Dancing for Peyton Manning's Supper

An unsuspecting rookie finds himself in the Colts QB's crosshairs during the holiday season. Peyton took many young players under his All-Pro wing, but only one became the victim of a hidden-camera prank that #18 still watches to this day. And a former Miami Dolphins safety reveals the blueprint for a devilish 80's rookie prank involving a beautiful woman, an abandoned house and a cactus plant. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Trickeration, a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
to Trickeration, the number one show about deception in sports
and your spot for honest conversations about dishonest acts, schemes, hoaxes, pranks,
trick plays. We cover it all here. Last week we
spoke with a St. Louis man who had a million

(00:24):
dollar fantasy football treasure stolen from him, and also with
a Milwaukee Brewers coach who frank the veterans into thinking
their rookie picture was an actual assassin. Hard to believe,
but true. So check that one out if you missed it,
as well as everything else lurking in the archives. This week,
we've got two tall tales for you. First, a Thanksgiving
theme story in which one of the greatest players in

(00:45):
NFL history knocks the stuffing out of an undrafted rookie,
and later an old training camp rank involving the most
beautiful woman in the stands, an abandoned house, and a
cactus plant. All right, enjoy the show. Peyton, He's always
been a frankster as long as I can remember. He's

(01:05):
always been the guy who, after a big road victory
where we're flying back, the one getting on the PA
system and have you impersonated the coach, or could be
a trash can full of water and you land up
against someone's door. Those were kind of things that happened constantly,
but generally Number eighteen was always behind it. In the

(01:31):
year two thousand, an undrafted free agent Justin Snow walked
into the star studded locker room of the Indianapolis Colts,
a team coming up a thirteen and three record and
a division title. Well, it was obviously intimidating. You're now
in the NFL. You have Pet Manning, you have Edric James,
Marvin Harrison, you know the heavy hitters. They and I

(01:51):
hit it off pretty well. I'm not saying he didn't
take a lot of young guys under his leane, but
you know, he and I were somewhat close for event
and rookie we had a lot in coming. Being country
boys love to hunt fish. He wasn't married at the time,
and we were buddies. I remember he would come over
the house before the away games. We always had a
couple of hours to kill and he'd come over and

(02:13):
you know, we'd hang out and righted the airport together.
I still remember this day. Are Christmas dinner, my parents
are in and he comes over for dinner and eats
with my family, just he and I and my parents.
The genuine friendship between the veteran and the rookie made
Snow even more unsuspecting that some Turkey Day tom foolery
was in the works. One of the equipment guys walked

(02:34):
around and put a copy of a free turkey at
the local grocery store. He get a thirty dollar turkey.
I'll probably you know, I'll let my mom cook it up.
So Peyton, obviously having meetings directly after practice, he says, hey,
do you mind grabbing my turkey for me. It wasn't
like it was some scrubs saying hey, grab me a turkey.

(02:54):
I've been like screw that, but it was Peyton Manning.
So I'm like, well, sure again, Peyton asked you a favor.
You're a rookie. You want to please the guy, right,
So I take this zerox copy into the grocery store
and they direct you to the back kind of the
meat department. So you go back there and they say, hey,
I'm here for the free turkey. I'm a cold player.
Show them what they left in our chair. And there's

(03:15):
a gentleman in this, a little white coat. He says, well,
I can give you yours, but in order to get
Peyton's or anyone else is you have to do some
sort of a touchdown dance. So at the time, the
girl I was dating was with me. Her name was Amy.
I said, Amy, I'm not gonna dance for a turkey.
I'll just get peyton mine or whatever. And she said,
come on, justin, just play along. You can dance. So

(03:38):
I turned around, like, all right, let's do it. So
the guy at the counter he plays, you know, the
Monday Night football theme song. So I started doing my dance.
I'm not saying I have skills by any means, but
I could dance a little bit, right. So I was
getting into it. And what dance did you do? You

(03:58):
remember the dirty bird that uh the Atlanta Falcons running back.
It's like Jamal Jamal Anderson, Jamal Anderson, you know how
you did kind of dirty bird where he's pumping his
fist up and down, he takes it to the side,
he's kind of doing something with his legs. That's all
that I did, And it would be one thing if
I did it for it, maybe ten seconds. But I

(04:18):
cared death sucker out and sold it for probably, I
don't know, a good thirty seconds to a minute word.
And what did Amy think at the time? Did she
say anything like, wow, you really went for it. Now
she's in the background just laughing her head off the
whole time, and you know, when I've done, she gives
me a big hug, and like the guy at the counter,
he says, man, that was awesome, great job. I appreciate

(04:38):
you playing along. Here's your extra turkey. So what I
do is I take both bags now, and I take
his back to the locker room, put it in his
locker because he's still in meetings. And then I, of
course take mine home and I just put my refrigerator.
I never opened it up, so I think nothing else
of it whatsoever. Well, the next day's Thursday, Thanksgiving Day,

(05:05):
and we always start the day with the team meeting.
I'm going to this meeting thinking that I've done a
good meat for somebody. And as I'm walking to the
training room, you passed by the equipment room. On that
equipment room, there's like this clear glass that has multiple
polaroid pictures taken of everybody with their turkeys. So I'm

(05:26):
thinking still nothing other right, So anyway, we get to
our team meeting and at the time it was Jim
Mora and he's given his talk about the previous practice
and you just kind of a breakdown, right, So as
he's finishing to come to an end, the lights dim,
the projector comes on and it's a video. So I'm like,

(05:51):
oh no, so then you kind of sink into your
chair a little bit. So I really didn't know until
that film pops up and shows me getting sucker to
the Monday Night Football of theme song. So everybody goes
through their dance, typically in a touchdown dance, you know,
you're spiking the ball or whatever touchdown dances there were

(06:13):
at the time, I said, a lot of guys were
doing and of course I'm the last one. It's like
I told you, for a good thirty seconds to him minute,
that was the one that acted like a fool. All
that's on film and everybody just rolling laughing. I mean,
because I got I got pranked, right, and you got
punked whatever you want to call it for a turkey.

(06:34):
So what had happened was they had a hidden camera
in the back covered up and you couldn't see that
was film. Everybody do their dance to this song. So
it gets better though, Come to find out in that
bag was a bag of ice, a staple shut with
the weight of a turkey that a lot of guys
had left in their car and melted. So not only

(06:55):
did you get a bag of ice for a Frank,
but you had to do a dance to get it.
Certain guys that us or are naive and and golipol
or whatever. I was that guy. We went from Jim
Mora to Tony Dungee to Jim Caldwell as my coach
is there with the Colts in twelve years. Every year
for twelve years, Matt I was always the full you know,
just a running joke. Every year Justine snow is doing

(07:18):
his dance to get take the free turkey. When you
had um, you know, inquired about doing this interview, I called.
I said, hey, man, this guy is asking to do
this interview. So he's like, man, I still got that
at my my archives at home, and he's like that's
still to today. Is probably one of the greatest Franks

(07:39):
of all time. A delicious bit of deceit from number
eighteen and yes we've already put the request in to
get the hidden camera footage of Snow from Peyton's archives,
and for our next story, sticking with the rookie hazing theme,
we traveled back to a simpler time, nineteen eighties NFL
training camp, just to give credit where credits to. This

(08:03):
was pulled on me by my cousin, and I was
like a soldier hitting the deck, crawling across the field
to get away from what I thought was a mad husband.

(08:24):
While with the Colts and later the Miami Dolphins, hard
hitting safety Lyle Blackwood spearheaded the initiation of the first
year players on the team. We usually had two to
three guys that we would be talking to, and there
were some higher profile rookies, but most of them were
middle range. Lyle and the veterans would point to a
beautiful woman in the stands and tell the rookies she

(08:46):
was a huge football fan and that she really liked
the Dolphins or the Colds, and we would say that
she will accommodate all of you off you all want
to go. We would talk about it all week long.
Then they you know, okay, well what about yes, what
about that? Yeah, yeah, sure, she'll do that, and we
always planned at the end of the week when we

(09:06):
had free time, and um, they couldn't contain themselves. Well,
what happened is that we'd come to pick them up
and they'd be all slicked up, cleaned up, cologne on, hair,
slicked down. They want to put their best foot forward.
So anyway, we'd get there and uh, this isn't a

(09:28):
real wooded area. We had to have an abandoned house,
which was very important, and so we'd start walking up
there and we'd get so close to the house and everything,
and then we had a guy in there with a
big overcoat, a hat on, and a shotgun. Of course
it was empty, and uh, he would come out and
he just say, I know what the heck you're doing.
You're gonna screw my wife. I'm gonna blow your head off.

(09:48):
And when he would shoot the shotgun, I'd go oh,
and I would just hit the deck, and everyone to
a man would haul ass. I mean, they we're just
take off. But I can remember one guy went over
to the side and goes, Okay, maybe I need to
help long maybe he's maybe he's not dead. He goes, oh,
he's dead, and he just he said he took off,

(10:11):
but you were dead. Yeah. Uh, when you were you
were playing dead. Yeah, I was just playing dead. Yeah.
And he just left you there. Oh yeah, he just
left me there. Well he thought for a moment and
then he said, oh, he's dead. He just took off,
and I remember he jumped the fence and he was
running through a cactus patch to get away from what

(10:33):
he thought was a mad husband. And so we, uh,
we couldn't find the one guy that went through the
cactus patch for like three hours. We were just searching everywhere.
Finally we were driving up this road and we saw
this figure kind of hunched over and he's lefting and everything.
And pulled up and he had cactus needles all in

(10:55):
him everywhere, and I said, what are you doing? He goes,
You're alive, before y'all just started die laughing. So funny.
I love that. And over the years, how many rookies
would you say you got with that prank? Oh? Gosh, um,
probably oh, fifteen or twenty. It's just just part of

(11:16):
It's part of the initiation into the NFL. Sadly, Blackwood's
mad husband hoax could only be pulled during certain seasons.
I was known for a prank shirt. And I mean
there's lots of little ones that worked over and over,
and he did it on certain individuals at certain times,
and sometimes there was a season going on that you
just didn't do anything because we've done a good season,

(11:36):
so there was no time for France. All right. That
is it for today. A big bank you to Justin
Snow and Lyle Blackwood for sharing these great stories, and
a special thanks to the listeners for taking the time

(11:57):
to rate and review the show. If you haven't already,
please do so. And also if you have any ideas
for future episodes, please email the tip line at Triggeration
Nation at gmail dot com. And as we do every week,
we check in with the legend Chris mad Doug Russo. Chris,
how do we do this week? Maddie, Good job, keep
up to good workw thanks Chris. All right, talk to
you guys next week. Triggeration is a production of my

(12:19):
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