Bust the Budget | Brad Sham

You
Nobody would have thought that I would be the one.
Ryder sports talk, baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball.
Oh, it's a big mic. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. Okay. Now I get it.
We're going to lightning strike boys. What happened over there, Grego?
We had a little lightning strike outside the window.
All right. All right. Here's a tip for all these Americana league teams.
You said tip. Yeah. Okay. I would keep jamming.
To take a colon, nothing but a big gen X jerk off.
This is a little bit or what?
I'm back.
And welcome in everybody to another episode of your dark
companion. Good to have you with us.
No matter how or where or when you may be receiving this podcast transmission.
We're glad you're here. It is the 16th of February. Is that right?
The 16th? Sure. Okay. We'll say it is.
And this is episode 196 as we slouch toward 200 in that way that we do.
My name is Mike Reiner. And I thank you very much for joining us.
No matter where you may be, when you may be receiving this.
We have the crew here assembled, shoot me Ashley Beckham all in here.
And today we're going to have another visit with one of my favorite guys that we've had on here.
I have a lot of favorites because a lot of people have been very generous with their time
and their willingness to do this.
And this guy is back for a second time and we are very glad of that.
He is the great Brad Sham.
The radio play by play voice of your Dallas football cowboys.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
I'm sitting here looking around your sumptuous podcast studio.
Yes, it is sumptuous.
And I'm unable to, while looking at all of the devices, I'm unable to count them.
And I just flashed on maybe the first month you were at the zoo.
How many years ago?
That would have been in 1979.
Yeah. So 40 something years ago.
Uh-huh. Yeah.
Uh-huh.
If I had said...
That's generous.
If, well, math's not my forte.
If I had said, you know, someday you're going to be in a sumptuous podcast studio of your choosing
and tried to describe, and I would not have the vocabulary then let alone now,
to describe all of the various pieces of equipment and transmitters and cameras and microphones at the...
Your head would have exploded if I had said to you, this will be your milieu someday.
Would have been and does now.
What's fun is all this stuff right next to me doesn't have anything to do with the podcast.
I think controls like a TV and then.
That all runs TV.
Hell of he knows.
That all runs a TV.
And then like all our stuff is right here with Ashley.
Yeah, that's cable boxes and stuff there.
Well, it's made for good story.
You know what? I should have just kept the bit going and said, oh, yeah.
Made for it.
Made for it.
Yeah, it did make for good story.
Yeah.
But yes, what we concern ourselves with in here is mostly this stuff over in this area.
How you doing, man?
I'm pretty good.
Pretty good. How are you?
Well, doing all right.
Let's see.
At our age, that's how you answer that question.
That that is 20 years ago version of I'm out freaking standing.
Yeah, pretty good.
I'm doing pretty good.
Well, I know that all right.
That's means you're sitting up as the late great Frank Luxelike to say,
I am sitting up and taking nourishment.
Yep.
And as others, I have known him said, like the great Charlie Jones, I'm standing without help.
You are.
You are.
That becomes a little less humorous every day.
Yeah, it does.
Oh, my goodness.
Well, it's the off season for you.
That's all I read.
What happens with you in the off season?
What does the great Brad Sham do when there are no football games to broadcast?
Rest.
Once by the time I did a lot of college basketball.
I did a lot of soccer.
And as you know,
you reach a certain station where people stop inviting you to do things for money.
And so you either find a way to do something like you've done,
or you just rest this football season's a seven day a week job.
Yeah.
And so I make no apologies at this stage of my life for having the next six months pretty much off.
It always takes me about a month to fully decompress.
And then you get stuff to attend to that's gotten away from you for the last couple of months.
Maybe try to do a little traveling, depending.
And I have every streaming service known to man and love to watch all kinds of things.
Movies, plays, read a lot.
Just rest.
Just take it easy.
Do you have any travels planned?
I have a couple of things I'd like to do, but I don't know if they will be in the cards.
I'll go to Chicago for sure and make my annual Pilgrimage in July to ringly field before the training camp starts.
You got peeps up there?
I do have some peeps.
I still have some peeps.
Yeah, I do.
And since I'm pretty sure my aunt and my close cousin who lived there will not even be aware of this,
I will say that my closest peeps, now Colin Faulkner, who is the Cubs Vice President of marketing,
who worked for the stars, worked for the Rangers, worked for FC Dallas.
And now he's a big wig with the Cubs and he makes sure that he sells me very good seats.
I go for a week, go for six games, and I won't go before the first of June
because the Ivy on the walls is not fully green yet, and I'm not going for Brown Ivy.
Yeah.
And I can't go after the middle of July because some time in their training camp is going to start.
So usually it falls around the fourth of July.
So you were Cubs all the way and not socks?
As a kid, I was everything.
My mother brought us up to be Chicago, and you're a fan of everything in Chicago.
And I don't have the White Sox hatred like a lot of Cubs fans do.
And I once was pride, primarily a White Sox fan when Bill Veccon of them, late 50s,
and they played the Dodgers in the World Series.
1959, my first big baseball year.
Right, and I was living in Puerto Rico and you should hear the Spanish pronunciation of Ted Klozuzki.
That was a bit of a thrill.
But I loved that team.
My first favorite player was Louis Aparicio, and my brother's favorite player was Nelly Fox.
And that was just an exciting team.
A lot of interesting characters on it.
And then the ownership changed.
And they just kind of lost their unique character.
And it was easier to latch onto the Cubs.
I had a lot of family there than we'd go back every summer.
And the north side was easier to get to from where people lived than the south side,
where then Kamiski Park was.
And I'll tell you the truth.
I went back.
I'm going to say 2004, something like that.
Might have been a little bit later, but not much.
I was doing a soccer game for Fox.
FC Dallas was playing Chicago.
And on that weekend, the Red Sox were in town playing the Cubs for the first time since the Auts.
And I saw that there was a game on Saturday.
I normally wouldn't have traveled on the Saturday, but I knew some people at Fox.
I was able to get a press pass.
And so I went just to see and I went like two, three hours early all by myself.
And the atmosphere in Ridleyville, the neighborhood, or and this was before the refurbishments
and the things that the Ricketts family's done.
It was like a college football game.
It's the damnest thing I ever saw.
It's one baseball game out of 162.
And the Cubs are usually terrible.
And they were having a party and it just infested the whole area.
And then I sat and watched the game and it was in the parks always full.
And there's no wave being done.
And there's not a lot of extraneous electronic scoreboard manipulation of the fan.
You don't need it.
Yeah.
It's like going to a British soccer game.
And so I said, you know what, I'm not missing out on this.
I'm coming back every year.
And I have every year since.
In the off season, when you get there, do you, do you ever take a little time to just put it all down and decompress completely?
Yeah.
First month is I try.
I try to do that.
So you kind of have an off season routine like that?
Yeah.
I mean, it's just, I mean, honestly, the older I've gotten, it's taken me longer, used to take two weeks.
And now it takes a month to, and I mean, just unplug.
I just watch crap on television and, you know, sleep late and eat bad food.
And just, you know, yeah, I mean, have to do, he was my guy.
You just have to, you just have to.
And I would say, I'd be shocked if Eric and Matt didn't tell you the same thing.
Now, when I was working with Eric 35 years ago, 30 years ago,
the second time off for the play by play announcers was not something that was, there were like two guys doing it, two veterans.
Everybody does it now.
Yeah.
They all take a series off.
It's still aggrined.
It's a daily grind.
And it's a, so, so is covering the NFL.
It's just a different kind of daily grind.
Yeah.
But you have to have, you have to get to a time where you do exactly what you said.
You just, you just unplug and put it.
Now, will I watch every available playoff game?
Absolutely.
And bowl game.
I'm on the board of directors of Cotton Bowl, so I'm going to follow everything in college football.
But that's just a fan.
I like that.
But yeah, I mean, I'll just do as little as possible for about a month.
And then you can kind of feel like, all right, we're going to get back out and balled with the world again a little bit, I guess.
In the last, probably, I don't know, maybe this weekend, maybe the weekend before.
But I found myself walking around here feeling strange because...
No football.
There was no football.
I was, gosh, what a, what do I do with myself?
You know, my Sundays for months now, like they are every year, have been dedicated to watching football.
And now there is no football.
What do I do with myself?
Well, that's why February is the most desolate month of the year because there's no football.
And nor is there yet any baseball.
Yeah.
And we're going to get, you know, a law.
Now, the Olympics are fun.
I do like watching.
I love the way we all get and become experts in things.
We know absolutely nothing about.
I was watching.
I can't say I was watching.
I had on over the middle weekend in February.
Valentine's Day weekend.
I had on a curling match.
USA and somebody.
I think it was the mixed doubles team.
Well, you know, you listen enough just to understand enough to be dangerous.
So I knew, okay, this guy is throwing this stone for the win in the 10th end.
See?
See what I've done there?
And...
No, I don't see what's...
And if he can put it in the house and get it on the spot, then they're going to win.
And he threw a great stone.
And they curled and swept and yelled.
And it was perfect.
And when the stone knocked the other guy out of the house, I went,
like, what am I going to do?
What?
Like I care?
Like I know.
But you do.
You do.
So that's been kind of fun.
But otherwise, February is a desolate month.
But then it comes spring training.
And then, you know, at the end of spring training...
Things get a little bit more normal again.
And then you get...
Then you got a baseball game every day.
Yeah.
Were you surprised by anything in the NFL playoffs this year?
Did the Super Bowl matchup surprise you?
It didn't shock me.
I actually thought Houston would beat New England because I thought Houston's defense
was that good.
That's what I thought, too.
But New England's defense was also very good.
And they just uprooted the Houston quarterback more than Houston could affect May.
And so New England won.
I don't know if anything...
I don't know if anything really shocked me.
I thought the Rams might make it to the championship.
I thought Seattle would get there because their defense was just outstanding.
And I saw them several times during the year.
And that was one thing I noticed.
The longer the tournament went on, the more significant defense became.
It happens every year and it happens.
And it happens and you can start seeing it in December.
That's one of the things that I thought was a flaw in the three really good years.
Mike McCarthy had...
You have to be playing your best football in December in order to go anywhere.
And their December football was not good.
In the three, twelve, and five years.
It wasn't good.
So they were missing something.
The better defensive teams, you have to have the offense to get to contention.
Yeah, it goes back to Tom Landry.
Yeah.
You know, he always used to say you get the Thanksgiving and then try to streak.
And you have to therefore be in position going...
And many times did you hear him say that?
Oh, I mean...
Every year.
Every year.
Every year.
Well, we get to Thanksgiving and just try to streak.
And...
And streak into the playoffs.
And streak into the playoffs.
And streak into the playoffs.
Yeah.
But the way things have developed in the NFL, defense is not something that usually wins
from the beginning of September.
But once you get into this period after Thanksgiving into December,
we're jockeying for playoff position.
The weather might be a little more problematic in some places.
And defense travels.
So, yeah.
You can't ignore offense, but you've got to be able to play on the defensive side of the ball.
And there's several teams it could.
And Seattle...
I don't know if they did it from day one.
I think they built.
But from the mid season, at least, on watching their defense was a treat.
You could just see they're lining up with something different than they're going to actually show you.
And it's a challenge for the quarterback.
You learn to respect what a quarterback can do because we see what they've got deployed.
We've got a play called.
Here I come to the line of scrimmage.
Oh, those two guys are not where I thought they would be.
We now have about ten seconds to reconfigure all the blocking schemes.
And with them, some of the route trees.
And now the ball's going to get snapped.
And now, I've got literally two and a half seconds to figure out,
oh, that's not what they showed me.
Those two guys were up on blitzing.
And now only one guy's coming.
And the two inside guys dropped.
And that corner, I can't see him.
But I'm going to feel him in a minute.
So that means he's on me.
And the ball's got a cosa.
And Seattle was so good at that.
The Super Bowl, to me, was the crowning achievement of it.
But they were just so good at it that they were able to overcome.
And offense, which was just average, because New England's defense was pretty good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was just amazing the way defenses became a bigger factor as a year went on.
I mean, it was really pronounced this year.
Let's get back to the local 11 here if we can for just a second.
What a shock.
If I had to describe this season for the Cowboys, one word that came to mind was just kind of messy.
You know, some things about it were really good.
Some things about it were not good at all.
And I don't know when, if ever, we've seen it a more pronounced separation between offense and defense on this thing.
Messy's a great word.
Messy is a very apt word.
I congratulate you, sir.
Thank you.
And on to next, because I can't do better than that.
But I think you're right about the difference, the separation between offense and defense.
So, you know, I didn't have any kind of lofty expectations going into the year.
I didn't like the defensive talent before they traded persons.
I didn't like the defensive talent.
Four of who they would have identified as their top five cornerbacks were not physically available when the season started.
And they knew that was going to be the case when training camp started.
And so, they just didn't, there was nothing to make you feel that you can hang your head on something defensively.
And then a couple of the veterans that they signed didn't work out.
And then it certainly appeared that the defensive coaching did not make adjustments, did not adapt, did not change.
And on the other hand, the offense is lighting it up.
But you could still, there were things you could see as the year went along.
On the offense, you can definitely say, oh, I would like to see more of that.
Let's see more of that.
And then they made the changes they made at the end of the year.
And the ownership has from, I would say, December on.
They have been pretty consistent about saying, yeah, we can't do the same things.
We've got to make some changes in the way we, not just on the field.
We got to change the way we were doing stuff.
And I asked Jerry at a private event so there was an audience there in early December before the writers had a chance to ask him if,
because of what he saw in that three games at them after the break when they beat the Raiders and they beat the Eagles and they beat the Chiefs.
Everybody got excited.
And because of what you saw then, and the fact I said, looking him right in the eye, that you know the clock is ticking,
what's the chance that you will approach your stewardship of the salary cap differently this off season than you have in the past.
And make sure you keep pickings around for a while and make sure you keep Kenny Clark.
And even then in early December, he said, yeah, absolutely.
We're going to, we are going to do those things.
We want to keep the running back.
We want to keep clowning.
So he has been consistent.
Now that doesn't get him off the hook for how it all unfolded from last off season until December 1st.
But, yeah, the regular season was messy and not without hope.
And I said this on the air in our last broadcast.
I go into this off season feeling much more enthusiastic than I did a year ago.
A year ago, you knew you had a head coach who didn't really want to be here and was not going to be let off the hook.
And I think it affected it.
I mean, they still won seven games for him with a not very good team and the quarterback hurt.
And I think that's a credit to McCarthy, but the whole vibe was bad.
But it's not that now.
And these changes in the defensive coaching staff, will they work?
We'll find out.
But I think they're exciting.
And then we'll see now they'll get to the middle of March.
It'll be time to see how they address free agency and then what they do in the draft.
The free agency thing, Mike, is so important because.
The reason I asked in the question about might you approach your protection of the salary cap differently?
I mean, what they need first is an off season with no contract drama.
So get Pickens signed somehow.
Overpay him.
Pay him more than you want.
What I want is for Jerry to turn to Steven and the rest of the kids and say, you know what?
You guys are going to have to deal with it.
What we're fixing to do to the salary cap four years down the road.
Y'all deal with that four years down the road.
I got something to do right now.
And there's ways to do that.
Teams do it.
Sooner or later you have to pay the paper.
But they've got to find a way to clear space enough to sign these important free agents, Aubrey.
And then just they don't have to add six of them.
They just have to add two or three of the right guys.
And then they have to draft well.
Then if they do that, I really think they can be very entertaining next year.
I'm much more enthusiastic than I was at the end of last year.
But Messi, he said, circling the square, is a perfect way to describe how the season was.
As important as Pickens seems to be the thing as good a player as he was.
Now this is just one guy here.
One guy out of the wheelchair.
I hear you and I feel the same way.
I think it's just as important if not more so to get Williams back.
I know the thinking is that you may subscribe to this.
The thinking is that you can go find a running back.
Well, a lot of teams do.
But that guy last year got, when a play looked like it should have got three yards, he got five.
When it looked like it should have gotten four, he got seven.
He got a knack for that.
They got what they expected.
And nobody else in the league wanted to take a chance on him because of his past injuries.
But his rookie year in Denver, he was the second back and had 900 and something yards.
And I don't know if they knew exactly how intelligent he is, how tough he is.
And what a really good team media's past protection is exceptional.
But he's a really good team mate.
I hesitate to say in today's NFL as much as I like him that he is more important than Pickens.
Pickens gave, and look, when they traded for Pickens, I wouldn't have gone near the guy.
I saw him in Pittsburgh.
I'm not a big fan of church, immature, me first behavior.
There's a lot of that going on with wide receivers.
You kind of can't totally avoid it, especially the better ones, the more artistic ones.
But you could see, I mean, Stevie Wonder could have seen how he transformed the offense being out there with lamb.
Together.
And then if you keep the quarterback healthy and you've got a little bit of a running game, now you can do some business.
So I think it would be harder to replace what Pickens gave them than it would be to replace what Williams gave them.
And if you were just hiring the young man in a job interview, you'd hire Giovanni Williams all day long.
But Rico Dowdell didn't get a contract from Carolina and he's on the market.
So they want Giovanni Williams back.
And if they want him back, I think they'll be able to get him back.
And they'll have Pickens because they'll tag him.
But you don't want to have him play on the tag and those guys don't even know what it means.
They just know it doesn't sound right and it doesn't feel good.
So that's what I mean.
And what I hope he means by busting the budget.
You've got to sign Williams.
You've got to get a contract with Pickens.
You've got to keep Kenny Clark.
You've got to get Aubrey signed.
You've got to keep Clowny and add to it.
Yeah.
And if you do all that, then you got a chance to be pretty good.
That's a lot though.
Yeah.
It's doable.
Yeah.
It's doable.
And that is football.
That's the way it goes.
It's always a lot.
Yeah.
So how do you get ready for the draft?
You know, I don't very much anymore.
Neither the radio station nor the team has asked me to do anything in a few years on draft day.
So I follow it because a.
I'm a fan and I'm interested and b.
The things that happen leading up to the just the same reason you watch all the playoff games.
Something's going to happen that is going to come up in conversation when we're back on the air next fall.
And so remember this guy, that's the guy the cowboys wanted.
But they couldn't get him and that trade happened.
So if I had a bigger daily responsibility, there's tapes you can watch and there's a lot of things you can do.
Yeah.
I look at all the mock drafts.
I look at a little tape here and there if I get my hands on it.
But mostly if you start tracking all the mock drafts and follow all the gossip from right at the end of the season before the senior bull.
And track all of that through the senior bull and the combine.
And then the visits into that you will get a pretty good sense of what the league thinks.
That doesn't mean the leagues wrong.
But if they always say if they draft a player.
Where all of the things you can lay your hands on say in the range that he's going to go then they didn't really make a mistake.
Even if he doesn't work out because that's what the league thought everybody thought the same thing.
Now if you draft someone you know the Raiders had that one draft a few years ago where none of them were around three years later.
And if you really reach and the Cowboys have done that from time to time then that's bad.
So you don't want to reach.
You might want to gamble every now and then.
But I think you can have the answer to your question is what I do is just try to follow all of the stuff that's out there.
And you can have a pretty good handle on whether they got something that looks like it's going to be pretty good.
And even with that you know the year they drafted Tyler Smith the consensus on him was he had enough ability to go in the lower third of the first round.
But nobody was sure he was going to be a really good player and they thought that and they thought that when they when they drafted the center from Wisconsin Travis Frederick when they traded down and got him 30 second or whatever they did.
So every now and then the league is wrong.
Tyler they were wrong about Tyler Smith.
So the Cowboys benefited from that because they took him about where the league said and he turned out to be way better than that.
But you can kind of get a sense of how they've done just by doesn't take a lot of effort or a lot of time and does not keep you from watching every episode of Landman and being ready for the Lincoln lawyer coming back and you don't have to give up any of that.
This is the great Brad Sham with us on YDC today.
And we've got a lot more to go with him because I want to do a little story time next on behalf of one of our viewers out there who asked me about this and I said I can tell you a little bit about it.
But I know somebody can pay a lot more.
We'll get to that in just a second. But right now it's time for that dreaded and feared mid show read.
Don't be scared Brad.
Yes, yes, yes.
Let's talk a little CBD here.
There are a lot of guys roaming around and things don't feel right.
Things feel out of whack and they heard all the time and they just are not at their best ever.
Now if that sounds like you, I know you're probably pretty tired of it.
If you're tired of it, you probably tried this. You probably tried that.
None of it works.
Have you tried CBD yet?
I would ask you.
And if you have it, well, you need to know about the CBD House of Healing because over there they've got the CBD thing down.
Now I was in that number myself, not too terribly long ago.
And I went over there to the CBD House of Healing.
Talk to the owner who is a registered nurse. She knows what she's doing here.
This is not some kind of crazy ass head shop I'm sending you to or anything like that.
It is a medical situation that you're getting into over there and she will recommend something for you.
And I'll bet you anything.
It's going to work. It did for me. If it'll work for me, I bet it will for you too.
The CBD House of Healing is located at Northwest Highway in Plano Road in the Northeast quadrant of that burgeoning intersection.
Stop by. Take a look at it. See what you think. Talk to them. See what they can do for you.
It's time for you to get over pain. Get out of pain at the CBD House of Healing.
Is that it?
I think so.
Okay.
All right.
I almost can't wait for this.
Because not too long ago.
Talk, talk, talk.
Now that's time to be scared.
Not too long ago.
I heard from a guy, obviously a young guy who was not around at the time.
And he wanted me, he wanted me to tell him about Tech Shramp.
I told him what I could, but then it dawned on me that in a couple of weeks, we were having a guy on here who knew him far, far better than me.
So just as to educate a youngster out there on Tech Shramp, what he was, what he did, what he was like.
I present to you the great Brad Sham.
Well, I did after Frank Lieber, God rest his soul passed away.
I took over doing Texas weekly radio show.
And we, I always felt we missed a bet by not having Hank Shramp and Jack Ham be on there with Sham and Shramp.
Somehow we did.
Well, that just got away from.
So I wound up, by the way, doing games with both Shramp and Ham later.
Tech Shramp.
Tech Shramp was the, he was one of the most unique individuals I've ever met.
He was a powerful presence.
He was, I think for his time certainly, the greatest visionary that American sports has known.
So Tech Shramp was a, born in Los Angeles, but his name was Texas, his given name was Texas.
And he was in, he was in PR and then he worked for the Los Angeles Rams in their front office.
And then he went to work for a while around the turn of 1960 to, he went to work for CBS Television.
And Tech Shramp is responsible for the Winter Olympics being on television.
Whatever year they were in Squaw Valley, it might have been 1960.
Tech Shramp was trying to convince CBS.
We should televised the Winter Olympics.
Was it 1960?
That seems right.
I thought for sure, as soon as I said that, I just knew you would be calling on the great international Google Messiah.
I'm do scrolling.
Yeah.
And, and he, and he, he had in 1960, so Squaw Valley and, and he's out laying cable and he had the story goes.
I don't know if it's true that he had Dan Rather and people that he knew were up and comers, running cable on the mountain.
People will watch this stuff if we do it.
And it obviously they didn't have things like, you know, freestyle, snowboarding and skeleton and monobob,
which I'm becoming a big fan of the monobob, by the way.
What's that one?
Huh?
Monob?
Monob?
You don't know about monobob?
I guess not.
What do you think it is?
One Bob.
Very good.
Okay.
It's a one person bobsled.
Oh.
Which I'd always heard of as a one man bob, but now they're calling it monobob and it's phenomenal.
I don't believe they had that at Squaw Valley in 1960.
Probably not.
But text, it was text who had the idea to put the Winter Olympics on television.
And little things, little cosmetic things from the use of cheerleaders.
Nobody had cheerleaders before the Cowboys cheerleaders before text did that.
You know, the arrows on the football field that point the direction the ball is going.
Yeah, that wasn't always there.
He did that.
You know, the big white stripes on the sideline that delineate the playing field.
He did that.
There's a dozen things like that that were his innovation.
So, he had the vision to see things that hadn't happened yet that would work.
But he also fully understood the business mechanics of the game.
He was bombastic.
He had a hair trigger, temper, and everyone felt the wrath of it at least once.
And then he got over it and forgot it.
Now, you might be shaken to your roots, but he would blow up and then move on and forget it.
He had the discipline because Clint Mercus and the owner of the team from the outset until it was sold to bum bright.
His rule was that these were hiring Schram.
To do this, he hired Guild Brant.
He hired Tom Landry and they did not interfere with each other's area.
You know, Landry hated the idea of the cheerleaders.
Hate ed.
They had the cheerleaders.
Landry got the first few picks in the draft.
Regardless of what text wanted.
Landry got the first few picks.
And then Guild got most of the middle and they threw texts of bone at the end every now and then.
Text was responsible for keeping that in line.
Every innovation that the sport had and that the team had was through the sheer brilliance and force of personality of text Schram.
Text Schram gave me the best tip on broadcasting basketball on the radio that I ever got.
The season had ended.
I know it was after 1985 because that's when Frank Lieber passed away.
And so I was doing, I think, SMU basketball on KRLD and I happen to be in Texas office in probably February.
And there was nothing ever subtle or quiet about text.
And so I don't know what I was in there for, but we're talking.
He said, hey, I heard you do the SMU game the other night.
I said, oh, thanks.
He said, you know, I don't know who the hell those guys are.
When someone gets a rebound, tell me what damn school they go to.
And I thought about it and I thought, now wait, I'm on the radio now, not on television.
And if I say shot by Smith, rebound by Jones, I mean, half the people listening don't can't tell you the name of every player on the team there.
If it's SMU fans, they don't necessarily know every player on their own team.
And they surely don't know the other team.
And I did a lot of network radio basketball and for darn sure people listening to those games in the NCAA tournament, they don't know every player on every team.
And you know how easy it is to say rebounded by Smith for SMU instead of rebounded by Smith.
Yeah.
But someone's got to point out to you that, I mean, that was, he was, he was an absolutely unforgettable character.
He was, he was loud, he was brash, he was arrogant.
Someone asked him once if someone accused him and the cowboys threw him at the height of like in their 20 year run of making the playoffs of being arrogant.
He said, damn right, we're arrogant.
We had a game once that they were favored to win handily and it turned out to be a close game.
And he was griping about the fact that it was a close game afterwards and I said, tack, you don't want every game to be 44 or nothing to.
He said, damn right, I knew.
He, he was a presence.
He was completely unforgettable.
But he was, some people thought he was more powerful than the commissioner partly because he had, the commissioner had worked for repeat Roselle, worked for him with the Rams.
And he helped Roselle get his job as the commissioner.
I think he followed Bert Bell.
But that's, that's how Roselle became the commissioner.
You know, a lot of people have said that Jerry's been the most powerful man in the NFL over the last few, you know, a couple of decades.
I don't know if that's true or not.
But they said it about Schram and I think it was even more true of Schram.
And he was the most, he was the most unforgettable character I think I've ever met.
I only had one story for the guy.
And this is something that I have not seen that I've never seen, obviously never seen anybody do before.
I've not seen anybody do sense and I don't know if we'll ever see this kind of thing come down again.
But after every cowboy game at Texas Stadium, you know, they had that big lounge area up there.
The press box was at the 50 yard line.
Right, right.
Everybody sat in there.
Yeah.
Well, after every game, text Schram, the general manager, president and general manager, the Dallas football cowboys, ostensibly the most powerful guy in the NFL.
And I know you know where this is going.
He would come up there, have a seat and immediately all the riders would gather around it.
But they wouldn't be holding microphones or anything like that.
They just sit at tables and it was just a, I don't know if it was supposed to be off the record or not.
I doubt if he ever got quoted.
But still was, let me just ask you this question.
Was the bar open?
The bar was open.
You damn right, the bar was open.
The bar was quite open.
Yeah, you damn right, the bar was open.
I have two other very quick text stories that hopefully will add a little color.
He convened everyone on the last, the occasion of the last exhibition game.
And we could call them that then when they played six.
And you played, cut the squad.
And so everybody would sit around the table and the bar was open.
And you, everybody sat around the table and threw in a dollar or five dollars, whatever it was.
And you would fill out which players you thought were going to get cut.
They would go in the pot and they would put the matastite, not, no, that's not true.
One of the matasties I ever saw him was the year his wife won that pot.
He was incensed.
He was truly irate.
But that's what, yeah, he loved that.
He loved that interaction.
And that gathering that you're talking about is a little different than the press conference Jerry holds outside the locker room after almost every game.
I think everything was off the record.
And there were no cameras or microphones.
Here's my other text RAM story.
I think you may remember it.
There was a tavern in thousand oaks or near thousand oaks called the Iron Horse.
And that was Texas favorite after hours of spot.
And almost every night late after dinner up till closing time,
Texas could be found at the Iron Horse.
The year, so the year that Tony Dorset was released and went and played for the Broncos.
So 86 was when Herschel came.
So let's say it was 87.
Maybe not.
But it's somewhere in here in the mid to late 80s.
And remember Dorset was released.
And he went and played for Denver and Charlie Waters was an assistant coach for the Broncos that same year.
Well, the Broncos on a Thursday night are playing the Rams in Anaheim.
So I calculated, could I cover the afternoon practice in thousand oaks and make it to Anaheim in time for the game and then talk to Waters and Dorset?
And I did.
And I probably had my call and show to do after the practice, but we had a two hour time difference.
So I did.
And I went to...
And I didn't go to the Iron Horse very often.
It wasn't for the likes of me.
But I went to Orange County and covered the game, talked to Waters, talked to Dorset, got in a car.
And I look and it's...
I don't know if it's 11 o'clock.
And let's say midnight is when the Iron Horse is going to close or move it up an hour, whatever it is.
And I said, I might be able to make this.
Let's try it just for the hell of it.
So I got in the car and I sped back up the 101.
And I made it to the Iron Horse like 10 minutes before closing.
And I walked in and of course, Texas sitting there at his table with a couple of his cronies.
And I walk in and he looks up.
He says, what the hell are you doing here?
I said, well, I went...
I went to Anheim to talk to Dorset and Waters.
And you made it back?
Yeah, I just got back.
Well, now you're showing me something.
That was the best compliment I ever got directly from...
That's who Tech Shrab was.
So there you go.
That's what Tech Shrab.
It's pretty awesome.
He was something.
All right, just a couple more things.
We'll wrap this up.
What we got, viewer questions there?
We might have a few.
Come on.
Do we?
Okay.
It's good to have viewers.
Well, do we have it?
What do you got?
Yeah.
I actually got a couple from Brian Briscoe.
Brian Briscoe.
All right.
Have you been on his podcast yet?
I have not.
Brian, what are we waiting on?
Yeah, what the hell, Brian?
Yeah, I thought you liked me.
He's probably intimidated by you, but go ahead.
All right.
Let's see.
How different has Brad's off-season prep for the upcoming football season changed?
Over the many years, he's called Cowboys Games to get ready for another long haul of broadcasting the next season.
I mean, you have access to video that you didn't always have.
But in the prep for the season, it doesn't...
The biggest change in the prep for the season is the limited access to players and coaches in the off-season and during the season.
We're invited to one OTA session per week of the three weeks of OTAs and player access is limited.
Coaching access is a little easier in the spring.
It doesn't exist at all during the season.
So I think that the biggest change is in the off-season what you can get from meeting new players and coaches and talking to them and rekindling relationships.
But his question was about preparation for the season.
That's probably the biggest change.
I still haven't learned how to pack my training camp bag, by the way.
That's still...
I have yet to avoid overpacking.
That's not bad.
This will be 47 training camps.
We'll see if I can get it this time.
Well, better over than under.
Is there like 20 pairs of underwear in the three shirts?
Well, I mean, here's what you do.
You first have to...
First of all, and it's even more pronounced in Oxnard than it was in Thousand Oaks.
There's now...
But we were talking before we got going about the sun and where it is.
Well, it's now 10 to 15 degrees cooler in Oxnard than it is in Thousand Oaks.
So, A, how many days have we gone?
B, how many times do I feel like doing laundry?
So, if the answer is one, then we'll take half as much underwear and socks as we need,
and just do one load of laundry.
The rest of the stuff we can send out.
But now, at night, you have to have long sleeves.
You have to have a quarter zip.
You have to have a jacket.
It gets cool up there.
How many of those are we taking?
We're taking one.
You're wearing the same one every day.
No.
Well, how many of those?
How many sweaters?
How many t-shirts?
I mean, these are first world problems.
No, they are.
But you got to figure out how many.
I haven't yet mastered it.
But in season 48, training camp 47, I hope to improve.
Maybe we can help you.
Maybe we can help you.
We can help you figure out how many built sweaters and fabledics pants you need to make.
Maybe.
Maybe.
We have plenty of time between now and then to consult.
We're happy to help.
Thanks.
Brian actually.
Yeah.
Got a few more.
Brian's actually got another one.
All right.
So.
The first one was a little lame.
Yeah.
So let's see if this one.
Yeah.
What's your whistle?
See if Brad will tell the tech story about one of the NFL draft years when techs would sit
in with Brad on NFL Draft Day, when KRLD carried the first round live in the 1980s.
Techs had a classic live-on-air reaction to the LA Rams selecting Mike Shodd with their
first pick.
Yeah.
So we were the first station to do a live broadcast from the NFL Draft.
We were the flagship station.
So I would go to New York and we carried it live and I don't know where the cowboys were
picking, but earlier than that.
So you hear every pick and we're sitting in the room, right?
So you can see when the card is going up and we could pull away, break away whenever
we wanted to.
But the drama's early and you follow the picks and you're following all the mocks and
now we're later in the round.
And now let's get techs on the phone and while the first round is still going on, they
had 15 minutes, so it took six hours.
So it's 20 something picks and we're talking to techs and he's reviewing what the cowboys
have done and how the day has gone and hold on that techs.
I think it's the Rams turn.
Let's let's go to the podium and hear Pete Rosell.
And we've left Texas Mike open and Pete Rosell says with the 26th pick in the 1980, whatever
it is, NFL Draft, the Los Angeles Rams select guard, Mike Shad, Queens College.
Canada and techs says into his open mic, well, I'll be damn.
And but he didn't, he filled in the pause and that was just as clear as the Noon Bell.
And I heard that and I said, surprise, Texas.
That was a good one.
And then so then techs goes, Hey, kind of along those lines, Jason Kyle says, I don't
have a question.
But can we hear Brad?
What the hell are you doing, Jason?
But he says, can we hear Brad cuss his favorite swear word because he can because we're
not on FCC regulated airwaves?
A little uncomfortable doing that here.
Do you want to spell it?
Or tell us by the way, you could see I just edited myself just a minute ago.
Yeah, I mean, no, it depends.
There are, look, there are, there are, you know, the saying courses for horses, there
are certain epithets that lend themselves to certain situations.
You wouldn't necessarily say the same thing when you stubbed your toe on the end table trying
to traverse the living room that you would say in the heat of conversation with someone
over some other subject, it might be a different curse word.
So yeah, there are options there, but you just use your imagination, it runs the panoply,
there's all, all kinds.
Maybe next show will have AI Brad sham now, see, we don't, we don't, not only do we
not need that, we don't need you putting that out in the universe.
For what is worth, we've, back at the ticket, we had the idea of AI norm, you know, 20 years
ago, you know, if he ever, if and when he ever retired, that, you know, I would be able
to create norm drops out of all the other previous drawbacks that's, that's, that is not funny.
It's not.
And by the way, keep your fingers crossed, it does not lead us to another director strike
here in the next three months.
I believe it.
I mean, a writer strike, director strike, another writer strike.
And maybe another actor strike, AI's coming for us all, yeah, we don't need, we don't
need, I'm sorry, I'm putting this stuff out in the atmosphere, we'll strike it from
the record.
It's too late.
It's there.
It's there.
That's a bomber.
Hey, it's a podcast.
Nobody's listening to anyway.
There you go.
If you ever, not if you ever, the next time you get Dale Hansen here, you might ask
him because he might not have the same inhibitions that I have about if he remembers what I said
in a Monday night, in a, in a commercial about a break in a Monday night game between
Dallas and Washington at RFK Stadium in the late 80s after Tony Hill, short arm to pass
in the end zone and dropped the ball and it became a field goal.
But it involved.
We were on armed forces radio and Rick Erickson was our producer and I, I know what armed
forces radio was and so the Dale loves to tell the story.
That's why he might give you the unexperigated version, you know, Hill short, he the safety's
coming.
Tony hears and he pulls his arms in the ball, bounces off his fingertips, it's supposed
to be touched down.
I think Cowboys won the game, but it's a field goal instead.
Now we're, we go away to break, go in and a half time, take my headset off and put it
around my neck and I turned our producer, Rick Erickson and I said, are we off the air?
Are we clear?
He said, yeah, we're clear.
And I then said, then get that blankity, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, things
out of my five.
So tired of the blankity, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank and Rick Erickson's face turned
this shade of white.
And I said, what's the matter?
He said, we were clear.
He said, well, yeah, but the armed forces radio, they hear every army base and all the
naval ships.
And so I got very skittish for about a second and then I thought, well, I was right.
And Dale comes back from, I always brought it back from break.
Dale comes back from the break.
He says, I'm going to take this one.
I said, okay.
And he comes back and he gives the score.
He said, brand, did you hear those guys in the hall at half time?
And what they said about Tony Hill shouting that I was me, of course, of course.
He had, it's the only thing in 10 years together.
It's the only thing Dale has on me and he loves to tell that story.
And in fact, the night of WFA did a big celebration of however many years it was at the time
for Dale 20 years at the station, whatever it wasn't.
And I was, I think I did a bit with Ackman roasting Hanson and well, then it's Dale's
turn at the end.
Well, he, and I've heard him do it.
He loves to tell the story because in Dale's telling, I've got blood, I have a big
full black beard, I've got blood dripping from my beard and it wasn't quite that bad.
But Dale will give you a version of some of my favorite.
We'll work on that.
We'll work on that.
We'll work on that.
We'll work on that.
We'll work on that.
Yeah.
One more thing here.
Sure.
And then we'll cut you loose.
I'm fine.
Any thoughts on the new defensive coordinator?
I haven't met him, but I'm very excited about what I hear and read.
What do you hear and read?
Well, he is.
I'm very, very little in red here.
Oh, no, the, I mean, the guy is a rock star.
Everybody in the industry says, well, he'll be there two or three years and then he'll
be a head coach.
I mean, everybody wants this guy.
Really?
Yeah.
And this is, you know, when I talked before about Jerry saying that he knew he had to do
things differently.
This is a great example.
He hired Matt.
He refluse.
Shot and Heimer had consent.
Shot and Heimer interviewed Matt and he was part of the process, but it was Jerry and
Stephen's hire.
This was Shot and Heimer's deal.
Find your guy.
And that's why they cast such a wide net and interviewed so many exciting young guys.
And this guy is regarded in the industry as one of the brightest up and coming light
lights in his coaching style, his, I mean, from an exes and O standpoint, he's learned
from some of the best.
He spent the last two or three years with Vick Fangio and Philadelphia and he was with
Vance Joseph in Denver before that.
And he was, I mean, he's got a list of really solid mentors and a great eye for talent
apparently and an especially good rapport with players.
He's just a really great coach.
And he then reportedly has had a lot to do with hiring the rest of the staff.
So it ref and it reflects some of the very best things about the offensive staff that
Shot and Heimer hired last year.
Some of them young NFL coaches, some of them out of college had never coached in the NFL,
but had been very good in college.
And they've, so they got some of those.
So I'm, I'm excited.
One more thing.
I know I said that was, by the way, by the way, you still have to have players.
Yeah.
You got, you still, they still got to get them some players to work with, so thoughts
on Shot and Heimer.
Well, yeah, I mean, I think he did just about all you could do in the first year.
He knew because he'd been around his father that there were things that were coming down
the pike that he could not anticipate.
Now the big test for him, of course, was Marshawn Neelan passing away so suddenly and tragically.
And that was something where you really had to rally the team.
But I mean, I think he showed his humanity all the time.
He shows the players who he is and acts like he's, he's pretty from what I can gather from
them.
I mean, I know he is with me the same way all the time, but I think that he's the same
way all the time he's honest, but he's tough.
He'll get on him if there's something he doesn't like.
And he, I think he knows what he wants.
So you have to have players.
And I think that he showed, along with a couple of the assistant coaches, he hired on offense,
Clayton Adams, the offense coordinator in particular, and the offensive line coach who
he got from Kansas State, who's a veteran coach, but he never coached in the NFL.
They were able to put together some creative plays in the running game.
And I think that there's every reason to hope, if not expect, that Christian Parker would
be the same way with the defense.
Excellent.
I'm excited.
You should be.
Yeah.
I was excited to have you on today.
Thank you very much.
Sorry.
I didn't swear for you.
Well, I thought your style anyway.
I mean, I know that.
I mean, I have been known to swear.
Keeps a clean on air.
Just pick your spots.
Yeah.
No.
Well, thanks, man.
I appreciate it.
Anytime for you.
You know that.
That is the great, Brad Sham.
Joining us here today on your dark companion.
Also, I'd like to thank you very much for watching and listening or whatever you're doing
with this thing out there.
If you like what we're doing, what we need from you is help us out on social media.
Like us.
Share us.
Do all those things.
You got to do to get us out there.
If you do that, we'll keep doing this.
And the world will be right.
I'm going to get Brad Sham back with us another time or two.
Very, very soon.
Thanks again, brother.
Yep.
You have about to ask.
All right.
Till next time.
Thank you, Shupi.
Thank you.
Actually, thank you.
Back off.
Bye.
I don't fancy off.
Your dark companion is a stolen water media presentation.