From the Greatest High School Game Ever to Friday Night Lights Forever | Eddy Clinton & Brad Leland

Speaker 1: Nobody would have thought that I would be the one. Ryder, sports talk. What happened over there, Grego? We had a little lightning strike right outside the window. Alright. Alright. Here's a tip for all these Americano League teams. Don't what? You said tip. Yeah. Tip. Okay. With a p. I would keep jamming.

Speaker 2: The ticket the ticket colon, nothing but a big Gen X jerk off set.

Speaker 1: Is this a cool night or what? I thought somebody would hear that go bullshit. I'm back, bitches. This catch me by surprise every single time.

Speaker 2: I don't know. I told you.

Speaker 1: Every time Yes. You start that countdown, and I'm never ready for it.

Speaker 3: 200 episodes in, I would

Speaker 2: have thought you would be, but that's okay.

Speaker 4: No. No. Does that mean it's I don't the

Speaker 1: appear very well.

Speaker 4: Is that the same as action?

Speaker 3: Basically, yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 3: Just less

Speaker 1: professional. Okay.

Speaker 4: By this time, we would already be cut and we'd have to re action again. Yeah. Well,

Speaker 1: we're not above that around here.

Speaker 3: No, we'll we'll start over.

Speaker 1: It has happened.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm

Speaker 1: sure it will again. In fact, it it may today.

Speaker 3: It might need to.

Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah. It might need to. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: We're already two minutes in. Hey.

Speaker 3: Okay. 58 to go.

Speaker 1: We're just talking to talk. We're just

Speaker 2: friends here. Yeah.

Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah.

Speaker 3: We're just talking

Speaker 1: about How are doing, your Shopee? Haven't haven't even seen you

Speaker 3: I yet know. It's been five days. I know. It's like forever.

Speaker 1: I know. Yeah. You ever there wearing a Dudley's cap and everything?

Speaker 3: I support our sponsors. That's what you should. And I support you talking about your butt like you were doing just before we went on. Saying that girls like your butt.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh. It's a point of controversy. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 4: Oh my goodness.

Speaker 3: So that's good start right there.

Speaker 4: Well, it is a

Speaker 2: good start.

Speaker 1: Oh, it sure is.

Speaker 4: I'm sorry, guys.

Speaker 1: What is this? April 13? Is that what you said?

Speaker 4: Somehow. Yes,

Speaker 1: April 13. Yes. The April 13, and this is episode number 212. 12. 212 episodes of Your Dark Companion.

Speaker 3: Mhmm.

Speaker 1: And today, just to show you that we still can, we have a couple first timers in here. Or actually

Speaker 3: We have one

Speaker 1: Actually, one first timer and one second timer.

Speaker 3: There we go.

Speaker 1: Let's deal with the second timer first. He is on my immediate left. Yeah. He is Brad Alberts. No way. That's that's not right.

Speaker 3: It's Herb's We have had Brad Alberts on who's like bigwig with the Dallas Stars. Oh, We like you more.

Speaker 1: I I just had a massive brain fart there.

Speaker 2: It's okay.

Speaker 3: Let's start over.

Speaker 4: Okay. We we can do that again. Yeah.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Take 2.

Speaker 1: In 321. Alright. On the left down there.

Speaker 4: If

Speaker 1: you like Oak Cliff on Oak Cliff crime, we're gonna have some today. Oh. Because you got two old Cliff guys in here. You got me Mhmm. And you

Speaker 2: got Eddie Clinton down there. Go Bison's.

Speaker 1: Yep. Go Knights. Yeah.

Speaker 3: Yeah. And Brad Leland, whose name you totally know. You at least know his first name.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I know he's Brad.

Speaker 3: Knowing your last name would be too formal.

Speaker 1: There are a lot of Brads in this world. Yeah, yeah there are. But yes, it's Brad Leland. You know, there there was a time, and Eddie can probably attest to this, we're probably about more or less in the same demographic.

Speaker 2: Mhmm.

Speaker 1: Probably we're in, Sunset and Kimball at about the same time. And I don't know how things were at Sunset, but I don't remember too many Brads at Kimball. Now, seems like you run into them constantly.

Speaker 2: It's kinda cool.

Speaker 1: Yeah, is kinda cool.

Speaker 4: Yeah, because we used to be boring Brads and then we got Brad Pitt and we got Bradley Cooper and then they got me, so we're not boring at all.

Speaker 2: All handsome

Speaker 4: gentlemen. No. Well, sometimes.

Speaker 1: Yeah, you guys just show that any Brad is a good Brad.

Speaker 4: Let's try it. Not Brad Lee. I'm Brad Lee. You're Brad Lee? I'm a Brad Lee. Yes, I am.

Speaker 3: Not a Brad friend.

Speaker 1: Most are, aren't they? Yeah,

Speaker 4: think. Yeah, there's some Bradfords. I don't think there's any just Brads. Maybe there are. I don't know. Could be.

Speaker 3: I'm glad

Speaker 1: you guys are here.

Speaker 4: Thank you. Thank you,

Speaker 1: It's good to see you again, Brad. Good to see you, Eddie. Eddie went to Sunset. I went to Kimball as we said. And back in the day, never the twain shall meet. It was a rather vicious competition. But for Kimball it was that way for everybody. It was that way for us in South Oak Cliff. Adamson maybe not so much but I bet you guys and Adamson got along pretty good, didn't you?

Speaker 2: Okay. You know, I remember a few years ago I was umpiring and I was out at Higgins Field and I got to thinking about it and I told I called the coaches out for the meeting and I said, I want to tell you something. Fifty years ago today, I was on this field. We played Samuel for the city championship and got beat that night. It's the last time I was on Higgins Field. That was kind of sweet for me. That was a long time ago.

Speaker 1: It was a long time ago. It's kind of cool.

Speaker 2: It was cool.

Speaker 4: You didn't think that you would even live this long, probably.

Speaker 2: Did any of us? No.

Speaker 4: I didn't. No, didn't. Yeah. No, I knew. I thought.

Speaker 2: But Oak Cliff was a great place.

Speaker 1: It was a

Speaker 2: great It was a great place to grow up.

Speaker 1: You know, it kinda got a bad rap then, it kinda still gets a bad rap now, but it's one of those places that you just had to be there.

Speaker 2: And the bougie place over at the Bishop Arts District, It cracks me up every time I go over there. Yeah. Because that's where all the big poker games were, where all the chop shops of cars, everything on Davis Avenue. Yeah. Now it's the Bougie Place.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It was rough stuff over there back in the day.

Speaker 4: And they have great golf courses too. They still have those. They do? Love Stevens and Cedar Crest. I love both of them.

Speaker 2: We were

Speaker 4: at

Speaker 2: Stevens when we were in Sunset and it was at night and they used to go park in the parking lot to watch the submarine races. And there were about four or five of us on the baseball team out there.

Speaker 1: We may have to explain that.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Like actual submarines?

Speaker 2: Yeah. Parking. It was just parking. But we decided that we would run and jump on the back of the car, run over the car, run out and we could get on Stevens Park Golf Course and get away. Nobody could ever catch us. So here we started out. We got on the back of the car. We got up on the roof and it was a dadgum convertible. We went right through the convertible. I don't know who was scrambling the most, us trying to get out of that car or the couple who were disappeared in the floorboards.

Speaker 3: Right as they're making out, they just have a dude fall on them.

Speaker 4: I have

Speaker 2: no idea we'd talk about that today.

Speaker 1: There we are.

Speaker 3: How that's how the show rolls.

Speaker 2: Welcome to Oak Cliff.

Speaker 3: Darn right. That's right.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Little bit of Oak Cliff history for you there. We haven't gotten into that very much since we've been doing this.

Speaker 3: Well, it sounds like we got an opportunity here. Yeah. I wanna hear more. That was fun as hell.

Speaker 1: Alright. What was your favorite place in Oak Cliff, Eddie? Austin's Barbecue. Austin's Barbecue, which is on Illinois and Hampton.

Speaker 2: Illinois and Hampton.

Speaker 1: Is it still there today?

Speaker 2: No, it's gone. I opened I was the first employee hired at Griff's.

Speaker 1: At Illinois in Hampton? Hampton Road.

Speaker 4: Griff's Hamburgers?

Speaker 2: Yes,

Speaker 4: sir. 15¢ or 10¢ per day?

Speaker 2: I gave away more food to my friends. They would come in and order a Coke and leave with about 9 burgers in the bag. Sorry about that.

Speaker 1: Is that where you guys used to go after American Legion baseball games and stuff?

Speaker 2: No, we would go to Kipps, man. Are you kidding me?

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: Kipps out on '35?

Speaker 1: Yeah, Kipps was cool for that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, Kipps was big.

Speaker 1: Yeah, if you were at an event or a game or something like that, yeah.

Speaker 2: Teresa, everybody.

Speaker 1: Yeah, when it was over you had to go to Kipps. About

Speaker 2: six, seven years after we graduated in 'sixty six, there were about five of us that got together one weekend, came after college and guys came home from work or whatever. And we got together and we decided it would be funny to put on our sunset letter jackets and go to Kipps. So we did. Even the guys, Larry Hardy who played in Major League Baseball, played at the University of Texas, Larry was in town too. So we got him a letter jacket. There's five or six of us walked into Kipps with our sunset letter jackets on. We have our hot fudge sundae and we get ready to leave and there's a bunch of sunset guys sitting at the other tables. So we got up and we go, Hey, see you guys at school Monday. They're looking at us like,

Speaker 1: Who the

Speaker 2: hell are those guys?

Speaker 1: That was a place though. Yeah, babe. That was a place and the hot fudge sundae was the thing.

Speaker 4: True Dallas guys.

Speaker 2: And the Texas theater.

Speaker 1: The Texas theater on Jefferson, which is still there.

Speaker 2: That was before you got to be able to drive because then you went downtown. Yeah. And generally what happened was you went to the movies on Friday night and you went to Lou Ann's on Saturday night. Yes. And if you didn't go to Lou Ann's, you went to the studio club.

Speaker 1: Alright. Now Lou Ann's, to fill everybody in here, Lou Ann's and the studio club were the places where the cool kids went, which means that I was completely dealt out.

Speaker 3: Did you ever go in there at any point?

Speaker 1: The first time I set foot in the studio club was when I was 18 no. No. Not not 18. When I was 21. And I was about to join a band that played there and they were we were practicing there.

Speaker 3: Which band was this?

Speaker 1: This would have been Derek Jones' party. And they had enough access to the place where they could go in there and practice. And that was my first time in there. Lou Ann's and wait a I did go to Lou Ann's too because I was in a band that was that wound up playing there.

Speaker 3: Okay.

Speaker 1: But that was after Lou Ann's moved.

Speaker 2: Yeah. You

Speaker 1: know? Yeah. Lou Ann's was somewhere along Greenville but then it moved in over at Greenville and Lovers Lane.

Speaker 2: But the old Lou Ann's was quite the place. Everybody from all over the city used to go there. So you'd see everybody. Look at those people from Brian Adams and

Speaker 1: Hillcrest. Yeah. Believe me, they did not like interacting with guys from Oak Cliff.

Speaker 2: Thought they were the very first time I drove in junior high, I drove with a bicycle over to Stevens Park, that neighborhood, I thought, God almighty. This is like California or something. I never seen anything like that because we grew up over off of Clarendon and Hampton over by Aunt Stel Snow Cones. We didn't have big houses over there, baby.

Speaker 1: For those who don't know, the area that Eddie's referring to is it was a very nice area then and it still is.

Speaker 4: Yeah, it is.

Speaker 1: It's over in Kessler Park and that's where probably the most moneyed of Oak Cliff dwellers

Speaker 2: And it's the prettiest part of Dallas. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1: It's a fantastic part.

Speaker 2: Not even close.

Speaker 1: You know, if you were out there and you've never been, some Sunday afternoon when you don't have anything to do, get on your phone, find a map, and direct yourself to Kessler Park and just drive around and see if you were aware of anything like that in Oak Cliff, if in fact you're aware of Oak

Speaker 3: Cliff at all. Maybe you could offer tours.

Speaker 1: What? Yeah.

Speaker 3: Maybe you could offer tours. I could offer tours. $5 a pop and

Speaker 1: I could offer tours.

Speaker 3: I would could make some money off that, Shoopy.

Speaker 1: Wanna do it Shoopy? Yeah. Alright, let's do it, we'll do it.

Speaker 3: I'll take $1 for every five you make just for having the idea. I'll give you a nickel for every five I make. Good enough. Inflation isn't real.

Speaker 1: No, it's not real. So if you want to do that, let us know. And we will, I don't know how we'll do it, we'll probably have to ride tricycles or something, we'll do that. That'd be fun. It would be fun.

Speaker 3: Let's do it.

Speaker 4: Could be be careful. Pack

Speaker 3: of gum with all the money I make from Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah. We'll have to watch certain areas, but as long as we stay we're in the area where Eddie's talking about,

Speaker 4: we can do that. Yeah. But don't go in a convertible

Speaker 2: at terminal.

Speaker 3: Someone might jump in.

Speaker 4: We used to, boy we were bad in the supermarket parking lot. We'd have these gray haired old women be driving and we would roll up to their cars and we would jump through their car, through their back seat and run through their parking lot while they're driving and then come out the other side. They were just freaked out. And that was one of our little studs. In those days, we would not be caught and we wouldn't be arrested, but now we'd be killed.

Speaker 2: Be careful talking about old gray haired women. Oh yeah.

Speaker 4: Well yeah, I've got one of those that I've married with.

Speaker 3: Years. Nice, congrats.

Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. Something.

Speaker 1: So can we get into Friday Night Lights here?

Speaker 4: Sure, if you want to. Now we're gonna do our twentieth year anniversary party in May and everybody's gonna regather up. And of course, we have one actor that won the Oscar this year, Michael Bay Jordan was on the show.

Speaker 2: Mhmm.

Speaker 4: And Jesse Plemons is number one in his age group in in the world. They're both number one in their, you know, categories in the world. Both of them were from Friday Night Lights. And then everybody that was on the show has just been very happy. And we're gonna be very happy when we get back together because it seems like we never met. I mean, we've never left. It would seem like we're in high school together. It's very cool.

Speaker 1: Is it one of those deals where when you guys you can go for a good while without seeing each other, but when you get back together, you just sort

Speaker 4: of pick up right where you left off? Exactly. It's exactly like that. It's unbelievable. And we still love each other so much. And the directors, the producers, the writers who all have become very successful from that show, it's just, amazing. It really is. It's fun. We're gonna do this in May at the ATX Film and TV Festival in Austin. Excellent. Yeah. It's fun.

Speaker 1: So when you guys were in the process of making that, did you know what you were doing? Did did you know that you were onto something that was going to turn out the way it did or was it a complete surprise to you or or what? Well, I

Speaker 4: felt like that we knew that we had something different because of the way we shot it. And it was just so different than most television because we shot it and so much of it, we could just take the script that NBC they they gave great scripts to us, NBC, but we did not have to follow them because Peter Berg, who directed and was a producer and one of the the leaders of the whole show, he said, if you do not want to say that, say whatever you want. So we had the freedom, which is very different in especially in especially in in TV where you can just go off the page. So many times Kyle and I'd come into the bar and we have a scene that's two or three pages and you know, we're just sitting at the bar and there was no rehearsal, there was no blocking, there was nothing. Just walk in there and start doing it. The cameras start shooting three angles and they just be gorilla shots and they just try to keep out of everybody's way. They just try to hide from each other. And so we would do the scene and we just start talking and just say the scene. And Kyle always asked me, he goes, well Brad, man, you you do all the talking. So what I want you to do here is I don't wanna say all this stuff. So you just talk for two pages and then at the end I'm gonna say what? I'm gonna say it the last time. And so that's what I did. Buddies did a lot of talking. So we just go off the page and then, and they didn't, it didn't matter to them because we were pretty much in line with what they wanted. And then they had, we did five takes and they've had 15 takes because it three cameras and they got it. And the editors would have a nightmare when we were saying all of this to them and they had to piece it together. But we knew that we had something special, but we did not know how special it would be. We didn't. I mean, we just knew it was very different and we felt like that it could keep going. And it really was the first thing that was ever streamed. It was Direct TV because they pick up half of the NBC costs. So the three first three seasons, NBC sponsored, I mean they produced it and then they were gonna get rid of us. And DIRECTV came in and said, we want half of it if we can show it first. And so NBC said yes. So we got season four and five with DirecTV. It was the first thing that was ever streamed. How many

Speaker 1: seasons did you guys go through before you realized what you had? Would that happen like in or after the first season?

Speaker 4: I feel like that we had the family, you know, We knew we were a family. We knew we had something a little special, but we did not know how successful it's gonna be because NBC billed it as Texas high school football show. And of course, all the women in the world, they watch that. They don't watch Texas high school football, but that's not what it's about. And so when they finally discovered that it was, it's about community and being a part of team and whatever sport, whatever language you spoke, every person in the world understands it. You know, was in Paris and I had these gentlemen and they said, what year did I say, What? You watch the show? Oh everybody in France wants the show we had soccer, we had high school coaches, we had to get in love with and all this stuff I said okay so that's when I really learned that the show has never been off in twenty years it's never been off And it's been appreciated by every language in the world except the people that just don't. I think maybe some of the countries don't ever watch a lot of those things because it has some risky things in it. So they don't censor But it's universal and it's not about Texas high school football. That's the backdrop. So that's something that we discovered after years because we realized that it was rocking. And we realized how many great directors and writers and the actors were really special. It was a family. So like you guys had at the ticket, the family is always the most important thing. So it was.

Speaker 1: Eddie has had a little bump with Texas high school football in his past Oh, yeah. Too. Oh. In fact, I was reading about it today and it just all came back to me. I had kind of, you know, hadn't given it much thought for some time now. Probably, I don't know, ten years or so. Maybe even longer than that. But I got to reading about it today. And all I could think of is, man, what that must have been like. What that must have been like just to be there, let alone to be on the air broadcasting the game. We're talking about the legendary football game, which a lot of people say is the best ever between Tyler John Tyler and Plano East.

Speaker 3: Mhmm. Yep. 1994. Right?

Speaker 2: And that Yeah. That's thirty years, man. Thirty years. Oh, That's unbelievable.

Speaker 1: Do you remember it like it was yesterday?

Speaker 2: I do. And like you, I kind of went back last night and was looking to some things you can forget about it. You know we have over a million comments if you go on the internet. There are now over a million comments about the game.

Speaker 1: I'm not

Speaker 2: surprised From around by the world. Yeah. I am not surprised by that. The shocking thing was we did local origination cable. I found when I decided I wanted to do high school football after I got out of TV and just wanted to stay with it. So you could go back then, cable was the buzzword if you remember that. Cable was everywhere. Cable, cable, cable. Now what a city had to do was they had to be provided a local origination truck and equipment that nobody cared about because it's where they covered the garden parties and city hall.

Speaker 4: So it was just

Speaker 2: sitting there. So I went to them and said to the district where Plano was playing, I said, I'll do a game of the week. It won't cost you a thing. Let me split the commercials with you. I'll do the whole thing. And so I went and got this crazy mailman who was a good friend of mine who coached youth football. And I said, why don't you do the color? I'll do the play by play and we'll do high school football. And we did that for ten years. Ten years, Denny and I, Denny Garver, and I did those games. Then it came 1994 around Thanksgiving time and I could not find a crew to work that game because it was Thanksgiving. So we ended up doing that football game with a director, with an engineer, with two camera guys. One of them, it was his first football game to ever shoot And Denny and I and coach Mike Zafuto from Lake Highlands in the booth. We had what's that? That's four that's seven total crew members that did that game. And we started at noon on Saturday when Plano played. Then the middle game was Lake Highlands. We did that game. And as all playoff games as you well know, they run late because games run late because you have what's supposed to be thirty minutes between games, you have an hour, hour and fifteen minutes between games. So the Plano East game kicked off at 09:00. It was supposed to kick off at 07:00. What you hear all the craziness that went on late, late, late in the game, it was 01:15 in the morning.

Speaker 3: Woah. Didn't know that.

Speaker 1: So I didn't know that either.

Speaker 2: I So when I hear know people you're say, Gosh, we're wore out because we did a broadcast. We'd been there from noon and we finished up at 01:30 in the morning.

Speaker 1: You did three games.

Speaker 2: We did three games.

Speaker 3: And with a skeleton crew, many crew members did you typically have back then?

Speaker 2: We'd have four, five, six cameramen and then a full truck crew that worked. And so we had seven people do three games. And when we got through and that game ended, we had two six packs ice down. We got in the car. There were five of us. Because what I did was to make us look big time, you got to have a crew, right? So our statistician I should say was one of Denny's postman friends from the post office and the other statistician was our paper boy who threw the paper. I had Stevie the stat man menish, I had Tom the apprentice porter, I had Denny Garber. I just went through the whole nine yards. We did that game, we drank those two six packs of beer on the way back to Plano, not one word was said because nobody had ever seen what we just saw. Denny called me at about 10:20 Sunday night and he said, Are you watching Channel five? And I said, No. He said, Well, we're going to be on. I said, What do you mean we're going to be on? Because it ran so late that nobody had video. The morning news didn't have the story. Nothing. And so Scott Murray introduced it introduced it this way on Sunday night. There was an unbelievable game at Texas Stadium last night, but wait till you hear the idiots that did the play by play. That's what Scott said.

Speaker 4: Yeah. That

Speaker 3: does sound like him.

Speaker 2: And then it just 08:00 Monday morning I got a call from David Letterman. 08:00 in the morning I got a call from David Letterman and then from

Speaker 1: Dave himself?

Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh my God.

Speaker 4: Yeah. But you guys did Johnny Carson.

Speaker 2: But well it just blew up. I mean the whole day was just Sports Illustrated and the Atlanta Constitution and San Francisco and ESPN. Everybody was calling. And about 04:00 in the afternoon, I had gone over to the cable company to do a little editing. And my wife called and said, Well, God, Jay Leno's on the phone. Just like it happens all the time. You know what, God? Jay Leno's on

Speaker 4: the phone.

Speaker 2: Said, Well, hear me again. Well, put him on. And so he said, Hey, we really want to have you out to California and have you on the show. And I said, Send a six pack of Lone Star and a Yellow Cab and we're there. He said, I can handle a Yellow Cab but what the hell is Lone Star? And I didn't want to tell him it was horse pee in a bottle. But he did, he booked us right there. And like you were talking about thinking back through things and you know how rare this is for people to actually get on The Tonight Show. I mean that's You gotta be kidding me. But I called him back and I said, Hey, he said, I wanna have you out on Thursday night. I'll fly you out Thursday. We'll have you on the show Friday and have you on the Red Eye back to Plano. I said, well, wait a minute. My partner and this is true. Denny had never flown on a plane. Oh. He had never been on a plane. Oh. And I said, I want to have him out there for three or four days and show him California and show you what's happening and everything like that. And he said, well, that'd be fine. So we arranged that and then I thought about it overnight and I called him back and I said, You have any connection that you can get us on Riviera Country Club when we play golf? Oh, oh. He said, Yeah, we can do that.

Speaker 3: Said, Wow. Golly.

Speaker 2: So this is really good. Now, two or three stories that brought back memories when you're talking about going through things. When we landed, the limo driver was named Joe Griffiths and he said, Now the way The Tonight Show works is we have a fleet of limos and anytime you want to go somewhere you just call the show. But he said, Here's my card. I want to be your driver. He said, You guys are all over everything out here and I want to be your driver. I said, Okay. So he called us about the second day we were there and he said, Out here in California we have poker clubs. I know y'all have golf country clubs and things like that, but we have poker clubs that are really big. And he said, All my people out here want to meet you. Would y'all mind going and signing some autographs? We're like, No, no problem. We're working in our schedule. And so he said, All right, I'll be there about 06:30 to pick y'all up. So he called about 04:30 in the afternoon and said, there's a couple that I regularly drive and they would like to meet you guys and they're they wanna go to the poker club too. Would you mind sharing the limo? No, Joe, that's okay. Come on. So now Denny shows up, we go out to meet Joe at about 06:30. Denny is, like I say, he's a postman from Plano. He's a hillbilly. He's got on his Justin boots that we just got. Justin just sponsored us. He's got on his starched Levi's. He's got on his Garth Brooks Western shirt. He's got his battle cut hair. Trimmed up. He is looking good. Now we pull up, the limo pulls up and if you were going out to open the door to the limo and you saw somebody in there, what would you say, Brad?

Speaker 4: What would I say? Yeah. Why am I here?

Speaker 2: No, you'd say hi, I'm Brad. How you doing?

Speaker 4: Well of course, yeah.

Speaker 2: Denny opens the door and there sits John Travolta and Kelly Preston.

Speaker 4: Oh wow. Woah.

Speaker 2: And Denny goes, John Travolta, you know dancing son of a bitch. Oh, no. He said, when they put you on the streets of New York and you could dance, you were okay. But when they put a cowboy hat on you and put you in blue jeans and put you in Gillies, I wanted to throw up.

Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, Urban cowboy.

Speaker 2: We're in trouble. That was one that was one story that came back and I thought, golly, did that

Speaker 4: really happen? Oh my god.

Speaker 2: It really happened. Holy crap. Yeah. That that game, I guess, will live forever.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It will live forever, but probably a number of people who are watching this

Speaker 4: They don't know.

Speaker 1: Don't know that much about it.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Tell them.

Speaker 1: I'm So why don't you take us through the the later stages of that game?

Speaker 2: And Yeah.

Speaker 1: The this is why this game is so special.

Speaker 4: It's the two minutes, right?

Speaker 2: Five minutes and thirty four seconds.

Speaker 4: Okay, five minutes.

Speaker 2: Now it was really a great game. I mean, these were the number one and number two ranked teams in the state. They were both twelve and zero. It's a shame they had to meet in the quarter finals instead of the finals. But the game started off and at halftime is a great game. It was like a four point game. And then you get two turnovers by Plano East. They have a interception for a touchdown. They get a fumble recovery for touchdown. Break it wide open. It's 41 to 17. I'm sorry. There were three minutes and twenty four seconds left in the game. That's right.

Speaker 1: Alright. Now listen to that. Forty one seventeen.

Speaker 2: Forty one seventeen.

Speaker 1: Three minutes and twenty four seconds left in the game.

Speaker 2: We're into the and what what made it so special to us was the kids at Plano East were kids that we started coaching in t ball. I mean, these were our kids. Yeah. So what you hear is our guts were coming out on the air. That's what you heard. Yeah. And we got so much backlash about, god, what a bunch of hillbillies and I can't believe they did that and I can't believe they said those things. Yada yada yada. Anyway, three minutes and twenty four seconds, Plano East has one onside kick, touchdown, two onside kicks, touchdown, three onside kicks, touchdown.

Speaker 1: Right now you hear that? Three times they try an on side kick, three times they recover the on side kick for a touchdown.

Speaker 4: Yes.

Speaker 2: With twenty four seconds left in the game, It is 4441 Plano East. My God, East has won the game. We're going to the next stage. It's unbelievable. All they gotta do is kick it off, tackle them, that's it. So the ball goes high and deep on the kickoff. It lands at the goal line. The guy from Tyler literally had to do the Willie Mays, go back over his head, catch it, turn around and go start up the sideline. He went 100 yards with a kickoff return. The final was 40 eight-forty four, Tyler John Tyler. End of the

Speaker 1: game. Incredible.

Speaker 4: It was

Speaker 2: It it was picked up after the Tonight Show. It was picked up by what happened when Scott Murray did his show and then he sent it up to network lines and NBC News picked it up and then they sent it out worldwide. And that's why David Letterman saw it. That's why everybody started calling. That's why it went worldwide. Now there was one other story that I thought was really humorous last night. As a matter of fact, had to tell my wife about this. You know Vern Lundquist?

Speaker 1: Oh,

Speaker 2: yeah. Everybody's mentor that started off in TV around here. I had not seen Vern in twenty or twenty five years, hadn't even talked to him. And for my mother's eightieth birthday, I wanted to get Coach Sutton, Coach Knight, Vern to send a picture, little note to it saying happy birthday Fran, yada yada yada, but I couldn't find Vern. I called CBS up in New York several times. He never returned the phone call. So I remembered, and you probably remember this too, he moved to Steamboat Springs a long time ago. And so I called information asking for Vern Lundquist and he was listed. And he did that as I asked him later, why would you be in the phone book? He said, because Doke Walker, who was one of his best friends did the same thing. If anybody ever wanted to, any of his friends wanted to get in touch with him, he wanted to be in the phone book where they can get in touch with him. So I called Vern. He answers the phone. Hello? I said, Laverne, it's Eddie Clinton. And he goes, wait a minute. You hear some paper shuffling. He goes, I'm looking at my calendar. Nothing on here does it say I need to talk to Eddie Clinton today. I said, come on, jackass. Yeah. I wanted to I said, can you do this for my my mom my mom? Yada yada yada. And he goes, well, I sure can. He said, can I ask you one thing? I said, sure. He said, this was in '97, '98. He said, what the hell was with you in high school football? I said, what are you talking about? He said, that Plano Plano game, football game was everywhere. And I gave him a little background on it. He said, and then, I'm laying in bed with Nancy one night. That's his wife by the way. And he said, We got The Tonight Show turned on and I'll be damned if you don't walk out on the set. And he said, Jesus Christ, he's everywhere. And his wife goes, What are you talking about? So she had to tell him about how that came about. And I said, Well Laverne, can I ask you one thing since you wanted to ask me one thing about high school football? He goes, Yeah, sure. I said, Do you still have those white pants? And he goes, Well you son of a bitch. I'm like, What happened there was, remember we used to go out to Thousand Oaks to cover the Cowboys? Yes. And Vernon and I would play golf out there all the time and we played one time. We got to 18 and we're tied up. And I hit started hitting my drive and Vern is on the back of the tee box and he goes, and now at the tee box from White Plains, New York, the young rookie Eddie Clinton. He wanted me to just shank the crap out of the ball. I didn't hit it too bad but I didn't shank it. So he came up and he started to get ready to hit the ball and he's waiting for me to do the same thing to him and I'm dead quiet. And he hits the ball so bad, almost between his legs and goes into the water behind him.

Speaker 3: Behind him.

Speaker 2: He jumps straight up in the air. He's got on white pants. He jumps straight up in the air and he comes down on his knees in that green California grass and he had to walk up the eighteenth Fairway with big green spots on his knees and I had never forgotten that and neither had he. So that was after twenty five years, that was one thing I asked Byrne, Do you still have those white pants? Oh my God. Those are the stories that you remember that all of that kind went on. But there's not, literally there's not a month that goes by that somebody doesn't bring that game up to this day.

Speaker 4: No. It

Speaker 1: was that special, man. Yeah. It was that special. It was that that much of a one of one and just that that crazy of a game. I can't imagine what it must have been what you guys must have been thinking as you're up there watching it watching it unfold. You know?

Speaker 4: You know, you could hear what they were thinking, and it was pretty dadgum crazy.

Speaker 1: It was.

Speaker 4: Oh my

Speaker 2: god. No. Oh, no. No. It's gonna low. They're gonna win. They're lose.

Speaker 3: Might play a little bit of it later on in the show.

Speaker 1: Oh, we might? Yeah.

Speaker 2: Know what I could not believe? After the game and a few months had passed and I'm walking through the living room and ESPN is on and they're talking about the ESPY Awards and the nominations are Wayne Gretzky's all time scoring record and Reggie Miller's 57 points against the Knicks and the Plano East Tyler John Tyler game. Wow. I'm like Wayne Gretzky's all time scoring record in Plano East and we killed him. We got the award, the guys told us backstage, by the way, y'all got like 27,000 votes, Gretzky got seven.

Speaker 4: Woah. Yeah. I'm like, You

Speaker 2: have gotta be kidding me.

Speaker 1: It's the magic of high school football.

Speaker 3: Texas high school football.

Speaker 2: And I don't know. I'd like y'all's thoughts on it. I don't know because now you've got homer calls of the week, you got all that kind of stuff. We got blasted so bad for the way we did that game, but I'm not sure that broadcasting didn't change. Cause everybody screams these days, don't they?

Speaker 1: Yeah, they do. And I think it did cause a change. Maybe not an immediate one. I think it took some time for it all to shake out and for everybody to decide what they thought about it. Probably a lot of people had to go back and listen to it again and again and again. The more the more they listened to it, the more they came around on it. You know? Well, It's you probably one of those things.

Speaker 2: You know, Denny and I, the years after that, and he passed away a few years ago at the age of 60, but we talked about it. But there were things that were said during that ballgame that we had never said in ten years of doing games together like Good Gosh a Mighty Joe Friday. I said, did that come from?

Speaker 4: He said, I

Speaker 2: don't know. You know where we said bingo, bango, bongo? Where did that I don't know. We said things that we never said before and we never said afterwards. We only did like one more year of broadcast.

Speaker 1: Hey, it was just that kind of game though. It was just that kind of game that you I mean, you were seeing something that you'd never seen before and we're never gonna see again, and you were just naturally reacting to it. And it was

Speaker 2: 01:00 in the morning.

Speaker 1: And it was 01:00 in the morning.

Speaker 2: And we were whipped. Yeah. And those kids, that was our emotion. Those kids were getting beat. Then they were winning. That was our guts hanging out there, man.

Speaker 1: Pretty awesome.

Speaker 4: And at the Texas Stadium. At Texas Stadium. Yes, sir.

Speaker 1: Alright. This is Brad Leland here. This is Eddie Clinton there. And they'll be back for a little bit more here in just a second. You boys can relax and and have a nice swig of water or whatever you want whatever you want over there, whatever you got over there because we gotta take care of a little business and sell a couple of things here because that means it's time for the dreaded and feared mid show read.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Don't be scared.

Speaker 1: That's right. It's nowhere near as threatening as it might seem. Mhmm. Alright. What I have here in my hand is a nice full spec spectrum salve stick from the CBD House of Healing. Now you're probably looking at this. If you were roaming around this world in pain and you need something to make you feel better, this works. I got a little problem going right now. It's crazy. When you start getting up there in years, shit breaks down, you know? That's all there is to it. And you've got to start thinking about things you otherwise wouldn't. I got put onto this and I found that it makes it feel better. It does I don't know if it's gonna make it go away or anything, but I don't care about that. I just don't wanna walk around hurting so bad. And this stuff really works for me. Where did I get it? I got it at the CBD House of Healing. And if you were dealing with something like this, probably what you should do, go over there, have a look, take a look around because they got all kinds of stuff in there that can probably help you out and probably help you make you feel better. And if you're roaming through this world in pain, that probably sounds pretty good to you. The CBD House of Healing is located at Plano Road and Northwest Highway in the northeast quadrant of that burgeoning intersection. Stop in there. Take a look around. Tell them what you're there for. Tell them what you need. Let them go to work for you. The owner is a registered nurse, and she approaches all this from a very medicinal standpoint. She will help you out. They will help you out. You will walk away with something that can make you feel better from the CBD House of Healing. Tell them about it, heard about it from us here on YDC and go check it out. Now Eric Nadel is a friend of everybody's, and he's a friend of this podcast. He is a friend of, like I say, everybody who knows him. He's a great guy. And every year he does a birthday benefit concert. And this year it's celebrating its fourteenth edition. It features two of Eric's favorite bands. I don't know if you know about Eric's musical tastes or his musical bag, but he is very eclectic, very diverse. If you're looking for something that you're gonna hear on the radio, chances are he's not your guy. But he does pick out good stuff, and he has a way of coming up with really, really good bands. Even if you don't know him, they are very much worth seeing. This year, it's Brooklyn based Sammy Ray and Friends and Bay Area favorite, Chuck Prophet and the Cumbia shoes. Now, the date is Thursday, May 14. That's coming up very soon here. Doors open at 06:30. Showtime's at 07:30 and all this is gonna be coming down at the Longhorn Ballroom, the legendary Longhorn Ballroom, which I don't know if you've been over there to see what they've done as far as remodeling and reopening that, but it is just immaculate. The benefits supports the work of the Grant Halliburton Foundation. That's a local nonprofit that provides mental health education, training, and support to teens and families. To find out more and to purchase tickets, visit granthalliburton.org/ericnadell. Granthalliburton.org/ericnadell and Halliburton is spelled H A L L I B U R T O N. Now, tables and suites are also available. So, come see us, the YDC gang on the purple carpet at Eric Nadel's birthday benefit. It's presented by Haynes Boone and KXT ninety one seven featuring Sammy Ray and the friends with special guest, Chuck Prophet and the Kumbia Kings. Is that all we got here?

Speaker 3: Yes, sir. Darn right. See? We survived.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: It wasn't that scary.

Speaker 4: No. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess we made it out of that okay, didn't we got shoot

Speaker 3: talk about Sav Sticks and Eric Nadel.

Speaker 1: Yeah, we did.

Speaker 4: We did. Pretty good. And he would come to Nick's uptown too. Know you came.

Speaker 1: Oh yes.

Speaker 4: And Eric would Eric would come and he was such a you know, he was a fan of all the music that we had. And he it was cool. Really cool.

Speaker 1: Yes. I was a big fan of Nick's Uptown.

Speaker 2: My god.

Speaker 4: Oh, those are hard to get.

Speaker 1: Yes, they are hard to get.

Speaker 4: Yes, nobody's gonna have that. No.

Speaker 3: And he's got two.

Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3: Look at that.

Speaker 1: Knicks Uptown was a cool place.

Speaker 3: When did it close?

Speaker 4: 'eighty or 'three, it turned into

Speaker 1: Fast and Cool, yeah.

Speaker 4: After that, but

Speaker 3: When did that close down?

Speaker 1: 'eighty six. Yeah, building still stands. Okay. It's just up there waiting for somebody else to do something else to it.

Speaker 3: Let's do something there.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Boy, we do have a lot of business ideas. Right. Yes, this is Your Dark Companion, your show for big ideas.

Speaker 3: That never go anywhere. Yeah.

Speaker 4: That's right. It's close to Nick's uptown too. It's right down the street.

Speaker 1: It is. Okay. So what's life like for you boys these days?

Speaker 4: Well, I will never retire. All my buddies are 71 years old and stuff, they say, When are you gonna retire? Said, Retire? I've been playing my whole life, know, I'm I'm very lucky to get to do it now and they take me and I get to go play a lot of different characters and so I have about six or seven movies that are coming out right now and it's really cool to be able to do this. I've been doing it for forty years, so it just keeps going and That's good, man. It's just one of those things that you just, you can always do it as long as you can walk and talk. You don't even have to be able to walk because I just did a movie with Bruce Dern, who's 90 years old and he is crippled. He's in a wheelchair but he is so enthusiastic and he's such a great actor and he just loved to be with us and you know I'm always one of the people on the now, it used to be, you know, the set, the camera guy or some old actor or somebody was the older, but hell, I'm nearly the oldest person on the set now. And then Bruce was there and he goes, oh, you're a young whippersnapper. You know, I'm 90, you got twenty years to go, dude.

Speaker 2: There you go.

Speaker 4: So anyway, that's one of the things that I hope I will keep doing. Think I will. Yeah, it's

Speaker 1: one of those things you gotta do as long as you can.

Speaker 4: That's right. That's right. And so I've been very lucky to do it. And I've played I've played two doctors in my whole career, and I played one recently. And it'll be at the Dallas Film Festival, International Film Festival. It's April 26. It's called One in a Million. And I played a doctor. It's kinda fun to play something like that, you know?

Speaker 1: But I played a That'll be at the Dallas Film Festival?

Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. That'll be, Yeah, and it's cool. It's a true story. It's not a documentary, but it's a really beautiful story about a little boy that had a serious, serious situation. Then in the way, you know so I got to play the Jerry Jones of the Fort Worth stockyards because he was a former pro football I mean a pro bull rider and he was so rich and he was something and that movie's coming out. It's about a woman a woman pro bull rider. It's called Daisy. And then I got another one that just came out. James Vanderbijk's last picture. It's called The Gates. And in that I got to play a former pro football player. And that was fun. So anyway, have to get to do a lot of things. Oh, an old cowboy. I got to bed on a horse. Hadn't been on a horse in twenty five years when I got on a horse and I was a bad guy and a real western. It's on TV now, so it's just really fun to go around and

Speaker 2: play. Liked you better in Justified when they whacked you. Yes, boy. Man.

Speaker 3: Technically I was in Justified too.

Speaker 2: I said, yeah, I remember that.

Speaker 1: And you were? Yeah. How did this come, why do I not know anything about this?

Speaker 2: A bunch of

Speaker 3: sucking DJ Boyd was a writer for Justified and he's from here, P1. Yeah. Him I remember.

Speaker 4: He would put all of these little inserts in the Justified, just like they were ticket things. If you had never seen or knew the ticket, you didn't know what he was talking about. But they awesome.

Speaker 3: Hot rod Dunham, Whacked Sea him.

Speaker 2: That's good. Yeah,

Speaker 4: boy, that was oof. Know, the thing about Justified, language was very, it was what I call southern Shakespeare because it had to be recited and read exactly the way it was written, but it was very beautiful because it was no no person in the South ever speak like that, But it was very, know

Speaker 2: A good show.

Speaker 4: It really good.

Speaker 2: It's awesome.

Speaker 1: What's your story these days?

Speaker 2: 11 grandkids in Maryland and South Carolina and Nashville. So we're all the time going over there and very, very fortunate, very honored to have had three boys serving in the Air Force. Had an intelligence officer, which is really funny coming from this family. An electronic specialist flying crew chief, sergeant, and still have a colonel who is over in The Middle East right now dealing with the war. And let me tell you something. From an old gray haired bastard that's seen a lot like y'all have. They're in one glorious thing about war.

Speaker 1: I like being called a gray haired bastard.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. They're in one glorious thing about war and the more I hear people talk about war, that's crap. Take it from a military family. They're in one glorious thing about war.

Speaker 1: It seems like the one thing in this world that there is just no fun about whatsoever. Anyway, I don't No mean fun, no glory, no nothing.

Speaker 2: I didn't mean to drag that down, but I'm very honored to have three three kids that are either serving and are that have served this country. And I think if we had a little more of that, we'd be in really good shape. They got that Oak Cliff root in them baby.

Speaker 4: So you

Speaker 1: know they keep it real.

Speaker 2: There you go. So yeah, we spend all of our time running around the country seeing kids and having them come here and play golf. The great thing about it with the boys is when we get together, which is not that often, we try to mate at a great golf course and share that and play golf.

Speaker 1: Courses such as which? Well, Riviera,

Speaker 2: Pebble Beach. Okay. Let's see. All kinds of places. I've gone blank thinking about where they are, but

Speaker 1: I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I think

Speaker 2: we've played about seven of the top 100 golf courses in the world. Looked at

Speaker 1: You talk Riviera, you talk Pebble Beach, we get the drift.

Speaker 2: Okay. But it means something because we play those courses and we think back over the years that we were fortunate enough to play there and be there.

Speaker 1: Well, I certainly thank you guys for stopping down and taking a little time for little YDC today Yes. And helping us out and helping us get this thing on the road.

Speaker 2: Well, gotta tell you something, man. From from my standpoint, you're like the all time greatest. Oh, man. Mean, what you've done in this Dallas Fort Worth market is unheard of. I mean, it really is. And then to know that you're just a guy like me from Oak Cliff, it just makes it fun. And you play it up. And I just want to tell you how much fun it is. I've known you from the peripheral and it's really nice to meet you and share some time with you.

Speaker 1: Oh, it's nice to meet you, Eddie.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Really good.

Speaker 1: And Brad, good to see you again. Yes, sir. Thank you guys for doing this. Yes. Alright. That is another episode of YDC for today. We certainly thank you for being by the channel out there. If you like what we're doing here, you know what we need from you. We need for you to get us out there on your social media. We need you to share us. Get us out there amongst your peeps. Help us grow this thing. We're staying after it. We're blowing hard in here and just trying to get this thing up and running. We need help from you. You do that. We'll keep doing this, and we will go on down the road together. Meantime, bye.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Nice. Yeah.

Speaker 3: That was fun, guys.

Speaker 4: It was fun. Just remember, clear eyes, full hearts.

Speaker 3: Can't lose.

Speaker 2: Can't

Speaker 3: lose. There you go.

Speaker 4: Yep. In fact, you could win the Oscar, which he did this year.

Speaker 3: That's crazy.

Speaker 4: Jesse Plemons, I at the end, I realized that Jesse was sitting on the front

Speaker 2: row.

Speaker 4: And when

Speaker 1: he