Super Bowl Special: OBJ vs. Joe Burrow
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the Super Bowl special. This is the un-undisputed, as I like to call it, because I'm about to share with you everything I cannot share during a two and a half hour go for the throat debate show. Today, I will tell you why Odell Beckham Jr. is fraudulent.

Today, I'll tell you why Joe Burrow is a whole lot like Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. and why he is so shockingly different from Tom Brady. Today, in honor of Super Bowl Sunday, the biggest betting day in sports, I will tell you how I beat my gambling addiction. Today, I'm going to flash you back a little later in the show to my all-time favorite Super Bowl week,

and Super Bowl game that I attended and I covered, and that would be Cowboys versus Steelers, Miami, January 1979. What a time that was. Today, as always, I'll get to several of your provocative and probing questions, but today, as always, first up, it's time for Not To Be Skipped. It is time

for me to tell you exactly what I think of Odell Beckham Jr. I don't know Odell. All I've done with Odell is go back and forth with him on occasion on social media. But I know a lot of people who do know Odell. I know some very close friends of Odell, and I think I have a pretty good handle, a pretty good inside view

of what Odell is really all about and not all about. I like Odell personally because I get the sense from everybody around him, he has a good heart. He's actually down deep, a really good guy. I divide the world probably overly simplistically into good hearts and bad hearts. Odell falls on the good heart side, no doubt. But when it comes to what I believe in,

in a winning football player, Odell is little to none of the above. Odell to me is way more style than substance. Odell to me is way more sizzle than steak. Odell to me is a whole lot more of hip height than hall of famer. Odell Beckham Jr., in a shock to me, has wound up in Hollywood

playing for the Hollywood All-Stars, known as the Los Angeles Rams, in a Super Bowl in Hollywood, staged this Sunday at the Rams Stadium. So fine stadium. How did it come to this? Wait a second. Odell Beckham Jr. is by far the biggest name in said Super Bowl. What? He is. By far.

I've covered so many Super Bowls, dating all the way back to Super Bowl X, which was also Cowboys versus Steelers in Miami. It's a long time ago. Every Super Bowl has been about the quarterback. It's been Joe Naiman. It's been Joe Montana. It's been Brett Favre, John Elway. It's been Troy Aikman.

It's obviously been Brady, Brady, Brady, and more Brady, leading to Mahomes, leading to Odell Beckham Jr., by far the biggest name in this Super Bowl. Time out. Odell Beckham Jr. hasn't made a Pro Bowl in six years. Seriously, not in six years. How many national commercials do you see Odell in? I can't think of one. You know why? His friends tell me.

that he doesn't really have a big, charismatic personality that works on commercials. As an interview subject, he's not great. He's not captivating. He's not commanding. He's not overpowering. Seen Odell quoted that much this week. Here and there, dribs and drabs. Nothing to write home about. Nothing memorable. His friends tell me he's really pretty introverted, that he can be very quiet,

Very reserved, very to himself, off camera. So wait a second. How does he have by far the most followers in the National Football League? He's got 15 million on Instagram, four more million on Twitter. That's 19 million followers. That's more than Brady. That's impossibly great. Or is it? How did this happen? This Odell phenomenon happened.

Well, you know how it started. It started against my Dallas Cowboys back in 2014 on a Sunday night at Giants. You know what happened? Bolt out of the blue, a lightning bolt out of the blue, out of the darkness in the sky came a lightning bolt. Down, down, down it came and Odell caught it with one hand diving backward over his head, snatched it out of the sky. Over my cornerback, Brandon used Carr

Chris Collinsworth on NBC, this was Sunday night, immediately called it the greatest catch he's ever seen. I can't argue with that. Maybe I've seen a couple approximated since, but it was all-time great. And Odell segued from that catch into pregame shows that were much better than his in-game shows from that point forward. It was what I remember of the Harlem Globetrotters, where you just went to see the Showtime show

You went to see the trick shots, the magic acts, and that was Odell and has been Odell ever since pregame, catching it behind his back, between his legs, over his head, one hand, no hand, catching in his teeth. He puts on a show of shows pregame that works in this day and age because it's all about image making, especially on the gram. All that works on the gram.

And yet here went Odell on the field over the edge. As a giant, he became known as the biggest soap opera star in the soap opera capital that was New York City because it was the young and the restless all rolled into one number 13. It was all my children in one man child that was Odell Beckham Jr.,

because he would just lose it during games, lose his poise, lose his way, drive his coaching staff and his teammates nuts because he went nuts. And DBs, starting with Josh Norman, realized they could just push Odell's buttons all day long. Go for the throat, go below the belt. It was reported that DBs would often use gay slurs against him, drive him mad. Remember when he went after Josh Norman after whistles? Lost it, man.

Craziness. Suspended. Fame. Fortune. Made for social media. It's video. It's pictures. It's the cleats. It's the hair. It's the watch you wore, the giant watch you wore during a game. Friends tell me that Odell is gifted at posting. He gets the game, how to play the IG game. He just has a knack for it.

a drive for it that works, that connects. He knows how to feed the fire with this challenge and that challenge, this dance and that dance, gifted at it. To me, much more gifted on the field, I'm sorry, off the field than on the field in that the more I watched him in New York, I kept asking, "This is a great football player? Is this what his teammates want? Is this what Tom Coughlin wants? Well, obviously not." And yet so many Hall of Fame receivers that I know

started to gravitate toward Odell Beckham Jr. And I'm saying, why? It's the opposite of what I see in a Hall of Fame receiver. It's the opposite of my man, Michael Irvin. I've made the case, Michael, greatest receiver ever because I covered him in Dallas for those '90s dynasty Cowboy teams. He was the leader of those teams. I often said I wanted the playmaker in my foxhole for big NFC East games.

At Giants, at Eagles, at Washington. Gamer, baller, guts, backbone. Jerry Rice, again, more of a follower than a leader to me. Michael was definitely a leader, but Jerry Rice had guts. Jerry Rice had drive. Jerry Rice would cut your heart out. Odell, he just made my heart hurt watching him.

This is greatness? He had one great year in New York the first year statistically, and then his stats started to drop, drop, drop, drop, and drop. Soap opera rose higher and higher. Acclaim rose through the roof. Next thing I know, he's at LSU's national championship game. Obviously, he played at LSU, Jarvis Landry.

And he's splashing money all over the field after the game, obviously against NCAA rules. Real money, not play money. Big bills, throwing them everywhere to LSU players. No, can't do it. But it promoted Odell, even if it threatened to get his old college in trouble. And then the next thing I know, he's in Paris. I think it was at Fashion Week.

And he's in a Paris hotel room with a model and what looked like white powder. And it created a firestorm of controversy. But it promoted Odell. And by the way, I've read that one team interested in then acquiring Odell as he fell out of favor with the Giants, put a private investigator on him trying to check out any potential drug use and came up empty. Odell's clean, got no problem off the field with any sort of

misbehavior in that regard. But on the field, am I betting on Odell Beckham Jr.? No. I'm sorry. It's one thing after another. Yet, why would my man Shannon Sharp, why would my man Chris Carter, why did they love Odell so much? Chris was a tough guy. Shannon's a tough guy. They're in the Hall of Fame. Chris Carter, all he did was catch touchdowns, big moments, big games. Shannon Sharp was big play Shay.

They love Odell? They defend Odell to me on TV? Why? Aha! Shrewd operator is Odell. He connects with those guys, he seeks their advice, and he always defers to them. There's no diva in Odell when he talks to the Hall of Famers. There's no diva in Odell when he talks to current stars of his ilk. Piers, no diva, always defers to whoever he's talking to. Hey,

Give me some advice. What can I do to get better? Always defers if he's talking to his buddy LeBron or Drake or my man Lil Wayne. I'm about to get to Lil Wayne in just a second here. To Shannon, to Chris Carter, Odell has called them routinely to pick their brains, to try to make them feel invested in his career. And they are. And they like him because he's so likeable.

as a guy, not as a football player to me, but as a guy. Football player gets more and more fraudulent. As a guy, I get it. Shrewd operator, defer, be deferential to Shannon. How did you do it? Oh, okay, I got it. Oh, I could try that. Okay, I got it. I'm gonna do better. I'm gonna do better. Hit bottom in New York, sitting alongside my friend Lil Wayne. To this day, Lil Wayne

blames himself for Odell's ultimate demise in New York with the Giants. Do you remember what happened? An interview conducted by Josina Anderson, and I called Josina and asked her for her view of what happened. Wayne was upset because Wayne thought that he was sort of lured under the false pretense that only he was going to be interviewed. And he showed up at a restaurant that I think had been closed down just for this interview for the afternoon in New York City.

and was shocked to find Odell's here. Oh, so it's both of us? Yes. Wayne then claimed to me that Odell came to the interview only because he was sold that Wayne's gonna be there. Odell, big fan of Wayne. So am I. Got it. So they end up sitting side by side, sort of riffing off each other.

The interview that airs has nothing about Wayne and his life and times or his new album or whatever the interview subject was supposed to be, according to Wayne. And bits and pieces of their back and forth, which became very incriminating to Odell, such as, oh, I miss Miami where Wayne was living. He's living out here in L.A. now, but he was living in Miami. So they're going back and forth. And Odell said, man, do I miss the the sunshine in Miami, especially in the wintertime?

And it came across in the way the interview was edited, according to Wayne, that Odell wanted out of New York when, in fact, according to Wayne, he did not want out of New York. But that was the beginning of the end. So as you know, the next thing we know, the Giants finally say more trouble than he's worth, and they trade him to the Cleveland Browns. Odell didn't want to go to Cleveland. Odell's not a Cleveland type of guy. And yet...

As he lands in Cleveland to be a Brown, my friend Mark Anthony Green at GQ does a cover story on Odell Beckham Jr. The stats are waning. They're declining. They're shockingly falling, falling, falling. But he's worth a cover at GQ. Love the story. Beautifully done by Mark Anthony. But really? And then you know what happened. We don't need to...

Walk back over the grave that became the Cleveland Browns Odell versus Baker Mayfield. I thought they were good friends I thought they liked to socialize and all of a sudden they're pitted against each other and it's Baker's fault and obviously Odell's father ends up posting or at least reposting a video of all the poor throws the Baker made in the direction of Odell and I kept saying on his undisputed that hmm

Remember this one, the drop on fourth down, and this one, the drop on fourth down by Odell, and this one that he dropped, and that one that he dropped, because I'm not sure Odell's heart was ever playing for the Cleveland Browns. Stats fall, fall, fall. One injury after another. Three surgeries in four years in Cleveland, and then the final nail became Baker Mayfield after Odell died.

Tore his ACL at Cincinnati. This is going back two years ago. Went on a tear. 11 games, went 8-3, 20 touchdowns to only three interceptions. Lit up Pittsburgh in a playoff game at Pittsburgh. They won 48-37 without Odell. Baker had a QBR scale 0-100 of 91. It's pretty good. It's pretty great. And now the Browns are thinking, whose fault is it?

Odell's or Baker's? Baker's or Odell's? And I think they finally concluded much more Odell's fault. And finally, they just flat out cut him loose. They cut him. They let him go on the open market and choose wherever he wanted to go. Odell's telling my man, Lil Wayne, it's down to New Orleans, where Odell's from, Wayne's also from there, and Green Bay, Wayne's favorite team.

And I started thinking, well, was Odell doing what he does to everybody? He tells everybody what they want to hear. That's what Wayne wanted to hear at that point. Oh, it could be either going home or going to my Packers. Nope. Bolt out of the blue. Rams blue. He's going to the LA Rams. Nobody even speculated about it. Well, wait a second. If he's going to the Rams, he's going to be the fourth option, the fifth option.

Because they had Robert Woods as the clear-cut second option to Cooper Cupp, who was on an historical role and was putting up stats nobody's ever put up in the history of football as a receiver. And what happens to Odell? He walks in the door and fate strikes. Robert Woods goes down that Friday, tore his ACL, gone for the rest of the year, and Odell starts to move up the ladder whether he liked it or not.

And all of a sudden, we're having a Hollywood ending because Odell's got a home in Beverly Hills. And all of a sudden, he starts to be able to shine in the shadow of Cooper Cupp. And I keep asking Shannon Sharp across the debate desk, well, who's better, Cooper Cupp or Odell? Because he raves about Odell as a superstar.

He says, well, Cooper Cupps better on the field. Well, no, no, at a combine. If you put them in a vacuum, which receiver would you take? And Shannon ducks and dodges. Well, that's not the question. No, it is the question. Because Shannon, in the end, on just pure talent, would take Odell, even though those three surgeries have robbed him of some of his quickness, some of his burst, some of his overall presence on a football field has been compromised.

29 going on 30. Just not the same as he was that rookie year in New York City. And yet, all of a sudden, we got a Hollywood script that's like Tyler Perry meets Steven Spielberg. And here comes Odell, off to a slow start. Last nine games that he played for the Rams regular season, he averages 3.4 catches, 38 receiving yards a game. Not great. But then we hit the playoffs.

And Matt Stafford starts to trust Odell because in the playoffs, all of a sudden, you've got Arizona and Tampa and San Francisco, and they're triple teaming Cooper Cup. We are going to take him away. They are daring you to throw to a single covered Odell Beckham Jr. And this is when it hit me right between the eyes. Odell started to thrive in single coverage because Odell Beckham Jr., in the end,

is a complimentary receiver. At heart, that's what he is. Maybe he had some superstar talent in the beginning, but in makeup, he's a number two or even a number three receiver, but I'll give you number two. Yet he has an A-list following. It's a little fraudulent. There's not that much there there. He's not what many think he's cracked up to be. He's fooled millions of people because they still see superstar win.

He's a B-side. He's a Robin. He's not Batman. He's Robin dressed up as Batman. That's what he is in the end. I'm sorry, that's who Odell Beckham Jr. is in the end. And I believe he has found football heaven opposite Cooper Cup. Now, as you see in these last couple of games, well, against San Francisco, he caught nine for 113. He finally broke the century mark.

But obviously over under receiving yards going into any of these playoff games, his won't even be half of what Cooper Cupp's betting total is. He's not in the same ballpark. He's not in the same galaxy. He's not in the same universe with Cooper Cupp. Shocking but true. So in the end, do I expect him to come back on a make good sort of prove it sort of incentive laced deal next year with the Rams? I do.

Had one friend tell me, maybe USFL, which is due to hit the charts this coming spring in April, maybe it'll start to rate on Fox. I think some games are on NBC, many are on Fox, but it's going to be pretty big, I'm told. Would Odell take that money and run? Because then the pressure would be off. You wouldn't have NFL pressure to be a number one receiver anymore because in the end, he's just not that guy. In the end,

He's just a number two and yet biggest name in this Super Bowl. Way to go, Odell. You fooled him. Let's take a question from the audience, shall we? Let's go to Mike from Queens. Do you miss traveling to different cities to cover games and players in person? Interesting. Trust me on this. I do not miss the traveling.

For 30 years of my career, I was gone for about three-fourths of every year because I went to every sports event known to man. I did them all every year. Just went right around the calendar. Super Bowl, World Series, Final Four, Masters, U.S. Open Golf, U.S. Open Tennis, British Open Golf, Wimbledon.

Every big football game, every big AFC, NFC championship, I went to all of the above. And it, frankly, it wore me out. And then if I can localize this for this week, I started to learn a hard lesson attending all of these monumental sports events. I love the ambiance of it.

I loved the flavor. I loved being able to write and talk about how it felt to actually be in the city and be at the stadium and be in the locker room. I loved all that. I miss some of that. But what I also learned was if you're really going to absorb a football game,

You got to watch it on TV. And I found more and more when I went to football games, I took my little TV with me and I'm listening for sure. And I'm watching some and I'm watching the monitors in the press box because pro football is much better understood. It's much better absorbed is the right word if you're watching on TV.

I hark back to the architect of my Dallas Cowboys, the late great Texas E. Schramm. Tech Schramm, genius, founding father. He told me back in the 70s, pro football was made for TV. He envisioned one day that the game would be played in a studio where you wouldn't have any fans. You'd just be the players would be in a studio. And we sort of had that during the pandemic.

Obviously, a lot of people still love to go to the games, so that's not going to happen. But maybe 50 years from now, that's where it will head. But my man Shannon Sharp on Undisputed, we have a Super Bowl happening about five miles from where each of us live. And I'm pretty sure he's going to go with Eric Dickerson, our man, the Rambassador, former great for the L.A. Rams. I think the greatest running back ever. And I think they're going to go.

Watch the game from high above in a box. And I always tell Shannon, well, good luck with that because if I go, it just distracts me. Every play that happens, people around me say, what did you think of that? I don't know. I'm just trying to watch. Let me absorb the game. I don't want to be distracted. I have a number of friends in this business who just live for being out and about, out among them.

They love to be recognized. They love to be idolized. And some of that is fine. I don't. I don't need that. So I don't miss going to the events because I promise you this, if indeed Shannon goes, stands or sits in a box high above talking to the Rambassador, talking to everybody around him at 6:30 Pacific time when Undisputed kicks off on that Monday, the next Monday after the game,

I will have a better command of the game than he will have been able to have by going to the game. Now for the Bengal, Joe Burrow. There's just something about Joe Burrow. I said this after Brady lost to the Rams. Closest thing we have left to Tom Brady is Joe Burrow.

And now it seems everybody's hopping on that train that's become a runaway train. I'm hearing Rob Gronkowski say, hey, if I could play with any young quarterback today, catch passes from any of these young quarterbacks, it would be that young buck in Cincinnati. Von Miller is saying he's Brady-esque. Sort of the new chic way to view Joe Burrow is he is Brady-esque. And I will give you much of that. Joe Burrow just has the gift for playing quarterback.

It's not particularly flashy or splashy. He just gets how to do it. He has the gift of speed reading, finding the most open receiver quicker than anybody else can find him, and delivering a pass with above average velocity, not cannon arm, but above average, that is so eminently catchable that it almost catches you for a receiver. Sweet balls, right on time, right on target.

It's hard to do on a consistent basis, and he does it as well as any of the young quarterbacks compared to Brady, the way he has done it. Obviously, 10 Super Bowls worth, seven championships worth. Will Joe Burrow ever get there? No. Will he ever beat Tom Brady? No. But he has a better feel for playing the position than Mahomes does, or Josh Allen, or Justin Herbert, or Lamar Jackson. Just has a better feel.

And that's why I give him a good shot of winning this Super Bowl. I also think he's got that natural born Tom Brady esque leadership gene in him that you can't quite explain. Players follow him into battle because they trust him in battle. He's been on the biggest stages of Ohio State finals championship games. Obviously, he went to LSU.

And he annihilated Georgia in the SEC Championship and my Oklahoma Sooners in the semifinal. And then in the national championship, Clemson, he threw in those three games 18 touchdown passes to zero interceptions and actually ran for two more touchdowns. He will not crack under fire. He will not lose his poise. He will not come unglued. He does not have what many quarterbacks have, which I call the haywire gene.

And when it comes to athletic ability, he has more than Tom Brady because once upon a time in high school, he played some receiver and quite a bit of defensive back. And he loved to play defensive back because he loved to hit people. I don't believe Tom Brady ever wanted to hit anybody. I can tell you this, Tom Brady never wanted to be hit because the essence of Tom Brady's greatness was getting rid of the ball in 2.5 seconds or less before they could get to him.

At Tennessee, Joe Brady, I'm sorry, Joe Burrow got sacked nine times and lived to tell about it. Nine sacks and no sack fumbles. You want to talk about toughness? That's how you win over a football team. I do not recommend it for the long term because he's going to last about a tenth as long as Brady lasted to 44. And I'm still not sure Brady is retired. We can talk about that next week, but I'm still not sure about it.

I still think there's a decent chance that Brady plays again at 45 elsewhere, not in Tampa, elsewhere, maybe San Francisco. That would make the most sense. Brady's 100% healthy at 44, going on 45. Joe Burrow, you remember week five against Green Bay, tried to run for a first down on third down, got annihilated, hurt his throat so bad he had to go to the hospital. This will happen recurringly, but that's who he is, and that's why that team loves him.

And that's why that team will fight for him because he will take punishment for them. But now we get to the differences. There's no way Brady would ever get sacked nine times. Joe Burrow is going to hang on to the ball to try to make the home run throw. He better not do that this week or he will pay for it because this rush is a little better, not a lot better, but a little better than Tennessee's rush. On this stage,

I fear a sack fumble. I fear a tipped or batted interception. I fear punishment that could knock him out of the game. So not this time, not nine sacks against these guys because they come from everywhere starting obviously with Aaron Donald, but Floyd and Gaines and obviously Von Miller is now revitalized from Denver to the Rams. It's just too much firepower. The difference here, the shocking difference to me is

Brady never flaunted any of his swagger. It was always behind locker room doors, swagger. It was always tough talk, trash talk to teammates before and after games behind closed doors, never publicly. Joe Burrow has gone public with his swagger because it's the Cartier shades.

It's the drip, it's the gold chains. Mine looks like teeny tiny miniature compared to what Joe wears, which is just stunning. It's eye-popping. And then obviously the victory cigars. And yet, usually I'd say, no, no, no, not yet, not yet. Careful, you're gonna cause resentment. You're gonna set off your opponents. But he hasn't, and I'll tell you why. There's something about Joe Burrow

that comes across as a kid who's not naturally cool, who's trying to be cool. It comes across like Macaulay Culkin, if you know the Home Alone movies. That character, obviously, once his parents and siblings left him behind, home alone, began to try to do cool adult things that he wasn't really that cool at.

And that's Joe to me now. It's like he's trying to be cool because he's want to be cool, but he's still got a little geek in him, just a little bit of nerd in there mixed in. And so it's endearing because he's trying to be a cool quarterback.

but he's not natural at it. It doesn't come that naturally or it might start to annoy and alienate either teammates or opponents. No, not Burrow. It's charming. It's heartwarming because he's just a little kid at heart trying to be a cool quarterback, getting close to it. In Home Alone, what did Macaulay Culkin's character finally do?

Well, he became incredibly clever and brilliant, and he did a number on the wet bandits. He ran circles around them, just the way Joe Burrow does defenses as a quarterback in his first full year of starting. Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone is Brady-esque. He makes Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern's characters look like fools. The adults, the made men.

They were a little corny, a little foolish themselves, but he just made them look lost. And that's what Joe Burrow does to so many made men on defense.

They can't figure him out. They can't stop him. He's throwing for gaudy totals. He's going over 500 yards. He's going over 400 yards. He's throwing for higher yardage than even Brady consistently did, and certainly he's way beyond Brady at an early age in a first year of starting. He's not naturally cool to me, and yet what he is naturally gifted at is he just knows he's really good. He knows that he knows things that you don't know.

And that's why that team trusts him to make that late throw at Tennessee to Jamar Chase that won the game. Then Ryan Tannehill turns around and throws it to the Bengals because that's what Ryan Tannehill has always done. That's what he did when he was playing part-time receiver at Texas A&M. So here came Joe Burrow and he winds up in Kansas City and he out-mahomed Mahomes.

Not spectacularly. He didn't throw it behind his back or between his legs or no look or left-handed. He just does it very conventionally and very convincingly. So in the end, I'm telling you, I got a feeling about Joe Burrow. Let's take another question from the audience, shall we? Let's go to Cole from Plano, Texas. Favorite Burb of mine. What is the best sports city in America and why? Cole, allow me...

to take a quick left turn on you because it is Super Bowl week and this is my Super Bowl special. I'm gonna go in a quick different direction. I'll save the guts of this question, the best, for later. I'm gonna go worst. And forgive me for this, I'm about to go complete unfair stereotype here. But I'm gonna do it because I think I'm right about this. The worst fans in America

reside around me right here, right now, as I sit on the west side of Los Angeles. The worst fans in America are Los Angeles Rams fans. I've known many of them. I have many friends who are quote-unquote diehard Rams fans, but they die very easily. I worked out here in LA in the 70s, and I covered some really good Rams teams, coached by Chuck Knox at the old Coliseum,

Five straight years, they won the division. Five straight. They were really good. Loaded. Pro bowlers. Star quarterbacks. Joe Namath. Pat Hayden. James Shaq Harris, the first starting black quarterback in the league. And yet, you want to talk about the sleepiest crowds I've ever experienced? It were those crowds, those Rams fans, because this is Hollywood. They go to be entertained.

And they're going to sit on their hands until you please them. They're not going to preact. They're going to react. They're not going to try to spark and inspire you with their standing and clapping and roaring. No, they're going to sit on their hands until you spark and inspire them. Those are some sleepy games. And it was called Ground Chuck then because it was a lot of ground and pound. I got that, but...

I was astounded by the quietest fandom I had ever heard and to this day have ever, ever heard. And remember, Rams fans had to suffer through the team moves to Anaheim, way down south Orange County. Pretty good hike from here. And then, talk about a good hike,

They suddenly become the St. Louis Rams for a while before finally returning to become the LA Rams once again. But here's the point about Rams fans and Los Angeles, just so you know this going into the Super Bowl.

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 mintmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. For

$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. This episode is brought to you by Honda. When you test drive the all-new Prologue EV, there's a lot that can impress you about it. There's the class-leading passenger space, the clean, thoughtful design, and the intuitive technology. But out of everything, what you'll really love most is that it's a Honda. Visit Honda.com slash EV to see offers.

In the end, or in the beginning, it starts and ends in Los Angeles with the Dodgers. That's just me. That's my take, having been here for three years in the '70s and now going on seven years on Undisputed at FS1. It's a Dodger town at heart. It became for a while a Laker town, and it still verges on that depending on how the Lakers are doing. Obviously, you had the Showtimes, then you had the Shaq-Kobeys.

and now you have the LeBron Championship. But I also feel like once LeBron starts to show some age, as he is now, and once Westbrook becomes a bust, and once AD starts to shrink and fade and disappear again, they're out. They're on to something else because it is Hollywood. And in the end, it's Dodgers, it's Lakers, and then it's Rams. They're there now. They're in the Super Bowl. But diehard?

Trust me, they will die quickly and easily. In honor of Super Bowl Sunday, the biggest betting day in sports, I'd like to tell you how I broke my addiction to gambling and how Undisputed gives me the greatest gambling outlet I could ever have hoped for. I started betting mostly on college football when I was a senior in high school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

I always thought from the start that I knew more about sports than anybody around me. Still think that, forgive me. But it began to translate for me into, I can beat this system. I can pick college football games against the line. And I started to in nickels and dimes because I had a close friend who knew a bookmaker and we could make then very illegal bets.

consistently with that bookmaker and I definitely won more than I lost. Meanwhile, both of my parents had hit bottom by my senior year in high school. Both alcoholic disasters. And I went to one counseling session for my father, none of them ever took, but the psychiatrist asked me if I drank alcohol. I did not, mostly because I'd watched what it was doing to my parents, but

She said to me, "You better be careful because you are double genetically predisposed for alcohol addiction." I remembered that, but I always thought of it only when it came to alcohol. And yet, it can also translate obviously into other obsessive compulsive disorders that I have developed over the years. I'm addicted to exercise. I always said, "Well, at least it's a good addiction."

Okay, it's a little too much, but it's a good addiction. And as you might know, I'm addicted to my work, to my calling, to my passion, to Undisputed, to this podcast. I live for it. But again, positive obsession, compulsion? Okay, so I sweep it under the carpet and go forward much to my wife's chagrin. So when I left Oklahoma City for Vanderbilt, I left with a full scholarship, a full ride,

But my parents had little to no money. So whatever spending money I took away to Nashville, Tennessee from Oklahoma City was money I made in the summers. And each summer I worked as I was at Vanderbilt, nickels and dimes, just so I could have some dating money for Friday night. And I got by, but I started to ease back into betting on mostly college football, nickels and dimes.

This began to escalate, and then it crescendoed in my senior year of college. And on the fateful Saturday of October 20th of 1973, I was so hot that I bet on five games that day. And if memory serves, I bet $50 a game. For me, trust me, at that time, that was like betting $500,000 a game.

But I did because I was on fire. I had become the gambling guru, the gambling god of Tower One at Vanderbilt. It was 14 floors. I was in a suite on the 14th floor and everybody wanted to know who I liked that week. I became like a walking tout service around the campus at Vanderbilt. I knew and saw everything, or so I thought. One week later,

I bet five more games, but this time I plunged. And on those five games, I bet $100 a game. Trust me, it's like betting a million dollars a game at that point in my life. I didn't have that kind of money, but I thought I didn't need that kind of money. I lost the first four games that day, one week later, so that would have been October 27th of 1973. And the fifth game was a later day start, a game I was covering for my school paper at Vanderbilt

My Commodores at Ole Miss. My Commodores were getting 14 points that day. My Commodores had just won three straight games, including just the week before homecoming at Vandy. We beat Georgia 18 to 14 and I was on fire for my Commodores. And obviously I was looking through the lens of my heart more than my head. So that was my last $100 bet.

And with two minutes left in that game at Ole Miss, I was there. Vanderbilt was down 24 to seven. I had by then left the press box and I was down on the field behind the end zone, down on one knee, watching it unfold, my life unfold or end right before my very eyes. In came a backup quarterback, a sophomore who became pretty good after that named Fred Fisher, who was from Nashville.

Last-ditch drive, obviously field goal not in play. Just trying to make the final score more respectable with a late last-ditch touchdown. Okay, so I don't need a field goal. I need a touchdown to cover the 14. With just a few seconds left, Fred Fisher hit a kid that I knew, a backup tight end named Mark Dietrich from North Miami Beach High School. Never forget it. Final score,

Ole Miss 24, Vanderbilt 14, Vanderbilt covered, the ultimate backdoor cover. I was down on both knees. I was so lucky. I thank God for the moment. If I had lost, trust me, I would have had to have called my mother and ask her to scrape up whatever she could and wire me the money because I was going to have to pay that bookmaker that Monday.

And it shook me to my bones and my roots. It shook me so bad that as God is my witness, I never bet another nickel on any kind of game after that day, that long ago day. But as I segued into my career, I found that, aha, Eureka, I can bet my pride on

on radio, on TV, or in print. And pride is, to me, way more valuable a currency than dollars and cents. And that brings me up to Undisputed, opening day, September 6th, 2016. New partner, Shannon Sharpe, one thing leads to another.

And he proposes a bet and he's reaching, reaching for some sort of currency. And he says, I'll bet you, he says, you love Diet Mountain Dew. I do. I have one before every show every day, just one. I don't recommend it as the greatest thing I ever do, but it's my one vice, if you will. I just like the taste of it. And I like the pop of it, the caffeine pop. I don't drink coffee. I drink Diet Dew. So he says, I'll bet you a Diet Dew, blah, blah, blah. I said, one?

Let's bet a case. And there we went. So we start betting cases of diet do. My friend Nelly continues to this day to laugh at me and say, "You guys don't bet cases of diet do." He says, "A case is a euphemism for $1,000." Nope, wrong. A case is just a case of diet do.

Shannon has paid me off one time and it was that first year on my birthday, which was December 4th of that year. So just two, three months in, he rolled out a whole cart of diet do to pay off all the do he had lost. And I'm pretty sure the company paid for that. So I don't think it came out of Shannon's pocket.

And over the years, I'm proud to say that over six years, I'm sure I'm up well over 100 cases of diet Mountain Dew on Shannon Sharp. And yet we're really just betting pride. And look, Shannon is an over-emotional knee jerk better with heart overhead. He bets his heart all too often and I revel in it and I leap on it and I take advantage of it.

But it scratches my itch, my gambling addiction. I gamble with Shannon almost every day on the show we're making some bet. The other night, Lakers, we chisel each other down. Finally, I give him Lakers in four against Milwaukee because I think Milwaukee just caught fire. And it was a wipeout. It was a 30-point game, but it got a little close in the end. They cut it all the way to 10 with five minutes left. And I'm thinking, is this going to be the ultimate backdoor cover? Nope.

Giannis said no. Two more cases to me. Won 10 this year on the Cowboys winning the NFC East against the field that I gave Shannon. That was a gimme to me. And I leave you with this. After the Rams beat the 49ers for the first time in six tries,

broke through in their home Super Bowl. We had on my friend Eric Dickerson, known him since his days running back with Craig James at SMU. I was in Dallas. The Rambassador, I nicknamed him. And he's on fire with the Rams. And he thinks the Bengals are so much chopped liver and that this is a mismatch. So he's talking bigger and bolder and badder. And I say, well, what's it going to be, a 10-point game? Nah, way more than that. 14? Nah, way more than that.

You're saying Rams by 21? Easy by 20. I said, I'll take that bet right now. He said, okay, let's go. And for the first time on air, I said, I don't want to bet Diet Mountain Dew because Eric doesn't care about Diet Mountain Dew. He has no idea what that even means. Can't imagine he's ever sipped one. I said, well, I think we got to bet some cold cash on this. He said, fine, name it. And I don't know what to do. I say, 100?

Again, I haven't bet since that day back in 1973. And he says, "100?" I said, "Make it 500." Well, to me, given how I was raised, 500 is a lot of money. It feels like 5 million to me. I make decent money, but that just feels like a lot of money. But I said, "Done," because if you'll give me Joe Burrow and 21, I think I got a pretty good chance.

Look, the mere fact that I'm talking about it publicly to you right now, it could jinx it. I could lose. I've lost bets like that before. Anything can happen and often does. I think that's one reason I finally said, this is just too risky. The house is going to get you in the end, one way or the other. But Joe Burrow at 21 for 500 bucks? I'll take it. Thank you, Rambassador.

Let's go back to one of your questions, shall we? Let's go to Rio from Valencia, California. How does Undisputed, excuse me, and Undisputed show differ when there is a live audience? Now that is a very good question. Rio, for me, live audience Undisputeds are my Super Bowls. I love those live moments.

in ways you can't even imagine because they are made for me and my personality and my nature. And obviously, thanks to this pandemic, I have not experienced one of those moments for two whole years since the Fox Super Bowl, San Francisco versus Kansas City on Miami Beach. Were those ever great shows?

We had such a great set built. We had a little village, like a little city that Fox built there right on South Beach. It was special, man. They mean so much to me because what happens is if there's no coronavirus, we're sitting here five miles from SoFi and Stadium. We'd be on site somewhere. I don't know, nearby restaurant. We'd be somewhere. I don't know where we'd be, but we'd be out and about with Undisputed this week.

And we would have had all Rams fans Monday, Tuesday, maybe Wednesday. And then all of a sudden, Thursday, Friday, here would come the Bengals fans. And they would chant against each other. They would try to out-shout each other. And I feed off that. I'm not sure my former partner, Stephen A., or current partner, Shannon, loved that.

sort of vibe, but I just feed off it in a crazy way because by nature, I can be a little introverted, but if you put me out in front like that, the energy of it just fuels me and I give it back to them and they give it back to me and I thrive on it for two and a half hours. And I probably get too loud and a little too crazy and maybe a little too over the edge, but it is what I live for on this show.

I wish somehow we could have a live studio audience every day, but it's just too hard to get people out at 6:30 in the morning. We're live at 6:30 Pacific time every day. And so in the pandemic, we wind up with skeleton crew. We're still in masks everywhere at Fox. It's great. It's fine. Very careful. But we have one camera operator. We used to have three. It seemed like we might have had four. We have one now.

And speaking of skeleton crew, it feels like death warmed over in the studio. It's just so deadly quiet in there. It's hard to get your energy up. You have to generate your own. So to me, those crowds, what I've experienced on South Beach at a restaurant in 2013, ahead of those Spurs heat games, off the charts. And we...

We went to Denver, packed a bar downtown Denver ahead of Tim Tebow versus Tom Brady in Denver. Remember that game? Brady smoked him. But you want to talk about decibels? You want to talk about energy? I'm wiped out after those shows in a great way. And then people hanging from the rafters in Houston before the All-Star game, All-Star NBA game, was just...

captivating for me. We had people upstairs, the hard rock, hanging, like sitting on the cross ties upstairs. It was unbelievable. And I can give you 20, 30 of those that we don't have anymore. It would be happening right here, right now. And what's most special for me is staying over afterwards to try to meet and greet everyone who came.

take pictures, sign autographs, whatever, exchange a little bit of banter with everybody who came. I lived for that and starting to feel like we're never gonna see those days again. And I sure hope I'm wrong. It's now time for a flashback. My greatest Super Bowl experience happened my first year as a columnist in Dallas, Texas. This was January of 1979. I was 26.

Super Bowl XIII, Cowboys versus Steelers in Miami. I had already covered three Super Bowls, but not as a columnist, so I couldn't pick and choose what I wanted to write about. Very different. I didn't have near the freedom that I was about to have at that Super Bowl. And that started with the Cowboys-Steelers first game, which was Super Bowl X in Miami. I went on to attend 33 in a row, 33 Super Bowls in a row.

I weirdly missed the one in Tampa, which was Pittsburgh against Arizona, the Roethlisberger late touchdown pass to San Antonio. And I'm not sure why we missed that, but I was at ESPN and for some reason we just decided not to go. But I hark back to that week, January of 79, just something about Miami in those days.

Those Super Bowls truly lived up to their Roman numeral status. And I'm talking Roman. I'm talking like Caligula Roman, Bacchanalian Roman. I believe the media hotel of memory serves was the Americana. And was this not Americana at its greatest?

Lobby would be filled every afternoon, every evening with celebrities and celebrity wannabes and high rollers and low rollers and bejeweled sun goddesses. It was a floor show. And I was in my element. In those days, they had the commissioners party on Friday night, be held at the Civic Center where they would just take over the entire, it was like a giant airplane hangar.

of five-star food for miles and miles. Everything your heart could ever desire, you could eat your heart out at the commissioners party, which featured celebrities and media and owners. You could just walk for hours and people watch. And I was just on fire writing that week because it was the greatest collection of talent ever assembled.

on a Super Bowl field to me. You had 10 Steeler soon-to-be Hall of Famers. Our man Terry Bradshaw here at Fox, all he did was win four of these, four Super Bowls. Mean Joe Green and Frank O'Harris and Jack Lambert and Jack Hamm, the great Lynn Swan and John Stallworth and Mel Blunt.

Right there with Deion is the greatest corner ever. He reinvented how to play that position physically and physicality. Mike Webster, their center, and then the Cowboys, my Cowboys. Roger Staubach, my all-time favorite Cowboy, and Tony Dorsett, and Drew Pearson, who finally got in the Hall of Fame because he should have been in a long time ago, and Randy White, the manster, and Rayfield Wright, the left tackle, and Cliff Harris, and Jackie Smith. Loaded with talent everywhere.

And I got swept up in the week and I got a little crazy and I got a little carried away. And I had just split with my junior high sweetheart, my first wife. And I'll admit publicly, I even had a little fling that week with a woman that I met in the lobby, an older woman. And I told my wife, Ernestine, I'm going to mention this on the podcast. And she said, go ahead. So long ago. Don't worry about it. So she knows that.

It was just what everybody did. This is the 70s. And when you went to the Super Bowl, that's just what you did. So I fell right into the trap. And I must admit, I loved it. And when I got back from that week, the executive editor of the Dallas Morning News, for which I worked, named Tom Simmons, told me it was the greatest stretch of column writing he had ever seen from anybody. And he had been around for a long time.

And I was so honored by that, but I knew I just got swept along by the vibe in Miami, on Miami Beach and Val Harbor. And then came the game at the old Orange Bowl that just oozed with clutch history. And what a game it was. It turned on two plays. It turned on poor Jackie Smith, a great tight end, one of the great pass-catching tight ends ever.

A little pop pass, just a little one of these kind of passes from Roger Staubach, wide open. And as he fell back, just hit him right in the hands and he bobbled it and he couldn't hold it and he dropped it. I'm sure he still lives with and is haunted by that memory. And then, of course, there was a call on Cowboy cornerback Benny Barnes that just lives in infamy. He was called for tripping Lin Swan and he did not trip him.

The only one who was tripping on the plate was Fred Swearengen, the referee who threw the flag. I have no idea. To this day, they got robbed again. I still wonder if the league has some kind of plot against my Dallas Cowboys. I don't know, but it sure seemed like it at the moment. Pittsburgh prevailed 35-31. Terry Bradshaw was the MVP.

These aren't big numbers by today's standards, but trust me, in those days, they were huge because it was Terry's career passing day. 17-30 for 318 yards. Charlie Waters, the great safety who had played corner for the Cowboys, pulled me aside in the postgame locker room and told me that he was furious with Tom Landry, the great Tom Landry, a Mount Rushmore coach.

for leaving them in the flex defense on first down, which meant man to man coverage. He said Pittsburgh knew every first down that we were in straight man on Lynn Swan and Stallworth. They couldn't cover them. And Terry Bradshaw ate on first down and ate them alive on first downs. And I went with that story and it was a mind blower. It was a bombshell of a story.

co-signed by Cliff Harris, the other safety Hall of Famer. And what a week that was. What a time in my life that was. And I look back on that week as the single most special week of my career. Let's go back to your questions one more time. Let's go to Terrence from Richmond, Virginia. Terrence, that's easy.

it's prince 2007 in miami once again playing purple rain in the rain as it fell real rain is falling as he's playing purple rain one of the great guitar solos in the history of guitar solos i was and am a huge prince fan huge fan of the purple rain album and

When Shannon Sharpe loses bets to me and I'm listening to him try to defend his bet from across the debate desk, I often think, "This is what it sounds like when doves cry." That's it for my Super Bowl special, episode five of the Skip Bayless Show. I would like to thank you for listening and/or watching. I would like to thank Jonathan Berger and his All-Pro team for making this show go.

I would like to thank Tyler Korn for producing this show. And I remind you, Undisputed, every weekday, 9.30 to noon Eastern Time, the Skip Bayless Show, every single week.