Speaker 1: Hi, This is Nick Bramlock from Starbaroth, Pennsylvania. I played
Speaker 1: Jaxson Golf Court Golf Smarter episode seventy four. I know
Speaker 1: a story about John Matten that really isn't being told
Speaker 1: very much. I was reading all these obituaries about the
Speaker 1: Ace hardware ads and the light beer ads and meeting
Speaker 1: the Raiders sidelines after ten years, and every big moment
Speaker 1: in John Madden's life. But nowhere in any of these
Speaker 1: obituaries do I see word one about the longest single
Speaker 1: career of his life, which was morning radio in the
Speaker 1: Bay Area. And I thought, well, somebody has to tell
Speaker 1: that story. I look around, I go, well, Gene Nelson's
Speaker 1: been kind of out of the picture for years. Frank
Speaker 1: Dale's not going to write a piece al Heart's dead.
Speaker 1: I guess it's me. What I didn't know really well
Speaker 1: was the aya Geene Nelson part. As I was kind
Speaker 1: of scraping around looking for information, I ran across your
Speaker 1: podcast episode where you talked about meeting John at the
Speaker 1: radio station, about your conversations, where you played one of
Speaker 1: the answering machine messages the record for you and Joanne shamelessly, dude,
Speaker 1: I scraped some of that put it in the article
Speaker 1: and quoted you because you know, I knew you'd be
Speaker 1: okay with it. It hit me that I had a
Speaker 1: trusted friend, somebody I could come to who didn't know
Speaker 1: some of the origin myths of John Madden. On morning radio.
Speaker 2: Mornings with Madden, our radio lives with an American Legend,
Speaker 2: featuring the author, my friend Stan Bunger.
Speaker 1: This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from
Speaker 1: great golf minds to help you lower your score and
Speaker 1: raise your golf IQ.
Speaker 3: Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast.
Speaker 1: Dan, Fred, great to be here. I mean, I'm I'm honored.
Speaker 1: I know you've done something like seven five hundred episodes and.
Speaker 3: You're seven five hundred and one.
Speaker 1: I'm glad.
Speaker 2: Well, it's it's kind of weird that we're doing this,
Speaker 2: but I have to do it. Let's establish right from
Speaker 2: the beginning that we've been friends for fifty years. Are
Speaker 2: we really going on fifty years?
Speaker 1: Darn close to it? And I'm not sure that we've
Speaker 1: actually appeared broadcasts together since we were appearing on the
Speaker 1: same broadcast together as students at San Francisco State University.
Speaker 2: Well, don't even call it a broadcast because it was
Speaker 2: it was only over a cable to the dorms. I
Speaker 2: was the morning DJ at San Francisco State's radio station.
Speaker 2: This is nineteen seventy five, seventy six, seventy seven, and.
Speaker 3: You were my morning news guy.
Speaker 2: So we were there at six in the morning and
Speaker 2: you were doing news and I was doing records.
Speaker 1: And we thought we were that. We thought we were
Speaker 1: all that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were so impressed with ourselves. And here we
Speaker 2: are and a long time later, and we have one
Speaker 2: other thing in common. That is why you're here today,
Speaker 2: and that is John Madden. And I've told stories about
Speaker 2: my relationship with Madden on the show.
Speaker 3: Episode eight hundred.
Speaker 2: I think I told a lot of stories, and then
Speaker 2: when John passed away, I probably did some more. But
Speaker 2: you have just published a book called Mornings with Madden,
Speaker 2: My Radio life with an American Legend. Let me do
Speaker 2: the golf part real quick, and we'll get into more
Speaker 2: golf later. You and I were out on the golf course, what.
Speaker 3: Two years ago, three years ago, yeah, yeah, a couple.
Speaker 2: Of years ago, post COVID. We were playing one of
Speaker 2: my favorite courses, Corika Park in Alameda near your home,
Speaker 2: and you said, I'm thinking of doing a book about
Speaker 2: my time with Madden, and I'm like, what.
Speaker 3: Y got there?
Speaker 1: Okay, I will. And the backstory, of course, is that I,
Speaker 1: in my forty plus year radio career, spent most of
Speaker 1: the last twenty working with John Madden. Now I didn't
Speaker 1: in the booth of them. In fact, I never actually
Speaker 1: sat next to him for a broadcast, but he was
Speaker 1: an integral part of a morning radio show on KCBS
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, which happened to be the third station
Speaker 1: that he did this on. The first one was one
Speaker 1: that you worked that way back in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: and for whatever reason, John kept doing a five to
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen minute every single weekday morning radio hit
Speaker 1: at a time when he didn't need the money, he
Speaker 1: really didn't need anything else taking up his life. He
Speaker 1: was John Mann, you know, I mean, the on air
Speaker 1: television personality, the ad pitch man, the guy behind the
Speaker 1: video game. All those things were going on concurrently. And
Speaker 1: when his time on radio ended in twenty eighteen, and
Speaker 1: I then retired in twenty twenty one, he died at
Speaker 1: the end of twenty twenty one, and it occurred to
Speaker 1: me that we had these thousands of recordings, and locked
Speaker 1: up in those recordings must be some gemstones, you know,
Speaker 1: some real wisdom, some wit, some teachable moments, whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call him, all of it in there. And
Speaker 1: then the question became, how do we get to that?
Speaker 1: And is there really a book at that? And I
Speaker 1: think you know, you and a lot of other friends.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure as I got halfway through the process
Speaker 1: of writing the book whether you were my friends or
Speaker 1: my enemies. When you said, oh, yeah, you should write
Speaker 1: a book.
Speaker 3: I listened. My wife wrote a book.
Speaker 2: I went through five years of that and that was
Speaker 2: published a year ago. So yeah, I get it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, really was what was crucial to
Speaker 1: the process. Of course, it was having these recordings, But
Speaker 1: I was trying to answer a question that actually, it
Speaker 1: turned out you had one of the keys to and
Speaker 1: that was to be able to tell the story of
Speaker 1: this eighty two nineteen eighty two to twenty eighteen span
Speaker 1: of John Madden's life thirty six years during which he
Speaker 1: appeared faithfully every morning, a little brief time out for
Speaker 1: some medical crises, but not much on day area radio.
Speaker 1: And he started with Gene Nelson, who was your colleague
Speaker 1: at KYA Radio in San Francisco and K and KO.
Speaker 1: I mean it was a look. I have never been
Speaker 1: able to unravel those two statements. Kept swapping call letters,
Speaker 1: but another old book not mine. When Gene retires twelve
Speaker 1: years later, you'd think that'd be enough. Madden's had a
Speaker 1: great time. He's hung out with this legendary DJ Gen Nelson.
Speaker 1: They meshed, they were amazing together, and that should have
Speaker 1: been enough by then. Nineteen ninety four, John Madden somewhere
Speaker 1: in there. John had a couple of years where he
Speaker 1: made more money from CBS Sports than any single player
Speaker 1: in the NFL. I mean, imagine's been that big Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: still calling in every morning to Geen Nelson to talk.
Speaker 1: Gene retires, John doesn't quit. He moves over to join
Speaker 1: another Bay Area broadcast legend, Frank Dill, who happens to
Speaker 1: be an avid golfer. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: Frank Dill John Madden golf stories. Frank retires three years later.
Speaker 1: There's a brief interlude where a guy replaces Frank that
Speaker 1: John doesn't get along with, and yet he stills it.
Speaker 2: You keep saying that, and you're staying in the book,
Speaker 2: Come on, who is it? Steve McPartland never heard him, Okay.
Speaker 1: History and you know, but apparently he ticked John off
Speaker 1: enough that John's like, I'm not doing this with this guy.
Speaker 1: And so my boss for many years at KCBS said,
Speaker 1: Kevin Arrow, who was a real, you know, inside the
Speaker 1: box kind of guy, thought outside the box and said,
Speaker 1: you know what, he would be awesome. He would give
Speaker 1: us an appointment listening moment at fifteen every morning where
Speaker 1: people will have to tune in.
Speaker 2: And radio, you know, especially a news talk station and
Speaker 2: it was mostly news.
Speaker 3: It wasn't even news talk.
Speaker 1: It was just news, traffic, weather together every ten minutes,
Speaker 1: bang bang bang bang.
Speaker 3: Twenty four to seven. Appointment radio.
Speaker 1: Explain that, Yeah, I should explain the term. I mean
Speaker 1: in broadcasting, if you have something that people feel they
Speaker 1: have to tune into, they must tune into, and radio
Speaker 1: doesn't allow you to time shift it really, I mean,
Speaker 1: not like a DVR and television all start the Super
Speaker 1: Bowl a half hour late, skip the commercials. In radio,
Speaker 1: you got to be there when it happens. And so
Speaker 1: eight fifteen, I mean, we have a story after a
Speaker 1: story of people saying I was late to work routinely
Speaker 1: because I was supposed to be in the office at
Speaker 1: eight fifteen, but I couldn't go in until I heard
Speaker 1: what Madden said. And it immediately like this, I mean,
Speaker 1: our ratings during that time slot skyrocketed. We ended up
Speaker 1: beating our longtime Nemesiskgo in the morning ratings battle as
Speaker 1: a result of that hour. And another shout out has
Speaker 1: to be given to a guy, nam Frank Oxerart, who
Speaker 1: was the station manager at KCBS. It was willing to
Speaker 1: go to New York to the suits at Corpora then
Speaker 1: say hey, this guy's worth it, you know, pay John
Speaker 1: Madden whatever it takes. I don't know what it was.
Speaker 1: I never have none, to be honest with you, to
Speaker 1: get him on our station because it will change everything.
Speaker 1: And it did, and so that was the beginning. I
Speaker 1: came back. So now he's working with Al Hart, another
Speaker 1: aread broadcast legend, starting in nineteen ninety seven on KCBS,
Speaker 1: and they hit it off right away. They were amazing together.
Speaker 1: But Al retires in two thousand. I mean, I had
Speaker 1: previously worked at KCBS for ten years, was off to
Speaker 1: another stuff. I get a call one day saying, hey,
Speaker 1: would you consider coming back. And you know, you remember
Speaker 1: that scene in the movie A Major League where they
Speaker 1: call Lou Brown he's run at a tire shot, and
Speaker 1: you say would you like to manage the Cleveland Indians
Speaker 1: And he goes, ah, I got a guy. I asked
Speaker 1: me about a set of white walls. I'll get back
Speaker 1: to you. You know that was kind of my response.
Speaker 1: I had other stuff going on. I wasn't sure I
Speaker 1: wanted to go back to everyday radio, but I did
Speaker 1: say yes. And I know that management must have been
Speaker 1: terrified that I would be the next Steve Apartment, that
Speaker 1: I would screw this thing with Madden up by not
Speaker 1: getting how to play the game with John Madden. So
Speaker 1: the day before I'm sorry, I go ahead.
Speaker 2: No, I was going to say it wasn't he was
Speaker 2: already on KCBS with a different morning.
Speaker 3: Person that right, with AlOH al Hart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, And they hear impression in the book. I'm
Speaker 2: listening to the audiobook. Your impression of al Hart.
Speaker 3: You nailed it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's He's the sweetest, kindest, gentlest, funniest man anybody
Speaker 1: ever met. There's never been anybody who met Albarne. Well,
Speaker 1: what a jerk?
Speaker 2: No, No, no, never, but I'm saying the voice and
Speaker 2: you do your impression of him on the audiobook.
Speaker 3: You nailed it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, wait, that was a no. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: I learned a lot from him, and so yeah, the
Speaker 1: day before they're gonna put me on the air for
Speaker 1: the first time. I come back in the summer of
Speaker 1: two thousand and they said, you really need to talk
Speaker 1: to coach. We got to get a call. And I
Speaker 1: know that management is thinking, jeez, this is this has
Speaker 1: got to work, this has got to work, this has
Speaker 1: gotta work. So I get on the call, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a little nervous. This is John freaking Madden right before.
Speaker 1: In fact, I didn't really like the Raiders. I used
Speaker 1: to root against him, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, you grew up on the Peninsula or happened
Speaker 3: to be at.
Speaker 1: Or in San Francisco. Mom and dad courted at Keysar Stadium.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I was a forty nine er fan. And
Speaker 1: I get on the phone and I just start dabbling.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, man, coach, I just want you to
Speaker 1: know I'm a I'm a big fan of you, know
Speaker 1: of you and you work on television. And my dad
Speaker 1: was a football coach and his dad was a football coach,
Speaker 1: and I love sports, any kind of sports, and Fred
Speaker 1: I must have talked for three minutes without stopping. I've
Speaker 1: breath and there's this at the other end, John Madden going, Steah,
Speaker 1: that's great, talk to you tomorrow. So you know, I
Speaker 1: hope I passed the audition at that point. And the
Speaker 1: next morning it's time for the first one. So I
Speaker 1: get the call from the newsroom, you know, in the intercom,
Speaker 1: saying okay, Madden's ready on line seven four, and I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: So I hit the talk back bay and I said,
Speaker 1: what's the topic. And there's this long silence, and I
Speaker 1: see people in the newsroom looking back and forth to
Speaker 1: each other. Finally somebody has the guts to lean in
Speaker 1: and go whatever you want. It's Madden. And that's when
Speaker 1: it all hit me. This isn't an interview. This is
Speaker 1: a conversation. That's a different animal.
Speaker 3: Huge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, before we get to your first conversation with
Speaker 2: Madden on the air, let's get let's back up a
Speaker 2: little because I have to say I'm listening to the audiobook.
Speaker 2: I love listening to the audiobook because I've always loved
Speaker 2: your voice. But you were incredibly generous to me in
Speaker 2: this book. I was amazed, and I'm honest with you,
Speaker 2: I was like tearing up, going, he's still talking about me?
Speaker 3: What is going on here?
Speaker 2: And then at least two more times I'm only on
Speaker 2: chapter ten in the audio book, and at least two
Speaker 2: more times I.
Speaker 3: Heard my name. I'm like, why are you doing this?
Speaker 3: Why do you keep throwing my.
Speaker 1: Name in there? Well, you know, I'm going to cycle
Speaker 1: back to your podcast, right because when Coach passed away,
Speaker 1: my initial thought was, I know a story about John
Speaker 1: Madden that really isn't being told very much. I was
Speaker 1: reading all these obituaries about the Ace hardware ads and
Speaker 1: the light beer ads and leaving the Radar sidelines after
Speaker 1: ten years, and I mean every big moment in John
Speaker 1: Madden's life. But nowhere in any of these obituaries do
Speaker 1: I see word one about the longest single career of
Speaker 1: his life, which was morning radio in the Bay Area.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, somebody has to tell that story.
Speaker 1: I look around, I go, well, Geene Nelson's been you know,
Speaker 1: kind of out of the picture for years. Frank Gale's
Speaker 1: not going to write a piece. Al Heart's dead, I
Speaker 1: guess it's me. And what I didn't know really well
Speaker 1: was the origin part, the KYA Gene Nelson part. And
Speaker 1: as I was kind of scraping around looking for information,
Speaker 1: I ran across your podcast episode where you talked about
Speaker 1: meeting John at the radio station, about your conversations, where
Speaker 1: you played one of the answering machine messages the record
Speaker 1: for you and Joanne, and that I mean shameless the dude.
Speaker 1: I scraped some of that, put it in the article
Speaker 1: and quoted you because you know, I knew you'd be
Speaker 1: okay with it. But it hit me that I had
Speaker 1: trusted friend, somebody I could come to who didn't know
Speaker 1: some of the origin myth of John Madden on Morning Radio.
Speaker 1: Much later, actually, as the manuscript had already been submitted
Speaker 1: and gone to the almost to the printer, a third
Speaker 1: party reached out to me. He said, would you like
Speaker 1: to be in touch with Gene Nelson? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: nobody talks to Gen Nelson. He's kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: checked himself out of out of the radio game. And
Speaker 1: and in my contact said I'll give you a mailing address.
Speaker 1: So I said, well that's a start. I'll do something
Speaker 1: I haven't done in years. I will write an actual
Speaker 1: letter and put a stamp on it, put it in
Speaker 1: the mail, and I included my email address, thinking I
Speaker 1: don't know Gen Nelson does email. He's, you know, in
Speaker 1: his eighties. I guess uh, and my phone number. And
Speaker 1: two days later, Fred I got three missed calls from
Speaker 1: Gene Nelson in voicemails, and I'm thinking, I missed. You know,
Speaker 1: I have the big the big fish on the line,
Speaker 1: and I missed him. I finally was able to get
Speaker 1: back to him a couple of days later, and I
Speaker 1: told him I just wanted to talk to him a
Speaker 1: bit to get because I already finished the story. I
Speaker 1: just want to make sure that everything you told me
Speaker 1: about the beginning, you know, sort of jibe, and that
Speaker 1: maybe I could make this into a little bit of
Speaker 1: a preamble to the book. And Jeane talked to me
Speaker 1: for about twenty minutes. I was scrambling to record it all,
Speaker 1: and told some hilariously funny stories and stories that mapped
Speaker 1: to the same experience that Frank Dill and I had
Speaker 1: with Coach Matt and tied the whole thing together for me.
Speaker 1: Now I knew how it started. I had talked to
Speaker 1: the guy who started with him, who had the same
Speaker 1: feelings about working with John Mann that I did. And
Speaker 1: by the way, it heard some of the same stories
Speaker 1: which were as funny in nineteen eighty two as they
Speaker 1: were in twenty sixteen, which is kind of Madden's genius too, right,
Speaker 1: I mean he never failed to hang on to a
Speaker 1: good story if he figured he could recycled and use
Speaker 1: it again.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I always had the night if gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so just briefly, John was on the RKO Radio
Speaker 2: network and he was recording these two minute pieces for
Speaker 2: RKO Radio that were sent on a national basis to
Speaker 2: the r KO stations. And the director of sports at
Speaker 2: RKO at the time.
Speaker 3: Was Charlie Steiner.
Speaker 1: Charlie Steiner who.
Speaker 2: Went to ESPN and is now the radio voice took
Speaker 2: over for Vince Gully and is a radio voice for
Speaker 2: the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Speaker 1: Ray, he's about to call a world series as we
Speaker 1: record this, I.
Speaker 3: Think, well, fingers, are you know?
Speaker 2: I mean that the network sure want to see that,
Speaker 2: of course, right, two biggest names and the Dodgers and
Speaker 2: the Yankees. And the Dodgers and the Yankees are the
Speaker 2: two biggest names anyway, So Charlie and I.
Speaker 3: So, you know, I would I would record.
Speaker 2: John would come into the studio and we record two
Speaker 2: or three pieces that were each two minutes long. And
Speaker 2: we got very good at punch editing, you know, like
Speaker 2: he would read and just pick it up and I
Speaker 2: didn't have to edit anything.
Speaker 3: We just did it live. And he was great at that,
Speaker 3: and he loved it. It was fun. And then we
Speaker 3: would talk for two hours.
Speaker 2: About all these different things, including my goofy ideas, and
Speaker 2: he loved it, you know, he just loved that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. And I actually my boss came in to
Speaker 2: me one day after John left and he said, you
Speaker 2: can't spend that much time talking to John.
Speaker 3: You've got work to do. And I said, you want
Speaker 3: to tell him to leave?
Speaker 1: Well, And you know, Fred that story and you told
Speaker 1: me that many years earlier. And I didn't really make
Speaker 1: all the dot connections until later. And just the other night,
Speaker 1: a neighbor of mine told me a story about him
Speaker 1: delivering industrial gases to a hospital here in the East Bay.
Speaker 1: He's waiting these canisters of oxygen or whatever in there
Speaker 1: and he sees John madd So he says, what can
Speaker 1: I meet it? And somebody says, yeah, sure, come out over.
Speaker 1: He's a nice guy. He'll talk to you. So my
Speaker 1: neighbor goes over. Madden says, how are you doing, man,
Speaker 1: what are you doing here? You know? And my old
Speaker 1: my neighbor says, well, you know, I delivering cryogenic gases
Speaker 1: to the hospital. And maddens, Oh, what's you know? Is
Speaker 1: that dangerous? I mean, as Most telling me the story,
Speaker 1: I stopped him. I go so he's asking you about you,
Speaker 1: and Most going yeah, okay. Fast forward a couple of
Speaker 1: years later, my neighbor runs into Madden again, I think
Speaker 1: a charity event, and he gets his moment at the
Speaker 1: end of the line. He shakes his hand. He goes,
Speaker 1: you know, we've actually met before, coach, and Madden looks
Speaker 1: at him and he goes, cryogenic gases, right, whoah right.
Speaker 1: But he was present in any if he was having
Speaker 1: a conversation with you. He wasn't looking over your shoulder
Speaker 1: to see who was bigger in the corner of the room.
Speaker 1: He was having a conversation with you any care And
Speaker 1: he remembered, which is a crazy part.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and he So we did this. I was
Speaker 3: with him for like almost four years. I even at
Speaker 3: one point Charlie hired me.
Speaker 2: He says, hey, You're going to have to go out
Speaker 2: to Madden's house recording this time.
Speaker 3: I'm like, what.
Speaker 2: He goes, just rent some equipment and just go out
Speaker 2: to his house and record these pieces he's doing about
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty four Olympics, which will be in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: and and just get those and send them back down.
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, So I rent some gear. I drive
Speaker 2: out to Pleasanton, I pull into the into the cul
Speaker 2: de Sac and there are his two sons, Joe.
Speaker 3: And and Mike.
Speaker 2: Mike, Yeah, playing basketball in the cul de Sac. Hi, guys,
Speaker 2: there was no exchange. I walk in the house. I've
Speaker 2: got this gear over my shoulders, you know, and bags.
Speaker 2: Those days you had to carry a lot of.
Speaker 3: Gear to do it and recording, not like today.
Speaker 2: And I walk in and John's sitting on the big
Speaker 2: lazy boy chair watching TV and his wife is standing
Speaker 2: on the kitchen counter. He's like, hey, hey, coach. He
Speaker 2: goes fred up forg She needs some help putting some
Speaker 2: stuff away. It's like, no problem, coach.
Speaker 1: So that's so mad.
Speaker 3: It's so mad.
Speaker 2: And then and then I help her out and she's like,
Speaker 2: thank you. She's reaching down and thank you. And then
Speaker 2: he goes, all right, she's going to show you what bedroom.
Speaker 2: Just go in the bedroom and we'll work in there.
Speaker 2: And I was there for maybe an hour. We recorded
Speaker 2: some stuff, and I left and never never, you know,
Speaker 2: like never back at their house again. But in eighty
Speaker 2: four when I went to the Olympics, it was on
Speaker 2: my birthday and my brother bought us tickets and we
Speaker 2: went down there. He was there and he said, well,
Speaker 2: stop by the truck. You know, he was in the
Speaker 2: production truck, and we went in and said hello. And
Speaker 2: you know, I left the radio station in eighty six,
Speaker 2: and so that was pretty much it. I never never
Speaker 2: had a chance to talk to him again, except once
Speaker 2: when after all those times where he was telling me,
Speaker 2: you got to turn that into it, that into a business,
Speaker 2: that idea, that's a great idea, you got to turn
Speaker 2: that into a business.
Speaker 3: And I had multiple.
Speaker 2: Things going on that I was popping out of my mouth,
Speaker 2: and so one of them was starting to work, and
Speaker 2: it was the radio Baseball Cards, which I later turned
Speaker 2: into a podcast that we did. So nineteen eighty seven
Speaker 2: we did one hundred and sixty two episodes of Radio
Speaker 2: Baseball cards with Don Drysdale as the host, and John
Speaker 2: was gracious enough to give me over the phone a
Speaker 2: testimonial about it, and that was the lead in my
Speaker 2: demo that I would be sending out to radio stations.
Speaker 1: Wow, Fred, the world it's out full of But there's
Speaker 1: quite a tribe of people who once John identified somebody
Speaker 1: as trustworthy, honest, loyal and also talented, because you couldn't
Speaker 1: just be a a hacker with John. In order to
Speaker 1: get in this inner circle, you had to deliver. But
Speaker 1: if you could and all of those things, John would
Speaker 1: go to the wall for you. He'd make sure that
Speaker 1: you got that meet He'd make sure that somebody read
Speaker 1: your proposal, whatever it was, because that's the way he operated.
Speaker 1: He I don't think he was out to save the world.
Speaker 1: I don't think he was trying to you know, be
Speaker 1: the center of a Kretzu you know, or the Madden
Speaker 1: World thing. But he was just loyal to people who
Speaker 1: he thought deserved, yeah, the opportunity to move on some better,
Speaker 1: and Mandiham did. There were production assistants over the years
Speaker 1: who became you know, network executives, largely because John would
Speaker 1: tell people this one's smart pay attention to him or her.
Speaker 2: Well, this is a golf podcast, and there are people
Speaker 2: tuning into hear about golf. So the one thing I remember,
Speaker 2: and this was at least at least a decade before
Speaker 2: I started playing golf, that I was with him, but
Speaker 2: I do remember him talking about, if I had to
Speaker 2: choose between golf and tennis, I would much rather be
Speaker 2: a tennis player, because when you're a bad tennis player,
Speaker 2: you're done in a half hour, and if you're a
Speaker 2: bad golfer, you're out there all day long.
Speaker 1: This encapsulates the general overarching Madden golf philosophy in the book,
Speaker 1: and there were many many other episodes over on the
Speaker 1: Oarther that didn't make it into the book. He would
Speaker 1: often talk about exactly that. You know, first of all,
Speaker 1: none of us are really very good. And I'm speaking
Speaker 1: to you as a guy with as of this moment,
Speaker 1: a twenty four point four a GHI N index, So
Speaker 1: that puts me right there.
Speaker 3: No, you don't, come on, we play a lot closer
Speaker 3: than that.
Speaker 1: I've richly earned it, friend now. But the point being,
Speaker 1: I'm not a great golfer. I'm not thirty index, but
Speaker 1: also not in eighteen and I have my moments when
Speaker 1: you know you pure one and you think I love
Speaker 1: this game. Man, you fought it out, I cut a
Speaker 1: little draw, you know all of that. And then have
Speaker 1: moments where you wormburg a fairway wood and you think
Speaker 1: what am I doing out here?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well we've played a half dozen times together. I
Speaker 3: love playing with you. I never thought like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: here we go again.
Speaker 1: Well, I enjoyed playing with anybody, right, Anybody who you
Speaker 1: know doesn't doesn't follow. I don't care about the actual
Speaker 1: rules of the game. I care about the coreum of
Speaker 1: the game. You're free to play and count whatever you want.
Speaker 1: I don't care about that, Nor.
Speaker 3: Have I ever asked you, Okay, what are we playing
Speaker 3: for in this game?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: But how much you want to play for it?
Speaker 1: It's like, oh no, I don't gamble, but you know,
Speaker 1: for me, anybody who wants to go out and have
Speaker 1: a good time, be able to laugh at our own foibles.
Speaker 1: I think I took some of that from John over
Speaker 1: the years because I quit the game for a long time.
Speaker 1: I wasn't getting better. It was taken too long to play,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, you know, like a lot of people
Speaker 1: in midlife, you get busy, the kids, the job, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, golf five hours of it or
Speaker 1: six hours of it just doesn't seem like a really
Speaker 1: wise investment. And John probably had more time, but he
Speaker 1: didn't see it as a wise use of his time.
Speaker 1: So among the other things, he'd says, I don't understand
Speaker 1: why it's got to be eighteen holes. Why can't it
Speaker 1: be like eleven or thirteen? Well, guess what, Why can't it?
Speaker 1: Why can't we have courses that are built in three
Speaker 1: whole modules so you can play twelve or fifty.
Speaker 2: I've had I've had architects on We've talked about doing
Speaker 2: it instead of two nines due to three sixes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why not? Why not? Why don't courses eighteen a
Speaker 1: whole tracks do a better job of figuring out how
Speaker 1: to manage starting times so people can play the front
Speaker 1: nine or the background, not just at dawn, you know,
Speaker 1: before everybody comes around the turn, but I mean all
Speaker 1: day long? Why not? And these were kinds of things
Speaker 1: that John, you know, we would talk about all the
Speaker 1: time because I think he loved, well, I know what,
Speaker 1: he also loved that golf is a great way to
Speaker 1: get out there and make fun of your buddies, right, yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what he did, even his buddy Dominic Mercurio, who
Speaker 1: is always just referred to an ear as Dominic. Dominic's
Speaker 1: a restaurant owner in Monterey. And apparently Dominic, you're not
Speaker 1: a big guy, but apparently he hits it a ton
Speaker 1: off the tee. Apparently I never played with Dominic or
Speaker 1: John Dominic doesn't have much of a game. After the driver, Dominic,
Speaker 1: you know, it up and hell, it's a hell out
Speaker 1: of it. And then he goes up and he pulls that
Speaker 1: tea out of the ground like that, like take that
Speaker 1: and you know that sword coming out of the sheet,
Speaker 1: unplugging the tea from the earth. You know. But then
Speaker 1: after that everything goes south, and all Dominic wants to
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, back in the clubhouse, you see
Speaker 1: if I drive on seven and John said, yeah, but
Speaker 1: after that and everything was horrible. I mean, he scalded
Speaker 1: your three wood into the barker, then took you three
Speaker 1: to get out of there, and then you know, so
Speaker 1: you know, he he approached the game I think with
Speaker 1: an attitude that was it's not going to get great.
Speaker 1: You're not going to be great. Why would you get
Speaker 1: upset at yourself if this is who you are.
Speaker 2: Right, right, And this is this book is not a biography, right,
Speaker 2: this is not like the life of John Madden. This
Speaker 2: is you telling stories of maddenisms. I don't know what
Speaker 2: else to call him. It just like how things that
Speaker 2: he said on the air and where it would go
Speaker 2: and with direction is And as you stated earlier, it
Speaker 2: was like, this is a conversation.
Speaker 3: It's not an interview.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like you know the kind of conversation you know,
Speaker 1: I know there's a phrase talking story, you know, talking
Speaker 1: story where you're just hanging out with people. You're sharing
Speaker 1: your live story, their live story. It's the funny thing
Speaker 1: you saw, the thing you couldn't understand, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's what I love. It's just hanging out and talking.
Speaker 1: John loved that too. He was an incredible observer, you know,
Speaker 1: of everything, you know, the world around, in the human condition,
Speaker 1: all of it, and so he loved to talk about that.
Speaker 1: So some ofod he just was baffled by. Some of
Speaker 1: it he flat out and said, I don't get that,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't get Grits was one that he
Speaker 1: told me one time, and I shared that with Peyton Manning,
Speaker 1: who I was able to get to write the forward
Speaker 1: for the post. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I wanted to talk about that, Like.
Speaker 1: What do you mean he doesn't like Grits? I said,
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I mean he's not around to
Speaker 1: ask anymore. And Peyton's going, now, I'm not down with that, man,
Speaker 1: I love Grits, not going. Yeah, me too. And I'm
Speaker 1: not even from New Orleans and didn't play at the
Speaker 1: University of Tennessee. You.
Speaker 2: So the forward in the book is by Peyton Manning. Yeah,
Speaker 2: congratulations on that. That is quite a coup.
Speaker 1: Well, I have to thank Steve Mariucci for that. Fred,
Speaker 1: here's a quick backstory. I'd never written a book before.
Speaker 1: I know that no freaking clue of what it meant
Speaker 1: to write a book. I pitched one very well known
Speaker 1: agent and her response was, I don't know. John Madden's dead,
Speaker 1: isn't he? And I said yeah. But I apparently wasn't
Speaker 1: able to explain what it was I was trying to
Speaker 1: do with the.
Speaker 3: Bo You didn't have the good elevator pitch going right,
Speaker 3: We'll think.
Speaker 1: I did, or it was a pitch that didn't fit
Speaker 1: a narrow box. It wasn't about It wasn't an oral history.
Speaker 1: It wasn't you know whatever. It was just my story
Speaker 1: about my life of John Madden and why he did radio,
Speaker 1: and the funny stuff and why stuff he said. And
Speaker 1: so during the pitch meeting, it's a zoom call with
Speaker 1: these editors from Triumph Books, and I can tell her interested,
Speaker 1: or else they wouldn't have scheduled the call. And I
Speaker 1: know they're interested because the publisher is on the call,
Speaker 1: not just the younger editors. And the questions I'd been anticipating,
Speaker 1: I'm answering. And then they say, well, who do you
Speaker 1: think you can get to write the forward? I was
Speaker 1: so naive about this whole process. I thought they went
Speaker 1: and got somebody to write the forward. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that was my job as the author. Just oh wow,
Speaker 1: the time is that dumb? So I said, I'm well,
Speaker 1: maybe Tony LaRussa, because he's a friend of John Madden's. Well,
Speaker 1: saying that to a group of book people in Chicago,
Speaker 1: where Tony had recently flamed out as the manager of
Speaker 1: the White Sox. And by the way, they're North Siders,
Speaker 1: not a good move. I can see their faces.
Speaker 3: All drops are white SOX twice.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, right.
Speaker 3: Right, And it was a competitor in Saint Louis.
Speaker 1: Yeah not yet, not a Chicago win, not a good
Speaker 1: good name, right, So okay, now I'm now I'm scrambling.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, uh, well maybe al Michael's. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: because worked with John and I had a couple of
Speaker 1: possible entrees to Al. I thought, wow, okay, and then
Speaker 1: I just threw Peyton's day Man. I said, or Peyton Manning.
Speaker 1: Man They all lit up. You can get Peyton Manning.
Speaker 1: I'm going I'll try it. I got off that call
Speaker 1: and I immediately text Steve Mariucci and I said, Mooch,
Speaker 1: do you think you could get me to either Al
Speaker 1: Michaels or Peyton Manning to write it forward for the book?
Speaker 1: And much knew about the book in general. And all
Speaker 1: I got back was I'll try. And then I didn't
Speaker 1: hear from him for like three months, and I'll try.
Speaker 1: As the shortest communication I've ever had with Mooch.
Speaker 2: So wait, give a little backstory on Mooch, because again
Speaker 2: golf audience may not know, may not follow the NFL.
Speaker 1: So Steve Mariucci from Iron Mountain, Michigan, where His boyhood
Speaker 1: friend was Tom Izzo, who became the basketball coach at
Speaker 1: Michigan State and won national championships. So you've got a
Speaker 1: parallel story there, these two boyhood buddies and John Madden
Speaker 1: and his boyhood friend John Robinson, who won a national
Speaker 1: championship coaching USC is in the College Football Hall of Fame. Remarkable, right,
Speaker 1: two different hairs from two different parts of the country.
Speaker 1: Madden and Mariucci need a I think Mariucci was the
Speaker 1: offensive coordinator of quarterbacks coach with the Packers at the time.
Speaker 1: John was still doing national broadcasts and he was just
Speaker 1: taken by Steve Marriuchi. They famously got on the bus
Speaker 1: one day, the Madden Cruiser to tour Green Bay and
Speaker 1: Mariuchi is going to sho him where everybody lived. Allow,
Speaker 1: that's where That's where McCarthy lives over there, Brett Farr
Speaker 1: lives in that house. And then you know they're pulling
Speaker 1: the Madden Cruiser up like in Culda Sacks in Green
Speaker 1: Bay and having to back out.
Speaker 2: Or if you've ever been to Green Bay, have you
Speaker 2: ever been spent time there? Yeah, she's not what you
Speaker 2: call a big city.
Speaker 1: No, take any suburban neighborhood anywhere and put a football
Speaker 1: stadium in the middle of that's green.
Speaker 2: It's bizarre because it's I worked there twice. At the stadium,
Speaker 2: they did fan festival, and I worked there twice. And
Speaker 2: you like, you get out of the airport and to
Speaker 2: go to the hotel, you cross the street from the airport.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's not a big deal.
Speaker 2: And then to get to the stadium, you come out
Speaker 2: of the parking lot of the hotel. You turn left,
Speaker 2: You go down about a quarter mile. You turn left
Speaker 2: at the first signal, you go down another half mile.
Speaker 2: There's another signal, you turn right, you go a half
Speaker 2: mile again, and you're at this stadium.
Speaker 1: There is an entire three five thousand seat stadium.
Speaker 2: Right it's an eighty thousand seat stadium with one hundred
Speaker 2: and three thousand people in the entire town. So I
Speaker 2: always figured the best job to have is to break
Speaker 2: into houses on Sunday because.
Speaker 3: Nobody's the only no one's going to be home because
Speaker 3: they're either at the game or working at the game.
Speaker 1: There just a few out of town guests who didn't
Speaker 1: like football or was right. So anyway, madd and Steve
Speaker 1: Berriouchia and Mariucci that day has brought with him a
Speaker 1: bag full of pasties, Cornish pasties, which are meat pies
Speaker 1: that were brought over to America by the Cornish miners
Speaker 1: who populated the Upper penninsul Love, Michigan and Iron Mountain.
Speaker 1: Mariucci's hometown has got a lot of that heritage. Mariucci said,
Speaker 1: heritage is Italian. Madd needs one of these, and he's smit.
Speaker 1: He's a freight mooch. You know, he probably ate three
Speaker 1: or four or eight of them, to be honest. There
Speaker 1: begins a bond which then begins to include Bacci, which
Speaker 1: Steve Mariucci is into. He gets Madden engaged, and Madden
Speaker 1: now starts to play Boggi. What they came up with
Speaker 1: was the world's greatest fundraiser, with all due difference to
Speaker 1: every way too long golf scramble fundraiser anybody ever suffered
Speaker 1: through a day at the BACI tournament is better because
Speaker 1: guess what, You're not out all day. Your matches last
Speaker 1: thirty minutes in between eating, drinking and hanging out. It
Speaker 1: would be as if after every shot on the scramble
Speaker 1: you could eat, drink and hang out instead of back
Speaker 1: to the clubhouse for the auction, right, and so they
Speaker 1: turned this thing into a multimillion dollar fundraiser and of
Speaker 1: course engage people who Bachi's kind of easy to learn,
Speaker 1: a lot easier to learn than golf, and so you know,
Speaker 1: that became the nucleus of the of their relationship and friendship.
Speaker 1: And Steve Mariucci coach. He was the head coach at
Speaker 1: University of California, then for the San Francisco forty nine ers.
Speaker 1: Then he had a job with the Detroit Lions and
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting whether he was head coach or general manager
Speaker 1: or whether. And then he's now working on the NFL
Speaker 1: network as an analysts and he's really one of the
Speaker 1: best because he's enthusiastic and smart and doesn't take himself
Speaker 1: too seriously.
Speaker 3: Right, And so he led you to Peyton Manning that
Speaker 3: he came through.
Speaker 1: Well, he finally did mnth's go by months. Thanks for
Speaker 1: keeping me on track, by the way, I can tell
Speaker 1: you're a professional. Let's go by. And I've not heard
Speaker 1: from him, and I thought, I'm screwed. You know, now
Speaker 1: I'm trying to reach out to my third level sources
Speaker 1: on al Michael's and that isn't working. And one day
Speaker 1: I get like three texts and three missed calls from
Speaker 1: Marucci Peyton. O'll look, you gotta get a hold of
Speaker 1: right away. And so I reached out to the number
Speaker 1: for Peyton's assistant that mooch gate me. She was awesome.
Speaker 1: She said, here's how it's going to work. Peyton will
Speaker 1: give you about twenty minutes on the phone. Then you'll
Speaker 1: write it up and you'll send it over for approval,
Speaker 1: and he'll approve it whatever changes need to be made,
Speaker 1: and then you go, Well, I kind of cheated because
Speaker 1: I kind of wrote it a little bit in advance,
Speaker 1: just trying to pull in a few of the threads
Speaker 1: that were in the book. And also, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of do I wanted to make sure, you know, and
Speaker 1: things like that were in there, right, So I did,
Speaker 1: and then I had to call with Peyton and he
Speaker 1: told me a few more things that I had weren't
Speaker 1: out there in the public sphere, including talking about a
Speaker 1: photo that he keeps on his desk at his office
Speaker 1: outside of Denver, of him and that and the two
Speaker 1: of them. I might be able to well, anyway, it's
Speaker 1: in the book, and when it turns out I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's a personal photo and I'm the seeking permission from
Speaker 1: Peyton to use it. Oh yeah, you can use it.
Speaker 1: My editor at Triumph Books does some digging. He says, well, actually,
Speaker 1: that's a crop out of a foreshot of John and
Speaker 1: Peyton and Philip Rivers of the Chargers and whoever else
Speaker 1: was on the brocass in Indianapolis. Peyton's like skinny back
Speaker 1: when he was still with the Colts, looking at John
Speaker 1: like puppy dog. And anyway, I right up the forward.
Speaker 1: I send it to Peyton. Honest to Godfred it's like
Speaker 1: five minutes. I get a response from Emila, the assistant, saying,
Speaker 1: Peyton says it's great. There are a couple of things.
Speaker 1: He thinks you didn't get quite right, can you? So okay,
Speaker 1: I send it right back. Five more minutes. Peyton says
Speaker 1: it's good, he loves it. And and then for our
Speaker 1: worldwide launch event, I thought, man, it would be great
Speaker 1: if we got Peyton' start going to be there. But
Speaker 1: what if we'll just get Peyton to record a video
Speaker 1: same thing. Five minutes Peyton says, he'll do it, you know,
Speaker 1: just send him.
Speaker 2: Her outgoing answering machine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just send him a script, and you know
Speaker 1: I did, and you know you were at the event.
Speaker 1: Peyton nailed it, brought down the house.
Speaker 3: Nailed it.
Speaker 1: And he's an important figure in this whole John Madden's
Speaker 1: story because I think he is the heir to John's
Speaker 1: mantle as sort of the soul and conscience of pro football.
Speaker 1: He loves the game dearly. He's also a new generation version.
Speaker 1: You know. But if there had been an opportunity to
Speaker 1: do a you know, a Peyton Manning cast back when
Speaker 1: John Madden was starting, John Madden would have done the
Speaker 1: Madden cast that he would have killed, right. You imagine
Speaker 1: you or me or anybody just sitting with John doing
Speaker 1: what Peyton and Eli do you know, on the sidelines
Speaker 1: of a of a broadcast. John would have been great
Speaker 1: at it. But John was great at all the other
Speaker 1: stuff he did do. Peyton's just a new version.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, I kind of you know, I
Speaker 2: listened Troy Aikman to me. When I'm listening to him,
Speaker 2: I'm like, I hear.
Speaker 3: Madden in him.
Speaker 1: Well, there are two guys, tro John loved Troy Aikman
Speaker 1: during the years when Troy was playing. I know he
Speaker 1: helped Troy. With the beginnings of his broadcast career, John
Speaker 1: had a kind of a short list of these people.
Speaker 1: He just identified them. Troy, Peyton, Brett Farr, you know
Speaker 1: who I know is following out a favorite a lot
Speaker 1: of way. But John and Brett Farve really got along
Speaker 1: quite well. Andy Reid and John are like this where
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. You know, there's a list of them. Rod Rivera,
Speaker 1: the former cal Line banker coach in the NFL. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are people that John just identified as good people.
Speaker 1: He would always say about somebody, he's one of the
Speaker 1: good ones, and it that's high praise, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the good ones.
Speaker 3: I mentioned that.
Speaker 2: I've been listening to the audio book and listening to
Speaker 2: your voice, and you break into Madden all through the book,
Speaker 2: and you really get good at it. You know, as
Speaker 2: the book progresses, you're getting better and better through it.
Speaker 1: I've started out at zero because I didn't think I
Speaker 1: was going to have to read the maddened parts. I
Speaker 1: thought they would surely hire somebody else with a different voice.
Speaker 2: So, you know, is it okay for me to ask
Speaker 2: you why in the audio book? You know, you've got
Speaker 2: hours and hours, hundreds of hours of audio of you
Speaker 2: and John that it's not in the audiobook is yeah.
Speaker 1: No. When I started the project, I assumed that were
Speaker 1: there to be a book contracted all in an audiobook
Speaker 1: in particular, that we would just port the audio that
Speaker 1: I had over into the book. You know, I used
Speaker 1: the transcriptions of the audio to write the book book.
Speaker 1: But what it turned out was that there had been
Speaker 1: an arrangement between the Maddeness State and Hollywood basically for
Speaker 1: the rights to all things John Madden to be licensed.
Speaker 1: And you know, there are at least a couple of
Speaker 1: movie projects, one for sure, big one, and then some
Speaker 1: documentary stuff underway. Now I don't know that the radio
Speaker 1: stuff will ever appear in these things, but it might. Write.
Speaker 1: So it was made clear to me that the audio
Speaker 1: would be off limits. You know, we're not here and
Speaker 1: there for personal appearances, but that to commercialize it in
Speaker 1: that way wasn't going to happen, so kind of not
Speaker 1: my problem. At that point, I thought, Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not a big audiobook consumer. I don't mean any
Speaker 1: disrespect to those who are. I just like to hold
Speaker 1: a book and maybe I listened to too much audio
Speaker 1: over my years radio. Actually myself and so fast forward
Speaker 1: to this past July. The book is only three months
Speaker 1: away from from publication, and I get an email I'm
Speaker 1: in France at the time, from my publisher's office and saying, oh,
Speaker 1: we've just about wrapped up negotiations with the audiobook publisher
Speaker 1: Recorded Books, and they would like you to read the book.
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, kind of hoping it would be Tom Hanks,
Speaker 1: Matthew McConaughey.
Speaker 3: Or you know, no, no, no, you're better.
Speaker 1: Anyway, So I said, Okay. The day comes and I
Speaker 1: and I and I reached out to the producer of
Speaker 1: the audiobook saying, can you find somebody else to read
Speaker 1: the Mad part? I recommended our mutual friend Mike Sugarman,
Speaker 1: who has a little bit different voice from out I thought,
Speaker 1: could read the mad part without trying to do a
Speaker 1: mad impression, just read them in a voice and tone
Speaker 1: that were a little different from my No, I think
Speaker 1: probably that just out only do it. Maybe a budget thing,
Speaker 1: I don't know. So I get into the recording studio
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, well, surely there'll be a director here
Speaker 1: or producer to kind of, you know, say try this
Speaker 1: a little more of that. I want you to feel
Speaker 1: this no.
Speaker 3: I've done a couple.
Speaker 2: I've produced a couple of audio books, my wife's and
Speaker 2: another one. And the other one was I had a
Speaker 2: producer here and I had to build out my studio
Speaker 2: and you know, like to make sure it worked right.
Speaker 2: And this bridge like goes over every single word to
Speaker 2: make sure you get it right, because people there's a
Speaker 2: lot of people who listen to audiobooks and read along
Speaker 2: the book.
Speaker 3: Oh no, so you can't.
Speaker 2: You can't diverge from what's on the printed page. You've
Speaker 2: got to be exact on what's on the printed page.
Speaker 1: This is amazing. Well, you know, when I got there,
Speaker 1: there was a twenty twenty four version of Fred Green
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties. I've got a recording engineer. He
Speaker 1: was a terrific young guy, and he's very, very diligent.
Speaker 1: You know, he catches my mistakes. And I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to kind of channel my grandpa reading to the grand
Speaker 1: kid's style because I've never done this. And then, i mean,
Speaker 1: without really thinking about it, I hit the first Madden
Speaker 1: quote and all I can do is kind of try
Speaker 1: to maybe be a little different and get back to
Speaker 1: meeting reading the story. So I kind of thought I
Speaker 1: figured there took two and a half days to record
Speaker 1: eight and a half hours. Eh.
Speaker 3: It hard work, hard freaking work, even for a broadcast
Speaker 3: veteran like you. Hard work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean for had a long stretch. For me,
Speaker 1: would be thirty seconds of speaking in a time. It's
Speaker 1: not like a podcast where you got to talk all
Speaker 1: this time. Right, So I assume they're going to send
Speaker 1: it off to recorded books and so many back there
Speaker 1: is going to go oh no, no, no, no, no
Speaker 1: no no, go back to square one. As it turned out,
Speaker 1: they asked me to come in and do like five
Speaker 1: little pickups, you know where I obviously got the wrong word,
Speaker 1: and now I realized because it was going to be
Speaker 1: the word that somebody was reading in the book, and
Speaker 1: that was it. And I haven't heard it yet. All
Speaker 1: some people who have been listening, they've been enjoying it.
Speaker 1: And I'm telling you.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I'm really enjoying the audiobook. I
Speaker 2: do like audiobooks, but I'm a podcast guy. So early
Speaker 2: on in Golf Smarter's life, I had Audible as a sponsor,
Speaker 2: and the research started coming out that people who listen
Speaker 2: to audiobooks don't listen to podcasts. And people who listen
Speaker 2: to podcasts don't have time to listen to audiobooks. They're
Speaker 2: very time consuming and they and they just you find yourself,
Speaker 2: like when you're in an audiobook or even in a
Speaker 2: podcast series, you find yourself doing things where you can
Speaker 2: stretch out time to be able to listen for long
Speaker 2: periods of time.
Speaker 1: I saw one of my neighbors driving around the block
Speaker 1: three times the other day.
Speaker 3: Listen to that was a podcast.
Speaker 1: It I had to be I'm sure it's all smarter,
Speaker 1: but no, it was not say it was.
Speaker 2: But let me just say in the book book, the
Speaker 2: hardcover book, it's hardcover only at this.
Speaker 1: Point so far. Yeah, yeah, it works. I guess downstream
Speaker 1: if it does well enough, then you know, a softcover paper.
Speaker 3: That would be a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2: And it's really awesome to see on the side the
Speaker 2: side cover here and just to see your name with Madden.
Speaker 3: It's like, so cool, man.
Speaker 2: But I can't tell you how flattered I am because
Speaker 2: in the section that has in the middle of the book,
Speaker 2: there's a section of photos and the first photo is
Speaker 2: the one of me and John. I was so flattered
Speaker 2: and I.
Speaker 1: Was like, I am said that they lead well here's
Speaker 1: another interesting point about about writing a book. Again, something
Speaker 1: I didn't know. You know, I got to supply my
Speaker 1: own photos. Now yeah, what yeah, there it is, I
Speaker 1: mean photo it says so much. And the first of all,
Speaker 1: back the thread of the story that we told early
Speaker 1: in the book about your relationship with John and the
Speaker 1: radio station. But here's big Goofy Madden and I.
Speaker 3: In my hebro.
Speaker 2: Or as a friend said to me recently, whoa, you
Speaker 2: had dark hair? Like, go to your room, what do
Speaker 2: you mean? I had dark hair on both of.
Speaker 1: Us in the zeros and somebody wrote into the show
Speaker 1: one time, I said the guy with the white hair,
Speaker 1: and I'm going, whoa.
Speaker 3: I know it's like, oh, yeah, that's me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But yeah, I learned that you got to supply
Speaker 1: your own photos. And so fortunately I had two different
Speaker 1: friends who shot a lot of mad events, and one
Speaker 1: of them, you know, wanted some compensation, which I don't
Speaker 1: blame him for the other one was flying with it,
Speaker 1: you know, not being compensated. They were willing to go
Speaker 1: on and license a couple of photos. So I know
Speaker 1: that there was a higher budget for this book than
Speaker 1: many of the other books that friends have come across.
Speaker 1: Have written where they literally had to go pay their own,
Speaker 1: you know, licensing fees for photos if they was in
Speaker 1: the book. So I mean, I feel really fortunate about that.
Speaker 1: This publisher, you know, Tryump Books. They do a lot
Speaker 1: of titles around sports. They've been really great to work
Speaker 1: with and you know everybody, I haven't heard a bad
Speaker 1: word about them from other authors who've worked for them.
Speaker 1: So you know, got a great book wayed to be
Speaker 1: written about sports, you know, pitch them.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, there is an entire chapter in the book
Speaker 2: dedicated to golf.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and you know Fredick too. As I was
Speaker 1: sorting out all of these thousands of recordings and they're
Speaker 1: all transcribed, So now I've got this massive database of
Speaker 1: text separated by each air date. So I knew when
Speaker 1: given the show had aired because we'd recorded or we'd
Speaker 1: saved them under a file name that had the air date.
Speaker 1: But now where do you start? This is a big haystack.
Speaker 1: You know, we're all the needles. So I began to
Speaker 1: kind of organize themes that I remembered him talking about,
Speaker 1: and golf was right at the top of that list.
Speaker 1: Wow talked about golf a lot, and he he loved
Speaker 1: a H the at and t H you know, Pebble
Speaker 1: Beach pro am. He became very good friends with Davis
Speaker 1: Love the third, who he loved not just as a golfer,
Speaker 1: but as a guy to hang out with because d
Speaker 1: L three apparently really really liked to eat, and if
Speaker 1: you really really like to eat, your friends with John
Speaker 1: Madden in John Madden's corner. And so you know these stories.
Speaker 1: There were stories about him, you know, fighting his way
Speaker 1: around the course down at Pebble Beach. He had all
Speaker 1: of his secret hide the ways you can to remember
Speaker 1: he was doing that back in the eighties, so things
Speaker 1: weren't hadn't quite as exploded, you know on the PGAH
Speaker 1: or the way they have now. The money was it
Speaker 1: was still pretty good money, but it was a different world,
Speaker 1: you know, like everything was, I guess in the eighties.
Speaker 1: And so there are stories about him, you know, gawking
Speaker 1: at guys at the driving range and thinking equipment is
Speaker 1: the answer, This will fix everything, and then realizing no,
Speaker 1: it's not the answer. But the first cell a lot
Speaker 1: of the equipment, don't they Those are observations that anybody
Speaker 1: who's been afflicted by golf, you know, I think all
Speaker 1: of us who play the game, whatever level we play
Speaker 1: it at. I mean, I guess there might be some
Speaker 1: people way up at the top who don't get the
Speaker 1: inherent weirdness of golf. But if you play the game
Speaker 1: the way most of us play, you know, golf's weird.
Speaker 1: I mean, who goes out there with a stick and
Speaker 1: tries to hit a round thing all the way down there,
Speaker 1: and then the miracle of being able to do it
Speaker 1: even in five strokes on a power four, to go
Speaker 1: from here to all the way there into a little cup.
Speaker 1: It's insane. Who you know? Who embedded this thing? Why
Speaker 1: do we do it? It's all okay, And John just
Speaker 1: laughed about all that.
Speaker 2: I've just come really, and I've said this for years.
Speaker 3: It's like the ball.
Speaker 2: You know, it's the hardest sport I've ever played, and
Speaker 2: the ball's just sitting there.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, it's not even moving.
Speaker 2: But I just realized recently, if it moves, you're completely
Speaker 2: freaked out.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well, John. One of John's favorite things was
Speaker 1: to say, you know, in golf, they tell you got
Speaker 1: to be perfectly still and stand up. That's the opposite
Speaker 1: of every other sport I've ever played, where you got
Speaker 1: to get down low and be moving right.
Speaker 2: And you and many people could go on and on
Speaker 2: and on about John.
Speaker 3: But there's two things that I want to bring up.
Speaker 2: One you kind of under your breath listening to you,
Speaker 2: you know, read the book, but it's your voice. You
Speaker 2: mentioned that you and your wife did this eleven thousand
Speaker 2: mile road trip. I don't know about this.
Speaker 1: What did you?
Speaker 3: When did this happen? And how did that?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: Let me just say that going to this the book
Speaker 2: launch event the other night, which was fantastic and I
Speaker 2: loved it and great seeing people that I hadn't seen
Speaker 2: in many years. One of them, which was your wife, Well,
Speaker 2: I haven't seen since college.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 2: I don't think i've seen her since college. And I
Speaker 2: walked up to her and she looks at me and
Speaker 2: she goes, I recognize you.
Speaker 3: And I said Fred Green. She screamed, she burned out.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I can't but you know, and then
Speaker 2: we joked about how when I knew her, when you know,
Speaker 2: when we were in our early twenties, that you know,
Speaker 2: we kind of looked alike. And I'm like, oh no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2: The pictures that I've seen of your son as a
Speaker 2: teenager looks exactly like I did as a teenager.
Speaker 1: But true, it's very weird. I don't even want to
Speaker 1: get that deeply into genealogy, so I'm afraid I'm going
Speaker 1: to find out that I'm related to you. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: we threw it everything.
Speaker 3: Actually, my brother and Ali last name is bunker.
Speaker 1: Well. You know, so as I was nearing retirement and
Speaker 1: this was now in COVID. You know, my last was
Speaker 1: in June of twenty twenty one, so everything was kind
Speaker 1: of weird. We'd gone through a year and a half
Speaker 1: a weird at that. Yeah, And John always had a phrase.
Speaker 1: John always would say, if you say you're going to retire,
Speaker 1: you've already retired. He didn't understand a farewell tour of
Speaker 1: an athlete saying this will be my last season and
Speaker 1: then you know, getting the keys to the corvette and
Speaker 1: the fishing boat and all that at every ballpark around
Speaker 1: the league. In John's mind, you you ran through the
Speaker 1: finish line every year, and then you took stock and
Speaker 1: if that stock taking legend to decide that's it, then
Speaker 1: you walked away. And he did that with the Raiders,
Speaker 1: and he did it again with NBC at the end
Speaker 1: of his television career. So that was always kind of
Speaker 1: a back of my mind joke. If you say you're
Speaker 1: going to retire, you've already done it. Well, I sent
Speaker 1: word to him that I was going to retire. By then,
Speaker 1: he'd already stopped doing radio. So we were just I'd
Speaker 1: see him once in a while, but I'd got to
Speaker 1: watch football games. We texted from time to time. I'd
Speaker 1: get a message out of nowhere from John and you know,
Speaker 1: it was it was, And so I told it my
Speaker 1: wife and I had decided, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: June of twenty one, COVID had drove a lot of
Speaker 1: the decision. Let's just get in the car and drive
Speaker 1: around the country and catch up with friends and family
Speaker 1: we haven't seen in some cases in many years. Seat
Speaker 1: places we've never seen, like the Deep South and and
Speaker 1: the Blues Trail and Memphis. And you know, our friend
Speaker 1: Ted Robinson, the great Emmy Award winning sports announcer. His
Speaker 1: wife Mary grew up on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
Speaker 1: and still has a home there, and they would retire
Speaker 1: to that home every summer, retreat to it, I guess.
Speaker 1: And so we said we're going to we talked about
Speaker 1: it for your let's to spend some time with Ted
Speaker 1: Mary up but you know, Michigan. Anyway, we did all
Speaker 1: this Stopton Green Bay, took a photo outs in the stadium,
Speaker 1: Send it to John, send it to mooch and eleven
Speaker 1: thousand miles later. But along the way before I left,
Speaker 1: John texted me and said, uh, before you go on
Speaker 1: the trip, read Travels with Charlie by John Steinbeck. And
Speaker 1: that had all he had always said, that, that book
Speaker 1: and the notion of seeing America in Steinbeck's case with
Speaker 1: his poodle Charlie, with his camper pickup camper while he
Speaker 1: was already I think he might have already had the
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize. By that, I mean this was a you know,
Speaker 1: John Sidebeck wasn't to beg or when he did this
Speaker 1: helped John Madden see a way of seeing America, you know,
Speaker 1: get out and walk the real people and Virginia. Turns
Speaker 1: out John's widow was either an English or creative writing
Speaker 1: major at cal Poly, and Steinbick was her specialty. She said,
Speaker 1: collective I picked books, So I wrote back to Coach.
Speaker 1: I said, well, I read Travels with Charlie a long
Speaker 1: time ago. Coach and he wrote right back, read it again.
Speaker 1: So I thought I bought a copy. And my deal
Speaker 1: was every night on the trip, I would read a
Speaker 1: chapter or some of a chapter before going to bed,
Speaker 1: and often I have a text coach. My wife did
Speaker 1: all the driving. By the way, also important to note, wow,
Speaker 1: she prefers to do the driving. I'm all right with it.
Speaker 1: I like to drive, but I'm good with having the
Speaker 1: iPad and the navigation in my lap, and you know,
Speaker 1: on the roadside, I can look it up and tell
Speaker 1: her what it was. So fast forward to you know,
Speaker 1: nearly in the end of the trip, we're coming into
Speaker 1: New Orleans, and I just was finishing the book, and
Speaker 1: what I had forgotten about the end of Travels with
Speaker 1: char is the last chapter, I think is the story
Speaker 1: of and I believe it's Ruby Bridges, the young black
Speaker 1: girl who you know, was desegregating a lily white school,
Speaker 1: and the vicious racism that was going on in New
Speaker 1: Orleans and in the South at that time. Steinbeck writes
Speaker 1: about vividly I'd forgotten that from my earlier reading of
Speaker 1: the book. I'd kept the gauzy, hazy memories of you know,
Speaker 1: roadside America. And then it all snapped together because what
Speaker 1: Coach was telling me was there's an important message in
Speaker 1: this book beyond Roadside of America. And you know that
Speaker 1: that speaks of who John was. I mean John, you know,
Speaker 1: he didn't care what were, what gender, you or any
Speaker 1: of them. Now if you, if you fit John's model
Speaker 1: of what a good human being is, you were in
Speaker 1: and you know the Raiders.
Speaker 3: Who was a teacher. He started out as a teacher.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's possible to see a version of John Madden's
Speaker 1: story in Virginia's story that ends at you know, Nipomo
Speaker 1: Middle School down there in the central coast in California,
Speaker 1: with a long career as the pe coach, and Virginia
Speaker 1: becomes the principal. I think in that version of the story,
Speaker 1: I don't think the principal, or maybe Virginia's the superintendent.
Speaker 1: But you know, that could easily have been the way
Speaker 1: this thing came out, you know, because that was there
Speaker 1: was ever any attention to become everything he became.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, I hate wrapping up on something
Speaker 2: that's not part of the book, but because I really want,
Speaker 2: I really want people to read this book. I hope
Speaker 2: you have a great success with this again. It's called
Speaker 2: Mornings with Madden, My Radio life with an American Legend
Speaker 2: by Stan Bunger.
Speaker 3: What didn't you you you briefly mentioned this earlier. What
Speaker 3: didn't make it into the book?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, there are probably one hundred iterations of
Speaker 1: other uh stories that fit within the silos. You know,
Speaker 1: the golf chapter, the dog's chapter, the eating chapter that
Speaker 1: that didn't make it in. You know what got left out?
Speaker 1: A lot of what got left out Fred, to be honest,
Speaker 1: was just the day to day's stuff that at the
Speaker 1: time seemed kind of important. Oh, you know, a new
Speaker 1: contract for or somebody got traded, or you know, who's
Speaker 1: going to start its news sports news, right, but you
Speaker 1: know what, the fact that that sport snooze, sports snooze, right,
Speaker 1: even if it had been news news. A lot of
Speaker 1: it was stuff that, you know, guess what a month
Speaker 1: or there's a lesson there, right, this is just today's stuff.
Speaker 1: It's going to go away. What sticks? What matters, what's eternal?
Speaker 1: I guess the literal answer to what didn't make it
Speaker 1: into the book would be John's appearance with us in
Speaker 1: the morning of nine to eleven, where he was in
Speaker 1: New York City at the Dakota where he had an apartment,
Speaker 1: and you know, we're at our wall to wall coverage
Speaker 1: of this incredible real time tragedy. I'm doing this myself
Speaker 1: at the radio station, pulling in feeds from here and there,
Speaker 1: trying to keep an eye on live video feeds, and
Speaker 1: eight fifteen comes up, and I probably didn't even know
Speaker 1: what it had come up. And at some point somebody
Speaker 1: in the newsroom said, you know, assume we're not doing
Speaker 1: mad today because you know, and I think my might
Speaker 1: at first said yeah, yeah, yeah, we're too busy, and
Speaker 1: then I think I don't know whether somebody reminded me
Speaker 1: he was in New York or if I said, wait,
Speaker 1: he's in New York and he can do this, and
Speaker 1: they said, yeah, yeah, he's ready. So we put him on.
Speaker 1: And what he had done, of course, was gone down
Speaker 1: the street and walked around on the Upper West Side
Speaker 1: and seen people covered with soot and ashes, fleeing with
Speaker 1: horror on their I mean, and he told that story
Speaker 1: on the radio in a way that you know, not again,
Speaker 1: not a train journalist, just the world's greatest storyteller. And
Speaker 1: you know the reason it's not The book is it
Speaker 1: never got saved. The recording system we had at the
Speaker 1: time would record at eight fifteen for about fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: and since we didn't do it right at eight fifteen,
Speaker 1: it didn't get recorded. Everybody was running around easy that
Speaker 1: day and nobody thought to hit record anywhere. I keep
Speaker 1: living with the hope that somewhere there's some radio junkie
Speaker 1: who somehow recorded this, or maybe like in that movie Contact,
Speaker 1: you know, where the message coming to the broadcast comes
Speaker 1: back from space one hundred years later or whatever. You
Speaker 1: know that this John Madden, which to me, You know,
Speaker 1: it's the most unlike John Madden thing of all the
Speaker 1: things John madd never did, but the most John Madden
Speaker 1: thing John Madden never did. Tell a story in real
Speaker 1: time with empathy and with precision. Doesn't get any better. Wow.
Speaker 2: Wow, And you said something in the book I need
Speaker 2: to I need to slap your wrist on this one.
Speaker 2: You said you were jealous of me. You said you
Speaker 2: were jealous of me out of college. Oh yeah, Like
Speaker 2: here we are fifty years later, dude, and you became
Speaker 2: the star. You were a Bay Area legend and in
Speaker 2: the in the Radio Hall of Fame here in the
Speaker 2: Bay Area they don't recognize production.
Speaker 3: Guys were only there for a decade. I was gone out.
Speaker 3: I left radio after a decade, but still you became
Speaker 3: the star, so you wan't to talk about jealous Well.
Speaker 1: Fred, thank you. I mean the truth is I was
Speaker 1: a kid who read everything, hed get his hands on,
Speaker 1: asked too many questions and never shut up. And you know,
Speaker 1: guess what they'll pay you to do that, it turns out. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I was super lucky to see where I
Speaker 1: came from. But I was quite jealous of you early on,
Speaker 1: because you know, we left college in nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 1: and I set out into all these small towns where
Speaker 1: I was making literally four to fifty dollars a month
Speaker 1: I think, at one of my first jobs, and you
Speaker 1: were working in San Francisco, and I'm thinking, God, if
Speaker 1: I could just get to sacker matter, because you know,
Speaker 1: the radio game was played by market size. I ever thought, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'll stay here in South Lake Tahoe. Great place to live,
Speaker 1: but I mean they didn't pay much in radio. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: my friend Fred and my other friend Jim, you know,
Speaker 1: while our other running mate from college and occasional golf buddy,
Speaker 1: you know, we're working in San Francisco, and I just
Speaker 1: thought these guys have got it. I screwed up, you know,
Speaker 1: so I was a little sealless.
Speaker 2: No man like when people tell me, oh, my son's
Speaker 2: graduating college and you got a job at Google, It's like, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: no no no.
Speaker 3: You want to end up at Google. You don't want
Speaker 3: it to be your first job.
Speaker 1: No, Fred, There's something to that. And that's why it's
Speaker 1: so much fun to do this with you, because what
Speaker 1: I do order about your career is, you know, going
Speaker 1: back to bed, let's circle back. You know, never work
Speaker 1: a day in your life if you can help it, right,
Speaker 1: but more importantly, find your passion and then let that follow.
Speaker 1: And you've done this, you know, through all of your
Speaker 1: various endeavors. I mean, the fantasy play by play one
Speaker 1: was my whole time favorite. You know, I do radio
Speaker 1: booth and pretend you're the broadcaster and walk away with
Speaker 1: the tape. Oh, by the way, Fred gets paid when
Speaker 1: you do it. This was just genius stuff. And the
Speaker 1: fact that you're still passionate about communicating and the podcast
Speaker 1: is awesome. I mean, I love the fact that you
Speaker 1: ranged over all of the ask everything that's golf adjacent, right,
Speaker 1: and you know if you love golf, well, okay, let's
Speaker 1: spin from that anyway. Kudos to you for sticking with it,
Speaker 1: and in this twenty eight thousandth episode, all.
Speaker 3: Right again the book Mornings. Please buy it, please help
Speaker 3: my friend out.
Speaker 1: The great news is I didn't set out to make
Speaker 1: any money, and every author I met recently said, don't expect.
Speaker 3: Don't expect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I tell people all the time, do you
Speaker 2: want to do a podcast, don't do it for the money.
Speaker 2: So the book is called Mornings with Madden, My Radio
Speaker 2: life with an American Legend, by my old friend and
Speaker 2: golf buddy, Stan Bonger.
Speaker 3: Stan, thanks so much, and congratulations Fred.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me continue to get success
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 2: Of course, I'll leave a link to the book on
Speaker 2: Amazon and the show notes, and don't forget the audio book,
Speaker 2: which I listened to and is also very entertaining. Thanks
Speaker 2: go out this week to Nick from Lack from starvor Pa,
Speaker 2: who received all three gifts for recording this week's episode intro.
Speaker 2: You too can become a Golf Smarter Ambassador just like
Speaker 2: Nick and receive all three free gifts by either opening
Speaker 2: a future episode, or leaving an honest review from wherever
Speaker 2: you follow golf Smarter. As you probably know from your
Speaker 2: own experience, listen to reviews are the single greatest way
Speaker 2: to discover new podcasts.
Speaker 3: If you write a view, make.
Speaker 2: Sure you send me an email telling me where I
Speaker 2: can find it and what you said, and once we
Speaker 2: confirm that, I'll get back to you with all of
Speaker 2: your gift details. Some great questions are coming in about
Speaker 2: our upcoming golf Smarter adventure to the Robert Trent Jones
Speaker 2: Trail next March. Really hope you can join me for
Speaker 2: three beautiful rounds of golf between March twenty six to
Speaker 2: the thirtieth, twenty twenty five, just outside of Birmingham, Alabama.
Speaker 2: Of all of the work that Tara and Allen of
Speaker 2: TMI Golf did to research and book this trip, one
Speaker 2: of the most compelling elements is that during the entire stay,
Speaker 2: we're only in one location, the alluring renaissance Birmingham ross
Speaker 2: Bridge Golf Resort and Spa. Please check out all the
Speaker 2: details pricing an itinerary at TMI golf dot com slash
Speaker 2: Golf Smarter. That's TMI golf dot com slash Golf Smarter
Speaker 2: and get back to me with any other questions that
Speaker 2: you may have, or make sure that you put in
Speaker 2: your reservation. Have you ever heard of the ain Point
Speaker 2: putting system? Sure you have, because it's been so successful
Speaker 2: on the tour and with all of us recreational golfers too.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: This Friday on Golf Smarter Mulligans, we go back into
Speaker 2: our archives for the first of a two part conversation
Speaker 2: from January of twenty thirteen with the creator of aim Point,
Speaker 2: Mark Sweeney. In part one, we'll get the full orientation
Speaker 2: and learn that it's introduction was not an obvious slam dunk.
Speaker 4: Golf Channel picked up aime Point in January of seven,
Speaker 4: and you know, I told my wife in December of six,
Speaker 4: I said, if they don't pick this up, I'm done.
Speaker 4: I'm out, because I'd already kind of been through CBS
Speaker 4: and NBC and they were really the last network. The
Speaker 4: problem with TV is there's only really three people to
Speaker 4: choose from. You have three customers, and if they all
Speaker 4: say no, then you're done. You're in business. And I
Speaker 4: was literally within days of just giving up and moving on.
Speaker 3: Could you have really walked away from it.
Speaker 1: At that point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well at that point, I mean, I loved it,
Speaker 4: but if there's no business for it, you know, you're
Speaker 4: start to death. If I couldn't prove a legitimate business,
Speaker 4: it was time to move on, like it or not.
Speaker 4: Came down to really really a couple of days and
Speaker 4: around Christmas of six and Golf Channel didn't say, Hey, great,
Speaker 4: we know we'll do this three year deal. They said,
Speaker 4: we'll do it one tournament.
Speaker 2: That's Part one with Mark Sweeney this Friday, arriving right
Speaker 2: here on the same feed you get each week for
Speaker 2: Golf Smarter. We're doing some heavy lifting on our website
Speaker 2: right now. It's a mishmash of things, and my web
Speaker 2: developer has just like hat it with me. So what
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do now is I'm going to redirect you
Speaker 2: to our distributors page that provides the complete list of
Speaker 2: all of our available episodes. It's at golfsmarterpodcast dot com.
Speaker 2: But if you have any questions about our adventure, updates
Speaker 2: on how your game is going, or suggestions for an
Speaker 2: upcoming episode, please write to Golf Smarter Podcast at gmail
Speaker 2: dot com.