Sideline Reporters: Kansas-Mizzou Firestorm & the Talk-About-It Question | Mac Engel

So I'm here to conduct a an experiment with my little friend here. Do not worry. No animals will be hurt in the process of this experiment. I have two potato chips. Kinda loud, kind of obnoxious. No one really wants to hear me eat this. Hazel, come here. Come here. Sit. Sit. Sit. Now let's watch this. Isn't that cute? It's true. We should all be dongs. Mac Engel, Fort Worth Star Telegram, Ingle Angle podcast, Sunset Lounge, Stolen Water Media. Thank you very much for joining me. You can't really see it, but I wanna show you real quickly if you happen to be watching this episode. I am wearing a vintage shirt. So you see this, it says KU. This is the university of Kansas, my undergraduate alma mater. And this says FedEx orange bowl. That's right. I still have the golf shirt from the season in which Kansas won the orange bowl. That really happened. Still doesn't seem quite plausible that Kansas, maybe the worst college football program in the nation over the last twenty years, actually won the orange bowl this century. This is vintage now. And I take care of this shirt like an heirloom. I only wear it for certain minutes of a day. I hang it, put it behind glass. It's kind of like the jewels of the Tower Of London. Only this is more special. Recently, the University of Kansas, you can see this little necklace. What were they called? I got that on Bourbon Street when Kansas won the final four in 2022. Recently, Kansas made some headlines. Kansas football team made headlines, believe it or not, when it decided to post a social media video hyping its upcoming football game against rival Missouri. This was last week. And the video, which was very well done. And it was narrated by Kansas alum, former Kansas Jayhawk football player and longtime Green Bay Packer, Gilbert Brown. And it fo its focus on the rivalry was about Kansas's history that starts back in the civil war era, pre civil war war era with Missouri when Missouri was a border state, and there was quite a bit of controversy around slavery. So Kansas produces that, posts that, and it goes viral. It's a lot of the Missouri people were really unhappy about it. I mean, really unhappy about it because if you watch that video, as I'm gonna show you here in a second, when you watch this video, this is not about football. It's not about basketball, and it's certainly not about sports. Love doesn't exist here, neither does mercy. This rivalry is different because it's built on something much deeper than just school pride. It's fueled by hatred passed down through generations. Our roots reached back to the civil war when blood was spilled over what you believed in and which side you stood on. There are heroes and villains. Only allegiance decides their legacy. There's right and wrong. There's Kansas and Missouri. If this rivalry passion has its colors, crimson and blue, gold and black, colors that continue to clash. When we collide, it goes beyond the game. Rock, chalk, jayhawks. So I don't know who produced that video. Usually, these big time college football teams have social media teams and content creators and all that. I would imagine that's what happened. And they produced it and put it up a day or two before the game. Then of course, Kansas, which for a long time had no longer played Missouri because Missouri left the big 12 conference for the sec. They're playing that series again. Now Missouri goes into Lawrence and wins the game, kicks their butt in the second half. After which, the head coach from Missouri, Eli Drinkowicz, was asked about it, and he's not happy about the video. He goes out of his way to say, Yeah, don't do that. Make it about sports. Don't do that. I don't know if we're gonna continue this rivalry. This isn't about that kind of stuff. This is about sports. Let's focus on the good things. And if he had left it there, if he had left it alone right there, I would have said, Okay, that's fine. You're absolute you you can really make that argument. Because when I watched that video, I thought, okay, they've gone to a really dangerous place to invoke that terrible time in human history. Forget forget state versus state history. I'm talking about human history. Slavery, when you bring that into the equation, when you're sitting there as a university and saying, Go John Brown, one of the most controversial vigilantes in the history of The United States. When you're sitting there saying, he's one of us, and you're bringing in Paul Quantrill, the Missouri general or soldier who came in and burned Lawrence to the ground. When you're bringing that into it, this is not about football team. You're basically in a way saying, Yeah, Missourians, they are in favor of slavery. That's a hell of a thing to say about somebody. You better back Now you can make the case of, okay, this rivalry is unlike any other in sports because of that. This is not like Georgia, Florida. This is not like Texas, Oklahoma. This is not like, LSU, Alabama or Indiana, Purdue, Ohio State, Michigan, UCLA and USC, Washington, Washington state, and all of these great traditional rivalries that give college football and college sports its color and its beauty and its passion. That element, the pre civil war discussion, that's what the crux of the rivalry between Kansas and Missouri is really about. So if you're gonna go there and you're gonna pull that in to be a part of a sports video, you better be all in and you better be okay with that, which I am sure KU people signed off on. Well, the Missouri people see it, and needless to say, they lost their minds. They were irate about it, and I don't blame them. That's a hell of a thing to bring in. If you're going to do that, if you're Kansas, you're going to do that, you're going say, This is part of this rivalry. This is why the rivalry is what it is. It is about John Brown. It is about Paul Quantrill. It is about states it is about border states and things like that. It is about that. Then embrace all of it and be about a history lesson of something that's much broader. That's how you can kind of defend it. If you're Missouri people, then you can totally understand why they're like, yeah, go to hell. You've reached into something that you didn't need to reach into, and that's unnecessary, which is what the Missouri football coach was saying after the game. Don't do this. And it would have been fine. It would have been fine had he not said as his parting shot, we left Kansas bleeding again. You cannot say that sentence after going on a tirade about how unnecessary what Kansas did pulling in all of those elements for a hype video for about a football game. If you're gonna be above it, be above it. If you're not, get in the mud and enjoy it. And enjoy the fact that you have bragging rights for one more year. Be above it. I have no problem with it. But if not, it makes you sound like a fraud. Topic du jour is not about that, but rather the presence of sideline reporters in sports and in essentially entertainment media. This has been something that has really changed since I entered the profession, let's say mid nineties, where before, right around that time, television studios and executives decided, how can we enhance the television package of a sporting event, whether it's college football, the NFL, the NBA, or whatever else? And these had existed before. Ahmad Rashad had done it very successfully with NBC Sports and its coverage really around the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan in the eighties. And some other people did it as well. Ralph Wiley did it, who's long no longer with us. He was a reporter in San Francisco, and he had a job with NBC Sports. And then some of these other television executives and directors decided, well, how can we how can we enhance this? And then what they started to do was put in female reporters. And the tenor of it changed considerably because whereas let's just go back to the NBA's coverage on NBC. They put in Ahmad Rashad, and Ahmad had a very good relationship, a friendship with Michael Jordan, our longtime New York NBA writer, Peter Vesey. And Peter had an acerbic wit and just a vicious tongue, and he was not afraid at all to use it, which is what partially made him so compelling as a sort of sideline or locker room. But then in the nineties, it started to change a little bit when college football on CBS, and then certainly ABC's Monday Night Football hired female reporters. They all kind of had one thing in common. They were really, really attractive. And it became sort of this new career path for basically women to get into sports media. And as I started to teach college classes at TCU and SMU, and I would ask young people what you wanna do a lot. I wouldn't say a lot, but I would say maybe five to 10% of the students that I had said, I wanna go be Aaron Andrews. That that's the career path that I want. Well, Aaron Andrews has gone on after being a cheerleader at the University of Florida and created a very successful career for herself as a sideline reporter. She has spawned countless imitators along the way across globally in different networks all over the world that carry basketball games, soccer games, rugby, anything like you can find them anywhere now, South America, Europe, Eastern Europe. And they all usually have one thing in common. They're usually very, very attractive. They're not models, but they're pretty close. And one element that's changed here in 2026 that was so different back when the social media platforms started to become more and more common, it was back then, if you started out and you wanted to get into entertainment or sports media broadcasting, they really did focus and judge those women based partially on their social media platforms. And the whole idea was it better look professional. No party shots, no bikini shots, no workout shots, no glamour shots. Have it be professional. If not, then you're just going to look like a girl who's pretty and is just trying to get in the locker room and and be on TV and be famous. They wanted you to to sort of look professional. Well, now here in 2026, no one cares. No one cares. You see these reporters now in party shots, bikini shots, whatever shots. It doesn't matter. That that whole veil has been ripped off. Now it's more about how big is your social media following. That's that is the currency. It's not whether or not. Gee whiz that picture isn't flattering now. It's not like they are going to sit there and celebrate the fact if that person has a picture, you know, doing a bong hit or drinking a bunch of alcohol. I'm not talking about that. But if it's a, if she's an attractive woman and she's on a beach and she's in a bikini top with her friends, don't care. They don't care. It's more about just have more followers. That's the currency. Well, back in, obviously, the early nineties, that didn't exist. But what did exist was these are attractive women. Let's put them on the sideline and have them give reports during the game. Lisa Guerrero became very famous for her brief role on ABC's Monday Night Football as a sideline reporter. Quite frankly, she was overwhelmed by it. I say that respectfully. I know Lisa. Lisa and I talked many, many years ago about potentially I was going to potentially co author a book with her. And we talked about it at length over many, many, many months. And she had written, I think three chapters about it. And then, you know, when Lisa was going through that on ABC's Monday Night Football, she was getting crushed. And this was before social media. So she was getting crushed in newspapers and it was mean. And here, the reality of it was you had this former actress. She had been on a a soap that I don't think went anywhere, but a former actress, a former LA Rams cheerleader, a model, a beautiful woman who was very good on camera. I don't wanna be clear about this. Lisa was really good on camera, is really good on camera. And she had a career, but she went on ABC's Monday Night Football. I don't think she really got enough help, and she got destroyed. I mean, destroyed. And she went on to basically reinvent herself and had a very successful long career on Inside Edition as a reporter. And so we started a friendship many, many years ago, and she gave me all the insights. One day we had lunch in Santa Barbara or someplace like that. Not Santa Barbara, someplace in North Of Los Angeles, Malibu or something like that. She had a little dog with her. We were talking about writing a book together and she had written three chapters and I read them and I thought, you know, she doesn't need me. And I told her that. I said, you don't need me to do this. I said, you've you've got it. Just go ahead and do it. Because by that point, I had already written the book with somebody else. And I knew what that process could be like. And it can be it can be interesting. I'll put it to you that way. It can be interesting. And I knew what it was like. And I knew in my my interactions with Lisa, which were all positive, but all of them were positive. I thought, I'm not sure this is a great idea. She should go ahead and do it. And she wanted me to do it at the time because she didn't really have time to do it. And it didn't come to be, and she eventually went on to write a book. You can find it now. She's been on this podcast. She has a podcast now. But she was one of the early renditions of the female tall of the pretty sideline reporter at sporting events, and she got cremated. I mean, crushed. And it wasn't always fair. A lot of it was mean. Would imagine it would even be worse today in social media world where anybody can be anonymous and just say anything about anybody without fear of actually having to confront that person. But what she did along with Erin Andrews and a whole bunch of other young women was to create a job opportunity and career genre for people who wanted to get in sports media. What you'll see is most of the people who get those jobs are women. One thing that I hear a lot of women talk about in sports media, and of course, I'm married to one, is just it can be savagely difficult. And it can be. And I'm reminded sometimes I'll go into press boxes and it is just an ocean of guys, mostly white dudes. And I'll call my spouse occasionally. I said, don't think some days I appreciated how difficult this was for you to go into these environments where you're the only girl. And it's hard, especially for the role that she was doing because she was offering her opinion. You know, she wasn't in in these certain different roles that people fall into in entertainment media, sports media. You know, she was she was a reporter. That that was very different for a female. Even today, it's still you're a bit of an outlier. That was tough. That was tough. And I saw it, and I've seen how sort of that profession has changed. And a lot of times I'll see and watch these women who are in these jobs and say, women need to support other women. I can tell you this for a fact. Sometimes the very, the biggest competition in those environments is women versus women. It's very competitive and it sometimes can be savagely brutal. So the reason why I'm bringing this up today is because I went to most recently Texas's home game against Ohio State. Now a lot of attention was paid to ESPN sideline reporter, Holly Rose interviews with Texas head coach Steve Sarkeesian after the game. Then the side, the Laura Rutledge halftime interview with Steve Sarkeesian, at which point Texas was trailing. Because I've done this job long enough, I kind of have an idea of how those are supposed to go. You don't have a lot of time. You have a director in your ear to the reporter, and you've got to hold that coach or that player there long enough for them to give it to you and to get in two questions. Right? So that can be tight. And it's a lot of noise and it's hot. And you've got this guy who doesn't wanna stand there, but is doing it because he's more or less contractually obligated to do it. Well, in this particular case with Steve Sarkeesian at halftime, he had been waiting and waiting and waiting because ESPN or ABC was taking too long to give it to the sideline reporter. So he leaves. That's really not that big of a deal. It's not. And then immediately after the game, there's Holly Rowe on field with Steve Sarkeesian, and he's busy. They've just had this historic comeback win against Ohio State. He wants to go shake Ohio State Ryan coach Ryan Day's hand and then go celebrate with his team. So he's very brief. He's very curt, and it looks kind of rude because it was. Those are very, very compressed, hurried environments, and they're difficult to do. They are difficult to do. And I am sympathetic to sideline reporters who are trying to get these interviews done in these very, very tight, uncomfortable, sometimes very stressful settings. However, I am sympathetic about that because I know what it's like to sometimes interview these people who really don't wanna stop and talk to you, or they're giving you literally a minute or thirty seconds. They're giving you a question, and then they're and you have to talk to them while they're walking. And sometimes it can be just subhuman. I'll never forget this. Dallas cowboys in 2006 were playing the New York giants on ABC's Monday night ESPN's Monday night football, and Drew Bledsoe, the quarterback, gets benched at halftime. Benched at halftime. I had a good relationship with Drew Bledsoe. I was covering the cowboys as a beat reporter for the Fort Worth star telegram then, and he is benched at halftime in favor of Tony Romo. Well, you've gotta get Drew Bledsoe. So I'm waiting for Drew after the game, and I know where he's there's two places he could come out. He's not gonna be in the locker room because he doesn't wanna talk to the media. So he's gonna go out the back way, which is where I've gotta be. And he sees me, and I kinda give him a look because he knows me. And I kind of shrugged. He's walking up the ramp. This is an old Texas stadium. And I'm walking up the ramp with him. And he just looks at me and says, Bad decision. And I said, Who's? He said, Bills. Meaning head coach Bill Parcells. Well, the story gets out that a reporter, me, chased him to his car. That did not happen. Here to say that did not happen. All I did was take about, oh, I don't know, 20 steps with him up a ramp, turn around and left. The fact that he gave me that much was all I needed. But I can tell you in that moment, can I can remember the whole thing just got like like it happened two seconds ago? You feel kinda just like, oh, god, what am I doing? That was reporting. That counted. I did my job in that particular case very well. And it's hard. The difference between what I was doing in between what the prototypical sideline reporter does now is totally different. Now that's more about brand enhancement. What I was doing then was trying to get hard news for that in that environment. The starting quarterback just got benched. What do you think? Okay. That's that's difficult. So I go back to this part about the sideline reporter in my understanding of what it is. It's now traditionally a female job. You'll see some guys do it. Not many. It's traditionally a female job. Okay. That's fine. You have to be attractive. That's just the way it is. If we wanna talk about the double standards that women face in terms of being on camera for these types of jobs versus men, get no argument from me. It's a 100% true. Thousand percent true. You'll see some balding, fat dudes have TV jobs. Not tons, but you see them. Don't see a lot of that in women. You don't. It is an unfair double standard. Now here's what I have told my daughter and what I've come accept about anything about these things, these sorts of things. If you wanna find unfairness, I don't care what your situation is, you can find it. If you wanna find double standards, contradictions, or hypocrisy for whatever situation that you think you are in, you can find it. Here's the other part. Nobody cares. They don't care about your excuses. We might be sympathetic to that particular loved one or close friend, But for the population at large, we don't care. We just don't. Nobody cares about them, even if they are very real and as tangible as the phone that sits in your hand. So you have now this profession, sideline reporter. What do they really do? And this is my real beef. Not with any of that, but with this certain element to the profession. Hello. It's Mike Reiner of Your Dark Companion here. Let me ask you. Are you looking for something to fill the long dead air hours of your day? Join the Sunset Lounge DFW and your dark companion on patreon.com, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Replace those sad, slow hours with sports, pop culture, music woven into interesting conversations. So step inside the green door, have a seat at the bar, and get in the groove with those shows and so very much more. So when I started out with the when I started out coming to Texas Rangers in 2001, The club, nor did very many have sideline reporters that worked the telecast. There were national ones. Like I mentioned, Lisa Guerrero at the time, Hannah Storm had a very successful career with NBC sports. There's a bunch. Willow Bay, I think did it for a little while. Force. Susie Colbert did it with ESPN, I believe. They were sort of on the front end of it. Know I'm missing some other really good ones. Pam Oliver did it at the beginning, and Pam was terrific. Pam was great. I don't think I ever met Pam. Another one who's been doing it for a long time, and this will be part of that conversation, is ESPN reporter Holly Rowe. Well, since this stuff that happened with the University of Texas on Saturday, Holly's kind of been in the news. I've dealt with Holly twice. I have nothing bad to say about her. She finds professional. She's been doing it a long time, a long time. And that's I don't care what anybody says. If you've been doing something for a long time. Hats off, especially a job like that. A good friend of mine in Utah, where I believe she lives, says nothing but great things about her. And I I know this. If you take that kind of job, the person who's in that kind of job that has some degree of visibility to it, you will invariably, inevitably find somebody who says, oh, man, they suck. What an asshole. What a bitch. They're so rude. They're so mean. Well, if you meet that person at the wrong time and they're busy and they're trying to get something done or they're just having a day, yeah, that's probably the conclusion you're gonna draw. I've seen it time and again, where if you don't catch that famous person, Hallie Rose famous in this context, if you don't catch that person in the right time and day, yeah, you're probably gonna have an unfavorable impression. But I think you could say that about anybody. Now multiply that times five with people who are trying to work. Multiply it by 10 for people who are on a schedule, on a deadline, in stressful circumstances, who are just, they've got to get it done and they need you out of the way. They need to be someplace else. Well, I would imagine that's happened to her many times, as well as many other people in that profession. I'm sympathetic to that. You want to be nice. You want to be accommodating, but there comes that breaking point. You're like, Man, I got to go. Bye. And I'm not saying maybe she is a nightmare. I have no idea. But I'm I'm sympathetic to people who are in those positions and get evaluated on that one quick instance that maybe fifteen, twenty seconds. And you think, well, what a bitch. What a jerk. I can't believe they acted like that. And you've you've completely formed all of your opinion based on that per about that person based on one twenty five second interaction. Again, it may be completely accurate, but it's kinda tough. Do we really need does does ESPN does an ESPN telecast really need Holly Rowe? No. No disrespect to Holly Rowe. Do they need these sideline reporters? No. They don't. Does ESPN need to pay a play by play or color analyst $10,000,000? No. They don't. I've alluded to this before on this podcast about that reality, but they do. And what I've come to accept and believe is that if you can go get it, go get it. Whatever that number looks like, if you can go get it, go get it. Just because I can't doesn't mean you shouldn't. You know? And just because you do doesn't mean they're not gonna be consequences on the back end. So if you're that employee's making 8 to $10,000,000 and then you see that same employer lay off five different employees, well, sorry. I mean, you do the math, man. So you gotta deal with that. But at the same time, like, I get it. You gotta go get it. Do what you gotta do because you do not know how long this window is going to be open to make that. So do they need any of these people? And I'm not I said ESPN. You could say Fox Sports, CBS Sports, NBC Sports, any of do they need the sideline reporter? Have you ever watched a game and and thought, wow, that element, that one report, that interview really enhanced my viewing experience of that event? I can think of maybe two. I do remember at the NFC championship game between the San Francisco 49ers when Colin Kaepernick was the quarterback and Richard Sherman was the quarterback for Seattle. Fox sideline reporter, Aaron Andrews, on the field. And by that point, she had done the job for, like, twenty some years. And Richard Sherman's in her face just sort of he's all amped up. He's all excited. They're gonna go to the Super Bowl. And she just asks him the greatest question ever. What are you mad about? It was beautiful. It was perfect. It was the best question ever. What are you mad about? And it totally handcuffed him. He's like, was totally unprepared for it. It was great. There was one I remember in the Winter Olympics when Melissa Stark was working for NBC Sports, and she's interviewing speed skater, Shaunie Davis, an American who had just won the gold medal in whatever speed skating event. And he is just sneering at her. It is so uncomfortable. It's so unfortunate. This guy just won the gold medal. And he's being asked some truly innocent questions by Melissa Stark, a phenomenal pro, really nice person. And Shaunie Davis is just it's uncomfortable to watch. And I think she asked the question, what are you mad about? Or what are you mad at? And then he gives her a short answer. And Melissa Stark throws it back to the studio and says, Shaunie Davis, Goldman, clearly excited, very sarcastic. I was like, Good for you. Do not sit there and be treated like that. And I believe later he apologized about it. But that gives you an example of two, two that I remember. There's one more. Michelle Tafoya was a long, longtime sideline reporter for, I believe, CBS Sports there for a while, but she really kinda made her way with NBC's Sunday Night Football in America where she's still on the sidelines. And there was one thing that she did. Know, I've interviewed Michelle a couple times, and she's fine. She's nice. And I believe she's running for US senate now in Minnesota as a conservative. But the thing that that I remember that she was in Seattle, and she came up with this idea to give you the viewer at home watching it on television of just how loud the football field was during the game. And it was a really neat idea that she had, They executed it really, really well. And it was a good job. I've named you three or four times, and think about all the games that I've watched over the last thirty years. Think about any sideline reports that I've seen. And I've named you a handful that stand out. They really don't do that much. But now they are part of not just the production, but the production costs going in of a Major League Baseball game, of a National Hockey League game, NFL, NCAA Basketball, and be all of them. So there are all these different job opportunities usually for women to pursue. And that's the part where I'm like, Yes. Great. Go for it. Go get a job. Go get paid. Make the most of it. If this is what you wanna do, go do it. But here's the reality of it. Some of it's gonna be really hard. Some of it's gonna be really ugly. Some of it's stuff you're gonna hear comments that are ungodly just because of your appearance. Is it a double standard? Yes. Is it a double standard that you're getting those opportunities because you're a female? Yeah. It is. But there's double standards everywhere. And guess what? Nobody cares. Here's the part, though, that rubs me the wrong way. And I have seen this a bit. There's two of them. I've seen this a billion times. You see the person who really wants it and then they get it. And for anybody who goes out who does that and gets it, I'm always happy for them. Good for you. That's great. Celebrate it. Enjoy it. Really celebrate it. And then their ego just explodes because they're on television. They get so full of themselves and they think they are so damn important. I'm like, who who do you think you are? Really? You're, you're strutting around here acting like you're important. You're walking around like you're like, you think this thing's gonna fall apart if you're not here tomorrow night? Circus, This is and you're a part of it. Just enjoy the fact that you are a part of it, but you are not doing anything of any real significance other than sticking a microphone in a coach or player's face and saying, Coach, you've gotta be really excited about this big win. How are you feeling? That's what it is. And this is the part that drives me crazy. I will see reporters, Again, this is gonna sound like this is gonna sound sexist. But I see all these reporters walking around with these notebooks and books and armful of notes and all this other stuff and keeping everything down, which is fine. Great. Doing your job. I get it. And then they put you on camera, and your first question is, coach, talk about that windy night. Go fuck yourself with the talk about questions. That goes for everybody in media. Have you ever gone to a bar? Have you ever gone out with friends? Have you ever talked to your mom, dad, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, nephew, niece, cousin, child, or dog, and said, mom, talk about your dinner last night. Deb, talk about how much money you have in your bank account right now. Would you ever ask that question? Ever, never. But in entertainment and in sports media, that's the norm. Ask a question that the audience may want to know. And I'll give them this, it's harder than it looks. I've asked 7,000 dumb questions. That's just in the last week. I've asked a thousand dumb questions. I've also asked a lot of good ones. Come prepared to ask something to get a good response, to get a response. It's very difficult sometimes because when you're interviewing athletes or coaches, especially after a loss, that is very challenging. And sometimes you're interviewing people who really weren't trained to be in front of the camera, and they're not comfortable with it. It's a very challenging situation. Hats off to former Texas Rangers reporter, Emily Jones McCoy, a couple years ago. I'll never forget this. She's interviewing a baseball player named Wyatt Langford, very young guy. After a big win, they win the game, and she's on the field interviewing him. And he's giving her the worst answers ever recorded. And she is just firing off question after question because she's gotta fill ninety seconds or however long, and he's not helping her at all. Now he's not trying to be rude. He's not trying to be difficult. He just doesn't know what to say, and he's on camera, and he he's kinda spooked. And Emily, who's done this job who who had done this job for a long time, did a great job in not giving him an opportunity to lead. She's got a job to do. And that job is get this guy to talk. So she's firing away questions. That is really hard when the other person just says, well, I'm very excited. What? And she just kept filling the time because that's what the goal is. That's what you've gotta do. But my frustration is, if you're going to do this, ask something decent. If you're gonna take all these notes, if you're gonna do all this research and all that other stuff, try to ask something pretty good instead of spending all this time, effort, and energy acting like you're Edward R. Murrow, and then standing there saying, Gee whiz, your mom and dad are in the crowd tonight. What's that feel like? Really? That's what we're asking? Be specific. And don't take yourself so so damn seriously. I want you to have a job. I want everybody to have a job. Enjoy it. You're part of the show. You're not the show, and get over yourself while you're at it. See you next time. This is a Stolen Water Media production.