Transcript of Local Hour: A Life Before Cell Phones (feat. Mr. Fat Mouth)

Dan, I'm a little bit nervous today. About? Well, I get here and I go say hello to my friend Mike Ryan. And this is also coming off of a very... He was in a bad place yesterday. He said some dark stuff on this show yesterday.

And off the air, a lot of people in Miami are still hurting. There's a feeling of sickness, of hangover all over the city. Yeah.

And I said hello to him this morning. I was like, Hey, just regular, how are you doing? He goes, Terrible. I want to die. I don't know what I'm supposed to say to that.

Yeah, you're not supposed to say much of anything. Is that because Duke is suing to keep Mensa from coming here? Is it because he's fighting with Uncle Luke? Is it just because they lost and he still hasn't gotten over it? He's here. I suppose I can ask.

I mean, maybe it was because FSU beat the Hurricanes basketball last night.

That, too. I went to that game yesterday, and I thought I could power through. I saw a couple of people in the Hurricanes Lounge that I'm friends with, and we all looked at each other. This was a mistake. We're going to go. Left at halftime. I didn't have the heart to just watch Green and Orange running up and down a court. They had ESPN on in the Hurricanes Lounge, so every 30 seconds, you'd just see Mendoza and Confetti.

The thing I wanted to ask you guys, actually, is if you've been able to avoid the televisions enough, because I just saw it this morning, to avoid seeing again and again the Mendoza play. The one Mendoza play of him running up the middle and scoring the countdown keeps playing. I feel like some of my channels are only airing that, nothing else.

Yeah, it's glorious, isn't it? Hey, by the way, I don't know why everybody's so down in the dumps. It's another sunny day here in football America. As we go into this show, a request, in fact, a demand. From here on out, call me National Champion Dave Dampschild. Thank you.

I mean, that's aggressive. You just came in, you just bossed everyone around Now Indiana is going to be cocky.

He's got the right. His team won.

Well, I was going to say, do you miss it? But have you ever felt that way? When is the last time you felt that way, that you were hung over with sadness because your team lost?

Wow. For me, I have had the fandom beaten out of me by journalism, by neutrality, impartiality. I think the last time I ever shed tears or came close at a sporting event was when my 1967 Red Sox lost in the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinal.

Not when you almost died at battle court?

No, I was passed out, so I couldn't... I had no emotion. I was dead on the ground.

In order for the University of Miami to keep the momentum going and stack successes on top of each other as they have for the last four years, they have to get a quarterback because the last two years, they've had profound stability at that position. Darien Mensa is very good, but Manny Diaz and Duke are now preventing him from coming to Miami because he's got a contract. Barry Jackson has tweeted, There remains optimism that Darien Mensa will join the Canes, but it's going to take longer than hoped, and nothing can be assumed in our judicial system. Duke decided it wants to make it difficult for Mensa and Miami. The lawsuit portion and litigation portion of there are no rules, and we're trying to figure out as we go along, and different people have different interpretations of the rules make it so that Duke doesn't want to be a feeder system anymore for everybody. They don't want to just exist anymore. As ACC champions, it's something that can lose its quarterback to Miami.

Duke is a school that has invested a lot more than people think into their football team, specifically. Mensa was the highest paid quarterback in last year's transfer portal cycle. Duke, people don't realize, is taking NIL for football very seriously.

Yeah, they're They're heavy into the rev share. You just have to look up how they got Darian Mensa, and they absolutely set the market with that. The reason why quarterbacks are getting offers of six and a half million dollars, reportedly, is because Darian Mensa doubled whatever the highest paid quarterback was the previous season.

I have no problem pointing on my hypocrisy when it comes to stuff like this. I hope it works out for the Canes because it's the Canes, and I want a good thing for the Canes to happen. But there is a part of me where it's like, I don't like the players signing contracts with team or schools and then just being able to say, F it, I'm going somewhere else. That part of college sports, I would like to be reined in sometime soon.

Now, there are employee agreements for non-employees and contracts that people have to adhere to. But the fundamental principle, because this is a lot like the Xavier Lucas thing is like, Okay, so you're saying he's an employee. You're paying him to play. And the NCAA is always like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, no. Slow up on that. And that's always how these players always drag the NCAA in these things.

But why does that matter? You'll have to excuse my ignorance.

Because once you open that Pandora's box, it stops being what the NCAA likes to pretend that it is.

I mean, labor laws, unions, all that stuff that come with employees.

Yeah, they don't want to open the door to that.

But should it just a contract be a contract, whether it's pay for play or name, image, and likeness?

The way that they write a lot of these contracts is you can't write a contract that says you are going to play X amount of game for the Duke Blue Devils next year. They write the contract specifically, You have a contract to do X NIL appearances in Durham County, North Carolina. So you have to go to this. A lot of it is like signings. A lot of it is like volunteer work that they're really getting paid a ton of money for, but it's not written as paid to play. So Duke, the contract they had signed claims ownership over his name, image, and likeness saying, You can't use your name, image, and likeness with another school, which clearly Miami he would be doing that if he goes and plays school there. It's a weird... There's a lot of work around with it. A lot of these schools will outsource their NIL contracts. There are these entire companies now that are just simply NIL organizations that help write these contracts and facilitate these deals. But it'll never expressly say, You have to play X amount of games to be the quarterback next year. You have to take this many snaps, but they find a workaround of that.

I love that the subtext of all this is Mario against the former coach, Manny Diaz. But I can't see that this stands up in court. I know the courts ultimately decide. This is the age of player freedom and player movement. I cannot believe the court is going to rule that a player has to stay at this school because he signed some contract that was mostly about making appearances in Durham. Let him still make the appearances in Durham. Just do it in a Canes uniform.

See how that goes over. Hey, this is all great, this sober conversation of legalities. How about we talk about national championships? Indiana Hoosiers are that, and they have their quarterback for next year, which is great news. But how about can we get back to, I know you guys are trying to turn the page, but as far as that goes, can we get back to Mike Ryan trying to go to the Canes basketball game yesterday and then having to leave like a scorned lover? I'm trying to move on. I want to find somebody else. I'm not ready yet. My heart isn't opened yet. He had to leave the game at half-time.

Minor penalty, two minutes for verbal diarrhea. Wow.

Bad call. Verbal diarrhea. I was making fun of. How about that?

Thank you for rescuing me. I was getting an alpha right there.

He kicked my ass. I don't know what to do with the level of pomposity coming out of Indiana about sports. I'm confused by it. I'm disoriented. I want to get back to the legality of what it is that Greg is talking about, though, because we've talked about this before. At the very advent of cell phones, we didn't have enough towers and stuff so that the cell phone communication was actually good. But people began relying on it so much that during a time where cell phones weren't yet working properly, people were demanding it so much that a lot of people had poorly working cell phones. That's where we are along the path on all this NCA stuff, where we're making up the rules, we're trying to figure out what the contracts look like, we're taking it to the judicial system so that the system can be put in place so that 10 years from now, it's not something that has this in it. You cannot have Duke suing the quarterback who's under contract to prevent him from leaving. Ten years from now, they're going to get this all sorted out. But now is the time that they have to set all the precedents because they keep getting presented with stuff they haven't seen before.

When you didn't have cell phones, how would you talk to each other? Did you write a letter?

What was it? Lucy, imagine trying to meet someone at a stadium when you don't have cell phones, if you're meeting friends at a stadium, how do you- Gate numbers used to be a big thing. Oh, a huge thing. But if someone's late, but imagine someone's late, can't get there for a half hour. How are you doing any of that stuff meeting your friends at a stadium without a cell phone? What? That's right.

I would just assume they were dead.

Excuse me? You stand up in a row and go like this and hope that they see you. Five sections over.

I mean, someone's stuck in traffic on their way to meet you, and you have no idea how long it's going to take until they get to you or if they're going to get to you at all.

So did you guys have to use maps to get there, like physical ones? Yes. I used to. I didn't even know they made those anymore.

You know about that printing out Google Maps?

I mean, before that, you just use regular in your glove compartment maps. You know about that map question. Now I'm doing the back in my day. That seems dangerous.

It is a back in my day thing.

Because the maps are so big. How are you able to tell? How can you spot where you are?

If you were running into any trouble, pull into a gas station, and they would tell you where you could go and explain a map.

We should do a bit where we just go to a gas station and add the directions. No phone. No phone.

You have to find your way to Eugene, Oregon.

You think that in Miami, You're going to find someone who speaks English in one of those gas stations to give you directions?

I couldn't get home right now without my cell phone.

The Verizon was one of the five worst days of my life. That's awful. Truly, I had no idea what was going on. Thank God I live in New York because I'm like, Okay, it's a I can figure this out. But if I had been anywhere else, I would have been dead.

We are so bleeped if for some reason our technology in this country doesn't work for 10 days, if everything shuts down. I told you, I was in a coffee shop the other day, and their credit card system went down, and I just saw 11 employees standing by the bagels just unable to do anything as if they'd been paralyzed.

Cash only? What? Who cares cash?

Oh, I got it. Wait a minute.

You could ask Fernando Mendoza as he proved on fourth and 5, he always knows how to find the way home. It's true.

Minor penalty, two minutes. Sport came out of your mouth.

What the hell?

Injustice. That was a really good one.

I had a cash incident the other day with Sedano. I don't know if he's around at all. I wanted to get his appraisal because I asked him to save it for the show because he was standing right next to me. I come out of a place where I'm paying $16 for parking. Now, first of all, the normalization of people overcharging for parking is something that I'm not generally good with, but we've gotten used to. I have a $20 bill that I'm going to give the valet to go get my car and pay for the parking. The guy says, I'm sorry, sir, we do not take cash. I'm like, You're taking this cash. This is cash you're going to take. This is how I'm paying for this. This has value anywhere I go in the world, and it's going to have value here.

The thing you want represents this thing I'm giving you. Yeah, but that's a company not trusting their employees, so you're hurting this employee.

That's fine. So he brings his manager over and his manager says, Sir, sorry, we're not taking cash. I'm like, You're either taking this cash or you're just giving me-You pulled that move? Yeah, you're either... And no, and it worked. But I'd like Sedano's opinion because I don't know whether thought I was being an asshole or not, but I reached my breaking point on this cash stuff where cash isn't good enough, but you got a tip jar. You got a tip jar where you take my cash, but you will not take my cash otherwise. And it's like, No, I'm not doing that. You will take the $20, you'll get a $4 tip for going to get my car. You shouldn't be charging me for any of this. The idea that it's normal now to charge me $16 to put my car somewhere just so that you could grift off me, I'm not I'm okay with, and I just lost my patience in a carport. I wasn't impolite about it, but I'm like, this is the only way you're going to get this paid for. There's not another way this transaction is going to happen.

Okay, so let me get this clear. That was not your tone of voice.

No, it was gentle. It was gentle. I thought it was gentle, but I'd be curious what Sedano thought. I'm reaching out to Sedano. Because I asked him to save whatever his opinions are on this and inform us on this. But Mike is presently feuding with Uncle Luke. I saw this. I don't know the backstory here. You texted me that Mike had a problem with Uncle Luke. For those of you who do not know, because it was a long time ago, Uncle Luke is the godfather of hip hop in Miami. Two Live crew took his lyrics to the Supreme Court.

How in relation to cell phones is this? On a timeline.

20 years before cell phones.

I don't even know. How did you listen to the music?

It's a great point by you.

You called up a radio station and requested a song.

We had these things-No, but how would you call the radio station? With what?

With a wall phone. A landline. It was a rotary doll.

How would you know the number, though?

They said it on the radio.

Oh, my goodness.

Are we in a place, Dan, where we would hand Lucy a rotary phone and she wouldn't know how to use it?

Probably not. I have a purse that's shaped like one, so I'd be able to figure it out.

She goes thrift shopping a lot.

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Don Lebatard. For five minutes, I was watching everyone just like, Nope, not letting you in, not letting you in. So when I got up there, I had to say something, and I said it. Cheaters never prosper. Stugatz. My buddy was saying, not today. Yeah, but you're-Not today. I think that was what he was adding. Yeah, that's so much better.

I'm telling you, the response I got from this guy, what I said was amazing.

He got him. Cheaters never prosper. This guy I yelled as angry as he could, I ain't cheating. This is the Dan Levatard show with the Stugatz.

What is the backstory? Can you give us the backstory that's unbiased, Zazlo, before we get some thoughts on this?

I saw Uncle Luke posted something. The first tweet I think Uncle Luke put out was something that's the effect of, Where's that kiss ass Mike Ryan? What's he saying today, the morning after the Canes lose? Yeah, where is kiss ass Mike Ryan today from #danlebitardshow? You think that's a commonly used hashtag, just #danlebitardshow? I don't think he really knows. He did # Mike Ryan. Not really. Oh, yeah. I bet there's a lot of # Mike Ryan. I really want to know what he has to say, Mr. Fatmouth. And by the way, that's a weird tweet because Mike Ryan is featured on a huge show show for three hours every day. He clearly knows what the Dan Lebitard show is because he hashtagged it. Why doesn't Uncle Luke go watch or listen to the Dan Levatard show and see what fat mouth meant Mike Ryan has to say?

Can I see the rest of that tweet Please, can I see the rest of that back and forth after Mr. Fatmouth? Because Mike Ryan says, depressed knowing we could have been champs if only we listened to your ass, Ray Ray Joseph takes, and now he's pissed Luke off.

Yeah, because for years, Uncle Luke was always, Why don't Ray Ray Joseph play this, that, blah, blah, blah?

And so Luke comes back with Mike Ryan, You a piece of shit. You know nothing about football. Jojo and Ray Ray never got an opportunity. You replaced them with zero and seven. You watched them last night, and all you got their ass beat by two kids from Miami. Coach Beard, who you bleep ride for. Rides with ick. And then you say, Mike, and I don't know what this is responding to because there was more to that tweet, but it's not on the page. Dude, your 60 65.

I'm sick burn.

Is he indeed 65? Is Luther Campbell 65? I assume Mike looked that up. I mean, is he 65?

I was ballparking.

Well, and here's the thing that I think Mike Ryan probably doesn't like also. Uncle Luke, at least to me, like, Uncle Luke loves when the Canes lose. He loves when the Canes lose because it seems that unless every coach on the team are Uncle Luke's handpicked coaches that he approves of, and every player on the team, and it's a lot of Miami kids who, of course, Uncle Luke does a lot of work with here, high school football.

He's gotten a lot of people to the NFL.

But unless all of them are playing the exact amount of time that Uncle Luke thinks appropriate, Uncle Luke would rather be right than the Canes win. And so the Canes lose because they're not doing everything that Uncle Luke suggests. And I feel like that That's annoying, probably, to Canes fans.

I think he proved it, which is after the Canes lose, he's like, Where's Mike Ryan at?

He's a big I told you so guy.

Big I told you so guy. Here's how this has gone. I've seen Luke out a couple of times. I, until very recently, considered myself friends with Uncle Luke. I've known Luke for 20 years. We work together, all that stuff. Whenever I've seen Luke out, which is rare because I grew up with him being identified with a university in Miami, but he's opposition at this point. He's not doing a lot in terms of being supportive of the program.

If they're not doing everything his way, he loves when they lose.

I saw him at a game and he was around. I'm like, Great to see you around. We're still going with the Ray-Ray Joseph stuff. Come on, let's be supportive. So I saw him on Sunday at an Adidas event. I saw him, he was in the back. And as I was saying goodbye to my friends, I'm like, Hold up, I got to set up to Luke because he's happy that we're obviously here. So I go to Luke, we're shaking hands, we're hugging, We're laughing. I'm like, You're happy that you're here? You must be. Are we still complaining about Ray, Ray, Joseph? Ray, Ray just entered the portal, and he's laughing. He's like, Mike, Mike, Mike. So I think that we have a good jocular relationship. And I saw that tweet, and I assumed it was more jocularity and us having fun. And then dude just crossed the line talking about how he's going to beat my ass in public when I was just laughing with you, when you had every opportunity to say shit, when I actually checked you on your shit.

Well, in one of the tweets there, he said that You didn't check him that he was going to smack you, but he looked around and there were people around, and he didn't want to, in his words, come off as an angry black man.

I just think it's a real shame that the aftermath of all this is this cane McCain violence, this trail of blood. Fernando and I are men of peace. We just want to bring a little sunshine to the world. This is heartbreaking stuff.

I'm genuinely confused by it. I know he's basically an internet troll now, and he's doing a thing, and I've known him for long enough to know when he's doing a thing.

What's confusing? You said he would smack you. Right.

Although I was the one that checked him. I'm also the guy that reached out to him directly, and I'm still waiting to hear back. We We can do this again, and we can be jocular about it again, you big phony goof.

I'd like to propose a boxing match for charity between Uncle Luke and Mike.

That's not cliché at all. We'll play the sound in a second here. It's a great inventive idea. No one's ever done it before.

But the question is, would it ever happen?

Okay, you want him to fight a 65-year-old man? Box for charity? That's right.

Yes, I do. That'll look good for Mike. Box for the UM program.

Money goes to UM. I think it would be an even fight.

All right. This has been going on for a number of years. I'm actually proud that Mike gets to inherit some of this as a disciple. First of all, when Zaz says, okay, when Zaz says, Uncle Luke supports the program only when the program does what he says, Uncle Luke, famously, said that he would go to the NCAA with all the violations against the University of Miami if they didn't start the black quarterback, Ryan Collins. That's where some of this started. And Uncle Luke also I don't think I've ever been more shocked in public than listening to WQAM when Uncle Luke is on and Uncle Luke is saying to Hank Goldberg, Yeah, Dan Lebitard called me the N-word. I'm like, That is not in any way true. He just made that up. He knows that's not true. When I came on, I immediately called him. I'm like, What are you doing? That's not in any way true. He starts laughing. So yes, he's a professional troll. He starts laughing. But he's a professional. That's what he does. He's a professional troll who once invited me to a party that I was going to go on a boat with him and an assortment of other people.

My mother was legitimately afraid that he was going to throw me into the ocean to die, to drown to death because she was afraid in general of all the things Uncle Luke related. But he's now 65 years old. He is indeed 65.

How did you call him now without a cell phone?

I did not call him that. He delights in remembering that gratuitous trolling that was wildly unfair. I don't think there's anything he could have said publicly about me that would have been more hurtful, untrue, or damaging.

I love him. He's like, Awesome.

See if you love him after this sound, because this is all going to get back to him. He was supposed to be here last week. We sent a car for him. I don't know what the hell What happened?

Well, I saw one video where he was like, I didn't want to come in because I would have beat Mike Ryan's ass if I came in. What was the excuse that he gave us?

He never had court trouble. He never told me why. He was supposed to come in three different days last week and never showed up and never explained why, except one time saying, I wouldn't have been good to you because my voice is shot. Let's listen to this. This asshole from the Dan Leventhal show. I was supposed to appear on Dan Leventhal show this week, and I didn't go because I know I probably did something I had no business doing to this dude, Mike Ryan. I said, I've been in a hurricane since you was a fucking dichot. What the fuck you talking about? And I'm looking around because I really want to jack his ass up at the police. Okay, camera, police. You got to look at your surroundings. And this mother comes up while I'm talking to this guy and start talking about the same shit. So I'm sitting there and I'm looking at Mike, this ain't the time and place for that, boss. I'm like, This mother. Now, if I take him around the corner and dummy his ass up, this guy is going to think I'm a. So I, Luther Campbell, have to restrain myself in certain settings, in certain situations, because I know It can be perceived as angry Black man.

So the man said, the big executive was like, Is that the Mike Ryan from the Dan Levatard show? I was like, Yeah. He was like, Why does he act like an asshole? Mike Ryan, in my opinion, is a. In my opinion, he's the dummy on the Dan Levatard show. But I won't go on your show and then say that slick shit so I can make you look like a real goddamn the dummy you are of the show. Mike, why are you grinning maniacly while you're listening to this?

Because he's doing a troll thing. But I do think you crossed the line. For the record, I'm not the one for that. I reached out to him directly. Still haven't heard back. He's doing his little goofy thing. He's become a Twitter troll.

Did Did that happen, what he said? Where he said, Mike, this is not the time for that?

No, he was being a goof. He was laughing and hugging me.

Was he looking around because he was going to smack you?

No, he wasn't. In fact, I had him on skates because I'm one of the few people that will talk to him in person and be like, Why are you doing this to the program? You're still talking about Lane Kiffin. You're still directing kids to FSU. You have an opportunity. You're all about taking credit for paying the players before it was legal. You have a legal avenue right now to actually help the program that you're supposed to rep. Instead, you're opposition. You're not helping at all. I give him the guff over that stuff. I thought it was all love. I thought we were having fun. But I do think that he crossed the line. Don't play with me like that.

He's the self-appointed general manager of Miami Hurricanes football. He's living in his own world. I think he's got a right to do everything he's doing and say everything he's saying. He's fun.

He's a cartoon. I'd be careful, though. I'd just be careful on this front. Shug Night, Snoop Dogg, all those people, Ice Cube, they all had to ask permission before coming coming to Miami of Luke because you might want to be careful with what it is you say publicly.

Stop. He's a 65-year-old man. He plays a bunch of golf. He's all chummy. He's doing a wrestling character.

I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about the people who defend and protect him.

That was true last week, but now the President of Miami is Fernando Mendoza, right? He runs all business here, right?

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Don Levatard.

Imagine if someone told you you couldn't have a Corvette.

Stugatz.

I'm a grown-ass man. Who's not filthy rich. I can't afford a Lamborghini. Well, I probably can, but that's beside. Hey.

.

This is the Don Levatard show with the Stugatz.

Well, I want to ask you guys something here about the coping involved that the Miami Hurricane fans have been doing the last couple of days. So I cannot tell you how many people yesterday sent me the tweet of Chris Felica saying and showing video on the Malakai Tony punt that he downed at the five-yard line.

Which Mike got mad at me for saying that he shouldn't have caught that ball.

The tweet, though, that is being sent, I was really surprised by the number of people who sent me this yesterday because it was clear that Miami was trying to set up something that you probably haven't seen a whole lot on punt returns. You may have seen it on kickoffs, but it's never tried on punt returns where you're on the right side with the football and you lateral it across the field. It's clearly open and it presumes a lot that the pass will be accurate. There's a lot of presumption involved, but people are pointing to that play and saying that it means something that this was left on the field. I understand it as a coping mechanism. But the thing that I wanted to ask you guys is, I thought we all understood that Indiana did the small things better than Miami, and I thought we all understood that game was decided by Indiana's special teams. They do that stuff better than Miami. It's not surprising that the punt was so good that they couldn't do anything on that play because that's what they do well. It's one of the places Mario Cristobal, I suppose, can be criticized.

He's got more pros than Indiana. Indiana is better at the small stuff. I thought we all knew that.

Their reputation was, They punish you for your mistakes. They're a great execution team. All that stuff played out on the field, from the punter booming that punt to Miami not being able to maintain their blocks, which was a running thread throughout special teams. And that's the difference. They execute to those two things. Honestly, credit to Malikai Tony for not forcing it because he did have Bryce Fitzgerald, I believe, on the other side. I know it assumes accurate pass, but we've seen Malikai Tony be able to throw the ball. He was a high school quarterback.

Wouldn't even had to have been accurate. There was no one near the guy on the other side of the field.

Yeah, but the reason no one tries that is because you can't be having the ball on the ground back there when you're playing that close to your own end zone in a game decided by the small thing.

It's ballsy, and it certainly would have done... Let's say that plays out in this alternate universe. Imagine what that does to Mario Cristobal's legacy. That call in that spot against Kirk Signetti.

That's like Sean Payton onside kicks the start of the third quarter.

The thing is, he made the call. It was just blown up by the stuff that Indiana does very well.

You guys know that when Malakai Tony would have turned to throw the ball, that the Hoosier's players would have reacted to that and gone to the other guy, and that assumes that Malachi would have thrown a good ball over there. You No, they would have gone over there and gotten in his way. It's not as though they would have just been like, Well, we got duped. There he goes down the sidelines.

Great play.

I love that we have to write fan fiction for Mario to get the big one.

Yeah. No, I get it, and screw you. But he had space.

He would have thrown a good ball, Fernando Mendoza. And did.

Would have been pretty cool if he was on the hurricanes. Tell you what, that Alberto Mendoza couldn't get out of Indiana fast enough. Isn't that the truth? Come on.

Get near the microphone, Greg, as you often forget to do. I wanted to ask you about Mike McDaniel. The reports are that he's going to the chargers, Justin Herbert, unless the Raiders' job becomes open to him or the Ravens' job becomes open to him. He's obviously in demand. It is funny to see what's happening in Miami, where he's in demand, at least in part, because everybody understands, Oh, had the number one passing offense in the league, and Raheem Mostard had 18 TDs on an offense that had a quarterback that wasn't as good as the one that he would now have in Los Angeles if Justin Herbert stays healthy, which he has. Justin Herbert will get to play differently than he's played the last few years because the amount that dude has been hit is insane. I know a lot of people argue about Justin Herbert and say, Stop making excuses for Josh Allen and Justin Herbert, but I saw no quarterback in the sport playing as unpleasant a football position as Justin Herbert at quarterback because the chargers couldn't block anybody this year once they got injured on the offensive line. I've said before, that offensive line didn't belong in the playoffs.

That was an incompetent offensive line.

No, that's fair. I think Mike McDaniel took the right job for him because you go where the quarterback is. He was still a finalist for the Giants, I believe, and pulled out of that job because he thought Justin Herbert was a- Didn't want any part of the Brown's job.

Could have had the Brown's job, doesn't want any part of that.

He went where the quarterback is. Now, I personally think Justin Herbert is overrated at this point in his career. I don't think he's lived up, but he's a better quarterback than the other choices he had.

Has a chance to be especially painful for Dolphins fans because Dolphins took Tua instead of Justin Herbert. And now you got the coach who, rightfully, has been run out of town linking up potentially with Herbert with an opportunity to improve him even more. It has a chance to be really painful for as a Dolphin fan if Herbert all of a sudden becomes a big-time passer. I don't know how you look at Herbert and think he's not great. I don't know what you're doing with Herbert there. He had a bad offensive line this year, so he didn't have time.

Chris. Yeah, he had a terrible offensive line.

We have a pretty good idea because Justin Herbert seems to be a sticking point with Dolphin fans.

Mcdaniel with Herbert is going to make you realize how bad Tua is. I think so, too. That's the reality, is that McDaniel made Tua, and Justin Herbert's tools with the ability to create a run game out of nowhere- Which is McDaniel special. That McDaniel has. When you can have that to free up everything that Herbert does, he is going to be spectacular with Mike McDaniel, and it's going to end any of those debates you were having as Jeremy Fowler throws out there, Hey, the Dolphins are looking at Malik Willis.

It's also fair to say at this point, you look at the interest in Mike McDaniel, both the head coach interviews he's done and the offensive coordinator jobs that were opening for him. That It makes it debatable to this day to say that the Dolphins were right not to give him one more season.

Which some of us were saying, that we're going to miss that offense.

No, it's absolutely debatable. And Jeff Hathley right now and the new GM have to prove that it was the right decision.

I know that Mike McDaniel and Dolphins fans don't want to hear this right now. He is idiosyncratic and doesn't cut the figure of the leader of men that you're used to in real football.

I like him. I don't like what Zaz is saying rightly ran him out of town. He's a 500 coach who produced offense.

Fair. I know I keep going back to this anytime I'm talking with you guys about the Mike McDaniel era in Miami. But man, that Monday night game against the Tennessee Titans. I hate that game.

Stop bringing it up.

If they survive that game, Mike McDaniel's job is not in question at this point.

They would have been 10 and 2.

They host a playoff game. They host the Steelers in all likelihood, and in all likelihood, they win that game. It's a very different discussion. But erase that. Forget We had about that alternate reality. For all the stuff about, see, he's not a serious guy for pro football, he did keep the Dolphins afloat. He was fired three months ago. Then the Dolphins, you had to look at the standings if you weren't in Miami, if you're elsewhere in football America. Wait a minute, the Dolphins are hanging around. They've played themselves back into being relevant in the AFC playoff chase here, and you guys just canned him. I don't know if that's the greatest idea.

I don't think he's a head coach. It's very possible, and we've seen this before. There are guys who are great coordinators, but they're not head coaches. And there was no way for Mike McDan to be demoted as an offense coordinator.

He's never been a coordinator. I hear that all the time, okay? And I used to hear it about Belichick, and it bothers me that we make that assessment only with the results. The last eight coaches the Dolphins have hired don't have any head coaching experience. And you may think Halfling is a head coach, but-I don't know. I don't know. He comes from war Chester Polytechn Institute as his starting point. If you guys think he's a head coach, you know more than I do, because I don't know. You got Diana telling me, Well, he presents well in the interview. That has nothing to do, nothing to do with being a good head coach.

You're forgetting he's a sweetie pie. Yeah.

I did forget that.

I would ask to ask directly, did Mike McDaniel seem like a head coach to you when he went to the playoff, hit both of his first two seasons? Yeah.

When he led the league in had the number one passing offense in the league.

Well, Dan, what you're talking about is how he presents in the interview, and something adjacent to that is the dim cynicism expressed in every coaching cycle, and especially this one right now. Look at social media and otherwise this last week or so, every fan base, the guy who was just fired or is up for a job elsewhere, they're saying, They want to interview our coordinator? Haven't they watched our games? It's that empty reaction. Everybody who is close to their team thinks that their coordinator, their head coach, is the issue and needs to go. That should not be a reflection on how good they are or not.

I would just add to Greg's question that he posed to me. Yes, I thought after the first two years, this is a really good head coach, Mike McDaniel. But then we get a larger sample size, and my opinion can change. I've actually seen double the amount of time now from two years to four years. I don't believe that to be the case. I think he's a great offensive But he's a 500 coach.

He won half of his games. When he was nine and two, you thought he was a head coach. When they had offense, you thought he was a head coach, and he was 500 as a head coach in four years with someone now deemed to not be a good quarterback. I hate when we do this. We just do it so often, and my starting point is Belichick. I was told when Belichick was hired, not going to work, going to be a defensive coordinator, doesn't present well, and didn't.

Well, the thing about Mike McDaniel is when he was winning, when he was making the playoffs, everybody loved his quirky personality. Oh, he was funny. The media was regaling the media. We were all laughing. And then two got worse. And then the losing started. Yeah, not as funny. And then Mike McDaniel were making ums and ums and he's terrible. He doesn't even know how to speak. He didn't change. The losing changed our perception of him. He's the same coach as he always was.

Offly coveted.

Offly coveted, surprisingly.

I don't think it's surprising. I was surprised. I don't think there's anything surprising about that. Raheem Mostard had 18 touchstones and then was out of the league. What are you guys watching that you think it's surprising that Every team in the league is interested in Mike McDaniel. Can he sprinkle something over here, that Shana-hand shit, that if I don't have an offensive line, it doesn't matter, I'm going to get 18 touchstones from Raheem Mostard?

All I mean is that every coach who's fired in the NFL isn't automatically sought sought after, and he's been highly sought after, both for head coach and coordinator positions. Nobody's forgetting about Mike McDaniel. We hear the league saying, You know what? The Dolphins got rid of a pretty good guy. Let's look into him.

Brian Flores, head coaching material to you? Just curious. I don't know how much his record was about. Leader of men. Okay, so that's what we're doing. Okay.

The biggest thing he's got to run into is like, Wait, is he going to sue me?

So guy who is caveman football coach, Caveman masculine, or Mike McCarthy- Or a great offensive, or a great run game coordinator like Mike McDaniel.

You want the Dan Campbell or the Mike Vrabel as the type, macho man.

Or the nerd that is just a genius. Brian Flores would have worked here if he got along with people. That is a quality that a head coach needs to have.

I don't know that that's been resolved, by the way. To answer your question, Dan, Brian Flores, there's been some smoke in other NFL stops as well. That's what might prevent him from getting in.

You say that, and one of the funny things that I learned when we were at Dolphin Camp is that he had installed, you said, smoke on his office, the glass on his office. He had installed just something that made it not visible because it was smoky. But he would just press. People outside would be coming to see him and he would just press it, and his office would just go smoky.

I need that on planes for the people sitting next to me.

Wow. Has he seen? That is the absolute Wahnsin. Just perfect. Nice. I need that on planes for the people sitting next to me. Nice.