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Pardon the interruption, but I'm Mike Wilbond. It's our 25th anniversary special. Tony, do you even remember our first show? What's that? Who are you? I guess you don't remember. I am ungardened by memory. I've told you this before. Right there with you. I don't remember the guests that we had. Yeah, but you remember Willie Mays? Was he on the show? Remember Jerry West? Wait, was he on the show? They were not on the show.
You know what? Jerry was on the show. Is that right? Welcome to PTI's 25th anniversary special. I AM VERY HAPPY TO BE HERE. IN today's episode, changes we've seen, regrets we've had, and a special surprise at the end. But we begin today with the names we have not been able to keep out of our mouths. Our time on the air has coincided with the careers of people like Brady and Bellichic, LeBron and Steph, Tiger and Phil, Crosby and Ovuchetkin, Venus and Serena, Roger Rafa, Novc, Djokovic, and so many more. Wilbon, who are the people who have been most worth talking about in your mind? All right, so I don't trust my memory fully anymore. I wrote some names down.
You mentioned I think you mentioned all of them, but at the top, my top is Tiger Woods. Um, and I know it's checkered now, but at that run, Tony, for eight or nine years where Tiger had greater impact than anyone in sports, period, to me, I got Steph Curry next because he changed basketball, the sport, because shooting changed it in a way nobody else did. Next, I do have LeBron. I got Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Kobe Bryant, who we should not forget at the beginning of our show was still kicking butt and taking names. I got Coach K. I got Usain Bolt, whose name might be better at the very top because I look, I got to see Usain Bolt in multiple Olympics and world championships. I never saw anything
greater than that. So, I think that the sports they play matter and I'll take Usain Bolt who's great all time, but it's a quadrrenial sport. You don't get to see him often enough. I look at other sports like tennis and golf that I love. I love them and soccer and even hockey and I would say that they are niche sports. To me, you did not write down very high Federer, no, Nadal, Joker, which I wrote down as one entry. To me, they are great ornamental sports, not meat and potato sports. To me, the meat and potatoes are basketball, baseball, and football. And that's why I have Tom Brady first. Understandable, Tom. I'm not going to argue against Brady, even though Joe Montana is my goat, if you know what I'm saying. But I But again, he played before.
I could argue against Brady. We've tried to distinguish this show through thoughtful insights and measured analysis, but we're human and we admit some things have gotten stuck in our craw. Tony, let's hold each other accountable right now. If you tell me who I've been too hard on, I'll do the same with you. I'm going to the notebook here because I want to make sure I get this right. First of all, you've been hardest on I95. Good. The highway that is the highway of dreams and business and commerce and history in America. You have killed I 95. You've insulted the people that live on 95 even though you actually live on
I95. You have insulted the food on I95. You have killed Philadelphia. My kid went to Penn and you have killed Philadelphia. Who else have you killed? Who else? Oh, uh, you've killed Matt Naggie. You killed him. You killed Jay Cutler. You killed THE COWBOYS. YOU GOOWBOY THROUGH soul crushing inter. You used to kill Lionel Messi and then you found out that he was killing it and you had to admit that you were wrong. He's a goat.
Right here. You it's it goes on and on. You kill marketing people. You kill an I mean the marketing people I'm not going to argue with. But the analytics this is knowledge. This is information. THEY'VE RUINED THE DISCUSSION OF SPORTS DATA. THIS show was better in 01 than it was yesterday cuz we have to deal with analytics and you trying to fill your notebook up with that nonsense. Now let's go to you and people you have trashed just incessantly over the years. Joel MB. Oh yeah. Start with no he doesn't even get on a court. And runner up Tracy McGrady. HEY LONG NEVER GOT second round.
Adam Silver the commissioner. If he's a living breathing commissioner he'll step forward. Let me just mention a guy that no one else remembers but I do. And the producers of this show do Brian Bilick who you calling a schmo until YOU MET HIM ON WHERE? I 95 TRAIN. AND HE SAID why do you call me that? And then I decided I liked him after that. What you have said about other people. You have said that. You know who else you killed constantly. And this I this is tough because you grew up a basketball fan in the Northeast along I 95. You killed the Wizards.
You don't even believe now that they've turned a corner. I BELIEVE THAT THEY HAD A DRAFT THAT YOU praised was West Unselled. Come on. Deserving of praise all these years. Let me go to something else here. Lately you've been threatening to actually kill people and you say everyone IS STUPID. YOU POINT OUT people day after day. He's stupid. They're stupid. It's more It's honestly, it's more than just, "Hey, kids, get off my lawn." It's, "Hey, can we arrest these kids on my lawn?" This is what you've been doing. That makes a bigger impact.
You know, just unbelievable how angry you've gotten. We get mail about that. Let's be honest. Won and I have not changed a lot since the show premiered. We're still old and bald and loud, but sports have changed in some very significant ways during our interminable run. Newspapers have died. sports reporting, sports columnist. I said sports media. Well, I'm just looking at newspapers. People don't go out and pick up the paper and sit down and read it anymore.
I've told you this before. I fear that my grandsons will never understand what I did for a living. The most important thing in my life and in yours, too, was to be a newspaper sports writer. And it's over. I know. I don't know how to deal with it. Yeah. I don't know how to deal with that. Yeah. That's I'm I'm I'm including that everything that is mainstream media that I hate which is yeah mostly I don't worry about athlete podcast because has I never go on the internet so it doesn't matter. Let's take a break. Coming up we will look back on some of our favorite interviews from the early days of the show before the producers stopped booking them as often
and made us work instead. But before that here are a few of our favorite stories that we completely made up for April Fools. But the NCAA has invalidated the last 16 seconds of Sunday's Davidson, Kansas game. Wilbon, this is unprecedented and to me it is unsettling, especially since the game will be moved from Detroit to Charlotte, North Carolina. I assume you are outraged as well. Do you want to tell them or should I? You tell them. April fools everybody. Completely brilliant. Enough already. Stop. You always talk about Chicago. Stop protecting this team. I've had enough.
Come on. I've had enough. I'M DONE. I'm out. I'm done. What? That's it. I'm tired of it. I don't remember that at all. April fool. How about you? But we begin today with a big turn in baseball's embrace of torpedo bats. Among the reported reasons, the concern that a spike in offensive output could throw off all the overunder numbers issued by sports betting interests. Won baseball backed the bats just two days ago. Is it doing the right thing by reconsidering? No, Tony. This is so overreactionary.
Do you want to Do you want me to say it or do you want to say it as to what we're doing here? Which one of us? I like saying it. I'm such a crem now. That's a April Fool's story. You do. No. Playoffs. Don't talk about playoffs. You kidding me? playoffs. I just hope we can win a game. I supposed to be the franchise player and we in here talking about practice. Well, coach, I mean it. Listen, we talking about practice. So great. Not a game. We talking about practice. Alltime. You play to win the game. So is that of this. So is that Hello.
Hello. You play to win the game. Both teams play hard, my man. Both teams play hard. Both teams play God bless and good night. The Bears are who we thought they were. The late great your boy. That's why we took the damn field. Now if YOU WANT TO CROWN THEM, THEN CROWN. I WAS THERE FOR THAT. LOVE. YES. I'M A MAN. I'M 40. THAT IS JUST COMICAL. It's my team. My quarterback Tom. My quarterback.
It's my quarterback. Not two, not three, not four. Not five. Not six. Not 10. How about two? Be a dog. This I don't We don't need no meow. We don't need no cats. Oh, this is great. I don't even need more dogs. THAT'S RIGHT. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? I AM. So crazy. Those are some of our favorite sound bites during our time on the air. We like hearing voices other than our own. And so we thank our most frequent five good minutes guests like Richard Justice, our Southwest Bureau chief, Norman Chad, we go back a million years with David Aldrich, Terry Bowen, David Dri, Bob Ryan is guest and co-host sometimes, David Pollock, Ron Jaws, Jorski,
Buster Only, our Farm Bureau chief, Tim Kirken, Jeff Passen, Dan Leard as guest and of course co-host PK Suban, uh, the one and Barry Melrose, Brian Windhorst, Kendrick Perkins, Jay Bilis, Taylor Twelman, Peter King, Booger McFarland, Jeff Saturday, Steve Young, and of course Charles Barkley. We also had some moments to remember with people who apparently had nothing better to do than to babble with us. As a white guy with no hair, how would I enjoy barbershop, brother? world issues, all topics, sports related, um, child care needs, everything. And then Hustleman is gonna come in a few minutes and sell us everything he can find.
I'M BUYING TICKETS RIGHT NOW. JUST OFF THAT, MICHAEL, I WANT I BET YOU ARE. I BET YOU ARE, DUDE. I AM. I PROMISE. I'm talking to your guy. Is the relationship going to be okay between you and Donovan? I have no desire to talk to Donovan. I guess there's a notion out there, you have no soul. Do you want to set that on the record right now? I have a huge soul. Of course I have a soul. Very close to my family. I have a strong soul. It's good to know. But is it a dark soul, do you think?
Absolutely not. I'm not a bad guy. I'm watching y'all, man. I'm watching y'all. People are passing here and they're like, you should be happy to be on this show. Good show. We've also had some other notable people who've appeared on the show. Sort of. Hello, I'm Lionel Richie here. Serenade, my latest muse. I'm Peyton Manning. Is it me you're looking for? No interruption, but I'm Mike Wilbond, and for Halloween, I decided to be Tiger Woods. Too bad my girl Lindsy Bond ain't here.
What up, boo? Pardon the interruption. It's Halloween and I'm Kimbo Slice. I look pretty mean and vicious tone. Remember that? What do you think? Please, you look ridiculous. Betrayals to all the games we used to play. You ready to list them, Mike? Yes. Role play, where we pretended to be others. Report card, where we graded people, places, and things. Oddsmakers, where we predicted percentages. Fortune teller, where we peered into the future.
Food chain, where we ranked things and then I shouted, "That's it. That's I thought I called that fish fry." Cutting room, where we took two connected characters and we kept one. Good cop, bad cop. I hated that. I love good elf, bad elf. in which we debated who had been naughty or nice. That was good cop bad. Body shop wherein we played mechanics who had to fix broken things. Time machine in which we traveled back to the past. An eggable or not eggable which only appeared once and we're only showing it because we got to pelt reality with eggs. That was great fun. Time to find out what we messed up over the last 25 years. We reintroduced Stat Boy. WHERE YOU GUYS BEEN? I'VE BEEN SITTING HERE FOR 10 YEARS WAITING for
you guys. But what I do have is a video daily double of one of your biggest mistakes, Michael Wilan. Take a look at this. This is our friend Michael Ray Wilan. Uh well, we do know that you like a backwards app behind you. You want to party? How do I How do you do, fellow kids? That's the look you're going for there. There are many other mistakes, but I need you guys to know it's been an absolute pleasure. You'll always be my boy and your boy. And uh I always got you guys. And good night Canada. I'm happy. Love you guys forever. Love you back. It's great to see you. I am not burdened by memories, you know. I know the memories.
Let's go to the big finish. Quick to it. What about How many titles will Victor Webama, who you love, win in the next 25 years? Five. Got him down for five titles. How many Super Bowls will Patrick Mahomes end up with? Four. He's got three. You and I got one more. Conservative. Will Conor McDavid ever win a Stanley Cup? Yes. Not this year, but the next year. So, what 28? Will an American man ever win another tennis major?
Ever is a long time. Of course, ever. I don't know that they're going to win it within the next 3 to 5 days. I don't know that. But ever is a very long time. Don't you think? Yeah, I think so. Uh, last one. Do you love this as much as I do? Of course I do. Except the reality part correcting. Yeah, I like that. So, you It's a It's always been a great pleasure. I think we lasted this long because it's always been sort of fun. I'm to me it's been fun. Don't get We're out of time. Buzzer still. We'll try to do better the next 25 years. I
don't know if we got 25 left. I'm Tony. I'm Mike Wilbond. Thanks for watching us all this time, knuckleheads. Oh, special thanks TO EVERYONE BEHIND THE SCENES IN THE NEWSROOM. THANK YOU. COULDN'T HAVE MADE IT without shout out. Yeah, they put us on PTI. Pardon the interruption, but I'm Mike Wilbon. We just celebrated our 25th anniversary. Tony, did you like wearing that tux? I'm Tony Cornheiser. Yeah, but it's too expensive to rent that for every show. I mean, I'm paying for that. I can't do it every time.
I'm going to have to introduce you to Mr. Zia. You can't be renting the tux at our ages. No, no, no. Welcome to PTI, boys and girls. In today's episode, Arch Manning faces a big test. The Patriots take on the Bears, and Booger McFarland joins us for five good minutes. But we begin today with last night's openers for 22 NBA teams. Uh, from a local standpoint, for me, the Wizards won a game last night. They won their beat a bad team. Milwaukee is a bad team. Uh, and they did it without Debansa, who did not play. He's got some ankle issue, I guess.
The guy who led them was Anthony Davis. Anthony Davis had 34 points and 12 rebounds in one of the 22 to 25 games he's actually going to play this year. So, I was pleased with that. But I want to talk about your boy from the Big 10, Yakel Landerborg. I mean, I think I like this. I'm going to go for 20 seconds here. I think I like this. I think it's okay to, you know, rar Luca as long as you can stop him defensively, which he did most of the time except on that halfcourt shot and except for the fact that Luca's team beat his team by 80. But who is Landborg? Like he's a rookie, but he's 24 so he's not a kid.
Okay. And you want TO TAKE HE'S GOT A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RING. I understand that because Luca didn't well Luca didn't go to college here to get anything like that. Luca is I know you hate Luca but he is a bonafide star. He is a bonafide MVP candidate for Yakel to say after that and I want to quote him accurately. I lost all respect for him and I said you did exactly who are you? So I want to pay attention to Yakel for the rest of the year. Beef is good. It's good for the rookie to get in Luca's grill and it's good for Luca to come back at him every time. No backing down. That's what the NBA needs.
Good. Cuz you see Sarkeesian benching Arch Manning if he struggles against Old Miss. I don't think you can casually bench Arch Manning. I think that's a headline and an uncomfortable headline. Arch Manning three or four years ago was the number one quarterback prospect and he is a Manning and I'm sorry but that counts at this point. Um if you're going to bench him I don't think you can bring him back in the same game. I'm not sure you can bring him back in the next game. I think if you bench this kid it's over there and he hits the transfer portal. So for Steve Sarkeesian to do that in my mind it's because he fears for his job.
They have those two losses you've mentioned, two in a row, Oklahoma and Florida, pretty good losses. But if they lose to Miss, that's three losses. Mike, I don't think you get into the tournament this year with three losses. Next year with 24 teams, maybe there's a team with three losses that gets in. But I don't think with 12 a three loss team is getting in. So if you bench him, you need to be sure that you can beat Miss because it's possible, Mike, that if they're not in the tournament, Steve Sarkeesian is not in that job. I don't see that at all. I see Arch Manning playing better. But the notion of all the pressures on Arch Manning is like Steve Sarkeesian is listening to Sports Talk Radio in Dallas. What I mean
I a lot of people have overstated this a lot. Don't get carried away and start listening to your fans. You'll become one. How do you feel about the potential playoff expansion to 24 schools? You know, I think about this like I do when the waiter comes to the table and says, "Hey, do you want some dessert?" Like, it sounds good and if you bring it to the table, I'm going to eat it, but do we really need it? LIKE WHO ASKED FOR 2014? NOBODY ASKED FOR 2014'S MIKE AND TONY. BUT GUESS WHAT? IF YOU PUT THE GAMES on
TV, we're gonna watch. No different than dessert when they bring the crumble or the banana cream pie or the Oreo cheesecake to the table. I'm going to eat it. I'm going to enjoy it. But do we really need it? No. We don't need 24 teams. Nobody wanted 24 teams. But as always in life, follow the money and you'll find out where these things go. I think it's it's been reported upwards of $350 million that's going to be coming around to these teams to do away with the uh conference championship game. I don't know of anybody that wanted 24 teams. To me, 12 was enough. I think the key will be this. In the coming years, how many teams between 13 and 24 actually advance and play for a championship? I don't think it's going
to be very many. But you know what, guys? I can be like the old guy, continue to fight it, but you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to eat my dessert. I'm gonna enjoy it when they bring it to the table and we're gonna enjoy these games when they put them on our TV next year. So well said. I think people need to know. People need to know that when they bring the dessert to the table and they bring a choice of three or four, you take them all. Thank you, booger. Appreciate you, booger. I am personally keeping my beard until I win a Stanley Cup. You want to impress me? Shave your heads before the playoffs on the Kings Tony with Goring Ross Lonsberry Marcel Dion Roi Von. They had those beautiful purple and gold uniforms
and now some idiot in marketing has them dressed like the Raiders. Come on. It's good to take a shot at marketing people whenever you get a chance. Happy trails to last night's game for the Valkyries. Atlanta pasted Golden State by 26 in game three of the WNBA finals. Angel Reese of the Dream had 21 points and 12 rebounds. Ryan Howard had five steals to add to her six in game two. The Dream is now up two games to one halfway to the title. Valky's head coach Natalie Nicas said before the game that this would be the best fight her team had shown in the finals, but could only say after the loss, quote, "Sometimes
promises aren't kept." And said, "Angel Ree, I'm not letting you take this from us." Tony, this is the first real pinch that the new franchise the Valkyries have been in. I mean, they've made everything go their way until now. The league probably needs them to win to even up this series, but I don't know if that could happen. The dream team seem in control. Let us go to the big finish if we could. Brady Kachchuck scored, but the Panthers lost in his return to Ottawa last night.
Your thoughts? He got heavily booed. He had pledged loyalty to the Senators before requesting a trade. This is what happens, guys. Show will not need offseason surgery. That's good news. And the Dodgers plan to pitch him again next season. Pitch him. You okay with that? I am good with that. I want to see him out Ruth. Ruth, I want to see a full season of both hitting and pitching. Yes. Harry Kane of Bayern Munich scored in his 10th straight Champions League game. That's one shy of Cristiano Ronaldo's record. You love Ronaldo. Are you impressed?
Yes. And I love Harry Kane. For club or country, you want Harry Kane on your side. We saw that in World Cup. 7-0 James Madison at 4-2 App State tonight. Who you got? I got James Madison. Billy Napier. It's a springboard back to the big time. Last one. Cav Sitches Nuggets Thunder tonight. What's more intriguing? The relationship between LeBron and Philly starts tonight. Let's see it. Oh, we're out of time. Try to be better than next time. I'm Tony Cornheiser. Sorry. And I'm Mike Bilbond. Same time tomorrow, knuckleheads. A million thank yous to Hillary Guy, Malikica Andrews, and the entire staff of NBA today. You guys are too kind.
