Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
It's the most magical time of the year, and I'm not talking about Christmas. I'm talking about the NFL season. So make sure you're ready with NFL Sunday Ticket and YouTube TV. Get the most live NFL games all in one place. Right now, you can save $85 when you bundle NFL Sunday Ticket with YouTube TV. Sign up today at youtubetv.com slash Spotify. Device and content restrictions apply. Discount apply to first four months of YouTube TV, then $72.99 a month. Ends August 29th. Terms, restrictions, and embargoes apply. No refunds.
School is back, and Dick's Sporting Goods has what you need to win your year. We've got everything from cleats to sambas, dunks, and more. Plus, the hottest looks from Nike, Jordan, and Adidas. Find your first day fits in-store or online at Dick's.com. But what I have seen this man do was so unrealistic, so inhuman to the point of superhuman, that I just can't quit him. Let's get at this. Be tremendous.
I'm relentless. Here we go. This is the Skip Bayless Show, episode 121, as in 121. Wow. This, as always, is the Un-Undisputed. Everything I cannot share with you during the two-and-a-half-hour debate show that is undisputed. Today, I will tell you why I just cannot force myself to
To give up on Tiger Woods, even though I know reality screams I should. And today I'll tell you why Sauce Gardner, great football player that he is, still doesn't have any idea how much harder golf is than football or any other game you might try to play.
Today, I will answer a parade of your questions concerning what's left of my Dallas Cowboys and about my workouts. And finally today, I will tell you a very sad story if I can get through telling you this story without completely falling apart. Bear with me. But up first, as always, it is not to be skipped.
So I'm here to tell you that Colin Montgomery is almost certainly right. Tiger Woods should quit trying to play in golf's major championships before he embarrasses himself even worse than he already has. Almost certainly right is Colin Montgomery. If you don't know Colin Montgomery, and I wouldn't blame you if you did not,
He just might be the most respected voice in golf outside of the United States. You can make a case. Colin Montgomery is the best player ever to not win a major championship, even though he did finish second five times in major championships. Colin Montgomery played on eight Ryder Cup teams for Europe. He's from Scotland.
He never lost a single Ryder Cup match in singles. He did captain a Ryder Cup team. He is now 61 years of age. His words carry weight. So allow me to read you what Colin Montgomery had to say the other day about Tiger Woods. Colin said, I hope people remember Tiger as Tiger, the passion,
the charismatic aura around him. There is none of that now at Pinehurst, which is the site of the recent U.S. Open. He did not seem to enjoy a single shot. And you think, what the hell is he doing? He's coming to Troon for the British Open and he won't enjoy it there either, said Colin Montgomery, who then continued,
about this being the end or should be the end for Tiger Woods. Colin Montgomery said, aren't we there? I'd have thought we were past there. There is a time for all athletes to say goodbye, but it's very difficult to tell Tiger it's time to go. Obviously, he still feels he can win. We are more realistic, said Colin Montgomery.
of the Tiger Woods playing in this week's British Open at Royal Troon. So realistically, do I think Tiger Woods will ever win another major golf championship, another Masters, another U.S. Open, another British Open, another PGA? I do not. How could I? Realistically. But what I have seen this man do was so unrealistic...
So inhuman to the point of super human that I just can't quit him. I can't call for him to quit. He's playing in a British Open at Royal Troon. And I'm going to watch because I watched Tiger's opening press conference. He always gives one a couple of days before the first round. This one at Royal Troon. And I heard him say, I saw him say, I wouldn't be here if I didn't think I could win.
I bought it. I fell right back in the tiger trap because he's tiger freaking woods. I know he's 48 years of age. I got it. But I was there. I was there on hand up close for most of those major championships from 2000 through 2002 when he dominated the game of golf.
the way no player ever has or to me ever will. It was super human what Tiger Woods did to golf. He dominated with thunderstorm style, aura, charisma, charm, force that just captivated the entire world, not just the golf world, the entire world, because you never knew
When that Tiger might spit four-letter thunder and fist pump lightning, he was thunder and he was lightning on a golf course in ways I'd never seen. No player, I know golf, I know golf history, no player had ever screamed curse words on a golf course in range of the boom mics, screamed it himself, or screamed up a scoreboard the way Tiger Woods had. Force of nature.
beyond Jones and Hogan, beyond Palmer and Nicholas. Not saying he was technically better than them, better ball striker, better this, better that, better this. No, not saying that. I'm just talking about the greatest will to win on a golf course I ever saw. Tiger Woods could will that tiny little golf ball in that tiny little hole in ways no one ever has, including Arnold Palmer, who was pretty good at willing ball and hole.
Tiger could impose his will on an entire field in ways no human has ever imposed his or her will on an entire deep field in a major championship golf tournament ever, ever, ever. We'll never see anything like that on TV shows in those years, in those days. We did debate topics about Tiger or the field, Tiger or the feet. You don't do that in golf.
Golf is so hard to predict. I don't know who's going to win the British Open. I can give you my this or that, but I'll probably be wrong. I'm almost certainly sure I will be wrong. It's just hard to know. The golf gods will touch him on the shoulder or him on the top of the head or maybe him on the foot. You just don't know. But with Tiger, you knew, especially from 2000 to 2002-ish, 2003-ish.
Take Tiger, not the field. You can have all those guys, all those guys, because when Tiger roars, they all bow down. They genuflect. They run and they hide. That's what was happening. And by the way, no small detail, even though Tiger said he did not want to be called black, Tiger Woods was black in a sport that to this day is still dominated by white people.
Men's golf dominated by white people. It just is. Tiger Woods knocked down the gates of Augusta National, the Masters in 1997, ran away with the Masters, as you well remember. But he did not. He did not open the floodgates for black golfers. Very, very few. Shockingly few. I could get deeper into that. Maybe someday I will. I have my theories. Maybe you have yours.
But the point is, there was only one Tiger Woods. He did that. Nobody else has been able to do it. No other black golfer has been able to come close to that. He did that. He was Tiger Woods and he is Tiger Woods. And when Tiger Woods says he can still win at age 48, I listen. I'm not betting against Tiger Woods even at 48, even after what we've seen recently from Tiger Woods.
Even though my better judgment is right there with Colin Montgomery. My better judgment says, wake up. Stop it. And by the way, if Tiger can win anywhere, it's at a British Open. Courses are flatter, easier to walk. He has trouble walking. Get to that in just a moment. Driving distance isn't at a premium at a British Open. You don't have to carry the ball 320 yards in the air to have a chance to win at Troon.
Tiger can hit his stinger one irons off the tee. He can hit drivers off the deck, keep his ball under the wind on second shots on par fives. I mean, Tom Watson nearly won a British Open at age 59. So why can't Tiger win at 48 or 49 or 50 or 59? Well, reality screams no. I can hear it in my left ear right now, screaming at me from my innermost psyche.
And that's because Tiger's body can no longer measure up to his will and to his clutch gene, which is the size of Jordan's. I've talked about this before, but Tiger back in the day wanted to be a Navy SEAL following his dad's military footsteps, trained with the Navy SEALs, tore his ACL with the Navy SEALs, suffered a stress fracture in his lower leg.
running distance in army boots, in army boots, combat boots. Tiger Woods has suffered more injuries than most career-long football players have. Tiger Woods has been hurt more than any golfer ever has that I can ever remember. Maybe I'm forgetting somebody, but no, not like what this man has suffered.
Not to mention that on February 23rd of 2021, Tiger Woods suffered a near fatal car crash out here in Southern California. I think he was going 85 miles an hour downhill and never touched the brakes before impact and lived to tell. That was a miracle. And yep, it was miraculous that he could ever even play again. And he has, and he is. It was incredible.
miraculous at this year's Masters that he made the cut. I thought it was a spectacular achievement. He made the cut, then gassed with his ankle flaring up on him again, the one that got crippled in the car wreck. Tiger on Saturday and Sunday shot 82 and 77, and the miracle turned into a debacle. But yeah,
It was a miracle that Tiger Woods actually came back and won the Masters in 2019. Again, this is pre-crash at age 42. He won the Masters in 2019 at age 42. But what is not miraculous is this wake up and accept it stat. Think about it. The same Tiger Woods who won 14 majors in his first 11 professional seasons, 14 and 11,
That's from the 1997 Masters through the 08 U.S. Open, which he won on that broken leg, Torrey Pines. That Tiger has now won only that one major, that 2019 Masters, in the last 16 years. Think about that. Won in the last 16 after 14 in the first 11. So that means Tiger Woods has won one major championship in the last 75 years.
that have been played. That is scary, scary reality screaming at you and me. But I still watch him as if he's still got some 2000 Tiger left in him. Still can't take my eyes off him. I love watching golf. I'm addicted to watching and playing golf as I'll get to in just a moment. And I'll watch anybody play golf for stakes. I love watching Scheffler and Rory and
DeChambeau and Koepka, name them, I'll watch them as long as it matters, as long as it counts. But to this day, still, still, still the most captivating presence in golf is Eldrick Woods. I will keep watching him at Royal Troon. Deep, deep, deep down, I will still be waiting for him to catch fire in that Scottish cold and to win another major.
Tiger Woods the other day in his opening remarks to the media fired back at Colin Montgomery, noting Colin's never won a British Open, so he has no more exemptions into said major championship, even as it's played in his own country. Tiger's won three British Opens, so he has a free pass to play in this tournament all the way until he's 60 years of age. If Tiger Woods does play when he's 60...
in the British, and I'm still around. I will be watching, and I will still be hoping. So, as most of you know, Sauce Gardner is an all-pro cornerback for the New York Jets. Many stories have been written about how, especially through this offseason, Sauce Gardner became obsessed with playing golf. I know the feeling. Recently, Sauce Gardner tweeted this.
I never thought I'd say this, but golf is harder than football. Duh. So Sauce, you're still a golf newbie. I'll go so far as to say you're still a golf baby. I'm sorry, my man. You still don't quite understand. Golf is 10 times harder than football. Golf is by far the hardest game in the world. The problem with golf is
starting with that little tiny ball trying to go into that little tiny hole, is that the golf ball does not move until you do. Nobody's going to pitch it to you or throw it to you or hit it at you, see tennis. It just sits there, that little tiny golf ball, staring up at you and mocking you until you put your swing in motion and try to make that little tiny ball go straight at your target.
I'll never forget Martina Navratilova and the days in which she dominated women's tennis. She happened to live three doors down from me. I played some golf with and even hit some tennis balls with Martina Navratilova, who when I asked her to compare golf and tennis, she chuckled and scoffed. Golf is way harder than tennis. It just is.
Golf is the most misunderstood game in the world because it just looks so boringly easy if you happen to watch it for even a minute on television and you've never played it. So boringly easy it appears from a distance. Trust me, it is not. Let's take basketball. I can shoot a basketball. I'm a pretty good shot. Recently posted a video. Maybe you can find it somewhere. Me...
shooting, making three-point shots. I know what I could do. I could go right now. I mean, right now, I could leave here, the Fox lot, go over to the little gym four or five blocks from here I frequent, and I could start making threes without really thinking about it. Maybe I'd get hotter or colder. I don't know. But after a while, trust me, I'd find some rhythm, and I'd start making threes fairly consistently and confidently.
There's no wind inside the little gym that I frequent. I might as well be bowling, shooting threes. Every golf shot is a snowflake. Every golf shot is different than every other golf shot. Trust me. You have wind in your face. You have wind galing behind you. You have wind off the right. You have wind off the left. You're on a downslope. You're on an upslope. You're on a sideslope. You're in high grass called rough.
Or maybe you're in medium-high grass, also in the rough. Or maybe you're on a closely shaved fairway that gives you a lie so tight you can barely get your club down beneath the golf ball. The golf ball is so tiny that if you miss hit it by one hundredth of an inch, it will hook or slice 15, 20 yards left or right.
The hole is so small in golf that the psychological demons can seize your hands when you're putting. And suddenly that little tiny hole has an invisible lid on it, no matter how hard you try to wield the ball into it. There are times when you could sooner make a 10-foot putt than a two-foot putt. Trust me on this. The two-footer looks farther than the 10-footer.
The closer you get to the hole with a putter, the more your hands might tremble and suffer involuntary tremors. Just when you think you have golf figured out, you know nothing about golf. One day you make every putt, but you can't keep the ball in the county with your driver off the tee. Then you lock in your driver the next day and you lose your iron swing. I've been killing my driver lately.
radar locking my irons, making a few putts, but suddenly, inexplicably, devastatingly, I can no longer get out of the sand. I used to be a really good sand player. It used to be the strength of my game, and especially at Brentwood Country Club where I play, if you can't get out of the sand, you might as well get out of golf because you're going to be in the sand at Brentwood because it's covered with sand everywhere.
to protect itself from the longer hitters. It's a fairly short golf course, not for me, but for most. You're going to be in the sand and now I can't get out of the sand and I can't explain it. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. I try to practice my way out and it only gets worse. That's golf. No sport has ever given me more satisfaction or humiliation than golf has.
It takes way too long to play. Heck, it takes two hours to play nine holes, which is usually all I have time for. If you're lucky, you'll play 18 holes in four hours. It just takes too long. Yet I keep playing because the game is so hard that it takes me completely out of my mindset. It takes me completely away from my problems in life because I'm about to have so many problems on the golf course.
It's my escape, but I can't say it's a great escape because it never seems to turn out great. Those days are rare. I have more fun just hitting practice balls at the driving range because I don't get so angry with myself. Sometimes I think I should just quit golf and hit golf balls, just practice instead of play. My man Keyshawn Johnson on Undisputed, we spoke about Sauce Gardner, his affliction addiction the other day.
showed us a video of him taking his one and only golf swing in his life at a club he belongs to out here in the Valley in Southern California. I guess his friends dared him to hit one golf ball off, I don't know what tee, maybe the first tee, probably was. So Keyshawn teed it up, great athlete that he is, and he smashed it. I couldn't really see the ball flight, but it looked like he connected. He says he belted it.
And he basically dropped the club and the mic and walked off. And that's his golf career. One swing, one great shot, according to Keyshawn. And I don't doubt him. Beginner's luck, blissful ignorance, the golf gods trying to ensnare him, trying to entice him into coming back for more. I've dared Keyshawn, come out with me. Come out to Brentwood and let's play 18 holes and see how long you last.
I don't think Keyshawn would have the patience to last much longer than two or three holes and say, this is crazy, I'm out. That's golf. That's why what Tiger Woods did from 2000 to 2003 was so all-time impossibly great.
and why I just can't write him off. We're driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search, match with Indeed. If you need to hire, you need Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast.
♪♪♪
According to a recent Indeed survey, join more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Bayless. Just go to Indeed.com slash Bayless right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash Bayless. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed.
This is Ian from Dallas. What did you do with your Micah Parsons jersey? What about all your other cowboy jerseys that went into the trash? I did. I threw them all into the trash, Ian, from Dallas, after that disaster of a debacle game against Green Bay, the home playoff game. I threw everything cowboy that I had into the trash that night, as you probably saw in the video.
And I left every last item in the trash to be thrown out. And it all, all is gone. And I hope burned into oblivion wherever it goes out here in Southern California. Every last one, every last piece. That's how much my heart still hurts over being down 27 to nothing before halftime against the seven seed Green Bay Packers when we were the two seed.
with the chance to get Detroit at home and get to our first NFC championship game in whatever it was, 28 years. Now, I'll be honest. I'm thinking in the next couple of weeks about ordering a new CD lamb number 88 Jersey just because I remain convinced he's my one and only baller on that team. He's the one and only player I can trust on that team.
As long as he is on that team, as long as Jerry does finally pay him and get him at least to the first game, I have a feeling he's going to hold out or be forced to hold out throughout training camp. I have a feeling he'll show up just in time to play game number one with a new deal. And for that game, I'll say it right here, right now, I vow to you, I will wear 88 for that game as I watch it.
But I'm definitely going to buy a number 17 Cowboy jersey because my best player last season was my kicker. And as you might or might not know, I hate place kicking. But I love me some Brandon Aubrey who wears number 17. He was the best kicker in football last year and he was mine. My one claim to fame last year was Brandon Aubrey. You know what? I amend what I just said.
For game number one this coming football season, the first Cowboy game, I will wear number 17. Watch me. This is Vic from Northbrook, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. Would you ever get a non-Cowboys NFL jersey? Okay, just for the record, Vic, I was given a game-worn Tom Brady jersey when he was in Tampa. Game-worn. Prize possession.
I'd still wear it, but Tom doesn't play. Baker does, but I don't want to wear a Brady 12 in honor of Baker. Baker needs to make his own way in Tampa, and I think he will continue to do so this year. Just a keepsake is a game-worn Brady 12. Buccaneers, Brady. I also was given by, I think, a friend of Manu Ginobili. I was given a Manu jersey back in the day. Spurs domination jersey.
2014-ish, great keepsake. Obviously, he's long gone, so it's just that, a keepsake. I still have a Kawhi number two jersey that the Clippers actually sent me. I don't know what Kawhi's got left in those creaky knees of his, but the Clippers said, we're all in for Kawhi. Just hard for me to root for a team with Russell Westbrook on it. So if they do trade Russ as they reportedly are going to sooner than later,
Maybe I'll get back slowly but surely on the Kawhi bandwagon. I still like him. I still haven't forgotten what he did to my Spurs, but I've forgiven him for what he did when he quit his way out of San Antonio to Toronto Championship and then to the Clippers. So I'll say that the Kawhi jersey is still in play and still qualifies as a great keepsake. Many fond memories. So the other jersey I'm thinking about purchasing before the start of this NFL season, non-cowboy,
would be a number 10 green and gold, a number 10 Green Bay Packer jersey. That's Jordan Love's number. There's just something about Jordan Love that I love. I think he's going to be the next great quarterback because he went on a roll late last season in which they went six and two leading into that cowboy nightmare that he threw on us, made me throw up.
But over that span, Jordan Love threw 18 touchdowns to two interceptions. Jordan Love is it. Dak ain't it, which is what CD's mom tweeted after the Green Bay loss. Jordan Love is it. This is all to show you just how much my heart still hurts over being down 27 to nothing to Jordan Love's team. I'm buying his jersey. This is Jules from Portland. Do you ever watch cowboy games with your friends?
Jules, you got to understand there are two things in my life that are sacred, Cowboy Games and Sooner Games, as in Dallas Cowboy Games and Oklahoma Sooner Games. I did grow up in Oklahoma City. My grandfather did have two season tickets. They were up pretty high to Sooner Games. I'm old enough that I barely vaguely remember that we won 47 straight games in
in a stretch, a record that will never, ever, ever be broken. 47 straight games we won. And I attended the 48th. It was my first ever OU game. The only reason I got to go at age five was because I was pretty mature for my age, number one. And number two, I had four older male cousins who decided they did not want to go with my grandfather that day.
Notre Dame was visiting Norman, Oklahoma, and Notre Dame had just got shellacked at home by Navy. In South Bend, Notre Dame had just lost to Navy badly, and Notre Dame rolled into Norman, Oklahoma, an 18-point underdog to a team that had won 47 straight college football games. My Sooners. I was already addicted.
My cousins turned up their noses. We don't want to go. Be a wipeout. Be 50 to six. My grandfather called my mom and said, do you think he's old enough? Yeah. My mom said he can do this. He'll be fine. So my grandfather, a bear of a man, didn't say much. My grandfather, I wasn't close to him, but he he took me to my first ever University of Oklahoma game at age five. And I sat beside him as my Sooners lost five.
Seven to nothing. At home, they lost seven to nothing as an 18-point favorite. And I got to tell you, as bad as it was, as difficult as my grandfather was on the... In those days, it took about an hour to get home because of the traffic from Norman to Oklahoma City. I don't think my grandfather spoke all the way to the car or home. I don't think he spoke when he dropped me off at home. That's how angry...
and shell-shocked my grandfather was by that loss. But I was hooked, man. The worst loss in Oklahoma history was the reason I'm still a Sooner fan. It made me live and die with my Sooners. I went away to school to Vanderbilt, but I was a Sooner fan. So Cowboys, Sooners, when they're playing on Saturday or Sunday or Monday or Thursday, no friends, not ever, ever, ever.
No Ernestine, my wife, ever. It's me in my sort of bedroom office that I use during the week when I get up at two o'clock in the morning to get ready for Undisputed. It's just me and my quote unquote daughter, our Maltese Hazel. She's the only one who can watch these games with me because she mostly sleeps at my feet in her little bed.
And if I do scream at the TV, which I am wont to do, words I can't repeat, when I do scream, she opens only one eye, basically rolls that eye at me and goes right back to sleep. That's why Hazel can watch every game with me because she knows how to handle me. I occasionally scream.
And then I gather myself and I tweet and I scream and I tweet and I scream and I tweet and I live and I die with my cowboys and my Sooners by myself. No texting, no calling, no nothing, no friends, just me. Sacred time. This is Evan from Palm Beach, Florida. What was the most memorable tweet you've ever sent?
I have sent some nuclear doozies, Evan. But seriously, the all-timer has to be a fairly recent four-word special. That tweet went, all in, my ass. Except it was all in, comma, my ass. I tweeted this fairly early in NFL free agency when it came crystal clear, clear as broken glass,
that Jerry Jones' vow, his proclamation of, I'm all in, was all wrong. He was actually all out, as we've come to see. So I tweeted, all in, comma, my ass, meaning all in, I'm sure. And you either really got it or you really, really did not. Either you thought it was the perfectly timed and cleverly created tweet
skewer of Jerry Jones or that I had lost my mind and gone off somewhere I shouldn't have gone. But I remain perfectly proud of that four word, one comma tweet, because I said more with those four words and single comma than I ever have in any tweet I've ever sent. This is Brian from New York. Ever play
pick up basketball or soccer or join a softball league. So Brian, I was amused by your question because I'll start with soccer. The last time I played soccer and the only time I ever played soccer was when I was at Vanderbilt in intramurals, fraternity soccer. I played goalie for three years. We weren't very good, but I actually got a great kick out of playing goalie because I
It was a great challenge for me, but I have so little connection to soccer itself. I still, except on the World Cup level, or maybe the Euro level, or the Copa level, I still have such a hard time watching soccer that once I finished my senior year of playing goalie, I never went back to it. Last time I played softball would be church league softball in high school.
as kind of a ringer on a friend's team after my baseball season had ended, played shortstop, not a power hitter, just a singles doubles hitter. And I loved it and I do miss it. And I wish I still had the time to do it, but I don't. But I still can find time to play pickup basketball, not free for all open season pickup basketball as in
go to the 24-hour fitness out here and play basketball, Equinox and play basketball. No, not that kind. That's way too dangerous. But I still play one-on-one basketball against people I know and can trust. What's wrong with open floor, open season pickup games is you can't trust anybody. And because a lot of people know who I am, you get fastest gun in the West trying to show me and show me up.
and it gets crazy and it gets dangerous in one wrong move, knock on some wood here, I don't even like to talk about it. You tear your ACL or your Achilles tendon and you're done. I like to work out too much. I like to run too much, run distance too much to risk that. But if I know my opponent and I can trust that my opponent will play hard but not crazy,
I still play one-on-one basketball, if that qualifies as pickup basketball.
We'll be right back.
Which brings me to the last question from Phil from Denver. Have you ever filmed your workouts? You know, it's funny. I hadn't thought about this, Phil, but I have been filmed many, many times lifting weights and running by various outlets. Recently, Men's Health did a whole breakdown of my workout, both in print and video. But as far as me filming myself, I've never done that.
I'm a weird mix of vanity and humility. So I think humility wins out. It's like, well, you can't do that. Nobody cares. I post occasionally still shots, just pictures, but it's not in your face videos of me working out. But I will say this. I have been blessed. I'm in far better shape right now than I was in my 20s.
If you, I don't have any, but if you could see pics of me in my 20s, they would be laughable. I weighed as much as 180-ish, I'd say. Now I weigh 165. Back in my 20s, I was probably 20% at least body fat. Now I'm somewhere between 5% and 10%, probably closer to 5%. So as I thought about this question, I'm so blessed that maybe I should post more videos
workout type videos. I shared last week my sort of ultimate fitness secret. Maybe I should do more of that because God has been good to me, which brings me to my final topic. And I will tell you up front, this concerns life and death. And I just hope I can keep it together long enough to finish this topic. So please bear with me. Seventh grade,
First week of school, Taft Junior High School, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Lunch break, we had a room called the Sooner Room at Taft. The Sooner Room. Wonder why. And we had a ping pong table in there. And at that point, the guys were more interested in ping pong than they were in the girls. That would change as we got into eighth and ninth grade. But at that point, everybody wanted to play ping pong. So as I was watching others play,
I noticed there was a guy named Craig Humphreys who was really good at ping pong, and he was legendarily good at basketball. I'd heard all about Craig Humphreys scoring exploits in church league basketball, but he went to a Baptist church, so they had a Baptist league, and I went to a Methodist church, so I was in the Methodist league. One thing led to another. I mentioned to him that I'd heard all about him, and he said, no, I've heard all about you.
in church league basketball. And I grew fast, so I was taller than most. And I could pretty much score at will in seventh grade in church league basketball. So we had heard of each other and we hit it off. We played on the Taft Junior High team, seventh and eighth grade, and we became close and best friends. That lasted forever.
Obviously, through high school, he went on to the University of Oklahoma and I went to Vanderbilt and we stayed in close touch, which, as you know, doesn't always happen when you leave high school. I never lost touch with Craig Humphreys, who ultimately became the hump man in Oklahoma City as a radio legend, sports talk radio legend.
started his own station at one point, then moved to another station when he sold that one. But he was on air, morning radio legend, the hump man, Craig Humphreys. We went through a lot together. I was the best man in his wedding, his first wedding. He was the best man in my first wedding. Neither lasted. He wound up with three daughters from his first marriage. I wound up with no children. He remarried
a woman named Bev, and God blessed them with a son named Sam. I was Sam's, I guess you'd say, godfather. Still very close to him. Sam loves him some Lil Wayne. Biggest Lil Wayne fan I've ever known, Sam Humphreys. White kid, growing up in Oklahoma City, loved Lil Wayne. And yet that white kid was a very good golfer. He went on to play golf at Tulsa University.
One summer, he was hitting practice balls. Sam Humphries was and did what a lot of kid golfers do. He stepped down on the club face of, I guess it was his wedge or nine iron, just sort of popped the handle up off the ground so he could grab it. And as he stepped, he stepped a little too fast and hard, and the handle flew up and hit him right in the midsection, right in the testicles. And it was a God thing because...
Sam's testicles began to ache so badly that he went to see a doctor who sent him to another doctor for tests, x-rays and MRIs or whatever they did. And they found testicular cancer in, how old was Sam then? 20-year-old Sam Humphreys. He was devastated. His parents were horrified. They loved their son, man. Sam Humphreys got a lot of love from both. So I got Lil Wayne involved.
that man little wayne's got the biggest heart of any human i know and i'm not exaggerating i asked him if he would call sam humphries he said absolutely when how just just set it up and within minutes he was on the phone with sam humphries telling him to hang tough sam hung tough fought through chemo and as we speak is cancer free so a year or so later
this is back to about 2019. Lil Wayne was playing out here at the Fabulous Forum in the LA area. Sam and his mom Bev wanted to attend the concert. I pulled a string with Wayne. They got to sit sort of backstage, side stage, where they were actually on the stage at the concert, thanks to Lil Wayne, who then in a lull introduced Sam and Bev to the crowd.
and said how proud he was of Sam for beating cancer. It was a beautiful night for mother and son, but especially for mother who was so thankful she still had her son. A few months passed. One night Craig called me, Craig Humphries, and said, "You won't believe this, but Bev has been diagnosed with breast cancer." Well, I'd been through breast cancer with my sister.
From about 2012 to 2017-ish, 2018-ish, my sister fought and fought and fought some more. And when that cancer settled in her back, it got so bad, she just finally gave out and expired. I hoped I would never have to witness that again. And here it went with Bev Humphreys. She fought and she fought through chemo after chemo after chemo.
They thought they had it, and then they didn't. They thought they had it, and then they didn't. And it got a little worse and a little worse, and they thought they had it contained here, and then it flared up over there. And then over the last six months, it got to the point where she couldn't keep her food down. Not to get too graphic, but it just tore me apart.
Day after day, night after night, to hear from her husband, Craig, my best friend since junior high school, that she just couldn't stop vomiting. She vomited so much that she had to get her esophagus scoped because it was so torn up. She had to have lesions taken out of her esophagus because it was so mutilated by all that bile she was spitting up.
Any solid food she could not keep down. I kept telling my wife, Ernestine, it's just the cancer. It's advancing. It's just eating her up from the inside out. And if she can't keep food down, you know what's going to happen? She's going to fade away and she's going to expire. They tried everything. They had another scope of the esophagus as she continued to vomit day after day after day. They tried another chemo type treatment.
And she got worse and she got worse until finally last week, one morning she tried to get up to use the bathroom and she fell. And then she couldn't control her bowels. They took her in for yet another test, a brain scan, and the cancer had advanced to her brain. Craig called me as I was leaving here last Friday and he said, they've given her two weeks. It just tore me apart.
Because that woman has suffered so much. And I have been so conflicted over the last three or four days, five days, talking to them every day about what this means and how I should feel. I do believe in God and I do believe in the afterlife. And at some point, I do believe that that woman who's as courageous and gutsy as any woman I have ever known
She just deserves some relief, just to escape the misery she's endured now for two and a half long, miserable years, torturous years. It just shouldn't be that way. And I've prayed about it, and I've prayed about it. I've talked to son Sam about it and dad Craig about it. And they both tell me at least they've had time to make it very clear to her how much they love her.
Sam told me that the other night he was able to tell his mom, who's still lucid, I'm going to be okay. And he said his mom looked him right in the eye and said, I've been waiting for you to tell me that. He's married now, Sam is. And his mom told him, lean on your wife and lean on your sisters, Craig's three daughters from his first marriage, all of them very close with Sam. A parade of folks have come through.
Bev has so many friends. She was the light of her world. And they've all been able to look her in the eye and hug her and tell her they love her because they know she's almost gone. My wife, Ernestine, is close with Bev. We both cried and cried over this when we talk about it. My wife has asked me, is it possible there could be a miracle here?
Is it possible she'll just suddenly beat it and recover? I don't know what to say. Is it possible? Sure. But I doubt it. And I'm so conflicted because I love that woman so much, Beverly Humphries. And I don't want to see her suffer anymore. I just want her to be at peace. God bless her. God ultimately take her. And God, please be with Craig and Sam.
That's it for episode 121. Thank you for listening and or watching. Thanks to Jonathan Berger and his All Pro team for making this show go. Thanks to Tyler Korn for producing. Please remember, Undisputed is every weekday, 930 to noon Eastern, the Skip Bayless Show, every week.