Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much?
I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. Here we go. This is the Skip Bayless Show. Episode 47.
in honor of the most intimidating cornerback in NFL history, Mel Blount of the Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s. This, as always, is the Un-Undisputed. This is everything I cannot share with you during the two and a half hour go for the throat debate show that is Undisputed. Today, I will tell you why I would eliminate the quote unquote most exciting part
of the great game of football. I will tell you why the TV show Yellowstone, in my opinion, is now the most watched show by far on television. As always, I will answer many of your terrific questions, your probing questions. A couple today will be about what's the greatest sports moment that I ever actually covered? And then another question about do I ever actually work out
in a gym with other humans? It's a good question. And finally, I will tell you how I became so close with Martina Navratilova and why I am now rooting for her harder than ever. But first up, as always, it is not to be skipped. Here we go again. It happened again the other night in one of our
college football playoff semifinals. It happened as usual at the end. And I tweeted about it as usual. And a whole lot of people on Twitter responded. That's according to my Twitter analytics. And they, as always, are either very pro or very con about my opinion that we should kick kicking out of football. Kick it out.
Forever and ever. Please allow me to explain this one more time. I hate place kicking. Place kicking in football is a laughable abomination to me. An abomination that somehow got grandfathered in from the earliest days of football without face masks. The earliest days of football before the forward pass had even been invented.
there was this thing called kicking. So let's see, how can we do this? Let's put up these big metal poles that look like a giant H and let's try to kick the football, this oblong football that we've invented, over the crossbar of the giant H and between the two upward sticking poles. And let's call this, hmm,
Let's call it a field goal. A what? A field goal? Well, we kick the ball up off the field and our goal is to make it go between the two poles sticking up in the giant H. What? Let's, how about we, how about we make it half of a touchdown? If a touchdown is six, that should count three.
Sure, let's call it a field goal that counts three points. And guess what, ladies and gentlemen? A Pandora's box was kicked right open. I hate field goal kicking because it wins and it loses way too many games played by gifted warriors who battle it out for 59 minutes and 59 seconds, only to have a little non-football player
trot onto the field and soccer kick the ball either through the uprights or to the wide right of the uprights or the wide left of the uprights and win and lose the game. So the whole game comes down to one swing of the leg by the one guy on the field who can't play football. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Honest to my God above, I don't know. I've never figured any of this out. The game I love so much with all my heart and soul, the game I live for, the game of pro and college football is decided by a terribly silly gimmick, a gimmick, something you'd think you'd only see at the state fair out on the midway.
Hurry, hurry, step right up and see if you can win the little lady a stuffed bear. And all you got to do is boot the ball 40 yards through the big H. The what? Field what? Football, the game I love, is so much better than this. We accept field goal kicking because nobody ever stops to question how dumb it is.
It's just always been such a part of the game we love. And hey, it's always edge of the seat exciting. It's always unpredictably, unbelievably exciting for all the wrong reasons. Tell me I'm wrong about this. Kicking should be abolished. Remember how it started when some lame brain first decided
to make kicking a part of football, this required that every team had to find one real football player on the team who could double as the place kicker. And I was okay with that even before it was way before my time, but I get that notion. I get that concept. So in the good old days, the earliest place kickers were actually very good players
actual football players. Maybe you remember some of the names. Lou "The Toe" Groza actually went both ways, an offensive lineman and an all-time great defensive lineman who made nine Pro Bowls and four first-team All-Pros and was actually the MVP in 1954, and yet kicking extra points and field goals only enhanced his football resume.
He was a really good football player before and besides kicking extra points and field goals. Same for George Blanda. Do you remember the name? He played forever. He played longer than Brady's played so far. Seemed like he played till 47 maybe. He actually won an AFL MVP in 1961 because George Blanda was first and foremost a quarterback, especially for the old Oakland Raiders of the AFL.
a quarterback who sort of on the side kicked extra points and field goals, enhancing his all-time great resume and actually extending his career into his 40s. I was much better with that idea, that concept. But remember, Lou the Toe was called Lou the Toe because in those days, those guys kicked straight on with the toes actually kicking
striking the football first and lifting it off the ground. Toes first. Then you know what happened. 1964 happened. Pete Gogolak happened. Pete had come to the United States from Hungary as a teenager. First love in Hungary was actually in, obviously, soccer, or as the rest of the world calls it, football. I don't know for sure, but I'm assuming Pete was a pretty good soccer player
And coming from Hungary, he became hungry for our football. So as he attended Cornell University, he went out for football, American football, and he had the brilliant life-changing idea of approaching the football from an angle from the side and launching it soccer style with his instep instead of his toes. His instep connected first with the football.
Oh, what height and distance Pete Gogolak could create with his soccer-style kicking. Pete Gogolak revolutionized kicking and our game of football. 1965, Pete Gogolak made first team All-AFL for a Buffalo Bills team that won the championship. And our world of football had been changed forever. Straight-on kickers.
Kickers who actually played football, defensive linemen, quarterbacks, all became prehistoric relics. And they gave way to these specialists that were soccer-style kickers who had absolutely no chance of ever actually playing any position on the football field. And we let this silly gimmick mutate.
we let these little non-football kickers take over the sport. I've got nothing personally against them, everything personally against it. So this whole thing first kicked me right in the stomach. At the end of a game I covered, this was a Monday night football game on October 3rd of 1988 at the Superdome in New Orleans. This was Dallas Cowboys at New Orleans Saints.
a game that New Orleans finally won at the buzzer with a walk-off field goal, 20-17. Down the stretch of that game, I sat back in awe as the Cowboy kicker named Roger Ruzek, you might remember him if you're a long-time diehard the way I am, Roger Ruzek missed an easy field goal. Then he made one that was pretty clutch. And then Morton Anderson,
the greatest kicker ever, the Great Dane, as he was called. He just cold nailed one, one of his left-footed lasers, right down Broadway, right down Bourbon Street, for the walk-off field goal. So the following day, this is what I wrote in my column in the Dallas Times-Herald. I imagined that if a Martian dropped down out of the sky to watch our game of football...
on the NFL's biggest stage on, let's say, Monday Night Football in this echo chamber called the Superdome. At games end, the Martian would have turned to me and concluded, "Oh, that little guy who runs onto the field and he kicks the ball between the poles, he's the most valuable player in this sport." And I'm assuming the Martian would say to me, "He's the highest paid on the team." Sorry, Mr. Martian, wrong.
Yet, as I've said many, many times, said from the start, as much as I despise kicking, it's almost certainly not going to be abolished. So if I owned an NFL team, I would prioritize finding myself the best kicker in football. I would pay him more than any other kicker gets paid.
Because that kicker is going to win or lose me, I don't know, four or five games a year, maybe one or two playoff games a year. These kickers are going to have preposterous impact on the scoreboard and ultimately on my one loss record. So I would spend a first round pick on a kicker. I would spend free agent millions on a kicker.
Get me Justin Tucker. Back in the day, get me Adam Vinatieri. Get me the most valuable player on the field, and I will pay him because he will reward me. But no, I've been told from the start by so many coaches, so many owners, including that owner, Jerry Jones, nope, you cannot invest the big bucks in kickers because they cannot be trusted. They're liable to lose money.
their swing of the leg, just the way a golfer can occasionally lose his swing with his driver, or her driver for that matter, and completely go all out demons and can't find the fairway anymore, just the way some kickers just can't find the giant H anymore. I was told from the start that kickers can be quirky quandaries.
Because when they go south mentally, they stay south mentally, and you have to move on and replace them with yet another recycled kicker. Some Nick Folt, Graham Ganoe, or Ryan Suckup. So what's my solution? Well, it's easy. You just eliminate kickers. I know, I know, I know that will never happen, but it should. I have proposed this for years. This is such a pet peeve of mine that it
It almost, for me, on a regular basis, turns into a pet heave, as in I feel like upchucking every time I see a game won or mostly lost by a kicker. The other night, poor Noah Ruggles for the Ohio State Buckeyes. A 50-yard field goal to win a national semifinal, to vault Ohio State into the championship game.
Ohio State's real-life football players had played well enough to win that game, and poor Noah had made his first two field goals. But with the season on the line, poor Noah hit the ugliest duck hook you will ever see, especially with a game on the line. He missed the left upright by, I don't know, 20 yards with a dive bomber left. I was crushed for the Buckeyes.
But again, I don't blame poor Noah. I blame the rules that allow for kicking and I say eradicate. It's pretty simple. Just make teams go for it all the way down the field. Go for it on fourth down if they so choose. Until they score or they don't score. Yes, you have to keep punting as part of football.
keep that part of the foot in football because punters to me are always, always routinely better athletes than kickers are. They're just a different breed apart from kickers. Punters, as you know, must catch long snaps. What are they? 20, 25-yard snaps, 20-yard snaps? And they must launch pinpoint kicks into different coffin corners
or away from any dangerous returners, or try to get the ball to nosedive first and hit and bite at, let's say, the one-yard line. Punters do occasionally run with the ball or throw the ball on fake punts, or in the case of Jake Camarda, if you saw the other day for the Buccaneers against Carolina, you've got to scoop up the ball on a low snap that bounced in front of you,
You have to run to your left the wrong way because you're a right-footed kicker. And on the dead run, you have to punt the ball with your right foot back across your body all the way down to the five-yard line. Obviously, Jake Camarda saved the game for the Buccaneers because he's very athletic. Hand-eye coordination. But no, he didn't make a field goal. He just punted the Bucs out of trouble.
Keep it. Love it. So if a team faced, let's say, under my new rules, a fourth and five down at the opponent's 30-yard line, well, it used to be you just automatically try the 47-odd-yard field goal, right? No. You can, at this point, just go for it. That's way more exciting to me than a field goal. Just go for it.
And if you don't love your chances of going for it because the defense has your number that day, then you can pooch punt it down to the five or four, three or two, one yard line. You got to force teams to go for it until they score a touchdown or they're stopped on fourth down. And if you do score a touchdown, then you have to every time go for two. It's a very exciting play. It's way more exciting than an extra point kick. Man. So,
Once more, it's upon us again, the season we love the most, NFL playoff season. Our beloved NFL playoffs are in jeopardy again. You know and I know what's coming very soon, coming right down the pike, right between our eyes. You know what's going to happen. Too many of these games are going to be decided by that little soccer-style kicker who trots onto the field and wins or loses it.
I guarantee you, your team will have games decided by your kicker. My team, the Dallas Cowboys, inevitably will have a game decided by a Brett Maher, whom I've come to re-love this year, but I once called Brett the fret. They had him, they cut him, they brought him back. He's recycled. He's been sensational. Do I trust him?
I think so, but he's a kicker. How can you trust the psyches of kickers? Man, I so wish we could figure out how to kick kicking out of football.
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and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Bayless. Just go to Indeed.com slash Bayless right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash Bayless. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Let's take one of your questions. This is from Charlie from New York on New York.
What's the best sports moment you've covered in your career? Easy. February 1980, Lake Placid, New York. Speaking of New York. Winter Olympics. Final Friday of the fortnight. I was a young gun columnist for the Dallas Morning News covering my first Olympics. All of us in the American press had been stuck in quarters
15, 20 miles outside of little tiny village that was Lake Placid, snowed in in little roadside inns, motels, at the mercy of highly unreliable van service that came and went here and there. I was worn out almost two weeks into those Olympics. Wasn't sure what to write on that final Friday leading toward the obviously Sunday closing ceremonies.
But the U.S. was playing Russia in hockey. Nobody seemed to care. Our kids had played those pros from Russia at Madison Square Garden in an exhibition game just before the Olympics. Final score was Russia 10, U.S. or us 3. 10 to 3 was the exhibition. This is hockey, not baseball, not football. Hockey. It was 10 to 3. I'd never written a word about hockey.
I knew very little about hockey. I liked it. I went to a lot of minor league hockey in high school, but we just went to watch the fights. I was out of ideas, so I asked our press liaison, "Do you have any press tickets left for the U.S.-Russia game tonight?" He said, "Are you kidding? I got plenty. Seems like nobody wants to go." I said, "I'll take one." And I walked down the little Main Street
of Lake Placid to the little tiny arena of Lake Placid. And there I was in the front row of the press seating, fortunately and faithfully sitting next to the late great Larry Felser of the Buffalo News, a hockey expert, good friend of mine. He talked me through what was happening right before my very eyes. And you know what was happening right before my very eyes.
the greatest upset in sports history. U.S. 4, Russia 3. Did I ever fall into the rightest place at the rightest time? I was there that night of February 22nd, 1980 to chronicle the greatest moment of my sports writing career. Covering a sport I knew next to nothing about. Thank you, God.
And another question from Sonny from Austin, Texas. When's the last time you've been to a live sports event? That is a good question. I guess, Sonny, it was on the Friday night right before the pandemic hit, March 2020. My wife, Ernestine, and I
Went to Jackie Robinson Stadium near the UCLA campus, not far from where Ernestine and Hazel and I live in West Los Angeles. And we went that Friday night to watch the number one ranked Vanderbilt Commodores baseball team, I'm a graduate, take on the UCLA Bruins. Yep, that was the last time I went to a live sports event. But Sonny, you must understand,
Two things. First of all, for the first 30 years of my career, I went to every sports event, or so it seemed. For 30-odd years, I went to every Super Bowl, every World Series, every Final Four, every Masters, every U.S. Open golf tournament. I went to British Opens. I went to Wimbledon. I went to every playoff game the Cowboys ever played.
You name it, I went to it year after year after trip after trip after trip. And I will admit, I got a little burned out on the battles that I fought just to get to the live events. I loved being there, loved writing about it, loved commenting on it. But I did get a little worn out, which is why I took the job on Cold Pizza in 2004.
to do morning television that morphed, as you know, into First Take on ESPN. That became undisputed here on FS1. Here's what you have to understand, number two, Sonny. This job that I do now does not lend itself to attending sports events. Every night, every Saturday, every Sunday, I'm responsible for knowing what has happened, what is happening,
what is going to happen, it feels like, in just about every game that's ever played. So if you attend one of those games, you sacrifice being able to watch three or four of them. And I know on an NFL Sunday, for instance, I watch at least three at once. On an NBA weeknight, I'm watching three at once and then maybe six total for the night as it changes from the early games to the later games.
I can see it. I can feel it. I can absorb it in ways that if I go to the live event, I'm out. I'm stuck. I'm going to know only what's happening at the live event. And while there, I'm going to have to deal with a lot of people who want to know what I think about said live event. Hey, did you see that? What did you think of that? They want pictures or they want photos.
A quick moment with me. And I love all that, and I do do all that, but that distracts me from actually absorbing what's going on in the game. So, Sonny, it's hard for me to go to live, to do this job correctly, to dominate on TV the way I attempt to dominate every day against Shannon Sharp, my debate partner. I need to know it all.
There might be a play or two in a game that if I just see the highlights, I'm going to miss. We're big on using video to support our arguments. I think sometimes I amaze our staff. I request plays like, what? And then I show you on TV, look at that. And it proves my point. So I can't prove my point on all the games that might...
wind up in our rundown if I'm at just the Laker game or whatever game, maybe a Dodger game I might go to here in LA or a UCLA college basketball game. Who knows? If I go, I'm going to miss. I'm going to sacrifice. And I don't. I live for what I do right now. Do I miss going to the live event? I do.
But until I decide not to do this job anymore, and I have zero plans to stop doing this job, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to any other live sports events. Now, allow me a quick aside, a quick commentary, my two cents on Yellowstone. Maybe you know it, maybe you don't, but all Yellowstone has done is become by far the most watched show on television ever.
Ernestine and I stumbled upon it, episode one, season one, and here we are, riveted through the first half of the season of season five. Please understand, I'm not saying Yellowstone is better than, dare I say, The Sopranos, because it's just not. But it is very, very good. Consistently very, very good. Consistently compelling. Rising
dare I say, far above the guilty pleasure soap opera of the classic old TV show called Dallas, a show I never loved and I was at the time living in Dallas. Dallas to me was much more about Houston. That's another topic for another time. Yellowstone is definitely about Montana, about the largest ranch in the United States, run with a ruthless hand
by the patriarch John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner. For me, Yellowstone works at the highest level for two huge reasons: Kevin Costner and Taylor Sheridan. Nobody today, in television or movies, writes at a more consistently riveting level than Taylor Sheridan does. I have been taken by the movies that he has created.
theatrical release movies, both Sicario's, Hell or High Water, Wind River. Did that rock me? And then on cable, cable releases like Without Remorse, and that one obviously starring Michael B. Jordan, and Those Who Wish Me Dead starring Angelina Jolie. I consider Taylor Sheridan's series, maybe you know it, maybe you don't, 1883, even better than I consider Yellowstone.
and his new series, 1923, is next on my list. But for me, Yellowstone works mostly because it's the role of Kevin Costner's life, and he has seized it with sometimes blood-soaked hands. I was never the biggest Kevin Costner fan, even though Ernestine constantly says to me that he should play me if my character ever made it into a movie.
But so many times back in the day, so many big blockbuster hits, I'm sorry, I just found Kevin Costner to be a little too wimpy, a little too soft, a little too sensitive for my taste. Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Dances with Wolves, Robin Hood, The Bodyguard, Waterworld. I could go on and on and on. I just never truly believed that Kevin Costner was
was quite as badass as the character he was supposed to be playing until Yellowstone. Kevin Costner is John Dutton, and John Dutton just might have, probably does have, the biggest balls on television. Kevin Costner finally, pardon my French, grew a pair. Kevin Costner speaks in this gravelly growl that just seems so completely real and natural
to the character, doesn't seem forced at all, doesn't seem put on at all. That's just John Dutton. Kevin Costner has become John Dutton. There's nothing soft about John Dutton, but there is just a dash of sensitivity, especially when it comes to his three children. Now his daughter Beth, she wears me out. She wears on me after a while. She's a bit of a one-trick pony to me, the brazen bitch with the hidden heart of gold.
But I suffer her because I know Kevin Costner and John Dutton are just right around the corner. Cole Hauser plays Beth's very powerfully convincing husband and also John Dutton's right and left-hand man. And Wes Bentley is perfectly cast as the smarmy reptile of an adopted son. And then there's Luke Grimes. He's the other son, the real son.
who can be absolutely sensational, leaps off the screen as the handsome action hero who, for my taste, just doesn't get enough screen time whipping or shooting bad guys. I'd like to see more of that. But the son of Yellowstone, and I'm talking about S-U-N, not S-O-N, the son, S-U-N, of Yellowstone is simply Kevin Costner.
Taylor Sheridan's world revolves around Kevin Costner. Finally, at age 66, Kevin Costner became a man, as in man's man. Thank you, Taylor Sheridan. Another question, this is Adam from Tennessee. Do you ever work out in a gym with others? It's funny, that question comes across to me as, do you play well with others? It's a good question. It's a fair question.
Pre-pandemic, I did play well with others. For a while, when I first came out here, what is it now, six years and four months ago to LA, I worked out in an old 24-hour fitness right up the street here from Fox. It's a gym I had frequented as a visitor to LA for years dating back to the 1980s. So I went to 24-hour until it closed, and then I moved over to Equinox. I moved on up.
still in my neighborhood. I enjoyed it, but more and more, I began to notice that my weightlifting workouts started lasting longer and longer and longer because more and more people approached to ask me sports questions. Now understand, if you do approach me, I will interact with you. If you're that interested in me, then I believe
It's my duty to respond in kind to you. That's just the way I'm built. So if you want to take pictures or you want to talk for a minute about the Cowboys or LeBron or whatever you want to talk about, I will do that much often to my wife's chagrin. But then the pandemic hit. Equinox closed.
First time ever, I bought a home gym system. I bought all the free weights that I needed, the bench, I bought the whole shebang. And when Equinox opened back up, I did not renew my membership. So now my workouts much quicker, much more intense, much more focused. And I must admit, I don't miss the crowd. I'm not one who needs to be among people
to get and stay motivated. I'm strictly a self-starter. Don't need a trainer, never had a trainer. My schedule's too crazy to keep a workout partner. I wouldn't mind one, but I just, it's so haphazard, it's just too hard to connect with somebody consistently. I'm just happier going solo. I guess I'm a little bit of a loner. So I guess the answer right now is no, Adam, I do not play well with others.
And one more question, this from Jose from Chicago. Could you still run a marathon after that fall you took on the treadmill last week? Thank you for asking. Thank you for acknowledging. Good question. Yeah, as I did detail in last week's episode 46,
I definitely did wipe out at high speed on my treadmill at home as I tried to text my man Lil Wayne, congrats on the Packers beating the Dolphins on Christmas Day, which I was watching as I was running for me full speed on the treadmill. Bad idea, bad mistake, bad wipe out. My left knee is still giving me some trouble, but I am back to running half speed. Then again, Jose,
You have to understand, I left my marathon days behind because those were some crazy, addicted, obsessed days. I do still run four times a week, three on the treadmill, one outside usually. The other three days, I am pounding away on an upright stationary bike at home. But back in my hardcore marathon days, I ran six days a week outside.
And in the buildup to my best marathon, I was running 100 miles a week. I do not kid. 100 miles a week. That included 25-ish miles on Sundays building up to that marathon. It was dangerously insane. I will be the first to admit it, and I will never do that again. But for my best marathon, I got down to 145 pounds.
about 20 fewer than I weigh as we speak and I ask you try picking up a 20 pound weight 20 pound weight and then imagine trying to lug that 20 pound weight for 26.2 miles that is marathon distance. That's a lot of weight. So I had to get down to that weight to run as fast as I did for 26.2. That day
what was called the Houston Woodlands Marathon. I'm not even sure they run it anymore, but they sure ran it that Saturday. It was 55 degrees and rainy, which was perfect. I ran two hours, 47 minutes and 20 seconds at Houston Woodlands. That's six minutes and 22 seconds per mile. That for me was flying. I look back now and I have no idea how I did that on that day.
But I did put in the work. I did lose the proper amount of weight. But that was before I had three scopes on my knee. Two on the right and one on the left that I hope doesn't become a second on the left. I put back on 20 pounds of upper body muscle. I don't want to lose that. I'm too vain. I'm too proud of it.
So I can still go outside and run eight miles at a pretty good clip. I doubt a whole lot of people could do that, but I can do that. But hey, 26.2 at a respectable pace, under three hour pace. And there's no way I'd want to run a marathon unless I could finish under three hours because I'd be ashamed of it. I'd be so frustrated, so upset with myself that it wouldn't be worth it.
So thank you for asking, Jose, but those days, treadmill spill or not, are history. School is back, and Dick's Sporting Goods has what you need to win your year. We've got everything from cleats to sambas, dunks, and more, plus the hottest looks from Nike, Jordan, and Adidas. Find your first day fits in-store or online at dicks.com. For my last topic, it's a bit of a flashback and a flash-forward. One story that touched me deeply
and personally this week was the awful news that Martina Navratilova has been diagnosed with not only breast cancer but throat cancer. Her agent was quoted as saying both cancers were caught, detected in early stages. So hopefully both can be defeated with treatment. But when I read the news, actually during a commercial break of Undisputed, man, I was shaken
I have love for Martina Navratilova, and here is why. This was 1979 in Dallas, Texas. I was in a relationship with a woman named Nancy, who was the PR director for a team called the Dallas Diamonds. Dallas is representative in the Women's Basketball League, WBL, professional basketball team that soon drafted number one overall. Nancy Lieberman, out of Old Dominion, Lady Magic.
the shows that woman could put on at the old Civic Center in Dallas and then at Moody Coliseum on the campus of SMU. The shows, the passes she could make, the trick shots she could pull off. I'd never seen anything like it before. I was wildly entertained and I had the pleasure of getting to know Nancy because my Nancy suggested that that Nancy
by a condo about, actually a townhouse, about four doors down from mine. So we hit it off. We got to know each other. And in that first summer heading into her first year, I actually played a lot of basketball, one-on-one basketball with and against Nancy Lieberman because weirdly, we were exactly the same size, about 5'11"-ish.
with long arms for our size so we were the perfect sort of match up. She beat me mostly, but I could make her sweat. I could give her a good workout. I could nip her at the wire occasionally, but she could play. She could play. Some of the most entertaining basketball I ever watched were those WBL games. But then that summer, Nancy Lieberman went to a tennis tournament at Hilton Head
and met and clicked with and ultimately fell in love with Martina Navratilova. Martina, the left-handed Czech defector, was at that point in her career having trouble beating America's sweetheart Chrissy Everett, the girl next door who could beat your tail in tennis. So back came Nancy Lieberman and Martina to Nancy's townhouse four doors down from mine
And she began to put Martina through a boot camp, the likes of which I'd never seen. They were out every early morning running sprints up and down our block. Martina came with us to Moody Coliseum several times to play basketball. We'd do two on two or three on three, and she could flat play basketball. I even played catch with Martina with a football, and could she ever wing it? Martina was only 5'7", but on television on the court, the tennis court,
She played so much bigger and more powerfully. She just loomed off my screen. And then I would stand next to her and realize I was two, three, maybe four inches taller. But I did get to know Martina. And I did come to like Martina a lot. She had her quirks. She had her demons. She had her moods. But I did come to like her a lot. She had two dogs called Shiba Inus. Maybe you know them. Maybe you don't.
Dogs from Japan that she had imported straight from Tokyo. Dogs named Tets was the boy and Ruby was the girl. So when Martina began to travel to tournaments and Nancy would go with her, we would, my Nancy and I, would keep her dogs for her, Tets and Ruby. Can't tell you how many nights I woke up and Tets and Ruby were sleeping beside me.
Couldn't keep him out of the bed, but that was life and I lived with it. Then one day, Martina shows up at our door with a baby Shiba Inu, a puppy, as a gift to us. She had bought us, had it sent, flown over all the way from Tokyo, a little Shiba Inu whom we named Suki, a boy who was remarkably tall and long for his age and
I began to run with Suki and pretty much fell for Suki. And last thing I wanted or needed at that point was a dog. But then came the fateful day in July of 1981 when Nancy and Martina came to me and said they had a problem. A writer, newspaper writer for one of the papers in New York, can't remember which one, was going to write that Martina was gay, was going to out Martina. And she definitely was gay.
But she definitely wanted to control her narrative and beat the writer in New York to the punch. So she asked me, they asked me, if I would write the story for my paper, The Dallas Morning News. I was the columnist, the lead columnist for The Dallas Morning News, but thought about it. And I said, well, I can write it more as a story, not as a column. But I was happy to.
And their point was they could trust me to quote them accurately and frame it accurately. And so we sat and we talked at great length. I interviewed both Martina and Nancy Lieberman, both of whom were stunningly forthcoming about their relationship and their issues. I remember Martina telling me that she had tried dating men for a while.
and I hope I get the quote correctly because I couldn't find it last night, but I think I'm pretty dead on with this. But her point was that from the moment a man rings the doorbell to pick me up, to take me out on a date, all he's thinking about is getting in my pants. She said, women aren't like that. Interesting. So I wrote the story. I quoted Martina and Nancy Lieberman accurately and liberally. And guess what immediately happened?
Remember, this is 1981. Martina lost every last one of her endorsements, every last one. Rackets, clothes, you name it. Lost them all. Gone. I did do one other lengthy Q&A with Martina while she was playing Wimbledon. I was covering Wimbledon at her flat at Wimbledon. This was in 1982. She thought I asked some questions.
a little too difficult questions, too probing questions. We clashed occasionally, but we got over it. I liked her a lot. So it was the next Christmas that my Nancy and I drove up to Oklahoma City on Christmas Eve to see my mom. And we took Suki with us in my Datsun 280Z with a hatchback. On that Christmas Eve, it was snowing. My Nancy took Suki out in the snow to do his business.
And for whatever reason, he either wouldn't or couldn't. We chalked it up as it's the snow. He'd never seen snow, been in snow. Maybe it was just too cold. So we waited through the night. First thing in the morning, we tried again. Got a little trickle, but just a little one. And we were concerned.
So we cut our trip short and thought we'll drive back and hopefully we can connect with our vet. Maybe he'll make a house call, maybe we can go see him. This would be on Christmas night. We drove back from Oklahoma City sort of mid-afternoon into the darkness back to Dallas. Suki slept in the back under the hatchback, stopped for gas a little more than halfway just across the Red River and the state line, Gainesville, Texas.
Nancy opened the hatchback, check on Suki and Suki was still asleep and I'm pumping gas and I don't hear anything from Nancy and it's quiet and it's too quiet. And suddenly she looked up at me and said very calmly, I think he's gone. I said, no, no, no, no, no, he's fine. Shook him. He was gone. I still haven't gotten over it.
We did have an autopsy performed. He died of a very rare kidney disease. I think it was mostly found in Shiba Inus from Japan. I don't know, maybe he was just over a year old. The day after Christmas at our townhouse, Martina and Nancy Lieberman and a big group of their friends came over and we held a wake for Suki. And I don't know, maybe three days later, four or five days later,
Martina shows back up at our door with another Shiba Inu puppy straight from Tokyo. Another boy. I wasn't quite ready, but that was Martina. Huge heart. We named this puppy Sony and he and I went on many a long run together. And now I'm just hoping that my friend Martina lives a very long and happy life.
That's it for episode 47. Thank you for watching and or listening. Thanks to Jonathan Berger and his All Pro team for making this show go. Thanks to Tyler Korn for producing. Remember, Undisputed every weekday, 930 to noon Eastern, the Skip Bayless Show, every week.