All Episodes

January 11, 2026 34 mins

Ben Maller (produced by Danny G.) has Mail Bag fun for your Sunday! Ben does an emergency Wild Card monologue before the Mail Bag! All questions sent in by new listeners & P1's of the #MallerMilitia! Download, subscribe, and remember that sharing is caring (unless it's an STD.) Follow Danny G. @DannyGradio and Ben on Twitter @BenMaller and listen to the original terrestrial radio edition of "Ben Maller Show," Monday-Friday on Fox Sports Radio, 2a-6a ET, 11p-3a PT!...Follow, rate & review "The Fifth Hour!" 

#BenMaller #FSRWeekends

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kubbooms.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the old republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
Mahler and Danny g Radios. We hang out with you
on a early Sunday, as we are recording this on
the eleventh day of January, and a podcast. Having a
podcast going into the audio sweatshop every day on the

(00:50):
weekend is a double edged sword. It's a blessing and
a curse. It is a blessing because when you have
wild Card playoff games on a Saturday, and you don't
have a radio show on a Saturday, you can come
in on an early Sunday morning and provide some commentary
on the plus Now, we will get to the mailbag

(01:11):
later on, which is a staple of the Fifth Hour podcast.
Nothing like Ask Ben, nothing at all like Ask Ben.
But we will begin with a couple of mini Malar
monologues on what we witnessed in the NFL wild Card
opener on Saturday. We're gonna start with the late game.

(01:31):
I was gonna start with the Ram game. I was like, ah,
I'll just do the Ram game. So they had halftime
of the Packer Bears game. It looked like there would
be no reason to bring that game up. It was
headed toward blowout city and then they played the second half,
So we're gonna start with that game. We're gonna start
with that game. It was not a gigantic upset. The

(01:53):
Packers were only a one point favorite. I took Green
Bay on benny versus the penny. That was the right side.
I didn't know they were choking dogs, but they turned
out to be choking dogs. Oh my god. Do you
know how in competent you have to beat to blow
an eighteen point lead in the NFL playoffs? They did
it anyway. Packers kicker Brandon McManus is the one that

(02:15):
etched his name on the side of the bathroom wall
of special team meltdowns in that playoff game on Saturday
night there at Soldier Field in Chicago. McManus who's been around.
This is not his first trip to the circus, and

(02:35):
he experienced a reversal of fortune. Missed two field goals
and an extra point. The Packers ended up blowing a
twenty one to three halftime lead. They lose a very
memorable NFL playoff game thirty one twenty seven to kick
off the wild card round. There So the Chicago Bears
win a playoff game and advance. But the better story

(02:58):
is in the losing locker room, and that is where
we will begin good jumping off point, the question kicker
Brandon McManus costing the Packers seven points in a game
they lost by four points, that epic collapse in Chicago.
Is this game entirely on his shoulders as is being reported?

(03:20):
So I have on this one dollar store guy named
Earl and ring doorbell camera, and we will combine all
of these things together and we are going to win
a podcast award. I don't think we're cool enough to
win one of those, and we don't suck up to
enough people, so I don't know that's gonna happen. But

(03:41):
a using malormath, and that's the only math we use
on the Fifth Hour podcast. Brandon McManus on the Mallard
pie chart gets seventy five percent of the blame pie.
And yes, kickers aren't football players, they're idiot kickers, hired
mercenaries with one job and a very fragile mind. I

(04:04):
get that. However, However, here's the thing, the low information
box score bandit, as we like to call him. They'll
see Jordan Love's three hundred and twenty three yards and
four touchdowns and want to give him a full pardon
and a parade. You can't blame Jordan Love. He had
four touchdowns and no interceptions and three hundred twenty three yards.

(04:26):
You don't know ball if you blame him. Not so fast,
my friend, because on the Mallard Show scorecard, Jordan Love
gets a hefty slice of guilt cheese Fondu, guilt cheese fondu.
Why not one, not two, not three, but four four
straight possessions in the middle part of that game, punt punt,

(04:50):
punt punt in the meat of the game. That is
offensive paralysis. Now, Jordan Love went from a butcher knife
in the first half to a dollars store butter knife
after halftime. First half chef's kiss, absolute chef's kiss second half.
It looked like he popped a melatonin at intermission and

(05:12):
needed a blankie. Under fifty percent completions in the second half,
shrinking like a cheap sweater. You don't blow a twenty
one to three lead, you win the turnovers to nothing
and still lose unless you and your quarterback are performing
mensa level and competence. Now, add on, the Packers did

(05:34):
have not one, not two, three, four four fumbles. They
recovered all of them, sure, but those are half turnover,
so that's four fumbles each a half a turnover. They
usually stop a drive, so that's like two turnovers. It's
like tripping over your own luggage while running to the gate.
So McManus again lit the match. However, Jordan Love poured

(05:56):
the gasoline on top. Now page two at the end
of the what is this the seventh season? I believe it?
Oh my god, where does the time go? Matt LeFleur,
Green Bays coach seven years and his team again showing
a lack of moxie like my dog late in the game.

(06:17):
There the composure in big moments in a playoff game.
So the question cheesehead fans want Mattlefleir fired. They want
him sent to a war tribunal after the Packers choked
it away in Chicago to be eliminated from the NFL plauffs.
What are the chances that this happens? What are the

(06:40):
chances that matt LeFleur is Gonzo? All Right, So the
Mallor sportsbook odds at plus four hundred, that is a
twenty percent chance that the Flur gets whacked. It's not
zero hope, but not exactly def con won either. It's
a two hundred hitter in baseball, which is usually not

(07:01):
a problem unless you're Miguel Rojas for the Dodgers against
the Toronto Blue Jays in Game seven of the World Series.
But I digress. So the Packer nation? Is that a thing? Still?
Packer Nation? They're waving their pitchforks like it's some kind
of medieval cheese riot. You think they ever had a
cheese riot in medieval times? The great thing about medieval

(07:23):
times is the people that were living in medieval times
did not realize they were in medieval times. They were
just living their lives. So anyway, yeah, this isn't Jerry
Jones with the flamethrower. This is sleepy Green Bay, a
commune in the NFL a co op, so it's always
more complicated. If this was another town, you'd say, Matt

(07:44):
Lafleur is gone. His ass is grass in Green Bay, though, eh,
I mean going into the playoffs, Lafleur was on my
short list of coaches that were on the hot seat
if they didn't win, and the Packers obviously didn't win
and they blew a massive lead. The issue is always
the over five hundred thousand shareholders that the Packers have.

(08:08):
There's no one billionaire sugar daddy. If there was one
billionaire sugar daddy like Jerry Jones, say okay, that's easy,
that's an easy move. Decisions move much more slowly. It's
like it's like molasses. It's slower than molasses. In late January.
You don't fire a coach there, you don't. You submit

(08:29):
a request, It gets laminated, it gets passed around and
voted on by a guy named Earl wearing cheese stained
overalls and a foam cheesehead. And LeFleur he's got some alibis,
mainly the highest paid non quarterback in the NFL, Michael Parsons,

(08:51):
did not walk through that locker room door as a player,
and Tucker Kraft, who had been a breakout star at
tight end, did not play all, both to them enjoying
some rice Crispies Snap crackle pop. So it's like baking
a cake and not having eggs and then being shocked
when you're on the British baking show and the thing collapses. Regardless,

(09:13):
you have a twenty one to three lead. You gotta
win that game. I mean, you don't need me to
tell you that. And after warning everyone, here's the thing.
At halftime, they did a little halftime walk and talk
the walkie talkie at halftime and he said, it's a
Bears are a comeback team. You warned everyone and then

(09:34):
couldn't get your team to make enough plays to stop
that from happening. That's coaching malpractice. And there's fingerprints everywhere.
That's not stepping on a rake, that's juggling chainsaws blindfolded.
So yeah, plus four hundred feels about right. It feels
about right, about twenty percent chance. Is it possible? Yeah?

(09:55):
Would it be painful? Yeah? And that loss was a
body blow, bodyblow, body blow. Yet Green Bay doesn't fire fast.
They don't they stew And I never liked stew I don't.
It's kind of like a brought worst left on the
grill too long. I like a well done food. But
generally speaking, you don't want your brod cook too much

(10:17):
because then it kind of pops open. It's it's not
that great. It's not that great. All right, last word
on the Packer Bears game. All right, So let's talk
about the handshake heard round the NFC North in the
NFL playoffs question coaches Ben Johnson and Matt LeFleur sharing
a very tense handshake at the conclusion of the NFC

(10:39):
Wildcard game. How did you see it? Well, how did
I see it? On the judge's scorecard. That wasn't a handshake.
This was a drive by DAP is what that was.
That was a hit and run greeting. Ben Johnson did
not shake Matt Leffleur's hand. He processed him. You don't reminder,
it was like you see those videos every once in

(10:59):
a while out on the interweb, and it's like the
Amazon delivery driver gone rogue on a ring doorbell where
they toss the package, they throw it, they're throwing a fastball,
they snap the photo, they peel out of the driveway,
they burn rubber, the whole thing for the Packers, blowing

(11:21):
an eighteen point lead. The season goes poof abra cadabra, gonzo,
and there's Matt Lafleur standing there waiting for some football decorum,
and instead Ben Johnson's like, screw this guy. He gives
in the old nice knowing you pal. I got to it.
I loved every second of it I did. Does that

(11:43):
make me a bad person? Know it does not. It
was good TV, great theater. And this league needs more pettiness,
not less. It needs more everyone. Everyone is treated like
a king. They're spoiled, rotten. They're spoiled, rotten, rich, every
one of the Ben Johnson doing this drive by like

(12:04):
an Amazon drivers pulling in what thirteen million a year
from Chicago, thirteen millionaire. Matt Lafleur is making five million,
which makes him the poor coach in these two for
Green Bay. So these guys are not starving artists. They're not.
This is ego. Sumo wrestling is what this is. So

(12:27):
give me the tension, give me the side eye. I
need more side eye I do. It's a breath of
fresh air, and sports are better when the smiles are
fake and the handshakes are a little icy, And that
wasn't disrespect, that was punctuation. I thought it was great.
And then Ben Johnson got knocked over by one of

(12:49):
his own players moments after that. It was quite the scene.
Quite the scene. So the Chicago Bear fans, you talk
about the spectrum of emotion at halftime, they were ready
to run out Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams and Kavi
Williams didn't play all that great. It's really bizarre. The
fourth quarter was wild and crazy. But for most of
that game, Caaleb Williams was not a very good quarterback.

(13:12):
But you're not supposed to talk about that because the
only thing people remember is the final score. And you
win the game and everything's great, everything smells like wonderful cologne,
and you lose the game and you're rotting shrimp is
what you are out in the sun, all right. Now,
Onto the early game. Onto the early game. The LMS

(13:33):
had to come back not once but twice against lowly Carolina.
Are you kidding me? It was fingerbiting hair falling out
that all that. It was a win. It was a win.
So let us discuss the question. So what did the
Rams beating Carolina actually say about Sean mcvay's team as

(13:55):
they advanced to the divisional round. So we have overdosed
and Neon Eraser on this mini Malar monologue as the
Rams take down the Panthers in wild Card Saturday, now
number one, number one, I'll tell you what it said

(14:16):
to me. The Rams are who we thought they were.
They play with their peas and carrots. They do. They
don't just eat the meal. They're not workmenlike. They're not methodical.
They don't go out and just take care of bins.
They rearrange it on their plate. They do, they do,
they do. Now, we covered this on Benny Versus the Penny,

(14:39):
and you listening to this, your fem I'm happy for
my guys in Chicago. We talked already about the Bears game.
But you're Femi eug and all those guys who are
are loyal to the show tree in Chicago. I'm happy
for you guys because the Bears have sucked for a while.
But in terms of Benny Versus the Penny, we talked
about the Ram game. We said, hey, I took Carolina

(15:01):
and some of you guys were trying to bust my balls.
On social media and you're oh Man Meller, you're Rams.
Oh Carolina, they covered the spread. I mean, okay, I
took Carolina on Benny versus Benny. The Rams have been
doing this all year. This is not new. They blew
a nineteen point lead, I believe to Philadelphia. They blew

(15:21):
a sixteen point lead in another game. And it's like
they're running a community theater production of how to keep
the underdog engaged? What are you doing? Like, just go
for the juggular, go for the kill shot. They don't
do it now. Matthew Stafford first quarter, he was cooking
with gas. He was Gordon Ramsey out there. There were

(15:41):
flames in the air everywhere, him and Puka Nakua unstoppable.
This looked like it was gonna be a forty to
ten win, and then they had to play the rest
of the game. The middle of the game, he goes
from Matthew Stafford goes from Gordon Ramsey cooking with gas,
and then he's rubbing rocks together like he's auditioning for Survivor.
He overdosed on stupid bills. It looked like he had

(16:05):
gastronidis whatever it is, you know, the food poisoning, pale, shaky, miserable,
all of that, and yet the end of the game,
he pulls the rabbit out of the hat. The Rams
matriculate the ball down the field and they get the
touchdown to go ahead. They have it. They were down

(16:25):
by four, they had to have a touchdown. So the
ras Mataz was there at the end the game winning drive.
And you exhale, unless, of course, you're a gambler and
you bet on the Rams, and that's not the case
for most people. Unfortunately, most people aren't gambled. I love gambling,
but most people don't gamble. And all that matters is
wins and losses. Wins and losses. Now in my world

(16:47):
of benny versus the penny. In my world, good teams win,
great teams cover. The Rams are not a great team.
And that's the thing. The Rams are good, they're not great.
And Sean McVay absolutely brilliant chef. The Rams thought outside
the box. They took somebody who wasn't quite ready to

(17:08):
be a head coach and made him a head coach.
And unless McVeigh decides to quit and go do bad television,
he'll be the Rams coach for another ten years. At
least it's insane. And he's good. The guy's good. And
so McVeigh just a masterpiece as a coach. And yet

(17:29):
he's like a brilliant chef but keeps leaving the oven
door open. So he's wonderful and has this terrible habit.
It's just knock it off all right now, Page two.
So the Carolina Panthers believe that they are not these
same old Panthers after this close playoff loss to the

(17:50):
LA RAM So I want to address that the question
there's a quote actually will wrap the question around. The
quote from Carolina defensive back Mike Jackson. What a tough
name to have if you're a star football player. A
lot of people have the name Mike Jackson. But anyway,
he said, quote, we just showed people that we aren't
the old Panthers. Mike Jackson said, close quote question, how

(18:14):
do you feel about that commentary that we are not
the same old Panthers? So I have two words I
wrote down on my board, my chalkboard. Stop it are
my two words. That is a participation trophy parade is
what that is? What do you do if I was
coaching the Carolina Panthers. So I'm Dave Canallis. I would

(18:35):
be like, dude, you're out of here. Get out of here.
You don't get a victory lap for losing capital l losing.
This isn't Little League with the orange slices. We're not
doing that here. Hello, Like, what do you want? We
will give you. I'll go into the prize chest and

(18:58):
I'm gonna give you a neon blue eraser, that bright neon.
I'll give you a teal how about the teal neon
teal eraser? Good? All right, so Carolina, unless I miss something,
still walked off the field with a giant l, big
fat giant el. And now this and some other quotes
I saw coming out of the Panthers' locker room. They're

(19:19):
doing this verbal gymnastics routine, grabbing for anything that feels
like a win. And is it true that Vegas had
them at two hundred to one to win the Super Bowl?
To win the Super Bowl? That is not disrespect. That
is a that is a bright billboard, times square billboard

(19:40):
that reads, you don't belong here, You don't belong here.
They were the biggest home underdog in NFL playoff history
of the Carolina Panthers. That wasn't shade. That was sunlight,
exposing a team that was unqualified to be in the
playoffs and the fat that they covered the spread. This

(20:03):
wasn't the Panthers rising. It was a whoopedie damn dow situation.
It was the Rams who were guilty of Malfeasan's in sleepwalking.
After they built up a double digit lead early in
the game, Sean mcvay's crew played down to their opponents,
called sandbagging like a shark nibbling instead of biting. The

(20:25):
shark could always bite, but instead nibbles. It was a
classic playoff trap game. And even then Carolina could not
actually close the deal because Bryce Young isn't that guy.
You're not that guy, Pal, You're not that guy. And
saying that we're not the old Panthers, the same old
Panthers after a loss is like bragging you did not drown,

(20:48):
even though you just swallowed half of the chlorine water
in the pool. Like what are we doing here in
the NFL? You've got it's amazing. This isn't called the scoreboard,
and you have you've never heard this bore. You've got
winners and you've got losers. No motivational posters survivors. The

(21:09):
Panthers lost, they lost. End of story. That's it all right,
Now onto the mail bag. It's all about the mail
bag in Ohio. Al, can you get me in the mood? Ohio, Al.
It's the mail bag, all right, very good, So let's

(21:40):
get to it. These are actual letters by actual listeners
of the show. You can send a message in care
of Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com. That's Real
fifth Hour at gmail dot com. Name and city, name
and city. Make sure to put that there if you
want credit. Keep your questions short, and our answers will
be long. If your questions are long, our answers will

(22:02):
be short. First one up from snow Dog in Fullerton.
It really is the Siberia of Southern California's Happy New Year,
he says, snow Dog. A little late, but I think
I'm still in the window now the windows A couple
of days after New Year's you're way past the window,
way way, as you know, fer Dog. It's the eleventh

(22:26):
of January. You have crossed over. We crossed the Rubicon
long ago, anyway, snow Dog says, or ferg Dog says,
you asked on the weekday show, who'd want to listen
to your nine year old podcast. Well, I say everyone should.
Skipping the old shows is like reading the Bible without
reading any of the Old Testament. There's many life lessons

(22:50):
buried in those podcasts. Well, thank you, ferg Dog. I
appreciate that. And of course it's a disposable form of
entertainment sports talk radio where you do the show that day,
you're talking about what's going on that day, and then
the next day there's another show and you're talking about
what's going on that day. It's not presented as an
evergreen product. It's not a show designed to last the

(23:13):
test of time. You're talking about what's going on in
that moment. Email continues. Last week, someone asked a question
about Nostridamis. Well, I've got one regarding Nostradinis, the true
profit of doom, says ferg Dog. He predicted Sam Donold
will win eight straight Super Bowls with the Seahawks and

(23:34):
go down as the greatest football player of all time.
What do you think is more likely to come true
that that or the Raiders winning more than five games
next season? All right, So a fer Dog or snow dog.
If you gave me one thousand dollars of funny money
and said, what's more like to happen? I would bet

(23:54):
on the Raiders winning six games next year. We don't
know who the Raiders is going to HIGs their coach.
It'll be some DRABBRONI. We have no idea who they're
gonna hire. So they'll hire somebody to come in and
be the new village idiot, which is a great job.
You can paid a lot of money, you don't have
to win, and then you get fired. You still get
paid a lot of money. And Pete Carroll's gonna make
fifteen million dollars a year for the next couple of years. Anyway,

(24:19):
the point is that the Raiders play a bad schedule.
They'll have the number one pick in the draft. They'll
have the number one pick in the second round. They
will not have the number one pick in the third
round because they traded that to Seattle Forerchino Smith. Yeah,
but I'll tell I'll take the Raiders. I'll take the
Raiders a Lucky Tony writes, and he says, hey, Ben,
in the prison dream, I woke up mid swing, so

(24:41):
nobody got shanked. But I love these dreams from Lucky
Tony that's so good. I like them more than when
he calls up and just drops a porn star's name
and then hangs up. Anyway, Lucky Tony says in the
Prison Dream, I woke up mid swing, so nobody got shanked.
I did fun with the knife, but that's been a

(25:03):
reoccurrence in night dreams. Around the time I sent my
song shout out, Mexican John Dutton, Terry and England also
sent a song that never got played. Could one of
you kind sers verify that they are in the system? Bears,
I'm happy for Lucky Tony. Lucky Tony, I'm sure he
got a little chubby when the Bears won that game

(25:25):
last night. He had to be very concerned at halftime.
I think we did play Terry in England's song. I
believe we did end up playing it on the air.
We did not play it when it needed to be played,
but we did eventually play it, and it is I
believe in the system. So I can go back and check.
But right not right now, I'm in the remote studio
and everyone that works on the show is nowhere to

(25:46):
be seen. So anyway, big next one from kwang in
Ho Chi minh Vietnam, he writes in he says Big
Ben and Daddy G. He says, please let weed man
Hippie know that Google has begun gradual role out of
a feature that allows users to change their existing Google
account email addresses to a new one while retaining all
their data purchases in history. Users whose email address end

(26:11):
in at gmail dot com can now replace them with
a completely new at gmail dot com address. This is
a major departure from previous functionality, where changes a changing
a username required creating a new account, manually migrating data
blah blah blah. Crucially, this process does not delete old
email addresses. Instead, the previous address is automatically converted into

(26:34):
an alias. From Quang very technical Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.
Guaranteed human but QWAG isn't that what a guaranteed human
would say or a robot? Rather that they're a guaranteed human?
You feel me on that alf from Shady Pines Rights
and he says, First off, I'd like to give a
tip to the listeners if you send in a question

(26:57):
to the mail bag that may or may not have
been deleted and replaced by a best of that Danny G.
Is still pissed at me for do not forward said
email three weeks in a row. That question will not
be answered. That being said, are you guys at the
age that whenever you see a bathroom in the wild,

(27:21):
you say to yourself, I could probably go, or I
should probably try before I get in the car to
alf in Shady Pines. Yes, yes, alf guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.
In fact, I now am at the point of my
life where I have if I'm going on a long

(27:42):
road trip, even going I'll tell you just going from
work too. I live very far away from the Fox
Sports Radio studios, and driving from the north Woods into
the Fox Sports Radio studios, I have to stop drinking.
I drink a lot of water. I have to stop
drinking water an hour before I leave to go to work, Okay,

(28:03):
an hour before I get in the malinmobile. I have
to stop drinking water. And then I'm at the point
now where I can't drink while drink the water while
I'm driving. I then have to wait until I'm about
a mile and a half from from Sherman Oaks, and
then I'll start drinking because if I drink any sooner.

(28:24):
Then I got an emergency situation. That's a problem anyway,
and uh what else? Email continues, First off, I'd like
to give a tip. Blah blah blah blah. Oh, I
think we I think we already covered that. I think
we already covered that. I think that's a double that's
a double ad there, bad job by me or bad
job by you. I don't know. Maybe that's it's probably
my fault, not your fault. But yes, alf absolutely, I

(28:47):
am very conscious of bathrooms. I know which locations have bathrooms.
Now I have been burned, and well, you go to
a bathroom and they you know, they got the code,
and then that's a big problem. And all right, JT,
the wingman from just outside Knoxville, Tennessee, rights and he says, hey,

(29:07):
big Ben and Danny g So as we dive into
the NFL playoffs, I pledge to keep my questions non sporty.
I didn't know who else to ask, so why not
ask the podcast guys, when is the best time of
the year to write poetry? I will trust your advice.
That's from JT. So my recommendation, JT, is to write

(29:30):
some poetry for the Malard Paloozer, which is the biggest
event of the summer in sports talk great. It's right
around the Major League Baseball All Star Break, which is
in July. We normally coincide it with that. So I
would advise you to work on your poetry in the
months of June and July. Get it ready by late
July and you'll be good to go, and you could

(29:54):
submit that into the show. We will have a poetry
contest roses Vie the It's of blue and I can
deep do poetry better than you, things like that. But JT,
we love you, man. I'm sure I'll run into you JT.
This year. One of the meet and greets, we plan
on having several, at least we know we'll do Vegas.

(30:15):
I'm getting I'm gonna get to Ohio one way or another.
That'll happen this year. Boston, it sounds like it's gonna happen.
Mike the Leprechaun and Mike in New Hampshire are hell
bent on having a Mallord meet and greet, a couple
of them, one in Boston, and I think we'll have
one in Worcester. So that'll be exciting looking forward to that.
So we look forward to those events. We'll do one

(30:36):
more here. I know we did a lot of ranting
about the football playoffs, so some of you guys questions
will not Some of your questions will not make it
out there. Scott from Florida the last one. He says, Ben,
your tribute to Gene Deckerhoff was awesome. Growing up in Tampa,
I used to listen to the Bucks games on radio
because they stunk so bad. They were always blacked out
on TV. Yeah, people forget there was an era where

(30:59):
these games were on TV. If your team sucked, you
didn't get a lot of the games on TV. They
didn't sell out at home, no TV, and Scott says,
I would go into my room, fire up RC pro
Am on the Nintendo and turn on Jesse Ventura doing
the play by play. Before the team made a major
upgrade to Gene Dekaroff. I will show my age with this,

(31:21):
but I am not sure Degorov made a better call
for the Bucks than the two NFC championship. The window
was closing for this team. They couldn't win in cold weather,
but they couldn't beat the Packers and now the Eagles
to get to the Super Bowl. On the opening kickoff
in a cold, loud Philly stadium, Brian Mitchell returned at

(31:45):
seventy yards to set the Eagles up for a quick touchdown.
Every Bucks fan thought, here we go again, and late
in the first quarter of the Bucks dril seven to three,
Joe Jarvisius beat former Northwestern classmate Barry Gardner on a
slant ran about fifty yards just inside the five yard line.
It was a massive planet turned the whole game around.

(32:07):
That week, Jeravicius had lost his newborn son, and although
I was only twenty three at the time, I would
never I've never, rather never forgotten how sad and desponded
Jerrevicious must have been. Same for Gene decker Off in
that moment, in that play, he made one of the
most emotional guttural calls of all time. Nothing fancy, but

(32:29):
so genuine and unplanned. You go Joe, You go Joe.
And then Scott attached a YouTube video which I we're
not going to play it, but I did watch it,
and he says, as a former kid cheering for the
backwards Bucks in the eighties and nineties, rest assured we
all love and respect him as much as you. It's

(32:50):
awesome that you know so much about him despite living
on the West Coast. That's Scott from Florida. Well, thank you, Scott.
And the reason I know Geen decker Off is because
of my job and we I used to be an
update guy and we played. I remember more from his
college football play by play calls than the Bucks. But
because the Bucks were bad, as you said, but I
do recall I always had a thing for the Bucks.

(33:11):
The logo was so ugly, the old logo, the creamsicle
logo with the pirate with the knife, the Robin Hood logo.
I was, boy, that's such an ugly logo. It kind
of grew on me. And they were so bad, and
I always liked the Losers when I was a kid,
even I was like, these guys, these are so pathetic,
these teams, and so have a chance to meet Jean
decker Off and you know, get to know, not know

(33:32):
him per se, but know his story, and through my
relationship with TJ. Reeves, who's broadcaster for the Bucks, it
was pretty pretty pretty cool, all right. That's it. So
Reggie and Detroit, Steve, Mike and Wisconsin, Joe in New York,
all you guys. Brett in Boston. I'm a schmuck, I'm
an a hole. I apologize. Send those questions in next

(33:56):
week and hopefully they will make it. On the air.
We have the live radio show Don't Forget About Benny
Versus the Penny that's on YouTube. Check it out. Radio
show returns tonight. We got three NFL playoff games to
break down today around the NFL, so we'll get to
that and have a wonderful rest of your Sunday. Got

(34:17):
a murder, I gotta go.
Advertise With Us

Host

Ben Maller

Ben Maller

Popular Podcasts

Two Guys, Five Rings: Matt, Bowen & The Olympics

Two Guys, Five Rings: Matt, Bowen & The Olympics

Two Guys (Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers). Five Rings (you know, from the Olympics logo). One essential podcast for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Bowen Yang (SNL, Wicked) and Matt Rogers (Palm Royale, No Good Deed) of Las Culturistas are back for a second season of Two Guys, Five Rings, a collaboration with NBC Sports and iHeartRadio. In this 15-episode event, Bowen and Matt discuss the top storylines, obsess over Italian culture, and find out what really goes on in the Olympic Village.

iHeartOlympics: The Latest

iHeartOlympics: The Latest

Listen to the latest news from the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Milan Cortina Winter Olympics

Milan Cortina Winter Olympics

The 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina are here and have everyone talking. iHeartPodcasts is buzzing with content in honor of the XXV Winter Olympics We’re bringing you episodes from a variety of iHeartPodcast shows to help you keep up with the action. Follow Milan Cortina Winter Olympics so you don’t miss any coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics, and if you like what you hear, be sure to follow each Podcast in the feed for more great content from iHeartPodcasts.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2026 iHeartMedia, Inc.