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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.
Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. Here we go. This is the Skip Bayless Show. Episode 67.
This, as always, is the un-undisputed, everything I cannot share with you during the debate show that is undisputed. Today, I will give you the backstory of probably the biggest fight my wife Ernestine and I have ever had. Thank you, Derek White. And I will tell you why I am hoping, maybe against hope, that Will Ferrell, one of my favorites, will make a great John Madden in the upcoming movie.
I will review a movie you may or may not know called Sisu, A Bloody Gem. And I'll tell you why I do not have a tattoo, as well as answer several of your probing questions about what goes on behind the scenes at Undisputed and in my life. But first up, as always, it is not to be skipped.
I'm hoping this is not the last topic I ever do on this podcast because my wife may or may not like it. But allow me to tell you the story of the epic fight I did have this past Saturday night with my wife, Ernestine. It was a classic battle right out of the book she was inspired to write a few years back about our sports-crazed relationship, or lack thereof.
I'm not promoting her book. It doesn't need promoting because it did very well on Amazon when it came out and it still continues to do very well. But her book is called Balls, tongue in cheek, Balls, How to Keep Your Relationship Alive When You Live with a Sports Obsessed Guy. It's a very good book. I contributed a chapter to it. I learned a lot from it, but it's about
Her view of sports is almost my mistress, heck, even as my real wife, because as I've made very clear to you and to her, I'm married to my job, which is all about watching sports, which are my passion, my obsession, my addiction, my life.
She hates me to retell this story, but one more time, I have to, just to bring you into the right context. First date we ever had back in 2005, August 2005, we went to a little sold-by-the-slice pizza place on First Avenue in New York City, where she's from. Right away, I told her, because I had this instinct this could go somewhere, but I told her that no matter what happened between us, from this moment forward,
She would always be number two to my work, which is my life, which is sports. Hey, at least I declared and disqualified myself straight up front because I had been through this dilemma in four other failed long-term relationships, though you could actually certainly argue that those relationships failed for other reasons. But I am proud to tell you
I have lasted by far the longest with Ernestine and have no plans not to last even longer unless she does. But I have had consistently great fun and a very rewarding life with her. And I've told her at least she's risen to 1A to my career, my sports, as opposed to just being number two. And she's a little proud of that.
I still look forward to our date nights, which are always Friday nights, usually movie night, or at least Jeopardy watching night. Unless, unless, unless I have a game or games to watch. So last Friday night, believe it or not, was the first Friday night I've had completely off in, I don't know, two months since the NBA playoffs started. Seems like two months. First night I have had completely off, no game tonight.
So we watched an Agatha Christie movie. We love Agatha Christie mysteries. We've seen all the Pueros with all the actors. David Suchet is our favorite. Seen all the Miss Marples. Lately, we've even watched a couple of Agatha spinoffs. See how they run. Maybe you've seen it. Maybe you haven't. Saoirse Ronan.
Sam Rockwell, Adrian Brody, and then Invitation to Murder, another Agatha spinoff with Misha Barton. Both were pretty good, extremely watchable, and helped me to escape from what many people use as their greatest escape, which is sports. So every once in a while on a Friday, I need to completely unplug and get lost in an Agatha. It's as far from sports as I can get.
I just need a break occasionally from this long, heart-taxing, sometimes heartbreaking NBA playoff road that I have been on. Just give me a little agatha, please, on a Friday night. So we found an old one that we hadn't seen. It's called Sparkling Cyanide. I got lost in it. It served the purpose. I had a good time Friday night. I'm pretty sure she did, too. We ate our
weekly Friday night slice of pizza. She gets it from Mulberry in Beverly Hills. We have our frozen yogurt. We had a good time like a normal couple. But before we went to bed, I warned her about Saturday night. I warned her what was coming. I explained that this is a big one upcoming on Saturday night. She likes the NBA, especially the playoffs, far more than she does the NFL and its playoffs.
she does occasionally sit with me and watch NBA playoff games. Sometimes, though, she gets a little confused with just how these seven-game series unfold. So I tried to explain, not condescendingly, but just carefully, tried to explain how Miami did win the first three games, two of them in Boston, but now Boston has won the last two, and this one, game six, would be in Miami,
As the Heat try to avoid having to go back to Boston for a game seven, I carefully explain to her that on Undisputed, which she doesn't quite, she watches but doesn't quite follow or get what I'm talking about. I think she just watches me as opposed to listening to what I actually say. She would beg to differ. We'll have another fight tonight whenever she listens to this.
But I tried to explain that on Undisputed, I picked Miami to win the series in six games. I'm not sure anyone else in the sports media outside of Miami picked the Heat to upset the heavily favored Boston Celtics. Heck, I'm not sure a lot of the Heat faithful truly believed that the Heat, playing four undrafted players in their rotation, were any match for Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown. Yet, before the series...
I had, with conviction, told Shannon Sharp, my debate partner on Undisputed, that while his Celtics, he loves Jason Tatum, were more talented, that the Heat were the better basketball team, that they would win in six games. Pride Online, six games. Then the Heat win the first two in Boston as nine-point dogs. And then they win game three by a landslide.
It felt like, even in Miami as a two-and-a-half-point underdog, that he just buried the Celtics. It felt like they had quit. But then right on schedule, of course, the Celtics unquit, resuscitated, dominated Game 4, and then here we go back in Boston, Game 5. I wasn't surprised. And the Boston Celtics seemed poised and perfectly positioned to make NBA history by becoming the first team
to ever come back from 0-3 down. 150 had tried, 150 had failed. So on Saturday afternoon, I reiterated to Ernestine, the Heat have to win this game tonight. I explained, I have a whole lot riding on it. You know, you have to understand her background. She did grow up in New York, actually out on Long Island, then moved to the city when she was like 18. But she never played a sport.
She can really throw a ball. I don't know where she got that. She's left-handed. We sometimes play catch with a nerfy kind of ball, and she can really wing it. But she never played. Nobody in her family liked sports. Nobody watched sports. Nobody followed sports. So she had zero sports background.
Her joke is the closest she ever got to a football field was she played clarinet in her high school band. So she was on the football field at halftime. That's the closest she ever got to a football game. And she did not watch her high school team's games because she didn't care. So the point was and is that she has no background in this. She has no point of reference here whatsoever. And I try to explain this.
that my pride's on the line because I'm picking these games on live national television. I'm betting on these games against Shannon Sharp. We bet cases of Diet Mountain do. I've told the story before, but it's mostly that I'm betting my pride. How much do I really know about sports? Well, I'm pretty good at picking games, so I have to display it. And when the games happen, I'm rooting like a madman for the team that I picked. And she always says, well,
You can't control how they play. No, but I can predict how they play. I can guess how they play. I can educated guess it. I can have a vibe or an instinct that this team is going to outplay that team. Just as I did, I thought the Heat were just better at overall basketball, better coached, more veteran, tougher physically and mentally.
Yeah, but she says, you can't control what happens because crazy things happen during games. Yes, but you don't get it because my reputation is on the line on national TV. So please understand. Please have a heart. If I lose, I take it very, very hard. And she says, well, it's not your fault. You didn't play. Yes, but I picked it.
I should know. I should know better. I should have known better that that would happen and that would happen. Yes, but you, no, no, you don't understand. So we go back and forth about you don't understand. So the game started at 5.30 LA time out here. And I did something I almost never do. I watched it in the living room.
I almost always watch these games in my office, which also serves as my weeknight bedroom because I get up at 2 o'clock in the morning and I don't want to inflict that on her in the big bedroom. So I sleep in my office. I watch these games in my office, usually with my daughter, Hazel, our little Maltese. But you know me and jinxes and good luck charms. So as fate would have it, the first three games of this series...
were played during times when I lift weights at home. So I'm very good at staying locked into a game. I couldn't do this during a LeBron game, a Laker game, because it would just take too much of my focus. But the Heat Celtics, it wasn't that big. It wasn't the marquee series for us on Undisputed. So I think, you know, I'm thinking to myself, I can get away with
lifting my weights, which are right around the corner from the living room. So I can actually keep an eye through the door on the big screen TV, the biggest screen TV in the house, in the living room. And I obviously listen as I lift and then occasionally take a break and run out and watch carefully and tweet in the middle of lifting weights. So you know what happened.
watching the first three games and they win all three of those games during my weightlifting time. And I started thinking, gee, this is working. This TV is much luckier when it comes to the heat than my office TV, which is considerably small. I have two big screens, but they're half the size of the living room screen. So somehow the heat were playing bigger on the big screen. So even so,
I was feeling so cocky about the series. I was up 3-0, and it looked like the Celtics had quit. So I decided, eh, I don't need to lift weights tonight. So on game four night, I just watched it in my office-slash-bedroom, and I should have known. You know what happened. It's 3-1.
I gave the Heat no shot in game five, said so on the air. That's back in Boston. So I just stayed in my office and predictably the Heat got blasted in Boston in that game. So for Saturday night's game six, I got to get back to the couch. So I set up on the living room couch with my trusty good luck charm, Hazel, on the couch at my side.
Hazel usually sleeps. She slept until halftime when, as always, I let her out to pee or poop or both. But as the game teetered along, as it started to roller coaster along, as you might remember if you watched it, I got increasingly agitated. Never can I remember any game ever, football,
basketball, baseball, you name it. Never can I remember a game playing such havoc with my emotions as this one did. My emotions began to spill all over poor Hazel asleep at my side. She, of course, barely acknowledged all my psycho outbursts. She's great at that. But Ernestine, meanwhile, was keeping an eye on the game.
She happened to be in the kitchen. She always keeps an eye on it in the bedroom or whatever room she's in. She just keeps an eye on it. But on this night, Saturday evening, it's sort of her routine. She was making her specialties, which are pea and lentil soup. She's making them for the week. She refuses to watch any game that matters with me because she's trapped. And I always tell her, okay, if you're going to watch with me, you're here. You can't leave because if
If all of a sudden the Heat jump up 18 points and she says, you know what? I've had enough. No, you can't do that. You got to stay because if you leave, you know what's going to happen. Boston's going to go on an 18 to nothing run. And so she says, okay, I don't want to get caught up in all of your jinx mania. I just don't even want to start. So she doesn't start. She watches somewhere else in the house, which is fine with me because it's probably safer that way. But through the second half, right before my very eyes,
I was witnessing, if you can understand, my nightmare dream come true, if that makes any sense. The Celtics were on their way to their worst three-point shooting performance of the entire season, 101 games. They were shooting 20% from three. Jason Tatum, Shannon loves him, I don't. Jason Tatum was headed for 0 for 8 from three. You know, for such a great player,
Jason Tatum sure has a lot of off nights, doesn't he? I keep asking Shannon about that. No, no, no. But you're talking about riding the roller coaster. He's a human roller coaster. Yet, with three minutes left, the Celtics were up nine points. Because, you know why? Despite 20% three-point shooting by the Celtics, my guy Jimmy Butler, playoff Jimmy,
had turned into way off Jimmy, as in way, way, way off Jimmy, as in he was three for 19 at that point. Three for 19, they're down nine with three minutes left. I was out of my mind. How could I not be? I'm venting on Twitter like a lunatic. I'm tweeting, for once, the butler didn't do it.
And I was tweeting about how Jimmy was getting his butler kicked by all the Celtic defenders, Jason Tatum, Al Horford, Derek White. I'll get to him in a second. But would you also believe when I least expected it, Jimmy Butler, who doesn't shoot threes very often, rose up and hit a three with two minutes left. Then he pulls off a three-point play, a traditional one, an and one on Al Horford.
Then Al Horford fouled Jimmy Butler on a three-point attempt. What are you doing, Al? Thank you. Thank you. With three seconds left, and Jimmy Butler faced the ultimate LeBron worst nightmare situation, scenario. You have to go stand there 15 feet from the basket by yourself, and you've got to make three straight free throws. LeBron would have gagged. Jimmy didn't.
I was amazed. I expected him to miss one because he'd already missed two in the fourth quarter previously. He was three for 19. I just said, I told Hazel, she was asleep, but I talked to her sometimes. I said, he will miss one of these, book it. And Jimmy, who shoots flat free throws that don't look like they have much of a shot of going in, went swish, swish, swish. What? From three for 19 to 19.
wait a second, he just scored the Heat's last 10 points. Wait a second, with three seconds left in the game, I'm up a point. I see Jimmy sitting over on the bench saying, just one stop. And I'm thinking, just one stop. I'm three seconds away from Heat in six. Just one stop. So Max Struess of the Heat
was supposed to be guarding Derek White, but his role was switched by Eric Spolstra. Don't even guard him. Turn around. Guard the formation. Guard the set that the Celtics are in because Derek White, the inbounder, don't worry about him. There's only three seconds left
Max Strews was assigned to look for Jason Tatum to pop out of the set. Wherever he goes, jump him, double him, deny him the basketball. Mission accomplished. Way to go, Max Strews. So instead, the ball rather desperately goes to Marcus Smart, who turned and rather desperately tried a fairly high degree of difficulty fall-away jumper.
which lipped out and fell just to the left of the rim. It was the single luckiest off-the-rim bounce or carom in the history of the NBA playoffs because the one unguarded Celtic, the one who was not blocked out, Derek bleeping white, crashed the glass and laid the ball back in off the glass with confidence.
what became a split, a tenth of a second left. But for the first split second, in real time, it felt like to me the shot was late. I thought that does not count, that's late. And I started to rise up off the couch in victory. Then I saw one of the refs emphatically signal good. What? I was shell shocked. I was dumbfounded. I was thunderstruck.
In an instant, I went from supreme elation to extreme deflation and devastation. I cannot tell you. It literally knocked the breath out of me. I thought I had it. And then I realized in a tenth of a second, maybe the greatest pick of my career, Heat in Six, had gone up in gut-wrenching smoke thanks to a guy who had
ironically become my favorite San Antonio Spur after Tim Duncan retired, after Manu retired, after Tony retired, after Kawhi quit his way out of San Antonio. Don't get me started. But after they were all gone, Derek Bleepin' White became my favorite Spur. I used to rave about him on Undisputed. I just sat there on the couch traumatized. I was numb.
I somehow managed to tweet in all caps, "NO" with an N and then as many O's as Twitter would allow me to type in a row. And then I managed with what strength I had left to hit send, "NO!" And at that very moment, my wife Ernestine walked in and she very routinely and very matter of factly asked, "What do you think you want for dinner?" What?
And of course, I lost it because I'd already lost it. I'd lost the game. I'd lost the series. I'd lost my wits. I'd lost my pride. I'd lost my soul. I had just lost everything. Not to mention 10 cases of Diet Mountain Dew to Shannon Sharp. I said, what do I want for dinner? I'm going to leave out all the gory details, all the not so nice language that ensued. But we fought.
It was life imitating art. It was a scene right out of Ernestine's book, "Balls." We fought so furiously. I can't remember a whole lot of what flew back and forth. All I can really remember is that she kept screaming or maybe just saying, "There's another game!" And me screaming back, "It's in Boston! They'll get their asses kicked!"
"The Celtics will win by 30." I kept going back and forth about this again and again. She screamed back at me, "You don't know that." I said, "Yes, I do. It's over. I lost." Back and forth we went on and off for the rest of the evening. I mostly after that suffered in silence. I just went into my shell. She wanted to watch this Jennifer Lopez movie on Netflix, "The Mother."
I sat there in silence. I tried, but my heart was not in it. All I could think of was Derek bleeping white. Ernestine, surprisingly, didn't much like the movie either. I don't know. Jennifer Lopez's character is just surprisingly hard to root for because she's so cold-blooded and just emotionless, kind of the way I was at that moment. So we turned it off, I don't know, about three-fourths through, and without a word, we went to bed.
There wasn't a whole lot of conversation on Sunday either. I was still pretty wounded. I was dreading having to go face Shannon Sharp on Monday, on Memorial Day. But on the air that day, as I always muster up and do, I hung in there with my heat. I still picked the heat to win it in seven, but without great conviction.
I did say on the air, I just mentioned in passing that we did have a fight, Ernestine and I, on Saturday night. Shannon got a great kick out of it, said something about, oh, they'll never understand, meaning wives who don't know sports. By the time I got back Monday, again, it's a holiday, Ernestine said, I'm getting bombarded with Google alerts because it seems like all the bloggers are writing about we had a fight. Great.
So our private life is being strewn across the country on the internet. What can I do? I couldn't even focus on that because Monday evening was coming inexorably down the track and I, like a lamb led to slaughter, forced myself to return to the scene of the crime, back to the couch. I asked Hazel to please forgive me. She seemed okay with watching and she sat by me again.
Game seven, 5.30 LA time, and you know what happened. First of all, the Heat missed nine of their first 11 shots. They also turned the ball over once in that stretch. They fell behind nine to four, and my blood was boiling. All I could think of was Ernestine and how I couldn't wait to tell her, I told you. Then Boston missed.
Then Boston missed again. Then Boston turned it over. And then the Celtics missed another shot. And all of a sudden, Max Struess stepped right into a catch-and-shoot three that, what? It put the Heat up 13 to 11? And they never looked back. The Heat stopped history and reversed history. This time,
the Celtics actually became the victims of a Memorial Day massacre, the opposite of what they did to Showtime's Lakers, you might remember, way back in 1985 on Memorial Day. Well, shut my mouth. Heat in seven. And in walked my wife Ernestine, just as she had just 48 hours earlier, and in honor of her book Balls,
She busted my balls. She said, I told you. I said, you did. She said, sometimes I think I know more basketball than you do. And I said, well, I wouldn't go that far. I will give her this. She has learned basketball. She's getting very astute at basketball. She knows charges, offensive fouls. That's a charge. I'm like, wow, how do you know that? She's worked hard at it. Plus, Ernestine has great life instincts.
So she says to me, you just never know what's going to happen in these games. Nobody knows for sure. I just shrugged sheepishly because I was pretty happy. Then I thought all that wear and tear on my heart, on my psyche for nothing. All that fighting, that epic battle was for naught. She says, admit it. I was right. I said, you were right, by the way.
I have heat in six over at Nuggets. I'll be watching on the couch with Hazel. Ernestine also will be watching and smiling in another part of our house.
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Let's take one of your questions, shall we? This is Jack from East Lansing, Michigan. Is covering the NBA playoffs easier or harder than the NFL playoffs? As I think I just demonstrated, Jack, it is way, way, way, way, way harder to cover the NBA playoffs for me. It's my version of fast and furious, only it's endless fast and furious, especially through the first three rounds.
multiple games every single night, seven nights a week. And this year, the games just seem to get longer and longer. Maybe they're wedging in more commercials. Now they're all seeming to go three hours, which means many, many of the nights when you saw me on live TV the next morning, I had slept no more than three, maybe four hours before getting up at 2 a.m. out here on the West Coast.
Look, I love the NBA playoffs. Love them just as much as I love the NFL playoffs. But this is way, way, way too much of a great thing. I have so many diet do-bets with Shannon on every series, often on every single game. So my pride is on the line. My emotions get so frazzled because it's just relentless, compounded by not sleeping. So
I'll admit it, I'm a ticking time bomb, as Ernestine can attest. Man, give me the one-and-done, win-or-go-home NFL playoffs. These seven-game series are just way, way, way too exciting. They're endlessly exciting. They're hazardous to my health and to my marriage.
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. This is Denny from Arizona. Hmm. How hard was covering the Cowboys in 2015 when they went four and 12? Got to answer one Cowboy question each podcast. Look, Denny,
You can rub it in, salt in the wounds, whatever. I don't care because it was no worse than 2020 when my Cowboys went 6-10, if you might remember. What was the common denominator? Both years, I lost my quarterback. Well, my quarterback, to paraphrase T.O., I lost my quarterback.
This is why I have zero problems with the NFL's push, their goal of overprotecting the quarterback with rule tweaks and changes. Hey, it's a quarterback or bust sport. Without your starting quarterback, you're almost always just done to the point that it's hard to even watch your team without its starting quarterback. I mean, without Tony Romo in 2015 or Dak in 2020,
My Cowboys became unwatchable. 2015, I tried to hang in with Matt Castle and Kellen Moore, not the coordinator. He actually played quarterback for my Cowboys that year. Or Brandon Whedon, a guy I know pretty well from Oklahoma State. I thought he was going to be pretty good as a pro. He had his moments, but not for my Cowboys. Romo recovered, you might remember, from his fractured clavicle, collarbone. Just in time for the Thanksgiving Day game against the
Cam Newton led Carolina Panthers. Remember, he's on his way to winning MVP, and it was just a disaster that day. Tony Romo came back just in time to throw two pick sixes, three total interceptions, threw for a grand total of 106 yards, and then hurt his shoulder again heading into the third quarter. 33-14 Panthers. It was just unwatchable. 2020 was also bad enough we were in the middle of a pandemic, but
remember what happened to Dak he actually took a front horse collar in the game fifth game of the season at home against the Giants got yanked down bad things happened as you recall all sudden I'm stuck with Andy Dalton who I thought was going to be much better than he was as the backup and then it was Ben DiNucci with the initials B.A.D and he was bad and then Garrett Gilbert mopped up it was shameful it was just unwatchable
This is all why I became such a big fan last year of Cooper Rush. Remember, Dak broke his thumb opening night. Cooper Rush stood right in, stood strong, and got us through the night. I thought he operated the offense even more efficiently and effectively than Dak ever did. I still believe if Cooper Rush had started the playoff game at San Francisco, I believe we would have won that game.
Silly me. That's what I call a backup quarterback. And by the way, he's back as my backup quarterback, which is why I'm now back on the Cowboy bandwagon. We'll have the best defense in the league. We won't have the best quarterback in the league. But if he does get banged up, Cooper will rush to the rescue. All right, let me get this off my chest. As I've said many times before, I am a big Will Ferrell fan.
He obviously has comedic genius, especially playing the role of the buffoonish star who is so lost in fraudulent self-importance that he has no idea what a fool he really is. It actually reminds me of somebody in real life I've occasionally responded to on this podcast, but I won't go there. But back-to-back, Will Ferrell,
hit two of the all-time greatest comedic home runs ever when he, as you might remember, played Ron Burgundy in Anchorman, Ricky Bobby, Talladega Nights. Two very different characters, local TV anchor and a NASCAR driver, who are actually very much alike. Stories were written by Will, his buddy, Adam McKay,
who also directed and who has demonstrated Adam has his own genius many times independent of Will Ferrell. See The Big Short, Don't Look Up, for that matter. See Winning Time, the HBO series based on the 80s Showtime Lakers of Magic and Pat Riley, Dr. Jerry Buss, played by Will's frequent co-star, of course, John C. Riley. I will get to that in a moment. So what was my reaction?
When I read Will Ferrell will play John Madden in an upcoming movie, my first reaction was, please don't make it a joke. You may remember Will's classic impersonation of late in his career, Harry Carey, who, by the way, was my all-time favorite baseball announcer when I was growing up in Oklahoma City as a huge St. Louis Cardinals fan. But of course, Will was hilarious, I must admit. As a
caricature Harry when Harry became the Cubs broadcaster and in later years as beloved as he was he was as I called him when I worked in Chicago he was Harry caricature John Madden was not a caricature
John did not turn into Harry Carey. Yes, John Madden had showmanship. John Madden was a huge human, literally, with a huge personality who could be hugely entertaining explaining NFL plays on a live telecast. Boom! But John was not a joke. I knew John Madden pretty well. I know a whole lot of players who played for him.
Starting with my friend Pat Toomey, like me a Vanderbilt graduate. Pat played for the Raiders and the Cowboys. He wrote a terrific novel on any given Sunday. Pat Toomey always told me from the start that John Madden as a coach was so much better, so much more lovable and likable than Tom Landry ever was.
Of all the coaches I've been around, so many coaches, John Madden cared more about his players than all those great coaches I know put together. John cared more about his players. Truly, deeply cared about players who often sacrificed, obviously, their bodies for his cause. I know younger people out there.
often have no idea what a great football coach John Madden was because he obviously became the namesake embodiment, the living embodiment of the greatest video game ever. All you need to say is Madden. But John Madden, the guy I knew, he had depth to him.
John Madden cared about everybody in his world, even the little people who worked behind the scenes on his network telecast. This was a good man and a great man. I definitely don't want to see his life spoofed or spoiled by an over-the-top portrayal. So I ask, is the goal here to play Madden as caricature, the way I believe John C. Reilly is basically playing Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss?
I was around Buss quite a bit back in the 80s. John C. is playing him way over the top. It's entertaining. It's very watchable. It works. I guess that's Hollywood. Everything must be exaggerated and movie-fied. Yet, there's a side of Will Ferrell that I have seen on film that makes me believe he can play the real John Madden as both man and myth.
that he can capture the huge heart as well as the huge persona. My late great friend Jim Murray, the all-time great syndicated columnist who worked out here at the LA Times, once compared John to a float in a New Year's Day parade. That's what he came across as. He would float into the room like he was that much larger than life. So before I proceed, let me put this in context, frame it for you.
This is how much Ernestine and I loved Anchorman and Talladega. They're in our all-time top five comedies, along with Caddyshack and Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. So I'll rank them. This might not be Ernestine's, but I'll go one Anchorman, two Caddyshack, three Blazing Saddles, four Talladega, five Young Frankenstein, and as runner-ups, any of the Naked Guns. You can go six, seven, eight for me, whichever.
But we also love one other movie that Will Ferrell pulled off that required some serious from the heart, from the soul acting. You probably won't know it, but we loved it. It's called Stranger Than Fiction. It stars Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Queen Latifah. It's about a very common man with a pretty good 9-to-5 job
Just a working stiff, a nobody named Harold Crick, who becomes haunted by a voice in his head narrating his every move. Actually, the voice of a novelist, played by Emma Thompson, who inadvertently takes over Harold Crick's life at her keyboard. This role requires emotional range for a comedic Will Ferrell, and we thought he nailed it, that he just killed it.
going from poignant to funny and mostly back to poignant, though the reviews were not all that kind. I'd call it lukewarm, the reviews. But because of Stranger Than Fiction, I believe Will Ferrell can pull off all sides of John Madden. So please, Will, know you're a big sports fan. Do John Madden justice if you can. You are capable. Please don't sell out to Hollywood when it comes to John Madden.
This is Joseph from Wisconsin who asks, "What do you immediately do after Undisputed ends?" Okay, I'll tell you the first thing I consciously do is I try to tell myself immediately to forget everything that just happened. It's over, it's done, it's gone, I can't get it back. I don't go sit with our producers,
and beat myself up over what did or didn't happen. Because if I started, I would beat myself to a pulp before the next day's show. And there will be a next day and a next day and a next day. The next day's show is flying down the tracks at me 1,000 miles an hour, another two and a half hours on live TV, often battling with my man Shannon Sharpe.
So for 15 years, I often did just one show a week, sometimes for ESPN, sometimes for the old Fox Sportsnet out here in LA with Jim Rome. So for all those years, I often had six days to fret and sweat my next appearance before I got to maybe redeem myself if I thought I had done poorly six days earlier.
So I said, if I ever get the chance, I want to do daily live national TV so I can fall into a rhythm and maybe stay in that rhythm day after day after day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year, two and a half hours a day. Just do it as hard as I can do it every day and then let it go. I never watch back tapes of shows. I would pick myself to pieces every
I would overthink it. I would overreact to it. I would start trying too hard. My philosophy is just be me. Prepare as hard as I can, then just let it fly. I always say, trust yourself, trust your wit, trust your instincts, trust your preparation. So when it's over,
I immediately leave it behind. I go to hit some golf balls on Tuesdays and Thursdays, maybe play nine holes if I can squeeze it in and the course isn't overcrowded. The other days, I go straight to lift weights. Wednesday, I prepare for this podcast. I leave it behind. On to tomorrow. This is Hobby from Los Angeles who asks,
What if anything remains on your bucket list? Hmm, never really thought consciously about that, but obvi, I have been blessed. I have covered every sports event that I ever dreamed of actually attending. Covered them all many, many times. I've gone to Summer Olympics. I've gone to Winter Olympics. Heck, I've done America's Cup races a couple of times. I've done World Cups in three countries.
Obviously, I've been to many, many Super Bowls and World Series and Final Fours and Masters and U.S. Opens in golf and tennis and Wimbledon's and British Opens, you name it, in sports. I have done it and done it and done it. Bucket list. I have not been to Russia or Australia. I wouldn't mind going someday, but I don't have burning desires to go to either. I haven't been to Israel.
That's probably atop my travel bucket list. I do want to go to Israel. But if you really want to know my personal bucket list, it's about achievements undone. It's about number one, I want to write a novel that gets published. Number two, I want to write a screenplay, finish a screenplay that gets made. And number three,
I want to write a tell-all, tell-it-all autobiography that does get published, as controversial as it might be. Those three things are atop my bucket list. Now for a quick movie review of Sisu, and I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly because the character in the movie is never called Sisu. I don't even know what it means and I don't care because it doesn't matter.
Maybe you've seen this movie. Maybe you have no idea what it is. But I do recommend it, much to Ernestine's chagrin, because she said from the start, after seeing one trailer, one TV commercial, Knife Through Skull,
No way will I watch that. She wouldn't go to the theater with me. She would not watch it on any cable with me. Now, here's the irony of this. She loves John Wick, loves John Wick in large part because she thinks Keanu Reeves is so hot. I'm not threatened by that at all. Yet she shrugs off John Wick's violence because to her, it's just cartoonish. Okay, I get it.
Sisu is ultra-violent. Sisu is much darker than John Wick. Yet, in the end, Sisu is even more clever and more creative than John Wick ever was. And I love John Wick. Saw every second of all four of them. The end of Sisu, are you ready for this? The end of it is even more tongue-planted, firmly in cheek, funnier than John Wick ever is.
Now, this movie is Finnish. There's some subtitles, but some of the bad guys just speak English. It's weird. The idea is that this legendary Finnish soldier known for killing 300 Russian soldiers, mostly with his bare hands, is retired. He's in his 60s when he strikes gold in Finland as World War II is ending. But on the way to cash in his gold...
He runs into this rogue Nazi unit featuring a tank and a motorcycle with a machine gun mounted on it. And maybe, I don't know, in the beginning, there are probably 40 or 50 Nazi soldiers, all of them utterly despicable human beings, bad to the bone, and those bones are about to get broken. So the difference...
between this legendary fighter in Sisu and John Wick is that this man gets the unholy hell beat out of him. I've never seen anything like it in any movie I've ever watched. He gets shot, he gets stabbed, he gets blown up twice, and he rarely uses a gun on his many victims. I mean, if memory serves,
John Wick got shot in the first one. I think in the second one he needed to get stitched up. Maybe he got stabbed in the opening scene. But in the fourth installment, John Wick gets 10 million bullets shot at him and not one even grazes him. Sisu is just the opposite. You think there's no way he could survive that and that and that. And at times it does seem pretty preposterous. After a while, you wonder, is this guy immortal?
But the point is made in a later speech in the movie that this guy just refuses to die more than any man who tries to kill him. Now, Sisu can be a little slow, a little mood-building, a little stark, almost post-apocalyptic in its tone. But listen, the last 20 minutes are sensational.
The Nazis have taken several Finnish women captive and of course they have done unspeakable things to these women. The women's revenge is legendarily satisfying and hilarious. I watched Sisu on the treadmill on Saturday and Sunday because there's no way my wife is going to watch it. So as I say, it's a treadmill movie for me.
A couple of times she did walk past and she yelled at me, "How can you watch that stuff?" I yelled back over the mayhem, "Because it's really good." I give Sisu an A-. This is Jeremy from Tampa. "What app on your phone do you use the most?" Never really thought about it until you asked Jeremy. So here I go. Number one app used on my phone is Apple Music, mostly when I'm in the car.
Number two is YouTube TV, watching games as I'm walking Hazel or if I'm occasionally out to dinner during a game with Ernestine, I'm always watching. Number three would be Instagram mostly to post my Friday I can't lose in these shoes picks. Number four would be Waze when I'm not exactly sure where I'm going out here in Southern California, which can lead to number five,
my Uber app. And this is from Ricky from Colorado. Do you tweet from your phone or computer? Ricky, almost always computer. You can condemn me as a dinosaur if you want, but I can type way, way, way faster with all 10 fingers than with just my thumbs. Thanks to years and years of deadline writing in the newspaper field.
I'm pretty sure I can type upwards of 100 words a minute, which comes in handy when I am live tweeting in the moment during games. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Love it. Feels like I'm on deadline again. But I am painfully slow when I'm just using my thumbs on my phone, on the phone keyboard. In fact, I find I'm faster just hunting and pecking with my four fingers on my phone keyboard.
So give me my laptop, give me the equivalent of a portable typewriter that I came up in this business using, and on Twitter, given that, I am the fastest gun in the West. Final topic. I mentioned a couple of podcasts back that at the Lil Wayne concert out here in LA, Ernestine and I met a tattoo artist who actually did Wayne's forehead tattooed.
This is Ivana, the world-renowned tattoo artist from Slovakia, but who lives part-time out here in LA. Ernstine clicked with Ivana, and Ivana told us even that night, as we had time to talk as we waited on Wayne to arrive, that she's done tattoos on every conceivable body part, including on a man's most private part, which I cannot imagine.
Wait, she put a tattoo on that? Wouldn't that be intolerably painful? I don't know. What do I know? I don't have a single tattoo, not even a tiny one hidden on my butt cheek. I've just never wanted a tattoo. But the other night, I did ask Ernestine if she would ever get a tattoo, fully expecting her to say, no way. And instead, she said, you know...
Maybe I'd consider getting a little one, maybe on my ankle. I'm like, "Really? You would?" No problem with it, but I was surprised. Maybe it's because of Ivana. I don't know. Now, do allow me to date myself. I grew up in a time when tattoos were mostly seen on sailors, probably acquired in some drunken stupor in some faraway port.
tattoos when I was a kid mostly seen on biker gang bikers, maybe on guys in prison or just out of prison. These tattoos were often done with this cheap sort of blue-green ink that appeared to fade by the day. So obviously I didn't want one of those tattoos. I was always a little weird in this way, but
But I was always from the start about body as temple. God gives you one body, and I believed that you should keep it in as great a shape as you possibly could. I was always more about muscles, low body fat, 30-inch waistline, much more about that than decorating my skin with tattoos. I did always like to wear what I considered classy clothes that accentuated my physique.
I guess that was my vanity at work. I wear my Jordans every single day on Undisputed. I wear my Wayne chain, my all black on Fridays. I'm good. It's funny, when I first got into the newspaper business, reporters were often referred to with this extremely unflattering term that I never quite got, but I heard it so much when I was a kid reporter, cub reporter.
we were called ink stained wretches. You ever heard that term? Ink stained wretches. So maybe I fought against that pathetic stereotype. Ink stained, I am not. Hey, the way I think, if I did give in and let's say I got Ernestine's name tattooed on my forearm, I'm so jinx crazed that I'd fear I would immediately jinx our marriage.
immediately have a gigantic be-all end-all fight, wind up in divorce court. Or maybe she'd be so repulsed by the sight of a tattoo on my lily white skin that she'd run off with, I don't know, her tattoo artist. So in closing, I will refer to the 16th album, again, Dating Myself, one of my all-time favorite groups, The Rolling Stones. Maybe you've heard of them.
That 16th album is called "Tattoo You." That album featured one of my favorite Stones hits called "Hang Fire." It's hardcore rock and roll. Also featured what became an arena anthem for many teams, especially the Dallas Mavericks that I covered through the 1980s into the '90s as they rose into, in '88, a seven-game Western Conference Finals against the Showtime Lakers.
That tune is called Start Me Up. That album is called Tattoo You, Not Me. That is it for episode 67. 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, every weekday, 9.30 to noon Eastern, The Skip Bayless Show, every week.