June 15, 2022 • 46 mins
Texans TV Host Drew Dougherty caught up with original Texan Seth Payne. The current Sports Radio 610 show host and former nose tackle discussed his loudest moment as a player, his agricultural upbringing and much more.
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):
It's always a treat and a pleasure to get to
talk with Seth Payne. He is an original Texan. You
hear him on the radios at Sports Radio six ten
in the mornings with Sean Pendergast. I find myself laughing
out loud at least once a show on the way
into work. And he's been this town for a long
time when away came back. When away came back, kind
(00:20):
of ping pongs all over the place. But Seth, first
things first, how the hell are you? I? I'm good man,
You're right, I do ping pong all over the place,
like Brandy and I have lived. We were counting it
up the other day, and yeah, I think from the
time we first got there and had like a temporary
apartment in two thousand and two, I think it's nine
(00:41):
different places in Houston. We just really yeah, we'd like
to take a sampling of everything. We just now we've
you know, once you have a kid, everything changes. But yeah,
when I was done, when I was done playing football,
we moved hied out a few different cities before we
ended up back here. So um, yeah, ping pong is
the right is the right way? Yeah, and you're doing well, right,
(01:02):
now right. I mean you're kind of doing the remote thing,
and I have a home, if that's what you're Yeah,
I never I never thought you were living in a
tent or in a cardboard box or anything. Yea. Now
I spend um. I go back and forth between like
my wife's hometown, which is close to my hometown in
Houston quite a like quite a lot. Yeah, in a
(01:23):
way that I that I really really liked. Like I
like being able to um kind of get variety and
change things up. And there's times where I can I'm
kind of by myself for seventy two straight hours, or
I can just be a workaholic, you know, or a
sleep aholic like whichever one, or a psychopath. I mean
if you like that, you know, it's kind of the
(01:44):
shining Yeah. I can manage like three different personalities completely
if I if I manage my time, right, I think
that's a sign of brilliance, right, Yeah, one of those things.
All right, let's go back way back when you're growing up.
You had a bit of a rural upbringing in my right,
as far as that goes, not stopbringing, but you had
(02:05):
there's an aspect of it. I mean, well we uh, well, Yeah,
my father was a farmer, and you know, I when
I was born, we were working on a dairy farm.
My father was part of his family's dairy farm with
my grandpa and my uncle. So from the time I
was from you know, zero to five, we lived on farms.
(02:28):
And then my parents got divorced when my dad was
still a farmer, so up through when I was a
teenager before my dad finally got out of farming altogether. Um,
but then even after that, I worked on my grandpa's farm,
I worked on my uncle's farm. So it was a
it was a big part of my life growing up,
and like, you know, a big part of my identity
was that I came from a family of dairy farmers
and it was a I think there's a lot of
(02:49):
it's kind of like unique type of pride in that
because part of the pride is wrapped up in that. Uh,
it's a it's a rough life, like it's a it's
a life that's very very demanding in terms of just
physical work, sleep deprivation, financial uncertainty. Even when things are
(03:09):
going really really well, the next drought or it's going yes,
it has to be the worst part, right, Yeah, that's it.
It totally is like anything in life when there's uncertainty
and you don't have any control over it. It's so
anything that really depends on the weather that that's a
huge source of stress. So I think even my grandpa,
(03:31):
you know, who was I think successful in life. I
just I always growing up, I always felt like everything
was always on the brink of disaster. And it wasn't
until I got older I was like, oh, no, that's
just the way my family handles. That's they do well
because they're constantly preparing for disaster. How long did that
take you to figure that out, though, I mean, that's
it seems you say it like it's, oh, that's like that,
(03:52):
But that's got to be a process that happens in
over years, right. Oh yeah, I'd say I not that long.
By the time I was maybe forty three or four,
for uh that I realized that maybe, yeah, you know,
I always have to worry about everything all the time. Yeah,
it's okay to it's okay, it's okay to enjoy things
a little bit every now and then, you know, in
a good sense. Though, I'm guessing that gave you some
(04:13):
pretty good perspective on things. So when you know, times
got tough in high school or in college or in
the NFL, and you did go through tough times. I'm
not saying they weren't tough, but that kind of helped
you deal with them a little bit better, perhaps, am
I am I, I, you know, I really it's a
shame that kids nowadays and you know, and I would
(04:36):
include that with kids my age growing up. You know,
it wasn't like we're in a grarian society when I
was growing up, So I was in the minority of
kids that like worked really hard physical jobs from a
young age. Um, but it does, it does it teaches
the character and it also it teaches you to have
perspective on things. Um. You know, there are very few
(04:56):
jobs that are as hard as like just really hard
physical labor out in the heat. And you know, you
can have miserable parts of various other jobs. But um like,
once you've been through that and once you've worked really
long hours, and I think really probably the thing that helped,
just thinking back on my brother and me and our
athletic careers, the thing that probably helped the most was
(05:17):
that from a young age, you're working alongside grown men
and trying to keep up with them. So the standard
is always like there's always a really high bar that
you can't reach or attain, and you know you're the
person that's slowing everybody down. So you're just constantly trying
not to be the slowest guy out there, and that
kind of flows over into the way you treat at
(05:37):
sports practice and everything else. So yeah, that was that
was It was a huge, huge part of allowing me
to have some athletic success. I think talking with original
Texans Seth Payne played on the defensive line mainly, it
knows tackle for the Houston Texans when the franchise began.
Seth So you've got that rural background, that that farming background.
But have you all you've always been a pretty voracious reader, right,
(06:00):
You've been You've always been into You've always had your
nose a book for the most Yeah right, yeah, yeah,
I uh yeah. From a young age, I think I
just I took to reading fiction, non fiction, everything particular, Yeah,
really everything. I kind of I'll burn out on nonfiction
and then realize I go, okay, I need to I
(06:21):
need to get out of that, and then I'll then
I'll go on a fiction bender and then realize that
I'm neglecting every other aspect of my life. So um
and then I'll then I'll just ping pong back to
to nonfiction and that. But lately it's been hard. What
are you reading? Yeah, yeah, all right, I'm quote unquote
reading Shogun by James Clavell. Oh. Yeah, that's a I
(06:41):
remember that being on my parents like bookstand or book
bookcase when I was Yeah, that's an oldie, right, so well, okay,
so it was written in the seventies. Yeah, ok, by
this British World War Two veteran who I believe had
been in Japanese pow camps um when he was in
war in World War Two. So when he got out,
he started learning about the Japanese and you know, learned
(07:05):
a great respect for their culture. But it's also it's, uh,
you could tell there's certain parts about it where you
can tell, all right, this was written in the nineteen seventies,
um by like okay, by this English dude who's giving
his version of ancient Japanese culture. And it's hard not
to read it without thinking, like, all right, I gotta
I gotta fact check a lot of this when I'm
(07:26):
done with it, because man, the part, especially where you know,
he's painting this culture where oh yeah, the women are
completely and totally subserving the men, and they just love it.
You know, they love it. They don't really, they don't
even have a problem with it, like all all right, Uh,
there's a I understand the differences of culture and everything.
But anyway, um, but so, what I was gonna tell
(07:48):
you is that I I the mistake I made was
I started listening to books on Audible and I'm kind
of kind of ruined for I listened to a lot
of books these days. So I'm listening to this one.
This one's like fifty hours long. I still I'm still
old school, Like I curl up, you know, in bed
before you know, I go to sleep. I'm laying on
(08:10):
one side read a book that the actual hardcover, never
done a kindle, never done any of that stuff. I'm
I still go to the library when they have you know,
they use book sales and get the fifty cent paper.
I'm a dork, So no, no, no, But that's good
because there is, especially when you're trying to remember something
from earlier in the book, or you just want to
do a good old fashioned dogg ear on it. Yep.
(08:31):
It's you lose something when you don't have that connection
to it, or even just like the geographic location for
remembering where a spot was in a book, because I
mean it's almost in the same way like I can
walk on the field at NRG Stadium and remember specific
things based on where I am on the field, Like
(08:53):
I'll just I'll step in a spot and it just
kind of brings back and it's weird. Um, it's not
don't even think about that I'm trying to do or anything.
But it's really cool. Just even though you know, I've
been all over that field and various moments and everything,
it's still you still got a real strong connection just
to that one specific spot. I bet you really like
the middle of that south end zone the most, don't you.
(09:15):
YEA wrapping up Quincy. Yeah, except you know the problem
with that is I barely remember it. That was one
of those so when when I got the safety, Garry
Walker was like three millimeters behind me, so I got
I ended up getting credit for that sack. Gary Walker
was very very close to share in the sack with me,
and he was the one flexing the cameras were drawn
(09:36):
to afterwards. Yeah, well, and to set things up. To
set things up. Most people know this that are listening
to this, But to set things up. It's late in
the game. Texans are on top. It was seventeen ten,
I believe, but Cowboys had a chance. There's still some time.
You're bet they're backed up and you get through. You
sack Quincy Carter for a safety, Like you say, Gary
Walker is right next to you, he's up flexing the places.
(10:01):
I mean, is the loudest you've ever heard. Yeah, it
just goes bananas, and you guys steals the win. Essentially,
they're not going to come back after that put you
up nineteen ten. It's it's one of the coolest things
that's ever happened to me in my entire life, like
in any realm sports or otherwise. Um, just because of
(10:22):
how unique the situation was with the Texans coming back,
well football coming back to Houston, the NFL coming back
to Houston, Like how pent up the energy of the
fans was, and then just that moment. Yeah, but I usually, like,
I'm not a guy that kind of goes unconscious during
plays A lot a lot of times, you know, especially
(10:42):
the really great athletes will we'll struggle even remember how
a play went, because they're just in that unconscious mode
where that's just going. That was one of those moments
where I think, just because of fatigue, because of everything
I remember. I remember going right up to the snap,
then everything is a blur after that, and I remember
running off, running off to the sideline. Everybody's celebrating and
(11:06):
jumping up and down and everything, and I remember Corey
Sears grabbing me and saying something. I was like, yeah,
what happened. It's like you did that. I was like what,
He's like, you did that? That was you? Oh, that's
what's pretty cool. So I kind of it's funny. I
get to watch that as a spectator, and a lot
(11:29):
of times it will happen is you might you might
remember a play put in your mind everything happened so slowly.
Then when you watch it on film later, especially when
you watch on the TV copy, they're like, wow, that
actually all happened. That thing that felt like it took
twenty nine seconds happened in like a quarter second. And
I get that effect just watching that play, seeing how
quickly it unfolded and everything. It's just kind of fun
(11:52):
to watch as a spectator. So well, It was fun
to watch in an attic apartment in Dallas in two
thousand too, because it was me and a bunch of
my college friends. And they were all mainly I mean
they're from some of them out from from out of town.
They were mainly Cowboys fans. So, um, I was kind
of I was kind of an a hole. Huh. Yeah,
(12:12):
I was doing bananas. So yeah. That was before social
media of any sort, so they still we had camera phones. Yeah,
no risk of embarrassment, you know. Yeah, speak it at will. Yeah,
it was. It was a fun, fun night for sure.
We'll get okay, we'll get into more football later. But
football you're obviously smart guy. It comes time because you're
(12:34):
wrecking shop. In college, you were you were like the
bully and excuse me in high school, right, it comes
time to come. You know. I was bully on the
football field. Bully on the football field. You you were
a nice guy. You were with people. I think, I
say high school and college was similar because I was
a really late bloomer physically, like I grew a bunch
(12:54):
of inches. I grew two inches when I got to college. Um,
but I didn't really have my growth spurt into my
junior year in high school. There's a there was a
poor setup to the question. The question was you did
really well on the field in high school. Obviously the classroom,
but what made you choose Cornell and what else? What
were the other choices available to you? Seth Payne Okay,
So okay. Because I was a late bloomer, I didn't
(13:16):
really have a whole lot of buzz about me going
o my senior year. And you know, i'd grown a
few inches my junior year. Um like like during the
football season my junior year, I was still growing. So
I was just gangly and awkward, you know, and I
was I was starting and I was okay. But I
ended up deciding because we had a state champion wrestler
at heavyweight uh that year when I was a junior
(13:39):
and this kid would have been a senior. I said, well, look,
I've been a varsity wrestler. You know, I wrestled like
one thirty two the year before. But I had grown
and I was at the time the weight classes were
either one seventy seven or two fifteen m and there
was nothing in between, so it was pretty much just like, Okay,
(14:01):
I either like wrestled JV all of a sudden, or
I just don't wrestle at all. So I just I
quit wrestling and decided to just focus on football and
training and everything. In doing that, I remember the wrestling
coach was like, well, Seth's what are you doing. It's
not like you're gonna play in the NFL or anything like.
Don't don't give up this opportunity to be an awesome
JV wrestler for a year. You find him when you
(14:24):
go home and just spike a football in his face
every time you see him. I know, we laugh about it.
He was he was, you know, and honestly he was
making the right argument. It's not like I couldn't have
also kept, you know, gaining weight and everything. It was
just I felt like it was what I wanted to do,
and I actually really committed to it. I had a
friend that I had a friend, Brian Klakota, who, like way,
was way more mature than me. He was a year
(14:45):
older than me and and he was going off to
play in college. So we just worked out every day
for like two and a half hours after school every day,
and I just I kept growing vertically. But then I
just I got a lot bigger and I came back
by the time I was a senior, just like like
a like a little man child, you know. Um So
(15:05):
I played really well my senior in high school, but
my coach was not long for the coaching profession and
he was kind of out to lunch. So after he
got fired at the end of a high school season,
you know, I'd gotten like all county or all whatever
that was all league, but nothing, nothing really not allow
a lot of athletes. Um, this this other kid, Sean
(15:26):
O'Day and I went into his office while we were
working out one day, this is the end of the
football season and junior year, senior year and year, okay,
and we saw a bunch of these questionnaires from colleges
laying on the table like unopened. The envelopes were unopened.
So Sean Sean and I serious, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nothing. Ever,
(15:47):
nobody'd ever shown anything to anybody. So Sean and I
were like, well, what do you think, And they're like,
I know, it's not it's it's not. We just won't
sign any names to it. We'll just fill them out.
So we filled out these questionnaires to different colleges that
we were interested in, and you know, they're all pretty
much local and regional, like my area. The country didn't
get recruited a whole lot at all. So and a
(16:09):
bunch of people in my family had gone to Cornell
and I had, I had, I had really good grades,
but then I had a rough stretch in high school
that knocks me down out of like the top the
top five in my class. Road have you so, but
I was like, you know, let me, I'll just fill
one out for Cornell. And it did, like the appraisal
of the player and everything. Didn't sign it, but just
sent it off to Cornell. And and then like two
(16:34):
weeks later, I get a call while I'm in class,
and it was a coach from Cornell was there kind
of doing a tour of my area and he wanted
to watch some film. So he calls me down. We
sit and I could tell like, I don't think he
was thinking much of me, But then when I walked
in the door, he could tell that I was a
(16:55):
big kid, and uh, you know, he asked who I
had been looking at. It was a bunch of local
Division three school So he's like your early coaches coach
to Stefano, he's still a good friend of mine. To
this day, and he was like, oh, coach, let's this
Italian guy. Uh, let's take a look at Let's see
what you got. So I put a tape in from
one of my games and I could kind of tell,
like I didn't have a whole lot of confidence about it,
(17:17):
but I could kind of tell about like five six
plays into it, and it was we were watching this
game of me versus East Rochester, and I remember this game.
It was it was like I was like, uh, it
was like I was a barbarian sacking of village of peasants.
I was just like picking people up and throwing them around,
like tossing that offensive tackle into the running back and
then yeah, yeah, and uh and I remember coach just
(17:41):
be like okay, okay, so well you're uh so, who's
talking to you? Did you say? And uh like I
don't know, it's just University of Rochester Hobart like oh okay,
um well hey listen, um what do you what are
you doing next weekend? Do you you want to come
take a visit? And it kind of like yeah, yeah, no,
no problem, coach. I was just like us the babe
in the woods, not really knowing much about anything. Um,
(18:04):
so then like a couple of weeks, I kind of
they put it started putting on a full court press,
and uh, my test scores were good enough to get
in and everything. It helped too. It like Cornell is
the only Ivy League school that also has an AGG school,
and it's kinda so it helped me get in there
that I had an agricultural background because there's a fewer
(18:25):
and fewer kids that do, so I was able to
like between football and AGG school, they were able to
overlook the one semester that I had dropped out of
school and driven to Florida and uh and uh and
uh and uh and and contemplated working on a fishing
boat for a few weeks. I want to get into that,
but we don't have time for that. Maybe I'll maybe
(18:46):
the next time you come on this one. But you
go to Cornell, things go well there. But how eye
opening and experience was that for you? Just socially and
academically and everything and being around um, the you know,
the high high achievers that you were around. Then yeah,
it really Um I think when you when you can
(19:06):
go to a school that's got, you know, really tough
admission standards like that, I I don't know how much
better the actual education itself is. I mean, there's really
good professors everywhere, you know, and there's good that the
knowledge is, the knowledge is the knowledge of the books
of the books. UM. The part that is really cool
(19:28):
is I think you do kind of get exposed to
these different types of kids that come from really different backgrounds.
So A, you learn just how a lot of your
you know, preconceptions or prejudices or beliefs about kids from
this area or that area or whatever you have from
(19:49):
growing up, um are really off. But then B two,
I think you just kind of get to learn to
respect different types of achievement, different types of um, I guess,
different types of intelligence because you've got kids that are
math geniuses, UM, and you've got kids that are you know,
(20:10):
artistic geniuses, and like so much you're superior in such
a vast way that, Yeah, you learn a certain humility,
I think, or at least hopefully that's the way it
should work out. Like And I can just remember kind
of being baffled by like how smart a person could be,
like right, because I tried to I tried to get
out and partake of a lot of different things, and
(20:32):
you know, meet people that I wouldn't have ordinarily met.
So that part of it was really like eye opening
to the broader world. So what were you? Was it
like it in the scene and Pitch Perfect on the
first day when they're all going around and filling out,
like for the extracurriculars, and you did you join a
bunch of extracurriculars in addition to football. Where I mean,
was it oh yeah for a little while, but then
it turned to Okay, yeah, I'm painting. I'm painting the
(20:53):
more impressive picture of myself than it actually was. Basically,
I'm just what I mean to say is that, Yeah,
I ended up going into a lot of different bars
where I met a lot of different people, and um no,
but there was well there were yeah, Like there are
a couple of different like charitable organizations that I was
(21:16):
lucky enough to be a part of that. We're also
kind of like social club type of things. Um so
you kind of mixed both of those worlds and that's
where I like, honestly, the biggest culture shock for me
there at that type of school was the um I
was just around I was around like really rich people
for the first time in my life. Um, because I've
been around really poor people a good chunk because I was,
(21:38):
you know, we were. But part of it was growing
up like in like barefoot poor in North Carolina for
like a certain stretch of time. And then and then
I've been around you know, like like people in the suburbs,
and I've been around people in the country and everything,
but like that whole environment of like prep school, elite,
(22:00):
rich kids, and I think that's like of all the
prejudices that I might have had as a young man,
I was really like I had like a chip on
my shoulder about rich kids, and it was really it
was it was kind of cool to see that, Yeah,
sometimes those stereotypes are true. Um. And sometimes just like
in any other walk of life, like people can be bastards. Um.
(22:21):
But then a lot of times, like a lot of
my preconceptions or misconceptions about successful people um or wealthy
people or anything like that were just way out of line.
Uh and and kind of that that there's uh like
it was it was one of those ways of like
really learning to judge people, um with by while stripping
(22:41):
away all their appearances. So I think a lot of
times we think of like you know, not judging. Yeah,
like not judging somebody that's um, not judging that somebody
that's poor, or judging somebody by a lack of something. Um.
But I was really like, I was a complete hypocrite
when it came to like judging people for like otherwise
benefit official things. I was real like, I was really
(23:02):
kind of a jerk about it. Yeah. I've heard your
I've heard your tales, you know, in the car talking
about what was it, people that vacation or people that
didn't have to work, and you're like, I guess growing
up you'd heard oh yeah, yeah, No. I I just
felt like, yeah, I thought teachers were rich. I thought
so it was that if you had a family, if
you were a kid and both your parents were teachers
(23:24):
and you owned an RV, I thought you were loaded
because you got to like you went down vacation in
the summer and everything. So yeah, it's just a good
life right there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah that was Tyler Tilling.
I thought like, I was like, oh, man, Tyler is rich.
That's what are his parents? They're both teachers, all right?
(23:44):
So you you wind up getting drafted by the Jacksonville
Jaguars and kind of the overriding thing over the last
few years that I've gathered from you is you have
a deep respect for Tom Coughlin despite some of the
kind of old school, maybe questionably dumb stuff that he
did as a coach, But you still respect because he
(24:05):
was a winner. He did wind up winning, and he,
I mean, he was a really impressive coach. Am I
off base in that I think that I think in
a lot of ways, players who have played for Tom
Coughlin as they get older kind of respect him the
same way you might respect a disciplinarian father, where when
(24:25):
you're growing up, you might just you know, you might
feel like he hate him because he's so tough on you.
And then you get older and you start to realize, like, okay,
there's a different side to him, and you understand why
he does the things he does and why he is
so tough on you. And then part of it, too,
is that Coughlin and I grew up in the same
area of the country, you know, an upstate Western New York,
(24:48):
where best why I can describe it is it's like upstate,
like the Finger Lakes region in western New York is
more like West Texas than it is New York City,
like it's very See I've lived in West Texas too.
I lived in luck so that's not not topography wise. Yeah,
it's just you know, it's like yeah, it's like it's
a lot more rural and a lot of respects um
(25:10):
and it's uh it but but it's also cloudy all
the damn time. And because of it, I think people
kind of get kind of cynical about stuff and and
sometimes are like just just kind of grumpy, but not
in not in an aggressive way like you might find
in New York City or Boston or something. They're just
kind of grumpy about stuff and they're gonna like they're
(25:31):
gonna find the negative side of of anything, which ultimately,
you know, it resolves itself and everything. But they're always
just kind of looking for the downside of something. And
it serves Coughlin well, because it's a coach. It's like
that's what coaches do. It's like they're just constantly looking
for like, Okay, yeah, well we won, but uh this
part really sucked. So you're never gonna ignore in victory
(25:55):
what you would address and defeat, and which is something
that Jeff Van Gundi, who was all also from my
region of the country said so good. People, by the way,
love Jeff van Gunny. A lot of kids from a
lot of kids listening might not realize that when Jeff
Van Gundy was a coach, he was a grumpy soob
just like Tom Coughlin. This whole like fun loving Rosie
(26:15):
side of Jeff Van Gundhy that didn't emerge until he
got into broadcasting after coach. That's been the coolest thing
because I've I've run into him a few times. He's
a Texans fan and he's he knows, he knows the franchise.
I mean, he's he's got a zillion great stories, and
I mean, yeah, I've had a lot of fun talk
with him. I did not know that about Coughlin and
him being near you. Is it how close to like
(26:37):
Cooperstown in Utica where that's like a ways the way,
that's a few hours over that's like over central part
of Albany than we are. Yeah, I think Utica. Yeah,
it's on the way to I just take that. So
like Jeff Van Gundy's from I think he's from Rockport
originally got like a little suburb of Rochester. Tom Cofflin's
from Waterloo, which is way out but a suburb kind
(26:58):
of a Rochester for like an hour away, and like,
I'm smacked that between those two. All right, for those
of you listening, this is Seth Payne. We're talking with
original Texan and it's kind of one of those things.
This is not the most comprehensive conversation with Seth. It's
kind of like we're skipping a stone. It's hitting the
water a few different spots, and we're picking up little
points in Seth's life. Maybe we can do this again.
(27:18):
I hope, I'd like to do this again. But right now, man, Yeah, well,
you go to the Texans. I mean, you're in that
expansion draft and that first year, the first few years rough,
but geez, you guys had some damn good defenses that
you were a part of. I mean, do you look
back at those years and think she should we? Really
kind of things got squandered, you know, like that those
(27:40):
defenses were on kind of got squandered because of what
was going on. Just that the growth that needed to
happen offensively, Yeah, it was. That was It's a shame
because sometimes when I look back over them, like the
stats from two thousand and two where like if you
look at DVOA or some of those things, we were
respect but and I like I say this without like
(28:03):
trying to criticize the offense right right, And that wasn't
mean I don't know about how good you guys were. Yeah, yeah,
I guess because the offense had six rookies starting on it,
Like it was just it was a bad offense, but
it was through no fault of the guys on Like
Chester Pitts was gonna end up being a really good
offensive tackle, but he was one of six rookies starting
on that team at the time, um in including the quarterback,
(28:26):
which is almost like having three rookies starting. So that
part of it kind of you know, skewed the defensive
stats because we were out on the field so much.
But yeah, those those guys that I got to play
on on that defense, Um, it was really it was
really some of my favorite times playing football because because A,
(28:47):
there were a lot of guys that were just super professional, um,
that just played their butts off, that knew a whole
lot about football. UM. But then B you take those
guys and there was a lot of pressure on us
to be like we had to be the reason we're
gonna win football games. Yeah, it was. If we were
gonna win, it was gonna be ten to seven or
(29:07):
thirteen to three or something like. It was it was
gonna be a close, hard fought game, or like in
the case of that Steelers game that year, we were
gonna have created four turnovers and scored twice on defense.
So um like I like, I think there were various
times when I was playing nose tackle in a three
four and that was the first time I'd ever played
that position. And the thing is like a lot of
(29:30):
times people will they'll heap so much praise on a
nose tackle for being underappreciated that I feel like sometimes
you end up being over appreciated. They'll say, like there's
so many articles written about like, well, this guy's underappreciated,
Like how many I've got like eight different headlines of
me being underappreciated. I kind of feel like because because
(29:50):
the theory is like, oh, okay, well, the nose tackles
taking up a lot of space and helping out the
linebackers behind them. The other side of that equation in
a three four defense is that linebackers behind you are
taking a lot of a heat off of you as
a nose tackle. So like when when I had over
those first couple of years, Um, Jay Foreman and Jamie Sharper,
(30:12):
Uh really at times, two guys who gobbled up tackles. Yeah,
guys like they were old school inside linebackers that just
came up and filled the hole and weren't afraid to
take on guards like they were. Very few linebackers take
on guards these days, like really take on guards, And
those two guys like did it that old school way.
(30:34):
So I kind of just I just felt really lucky
to play with guys like that who were just super
professional about their business in a way that um that
some guys frankly aren't. And like, I don't want to
start going through the list because I'll forget people, but
there are a lot of guys like that. And then
you know, and Gary Walker and I got to end
up playing together as teammates for a total of gosh,
(30:57):
I think seven years. That's rare. That's where, especially two
teams like that, I mean, that's where. Yeah, and he's
another guy that, like I always noticed the difference between
if Gary was in the game, Uh, it wasn't as
physically painful because he soaked up a lot of double teams.
Gary left. It was like, oh, well, let's pick on
somebody else now, And it was like football was a
(31:18):
way more painful game. Okay, properly appreciated, underappreciated, over appreciated,
whatever the level of appreciation. I have noticed I've been
with the Texans since oh nine, I have noticed that
you can't say you know what to the nose tackle
in the locker room that because like, nobody's gonna like that.
Everyone has respect for the nose tackle. Oh there was you,
(31:39):
whether Sean Cody, whether it was or not. I was
gonna say, DJ reader pick it. I mean, everybody loves
respects and just gives it up for the nose tackles. Yeah,
you guys seem to have like a kinship too over
the years. It's another cool part of it. Um, I'm
glad you said it actually that way too, because well,
(31:59):
for for one, yeah, gar Gary never stopped messing with me,
So there's that. But um, I think that the thing
about playing nose tackle, that's really cool because again I
hadn't really I had never played that position in A
three four before. Is it like everybody sees it? Like
everybody sees the abuse, the physical abuse that you've taken,
and a lot of times guys don't realize it until
they're watching and you're in a team meeting, and you know,
(32:22):
usually defensive coordinators are really good about pointing it out
when somebody makes tackle for a loss, but the nose
tackle is like upside down soaking up three three offensive linemen,
It's like they'll point it out. And that was always
Actually one of my other favorite things playing in a
three four for the Texans was when one of the
(32:42):
defensive backs would say something to me like after like
if I made a play after getting combo blocked or
something like that, when the defensive backs compliment you and
you could tell that they noticed it, like while they
were watching. Um, sometimes you can really hear it across
from the hall when they get super excited about something
and then somebody will duck their head in and uh,
it sound like Dante Robinson will duck their head in,
(33:04):
like in the middle of our meeting. They're like, damn Gary,
like we just we just saw you do whatever, and um,
that part's really cool. So when you when you get
earned the respect of the defensive backs, who are you know,
got their whole host of issues to worry about. That
that part's really cool. And what was it like retirement?
I mean, I know everyone has not everyone, but many
have their struggles. When the game's over. You've obviously flourished,
(33:27):
you know, but you you did a lot of stuff
before or in between leaving the Texans and getting on
the radio. What was that that period like were you
because I remember you telling me you ran some marathons
and I was like, yeah, I mean stupid. What was
life like for a little bit? I was like, you know,
it was, um, you know what. This is what I discovered,
(33:47):
and this is what I tell guys, is that I
actually had a pretty good plan for what I wanted
to do. But about a year and a half into it,
I realized that I didn't like any of the things
I was planning doing when I was playing, so or
the things that I had planned out in terms of
a couple of the businesses I was involved in and
what I was doing on a daily basis just wasn't
(34:10):
really actually what I enjoyed doing. So I always try
to tell guys, you know, to be to have a
plan and have options, but to just to anticipate and
expect that there might be some malaise is you really
try to figure out exactly what you want to do
because you never really know. You can do stuff in
the off season and try it out, but you never
really know until you're until you're in it. And I
(34:32):
think for me, probably like, without going into too much detail,
I think one thing that happened was when when you're
a player, sometimes you know, you know, it's drilled into
your head to play for so many things other than
money that you should like you want to care about
things because the money's already there. Like, as soon as
(34:53):
you're in the NFL, you're making more money than probably
anybody in your family has ever made before. So the
money's already there. So if you're using money as a motivator,
it fades really really quickly, right, um, So you got
to find other things that motivate you. And I think
that the one big revelation I kind of had when
I was done playing was that I was doing a
(35:15):
lot of things that I thought were good things, um,
that I thought were you know, productive and good for society.
After I was done, but then also I just like
I like earning a paycheck, Like I started, like I
was lucky. I grew up in a farm where my
family paid me from a very early age work and
I kind of like just from a young age I
was earning a I was earning a paycheck, or I
(35:36):
was at least getting money after I would help pay
and everything because um, and the part of it for
me was just like I just got to get back
to just earning a paycheck and like and working, um,
like not a real job because I don't feel like
I have a real job now. Um, But there's like
there's a whole lot of dignity and honor and just
(35:57):
going out and earning a paycheck. Um. And then sometimes
I think we're bombarded with so many with so many
ted talks and motivational slogans and everything else these days
that I think people people get to the point where
they almost feel guilty or that they feel like it's
not a worthy thing just to be an earner and
a provider, you know, Like, but at the end of
(36:19):
the day, that's really like that's that's the same as
a few hundred years ago when you were going out
and you had to hunt and gather, um, you know,
like that's that's your worth as a human being is
like keeping you and your other human beings alive. So
that's so I just I missed. I missed like working
a real job. So I try. I had to go
about finding a job that wasn't a real job, but
(36:41):
tell myself, it's a real job. And I landed on
sports talk radio. Well, you've been doing it. This is
Seth Pain of Houston Texans and Sports Radio six, and
you've been doing it for the better part of the
last decade. And it seems like you know a hand
in glove, and it's seems like a great job. And
there's obviously tedious day, even the best of jobs have
their tedious day and all that stuff. But I mean,
(37:02):
how much do you just love it? I mean, because
it's like we started this thing. I mean, I'll I
laugh out loud pretty much every time you guys are
on near you, you guys wind up saying something really,
really funny. You come at it. It's obviously you prepare
quite a bit. You're not just talking off the cuff.
I mean, how much fun is the preparation? How much
fun is the execution of it? How much fun is
you know when you're finished for the day and you've
(37:23):
got the whole day in front of you. It's um.
It is. It's a lot of fun, and it is
one of those things like I'm always careful when I
say this, because it doesn't We talked about this this morning.
Actually is like sometimes when you start talking about the
work you put into it or anything, people think you're
complaining about it. Right, That's why I prevaced it. Even
the best jobs have their dumb days, you know, like
they're well, yeah, for us, it's the like, you know,
(37:46):
just like farmers can't control what the weather is going
to do, like sports talk radio hosts can't control when
all of a sudden, like the a topic, like the
biggest thing that people want to talk about, like is
emotionally draining and exhausting everything. So so there's that, but
but but beyond that, like it is um the cool
(38:07):
thing about it and also kind of sometimes the most
frustrating thing about it is that I still have a
hard time explaining to my grandmother what I do for
a living or anybody else. Like if you take a
non sports radio listener and you tell and they ask
you what do you do, and you're like, well, um,
I talked about sports for four hours. I try to
(38:28):
find different angles and topics and things that it's and
it's a hard thing to describe, like how do you
do that for four hours? And really it's Um, I'll
show you here. I'll show you the three ques that
I have in front of me. UM. Because I work,
I'm lucky enough to work. I've had a couple of
great partners. I had Mike Meltzer and now I've got
um Sean penderguest. So basically like my one my one
(38:50):
QE is that showing up on camera. I got a
it's a little low, but I can my one que.
This is great for an audio podcast, but I want
try to see this everybody. It says, uh, what moves
people emotionally? Because I think that, UM, A lot of
times people forget like oh, there we go. What moves
people anyway? Says what moves people emotionally? Uh, listeners, it's
(39:13):
it's a little white slip of paper and black It
said what most people emotionally there regard because there's a tendency,
especially when you are kind of reading and watching a
lot and everything, you get wrapped up on the technical
side of things and you forget that like oh yeah,
like no matter how technically proficient. Somebody is about something
like sports or anything else. It's like what moves them
(39:34):
emotionally is is what they remember and what they want
to listen to and talk about. So we're always trying
to remind ourselves like, all right, where's the emotional side
of this? And that ends up being fun um or
sometimes you know, I, you know, gratifying emotionally what have you?
The other one is I have this little this is
a little prompt that actors use. Yes, and yeah, that's
a that's an improvisation trick, in't it. Yeah, when you're
(39:58):
an improv like you always try to build on the
other person's story or what they've contributed. So instead of
being because especially with me, like I've kind of got it,
you know, I've got a naturally argumentative or devil's advocate
side to me that sometimes sometimes I got to remind
myself like I'm just kind of being a jerk right now,
like instead of I'm not, I'm not adding or building
to this conversation at all. So it ends up being
(40:20):
like if you can create that kind of environment, like
you're always building something, you're building a conversation, and then
the other ones and this is how I protect myself
in the age of social media. Assume positive intent. Yeah, yeah,
so that's a third placard. Assume positive intent because one
thing that I've learned is because a lot of times
either we're debating, we're arguing, or you're just delivering an
(40:40):
impassioned opinion about something, you get into a mode where
almost anything anybody says to you you perceive as like
an argument or a threat. And then, especially if it
comes in on our text line or if it comes
in on social media, devoid of any it's devoid of
any context. You can't see, you can't see body language,
can't hear tone of voice. Yeah, it's yeah, And you
(41:02):
assumes I fly blind. You assume negativity or sarcasm or
an insult or something. So now, I like, I try
to be almost I try to, and people who listen
to my show know that I fail at this um badly,
but I but what I try, what I try to
do is be almost ideally. I'd be like almost like
(41:24):
psychotically positive about things where somebody might insult me and
I'll be like, hey, brother, thanks, and I fall somewhere
in between, you know, yeah, throw the brother in there
and you're good, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, brother, all right,
Like I'll tell them, I'll pray for them, but I
mean it seriously and not passive aggressively. Okay, let's do
a rapid fire to wrap this up. I gotta gotta
(41:47):
close a book on things. Uh, what are your thoughts
as a Cornell grad on Andy Bernard's Cornell aspect of
the Office. What did you think of all that? I
hated it, but it was I had never watched the
Office before. Um yeah, So for the good of connecting
(42:07):
with the audience and for no other reason, I said,
all right, I gotta binge watch the Office. So I
binge watched the Office and um, which was fun obviously,
Like I did it because it was fun, but it
did like I like a huge portion of our audience,
guys my age that have seen every office and quoted
all the time, Like I didn't get the jokes. So
so I watched it and like afterwards, because they're look,
(42:31):
there are a ton of Andy Bernard's out there, especially
like right after they graduate, where they're like kind of
proud of themselves for where they went to school or whatever,
and they try to inject it into everything and it's
just it's it's it's embarrassing. So that part of it was, Yeah,
that was embarrassing. Um. Over time, I've learned to like
appreciate it and laugh at it for what it is,
(42:53):
which is just a stupid joke. Um, like a stupid
joke in a good way, not in all sensitive about
it already type of way. When you get your haircut,
do you enjoy getting the shampoo done first or do
you not want it's shampooed? Oh, that's a good question.
I don't like the shampooing because I feel like it
(43:15):
alters like when you're trying to get if you're a
guy like me who doesn't spend a whole lot of
time like quaffing myself in the morning. Um, I feel
like the I feel like getting it having doing it
when it's wet gives you a misleading view of what
it's gonna look like. So I actually before I like
just going to a barber and just getting it done. Boom.
(43:36):
I love the shampoo. It feels good. It's like a
nice scout massage. Last thing. It kind of rough sometimes though, Nah,
you gotta find the right you gotta find the right
right with the magic fingers, dude. Yeah, last one is
a pop tart or ravioli? Oh, is a pop tart
or ravioli? So ravioli? Is that? What types of ravioli
(43:59):
are there? Is there a ravio that isn't just something
that's stuffed with something else? Is it? Really? I think?
But it's uh, but it's gotta be a pasta. Um,
So it's so pop tart is something wrapped with a
wheat based food stuff, but it's not a it's not
a pasta type of food stuff. So no, it's not. Okay,
(44:19):
I'll respect that. I'll respect that's your perspective question though,
that's actually a really good way to put something. I
gotta try to I gotta try to do something, you know,
from left field with these Drews dozens. So that's why
pop tart is a peta more than it is a
pop tart. Oh, yeah, I go with that. It's a
strawberry jam. It's basically that question is a derivation of
(44:42):
is the hot dog of sandwich? Yeah? Yeah, for super
serial blah blah blah blah. You know, so it was
you know, it was a Confucius first asked that question.
It was the about the pop tart. Yeah, I think
he did Let me tell you something. Let me tell
you something. I took a picture of this the other day.
I was it the I was it the airport, and
I got my fortune cookie at the end, and I'm like, man,
(45:05):
you guys are really committing to the bit of having
like a Chinese restaurant with zero Asian people working in it,
because because this is this is the this was the
ancient Chinese wisdom I got in this fortune cookie. Lay
on it sounds like it could have come from uh,
it could have come from my from my Irish Italian
(45:26):
fourth grade gym teacher. Time heals all wounds, keep your
chin up? What the hell kind of that's a that's
the worst fortune cookie I've ever gotten. That. That's horrible.
From my airport Chinese food, my favorite Chinese food place,
that the air step your game up Chinese food airport spot. Well, hey,
this was awesome. I love love getting together, whether you
(45:47):
love connecting with you. I hope you're doing great. Can't
wait to see again soon. Let's please do this again
in the future, and we'll do it. Well, we'll do
another one, but we won't frame it like an interview
because then I end up talking too much. I will
point else. We wanted to hear from you. We wanted
to hear from Oh boy boy, I don't, I don't.
I talked too much. We need more, We need more,
fifty fifty Drew, Seth, it's not a radio show man,
(46:11):
it's not. But we'll see. Yeah, we'll work it out.
Seth Payne, you're the best. Appreciate the time coffee chat
with Drew and Seth coffee chat with Drew and said,
all right, we'll book that. Man. This is, this has been.
Where are they now?
It's always a treat and a pleasure to get to
talk with Seth Payne. He is an original Texan. You
hear him on the radios at Sports Radio six ten
in the mornings with Sean Pendergast. I find myself laughing
out loud at least once a show on the way
into work. And he's been this town for a long
time when away came back. When away came back, kind
(00:20):
of ping pongs all over the place. But Seth, first
things first, how the hell are you? I? I'm good man,
You're right, I do ping pong all over the place,
like Brandy and I have lived. We were counting it
up the other day, and yeah, I think from the
time we first got there and had like a temporary
apartment in two thousand and two, I think it's nine
(00:41):
different places in Houston. We just really yeah, we'd like
to take a sampling of everything. We just now we've
you know, once you have a kid, everything changes. But yeah,
when I was done, when I was done playing football,
we moved hied out a few different cities before we
ended up back here. So um, yeah, ping pong is
the right is the right way? Yeah, and you're doing well, right,
(01:02):
now right. I mean you're kind of doing the remote thing,
and I have a home, if that's what you're Yeah,
I never I never thought you were living in a
tent or in a cardboard box or anything. Yea. Now
I spend um. I go back and forth between like
my wife's hometown, which is close to my hometown in
Houston quite a like quite a lot. Yeah, in a
(01:23):
way that I that I really really liked. Like I
like being able to um kind of get variety and
change things up. And there's times where I can I'm
kind of by myself for seventy two straight hours, or
I can just be a workaholic, you know, or a
sleep aholic like whichever one, or a psychopath. I mean
if you like that, you know, it's kind of the
(01:44):
shining Yeah. I can manage like three different personalities completely
if I if I manage my time, right, I think
that's a sign of brilliance, right, Yeah, one of those things.
All right, let's go back way back when you're growing up.
You had a bit of a rural upbringing in my right,
as far as that goes, not stopbringing, but you had
(02:05):
there's an aspect of it. I mean, well we uh, well, Yeah,
my father was a farmer, and you know, I when
I was born, we were working on a dairy farm.
My father was part of his family's dairy farm with
my grandpa and my uncle. So from the time I
was from you know, zero to five, we lived on farms.
(02:28):
And then my parents got divorced when my dad was
still a farmer, so up through when I was a
teenager before my dad finally got out of farming altogether. Um,
but then even after that, I worked on my grandpa's farm,
I worked on my uncle's farm. So it was a
it was a big part of my life growing up,
and like, you know, a big part of my identity
was that I came from a family of dairy farmers
and it was a I think there's a lot of
(02:49):
it's kind of like unique type of pride in that
because part of the pride is wrapped up in that. Uh,
it's a it's a rough life, like it's a it's
a life that's very very demanding in terms of just
physical work, sleep deprivation, financial uncertainty. Even when things are
(03:09):
going really really well, the next drought or it's going yes,
it has to be the worst part, right, Yeah, that's it.
It totally is like anything in life when there's uncertainty
and you don't have any control over it. It's so
anything that really depends on the weather that that's a
huge source of stress. So I think even my grandpa,
(03:31):
you know, who was I think successful in life. I
just I always growing up, I always felt like everything
was always on the brink of disaster. And it wasn't
until I got older I was like, oh, no, that's
just the way my family handles. That's they do well
because they're constantly preparing for disaster. How long did that
take you to figure that out, though, I mean, that's
it seems you say it like it's, oh, that's like that,
(03:52):
But that's got to be a process that happens in
over years, right. Oh yeah, I'd say I not that long.
By the time I was maybe forty three or four,
for uh that I realized that maybe, yeah, you know,
I always have to worry about everything all the time. Yeah,
it's okay to it's okay, it's okay to enjoy things
a little bit every now and then, you know, in
a good sense. Though, I'm guessing that gave you some
(04:13):
pretty good perspective on things. So when you know, times
got tough in high school or in college or in
the NFL, and you did go through tough times. I'm
not saying they weren't tough, but that kind of helped
you deal with them a little bit better, perhaps, am
I am I, I, you know, I really it's a
shame that kids nowadays and you know, and I would
(04:36):
include that with kids my age growing up. You know,
it wasn't like we're in a grarian society when I
was growing up, So I was in the minority of
kids that like worked really hard physical jobs from a
young age. Um, but it does, it does it teaches
the character and it also it teaches you to have
perspective on things. Um. You know, there are very few
(04:56):
jobs that are as hard as like just really hard
physical labor out in the heat. And you know, you
can have miserable parts of various other jobs. But um like,
once you've been through that and once you've worked really
long hours, and I think really probably the thing that helped,
just thinking back on my brother and me and our
athletic careers, the thing that probably helped the most was
(05:17):
that from a young age, you're working alongside grown men
and trying to keep up with them. So the standard
is always like there's always a really high bar that
you can't reach or attain, and you know you're the
person that's slowing everybody down. So you're just constantly trying
not to be the slowest guy out there, and that
kind of flows over into the way you treat at
(05:37):
sports practice and everything else. So yeah, that was that
was It was a huge, huge part of allowing me
to have some athletic success. I think talking with original
Texans Seth Payne played on the defensive line mainly, it
knows tackle for the Houston Texans when the franchise began.
Seth So you've got that rural background, that that farming background.
But have you all you've always been a pretty voracious reader, right,
(06:00):
You've been You've always been into You've always had your
nose a book for the most Yeah right, yeah, yeah,
I uh yeah. From a young age, I think I
just I took to reading fiction, non fiction, everything particular, Yeah,
really everything. I kind of I'll burn out on nonfiction
and then realize I go, okay, I need to I
(06:21):
need to get out of that, and then I'll then
I'll go on a fiction bender and then realize that
I'm neglecting every other aspect of my life. So um
and then I'll then I'll just ping pong back to
to nonfiction and that. But lately it's been hard. What
are you reading? Yeah, yeah, all right, I'm quote unquote
reading Shogun by James Clavell. Oh. Yeah, that's a I
(06:41):
remember that being on my parents like bookstand or book
bookcase when I was Yeah, that's an oldie, right, so well, okay,
so it was written in the seventies. Yeah, ok, by
this British World War Two veteran who I believe had
been in Japanese pow camps um when he was in
war in World War Two. So when he got out,
he started learning about the Japanese and you know, learned
(07:05):
a great respect for their culture. But it's also it's, uh,
you could tell there's certain parts about it where you
can tell, all right, this was written in the nineteen seventies,
um by like okay, by this English dude who's giving
his version of ancient Japanese culture. And it's hard not
to read it without thinking, like, all right, I gotta
I gotta fact check a lot of this when I'm
(07:26):
done with it, because man, the part, especially where you know,
he's painting this culture where oh yeah, the women are
completely and totally subserving the men, and they just love it.
You know, they love it. They don't really, they don't
even have a problem with it, like all all right, Uh,
there's a I understand the differences of culture and everything.
But anyway, um, but so, what I was gonna tell
(07:48):
you is that I I the mistake I made was
I started listening to books on Audible and I'm kind
of kind of ruined for I listened to a lot
of books these days. So I'm listening to this one.
This one's like fifty hours long. I still I'm still
old school, Like I curl up, you know, in bed
before you know, I go to sleep. I'm laying on
(08:10):
one side read a book that the actual hardcover, never
done a kindle, never done any of that stuff. I'm
I still go to the library when they have you know,
they use book sales and get the fifty cent paper.
I'm a dork, So no, no, no, But that's good
because there is, especially when you're trying to remember something
from earlier in the book, or you just want to
do a good old fashioned dogg ear on it. Yep.
(08:31):
It's you lose something when you don't have that connection
to it, or even just like the geographic location for
remembering where a spot was in a book, because I
mean it's almost in the same way like I can
walk on the field at NRG Stadium and remember specific
things based on where I am on the field, Like
(08:53):
I'll just I'll step in a spot and it just
kind of brings back and it's weird. Um, it's not
don't even think about that I'm trying to do or anything.
But it's really cool. Just even though you know, I've
been all over that field and various moments and everything,
it's still you still got a real strong connection just
to that one specific spot. I bet you really like
the middle of that south end zone the most, don't you.
(09:15):
YEA wrapping up Quincy. Yeah, except you know the problem
with that is I barely remember it. That was one
of those so when when I got the safety, Garry
Walker was like three millimeters behind me, so I got
I ended up getting credit for that sack. Gary Walker
was very very close to share in the sack with me,
and he was the one flexing the cameras were drawn
(09:36):
to afterwards. Yeah, well, and to set things up. To
set things up. Most people know this that are listening
to this, But to set things up. It's late in
the game. Texans are on top. It was seventeen ten,
I believe, but Cowboys had a chance. There's still some time.
You're bet they're backed up and you get through. You
sack Quincy Carter for a safety, Like you say, Gary
Walker is right next to you, he's up flexing the places.
(10:01):
I mean, is the loudest you've ever heard. Yeah, it
just goes bananas, and you guys steals the win. Essentially,
they're not going to come back after that put you
up nineteen ten. It's it's one of the coolest things
that's ever happened to me in my entire life, like
in any realm sports or otherwise. Um, just because of
(10:22):
how unique the situation was with the Texans coming back,
well football coming back to Houston, the NFL coming back
to Houston, Like how pent up the energy of the
fans was, and then just that moment. Yeah, but I usually, like,
I'm not a guy that kind of goes unconscious during
plays A lot a lot of times, you know, especially
(10:42):
the really great athletes will we'll struggle even remember how
a play went, because they're just in that unconscious mode
where that's just going. That was one of those moments
where I think, just because of fatigue, because of everything
I remember. I remember going right up to the snap,
then everything is a blur after that, and I remember
running off, running off to the sideline. Everybody's celebrating and
(11:06):
jumping up and down and everything, and I remember Corey
Sears grabbing me and saying something. I was like, yeah,
what happened. It's like you did that. I was like what,
He's like, you did that? That was you? Oh, that's
what's pretty cool. So I kind of it's funny. I
get to watch that as a spectator, and a lot
(11:29):
of times it will happen is you might you might
remember a play put in your mind everything happened so slowly.
Then when you watch it on film later, especially when
you watch on the TV copy, they're like, wow, that
actually all happened. That thing that felt like it took
twenty nine seconds happened in like a quarter second. And
I get that effect just watching that play, seeing how
quickly it unfolded and everything. It's just kind of fun
(11:52):
to watch as a spectator. So well, It was fun
to watch in an attic apartment in Dallas in two
thousand too, because it was me and a bunch of
my college friends. And they were all mainly I mean
they're from some of them out from from out of town.
They were mainly Cowboys fans. So, um, I was kind
of I was kind of an a hole. Huh. Yeah,
(12:12):
I was doing bananas. So yeah. That was before social
media of any sort, so they still we had camera phones. Yeah,
no risk of embarrassment, you know. Yeah, speak it at will. Yeah,
it was. It was a fun, fun night for sure.
We'll get okay, we'll get into more football later. But
football you're obviously smart guy. It comes time because you're
(12:34):
wrecking shop. In college, you were you were like the
bully and excuse me in high school, right, it comes
time to come. You know. I was bully on the
football field. Bully on the football field. You you were
a nice guy. You were with people. I think, I
say high school and college was similar because I was
a really late bloomer physically, like I grew a bunch
(12:54):
of inches. I grew two inches when I got to college. Um,
but I didn't really have my growth spurt into my
junior year in high school. There's a there was a
poor setup to the question. The question was you did
really well on the field in high school. Obviously the classroom,
but what made you choose Cornell and what else? What
were the other choices available to you? Seth Payne Okay,
So okay. Because I was a late bloomer, I didn't
(13:16):
really have a whole lot of buzz about me going
o my senior year. And you know, i'd grown a
few inches my junior year. Um like like during the
football season my junior year, I was still growing. So
I was just gangly and awkward, you know, and I
was I was starting and I was okay. But I
ended up deciding because we had a state champion wrestler
at heavyweight uh that year when I was a junior
(13:39):
and this kid would have been a senior. I said, well, look,
I've been a varsity wrestler. You know, I wrestled like
one thirty two the year before. But I had grown
and I was at the time the weight classes were
either one seventy seven or two fifteen m and there
was nothing in between, so it was pretty much just like, Okay,
(14:01):
I either like wrestled JV all of a sudden, or
I just don't wrestle at all. So I just I
quit wrestling and decided to just focus on football and
training and everything. In doing that, I remember the wrestling
coach was like, well, Seth's what are you doing. It's
not like you're gonna play in the NFL or anything like.
Don't don't give up this opportunity to be an awesome
JV wrestler for a year. You find him when you
(14:24):
go home and just spike a football in his face
every time you see him. I know, we laugh about it.
He was he was, you know, and honestly he was
making the right argument. It's not like I couldn't have
also kept, you know, gaining weight and everything. It was
just I felt like it was what I wanted to do,
and I actually really committed to it. I had a
friend that I had a friend, Brian Klakota, who, like way,
was way more mature than me. He was a year
(14:45):
older than me and and he was going off to
play in college. So we just worked out every day
for like two and a half hours after school every day,
and I just I kept growing vertically. But then I
just I got a lot bigger and I came back
by the time I was a senior, just like like
a like a little man child, you know. Um So
(15:05):
I played really well my senior in high school, but
my coach was not long for the coaching profession and
he was kind of out to lunch. So after he
got fired at the end of a high school season,
you know, I'd gotten like all county or all whatever
that was all league, but nothing, nothing really not allow
a lot of athletes. Um, this this other kid, Sean
(15:26):
O'Day and I went into his office while we were
working out one day, this is the end of the
football season and junior year, senior year and year, okay,
and we saw a bunch of these questionnaires from colleges
laying on the table like unopened. The envelopes were unopened.
So Sean Sean and I serious, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nothing. Ever,
(15:47):
nobody'd ever shown anything to anybody. So Sean and I
were like, well, what do you think, And they're like,
I know, it's not it's it's not. We just won't
sign any names to it. We'll just fill them out.
So we filled out these questionnaires to different colleges that
we were interested in, and you know, they're all pretty
much local and regional, like my area. The country didn't
get recruited a whole lot at all. So and a
(16:09):
bunch of people in my family had gone to Cornell
and I had, I had, I had really good grades,
but then I had a rough stretch in high school
that knocks me down out of like the top the
top five in my class. Road have you so, but
I was like, you know, let me, I'll just fill
one out for Cornell. And it did, like the appraisal
of the player and everything. Didn't sign it, but just
sent it off to Cornell. And and then like two
(16:34):
weeks later, I get a call while I'm in class,
and it was a coach from Cornell was there kind
of doing a tour of my area and he wanted
to watch some film. So he calls me down. We
sit and I could tell like, I don't think he
was thinking much of me, But then when I walked
in the door, he could tell that I was a
(16:55):
big kid, and uh, you know, he asked who I
had been looking at. It was a bunch of local
Division three school So he's like your early coaches coach
to Stefano, he's still a good friend of mine. To
this day, and he was like, oh, coach, let's this
Italian guy. Uh, let's take a look at Let's see
what you got. So I put a tape in from
one of my games and I could kind of tell,
like I didn't have a whole lot of confidence about it,
(17:17):
but I could kind of tell about like five six
plays into it, and it was we were watching this
game of me versus East Rochester, and I remember this game.
It was it was like I was like, uh, it
was like I was a barbarian sacking of village of peasants.
I was just like picking people up and throwing them around,
like tossing that offensive tackle into the running back and
then yeah, yeah, and uh and I remember coach just
(17:41):
be like okay, okay, so well you're uh so, who's
talking to you? Did you say? And uh like I
don't know, it's just University of Rochester Hobart like oh okay,
um well hey listen, um what do you what are
you doing next weekend? Do you you want to come
take a visit? And it kind of like yeah, yeah, no,
no problem, coach. I was just like us the babe
in the woods, not really knowing much about anything. Um,
(18:04):
so then like a couple of weeks, I kind of
they put it started putting on a full court press,
and uh, my test scores were good enough to get
in and everything. It helped too. It like Cornell is
the only Ivy League school that also has an AGG school,
and it's kinda so it helped me get in there
that I had an agricultural background because there's a fewer
(18:25):
and fewer kids that do, so I was able to
like between football and AGG school, they were able to
overlook the one semester that I had dropped out of
school and driven to Florida and uh and uh and
uh and uh and and contemplated working on a fishing
boat for a few weeks. I want to get into that,
but we don't have time for that. Maybe I'll maybe
(18:46):
the next time you come on this one. But you
go to Cornell, things go well there. But how eye
opening and experience was that for you? Just socially and
academically and everything and being around um, the you know,
the high high achievers that you were around. Then yeah,
it really Um I think when you when you can
(19:06):
go to a school that's got, you know, really tough
admission standards like that, I I don't know how much
better the actual education itself is. I mean, there's really
good professors everywhere, you know, and there's good that the
knowledge is, the knowledge is the knowledge of the books
of the books. UM. The part that is really cool
(19:28):
is I think you do kind of get exposed to
these different types of kids that come from really different backgrounds.
So A, you learn just how a lot of your
you know, preconceptions or prejudices or beliefs about kids from
this area or that area or whatever you have from
(19:49):
growing up, um are really off. But then B two,
I think you just kind of get to learn to
respect different types of achievement, different types of um, I guess,
different types of intelligence because you've got kids that are
math geniuses, UM, and you've got kids that are you know,
(20:10):
artistic geniuses, and like so much you're superior in such
a vast way that, Yeah, you learn a certain humility,
I think, or at least hopefully that's the way it
should work out. Like And I can just remember kind
of being baffled by like how smart a person could be,
like right, because I tried to I tried to get
out and partake of a lot of different things, and
(20:32):
you know, meet people that I wouldn't have ordinarily met.
So that part of it was really like eye opening
to the broader world. So what were you? Was it
like it in the scene and Pitch Perfect on the
first day when they're all going around and filling out,
like for the extracurriculars, and you did you join a
bunch of extracurriculars in addition to football. Where I mean,
was it oh yeah for a little while, but then
it turned to Okay, yeah, I'm painting. I'm painting the
(20:53):
more impressive picture of myself than it actually was. Basically,
I'm just what I mean to say is that, Yeah,
I ended up going into a lot of different bars
where I met a lot of different people, and um no,
but there was well there were yeah, Like there are
a couple of different like charitable organizations that I was
(21:16):
lucky enough to be a part of that. We're also
kind of like social club type of things. Um so
you kind of mixed both of those worlds and that's
where I like, honestly, the biggest culture shock for me
there at that type of school was the um I
was just around I was around like really rich people
for the first time in my life. Um, because I've
been around really poor people a good chunk because I was,
(21:38):
you know, we were. But part of it was growing
up like in like barefoot poor in North Carolina for
like a certain stretch of time. And then and then
I've been around you know, like like people in the suburbs,
and I've been around people in the country and everything,
but like that whole environment of like prep school, elite,
(22:00):
rich kids, and I think that's like of all the
prejudices that I might have had as a young man,
I was really like I had like a chip on
my shoulder about rich kids, and it was really it
was it was kind of cool to see that, Yeah,
sometimes those stereotypes are true. Um. And sometimes just like
in any other walk of life, like people can be bastards. Um.
(22:21):
But then a lot of times, like a lot of
my preconceptions or misconceptions about successful people um or wealthy
people or anything like that were just way out of line.
Uh and and kind of that that there's uh like
it was it was one of those ways of like
really learning to judge people, um with by while stripping
(22:41):
away all their appearances. So I think a lot of
times we think of like you know, not judging. Yeah,
like not judging somebody that's um, not judging that somebody
that's poor, or judging somebody by a lack of something. Um.
But I was really like, I was a complete hypocrite
when it came to like judging people for like otherwise
benefit official things. I was real like, I was really
(23:02):
kind of a jerk about it. Yeah. I've heard your
I've heard your tales, you know, in the car talking
about what was it, people that vacation or people that
didn't have to work, and you're like, I guess growing
up you'd heard oh yeah, yeah, No. I I just
felt like, yeah, I thought teachers were rich. I thought
so it was that if you had a family, if
you were a kid and both your parents were teachers
(23:24):
and you owned an RV, I thought you were loaded
because you got to like you went down vacation in
the summer and everything. So yeah, it's just a good
life right there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah that was Tyler Tilling.
I thought like, I was like, oh, man, Tyler is rich.
That's what are his parents? They're both teachers, all right?
(23:44):
So you you wind up getting drafted by the Jacksonville
Jaguars and kind of the overriding thing over the last
few years that I've gathered from you is you have
a deep respect for Tom Coughlin despite some of the
kind of old school, maybe questionably dumb stuff that he
did as a coach, But you still respect because he
(24:05):
was a winner. He did wind up winning, and he,
I mean, he was a really impressive coach. Am I
off base in that I think that I think in
a lot of ways, players who have played for Tom
Coughlin as they get older kind of respect him the
same way you might respect a disciplinarian father, where when
(24:25):
you're growing up, you might just you know, you might
feel like he hate him because he's so tough on you.
And then you get older and you start to realize, like, okay,
there's a different side to him, and you understand why
he does the things he does and why he is
so tough on you. And then part of it, too,
is that Coughlin and I grew up in the same
area of the country, you know, an upstate Western New York,
(24:48):
where best why I can describe it is it's like upstate,
like the Finger Lakes region in western New York is
more like West Texas than it is New York City,
like it's very See I've lived in West Texas too.
I lived in luck so that's not not topography wise. Yeah,
it's just you know, it's like yeah, it's like it's
a lot more rural and a lot of respects um
(25:10):
and it's uh it but but it's also cloudy all
the damn time. And because of it, I think people
kind of get kind of cynical about stuff and and
sometimes are like just just kind of grumpy, but not
in not in an aggressive way like you might find
in New York City or Boston or something. They're just
kind of grumpy about stuff and they're gonna like they're
(25:31):
gonna find the negative side of of anything, which ultimately,
you know, it resolves itself and everything. But they're always
just kind of looking for the downside of something. And
it serves Coughlin well, because it's a coach. It's like
that's what coaches do. It's like they're just constantly looking
for like, Okay, yeah, well we won, but uh this
part really sucked. So you're never gonna ignore in victory
(25:55):
what you would address and defeat, and which is something
that Jeff Van Gundi, who was all also from my
region of the country said so good. People, by the way,
love Jeff van Gunny. A lot of kids from a
lot of kids listening might not realize that when Jeff
Van Gundy was a coach, he was a grumpy soob
just like Tom Coughlin. This whole like fun loving Rosie
(26:15):
side of Jeff Van Gundhy that didn't emerge until he
got into broadcasting after coach. That's been the coolest thing
because I've I've run into him a few times. He's
a Texans fan and he's he knows, he knows the franchise.
I mean, he's he's got a zillion great stories, and
I mean, yeah, I've had a lot of fun talk
with him. I did not know that about Coughlin and
him being near you. Is it how close to like
(26:37):
Cooperstown in Utica where that's like a ways the way,
that's a few hours over that's like over central part
of Albany than we are. Yeah, I think Utica. Yeah,
it's on the way to I just take that. So
like Jeff Van Gundy's from I think he's from Rockport
originally got like a little suburb of Rochester. Tom Cofflin's
from Waterloo, which is way out but a suburb kind
(26:58):
of a Rochester for like an hour away, and like,
I'm smacked that between those two. All right, for those
of you listening, this is Seth Payne. We're talking with
original Texan and it's kind of one of those things.
This is not the most comprehensive conversation with Seth. It's
kind of like we're skipping a stone. It's hitting the
water a few different spots, and we're picking up little
points in Seth's life. Maybe we can do this again.
(27:18):
I hope, I'd like to do this again. But right now, man, Yeah, well,
you go to the Texans. I mean, you're in that
expansion draft and that first year, the first few years rough,
but geez, you guys had some damn good defenses that
you were a part of. I mean, do you look
back at those years and think she should we? Really
kind of things got squandered, you know, like that those
(27:40):
defenses were on kind of got squandered because of what
was going on. Just that the growth that needed to
happen offensively, Yeah, it was. That was It's a shame
because sometimes when I look back over them, like the
stats from two thousand and two where like if you
look at DVOA or some of those things, we were
respect but and I like I say this without like
(28:03):
trying to criticize the offense right right, And that wasn't
mean I don't know about how good you guys were. Yeah, yeah,
I guess because the offense had six rookies starting on it,
Like it was just it was a bad offense, but
it was through no fault of the guys on Like
Chester Pitts was gonna end up being a really good
offensive tackle, but he was one of six rookies starting
on that team at the time, um in including the quarterback,
(28:26):
which is almost like having three rookies starting. So that
part of it kind of you know, skewed the defensive
stats because we were out on the field so much.
But yeah, those those guys that I got to play
on on that defense, Um, it was really it was
really some of my favorite times playing football because because A,
(28:47):
there were a lot of guys that were just super professional, um,
that just played their butts off, that knew a whole
lot about football. UM. But then B you take those
guys and there was a lot of pressure on us
to be like we had to be the reason we're
gonna win football games. Yeah, it was. If we were
gonna win, it was gonna be ten to seven or
(29:07):
thirteen to three or something like. It was it was
gonna be a close, hard fought game, or like in
the case of that Steelers game that year, we were
gonna have created four turnovers and scored twice on defense.
So um like I like, I think there were various
times when I was playing nose tackle in a three
four and that was the first time I'd ever played
that position. And the thing is like a lot of
(29:30):
times people will they'll heap so much praise on a
nose tackle for being underappreciated that I feel like sometimes
you end up being over appreciated. They'll say, like there's
so many articles written about like, well, this guy's underappreciated,
Like how many I've got like eight different headlines of
me being underappreciated. I kind of feel like because because
(29:50):
the theory is like, oh, okay, well, the nose tackles
taking up a lot of space and helping out the
linebackers behind them. The other side of that equation in
a three four defense is that linebackers behind you are
taking a lot of a heat off of you as
a nose tackle. So like when when I had over
those first couple of years, Um, Jay Foreman and Jamie Sharper,
(30:12):
Uh really at times, two guys who gobbled up tackles. Yeah,
guys like they were old school inside linebackers that just
came up and filled the hole and weren't afraid to
take on guards like they were. Very few linebackers take
on guards these days, like really take on guards, And
those two guys like did it that old school way.
(30:34):
So I kind of just I just felt really lucky
to play with guys like that who were just super
professional about their business in a way that um that
some guys frankly aren't. And like, I don't want to
start going through the list because I'll forget people, but
there are a lot of guys like that. And then
you know, and Gary Walker and I got to end
up playing together as teammates for a total of gosh,
(30:57):
I think seven years. That's rare. That's where, especially two
teams like that, I mean, that's where. Yeah, and he's
another guy that, like I always noticed the difference between
if Gary was in the game, Uh, it wasn't as
physically painful because he soaked up a lot of double teams.
Gary left. It was like, oh, well, let's pick on
somebody else now, And it was like football was a
(31:18):
way more painful game. Okay, properly appreciated, underappreciated, over appreciated,
whatever the level of appreciation. I have noticed I've been
with the Texans since oh nine, I have noticed that
you can't say you know what to the nose tackle
in the locker room that because like, nobody's gonna like that.
Everyone has respect for the nose tackle. Oh there was you,
(31:39):
whether Sean Cody, whether it was or not. I was
gonna say, DJ reader pick it. I mean, everybody loves
respects and just gives it up for the nose tackles. Yeah,
you guys seem to have like a kinship too over
the years. It's another cool part of it. Um, I'm
glad you said it actually that way too, because well,
(31:59):
for for one, yeah, gar Gary never stopped messing with me,
So there's that. But um, I think that the thing
about playing nose tackle, that's really cool because again I
hadn't really I had never played that position in A
three four before. Is it like everybody sees it? Like
everybody sees the abuse, the physical abuse that you've taken,
and a lot of times guys don't realize it until
they're watching and you're in a team meeting, and you know,
(32:22):
usually defensive coordinators are really good about pointing it out
when somebody makes tackle for a loss, but the nose
tackle is like upside down soaking up three three offensive linemen,
It's like they'll point it out. And that was always
Actually one of my other favorite things playing in a
three four for the Texans was when one of the
(32:42):
defensive backs would say something to me like after like
if I made a play after getting combo blocked or
something like that, when the defensive backs compliment you and
you could tell that they noticed it, like while they
were watching. Um, sometimes you can really hear it across
from the hall when they get super excited about something
and then somebody will duck their head in and uh,
it sound like Dante Robinson will duck their head in,
(33:04):
like in the middle of our meeting. They're like, damn Gary,
like we just we just saw you do whatever, and um,
that part's really cool. So when you when you get
earned the respect of the defensive backs, who are you know,
got their whole host of issues to worry about. That
that part's really cool. And what was it like retirement?
I mean, I know everyone has not everyone, but many
have their struggles. When the game's over. You've obviously flourished,
(33:27):
you know, but you you did a lot of stuff
before or in between leaving the Texans and getting on
the radio. What was that that period like were you
because I remember you telling me you ran some marathons
and I was like, yeah, I mean stupid. What was
life like for a little bit? I was like, you know,
it was, um, you know what. This is what I discovered,
(33:47):
and this is what I tell guys, is that I
actually had a pretty good plan for what I wanted
to do. But about a year and a half into it,
I realized that I didn't like any of the things
I was planning doing when I was playing, so or
the things that I had planned out in terms of
a couple of the businesses I was involved in and
what I was doing on a daily basis just wasn't
(34:10):
really actually what I enjoyed doing. So I always try
to tell guys, you know, to be to have a
plan and have options, but to just to anticipate and
expect that there might be some malaise is you really
try to figure out exactly what you want to do
because you never really know. You can do stuff in
the off season and try it out, but you never
really know until you're until you're in it. And I
(34:32):
think for me, probably like, without going into too much detail,
I think one thing that happened was when when you're
a player, sometimes you know, you know, it's drilled into
your head to play for so many things other than
money that you should like you want to care about
things because the money's already there. Like, as soon as
(34:53):
you're in the NFL, you're making more money than probably
anybody in your family has ever made before. So the
money's already there. So if you're using money as a motivator,
it fades really really quickly, right, um, So you got
to find other things that motivate you. And I think
that the one big revelation I kind of had when
I was done playing was that I was doing a
(35:15):
lot of things that I thought were good things, um,
that I thought were you know, productive and good for society.
After I was done, but then also I just like
I like earning a paycheck, Like I started, like I
was lucky. I grew up in a farm where my
family paid me from a very early age work and
I kind of like just from a young age I
was earning a I was earning a paycheck, or I
(35:36):
was at least getting money after I would help pay
and everything because um, and the part of it for
me was just like I just got to get back
to just earning a paycheck and like and working, um,
like not a real job because I don't feel like
I have a real job now. Um, But there's like
there's a whole lot of dignity and honor and just
(35:57):
going out and earning a paycheck. Um. And then sometimes
I think we're bombarded with so many with so many
ted talks and motivational slogans and everything else these days
that I think people people get to the point where
they almost feel guilty or that they feel like it's
not a worthy thing just to be an earner and
a provider, you know, Like, but at the end of
(36:19):
the day, that's really like that's that's the same as
a few hundred years ago when you were going out
and you had to hunt and gather, um, you know,
like that's that's your worth as a human being is
like keeping you and your other human beings alive. So
that's so I just I missed. I missed like working
a real job. So I try. I had to go
about finding a job that wasn't a real job, but
(36:41):
tell myself, it's a real job. And I landed on
sports talk radio. Well, you've been doing it. This is
Seth Pain of Houston Texans and Sports Radio six, and
you've been doing it for the better part of the
last decade. And it seems like you know a hand
in glove, and it's seems like a great job. And
there's obviously tedious day, even the best of jobs have
their tedious day and all that stuff. But I mean,
(37:02):
how much do you just love it? I mean, because
it's like we started this thing. I mean, I'll I
laugh out loud pretty much every time you guys are
on near you, you guys wind up saying something really,
really funny. You come at it. It's obviously you prepare
quite a bit. You're not just talking off the cuff.
I mean, how much fun is the preparation? How much
fun is the execution of it? How much fun is
you know when you're finished for the day and you've
(37:23):
got the whole day in front of you. It's um.
It is. It's a lot of fun, and it is
one of those things like I'm always careful when I
say this, because it doesn't We talked about this this morning.
Actually is like sometimes when you start talking about the
work you put into it or anything, people think you're
complaining about it. Right, That's why I prevaced it. Even
the best jobs have their dumb days, you know, like
they're well, yeah, for us, it's the like, you know,
(37:46):
just like farmers can't control what the weather is going
to do, like sports talk radio hosts can't control when
all of a sudden, like the a topic, like the
biggest thing that people want to talk about, like is
emotionally draining and exhausting everything. So so there's that, but
but but beyond that, like it is um the cool
(38:07):
thing about it and also kind of sometimes the most
frustrating thing about it is that I still have a
hard time explaining to my grandmother what I do for
a living or anybody else. Like if you take a
non sports radio listener and you tell and they ask
you what do you do, and you're like, well, um,
I talked about sports for four hours. I try to
(38:28):
find different angles and topics and things that it's and
it's a hard thing to describe, like how do you
do that for four hours? And really it's Um, I'll
show you here. I'll show you the three ques that
I have in front of me. UM. Because I work,
I'm lucky enough to work. I've had a couple of
great partners. I had Mike Meltzer and now I've got
um Sean penderguest. So basically like my one my one
(38:50):
QE is that showing up on camera. I got a
it's a little low, but I can my one que.
This is great for an audio podcast, but I want
try to see this everybody. It says, uh, what moves
people emotionally? Because I think that, UM, A lot of
times people forget like oh, there we go. What moves
people anyway? Says what moves people emotionally? Uh, listeners, it's
(39:13):
it's a little white slip of paper and black It
said what most people emotionally there regard because there's a tendency,
especially when you are kind of reading and watching a
lot and everything, you get wrapped up on the technical
side of things and you forget that like oh yeah,
like no matter how technically proficient. Somebody is about something
like sports or anything else. It's like what moves them
(39:34):
emotionally is is what they remember and what they want
to listen to and talk about. So we're always trying
to remind ourselves like, all right, where's the emotional side
of this? And that ends up being fun um or
sometimes you know, I, you know, gratifying emotionally what have you?
The other one is I have this little this is
a little prompt that actors use. Yes, and yeah, that's
a that's an improvisation trick, in't it. Yeah, when you're
(39:58):
an improv like you always try to build on the
other person's story or what they've contributed. So instead of
being because especially with me, like I've kind of got it,
you know, I've got a naturally argumentative or devil's advocate
side to me that sometimes sometimes I got to remind
myself like I'm just kind of being a jerk right now,
like instead of I'm not, I'm not adding or building
to this conversation at all. So it ends up being
(40:20):
like if you can create that kind of environment, like
you're always building something, you're building a conversation, and then
the other ones and this is how I protect myself
in the age of social media. Assume positive intent. Yeah, yeah,
so that's a third placard. Assume positive intent because one
thing that I've learned is because a lot of times
either we're debating, we're arguing, or you're just delivering an
(40:40):
impassioned opinion about something, you get into a mode where
almost anything anybody says to you you perceive as like
an argument or a threat. And then, especially if it
comes in on our text line or if it comes
in on social media, devoid of any it's devoid of
any context. You can't see, you can't see body language,
can't hear tone of voice. Yeah, it's yeah, And you
(41:02):
assumes I fly blind. You assume negativity or sarcasm or
an insult or something. So now, I like, I try
to be almost I try to, and people who listen
to my show know that I fail at this um badly,
but I but what I try, what I try to
do is be almost ideally. I'd be like almost like
(41:24):
psychotically positive about things where somebody might insult me and
I'll be like, hey, brother, thanks, and I fall somewhere
in between, you know, yeah, throw the brother in there
and you're good, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, brother, all right,
Like I'll tell them, I'll pray for them, but I
mean it seriously and not passive aggressively. Okay, let's do
a rapid fire to wrap this up. I gotta gotta
(41:47):
close a book on things. Uh, what are your thoughts
as a Cornell grad on Andy Bernard's Cornell aspect of
the Office. What did you think of all that? I
hated it, but it was I had never watched the
Office before. Um yeah, So for the good of connecting
(42:07):
with the audience and for no other reason, I said,
all right, I gotta binge watch the Office. So I
binge watched the Office and um, which was fun obviously,
Like I did it because it was fun, but it
did like I like a huge portion of our audience,
guys my age that have seen every office and quoted
all the time, Like I didn't get the jokes. So
so I watched it and like afterwards, because they're look,
(42:31):
there are a ton of Andy Bernard's out there, especially
like right after they graduate, where they're like kind of
proud of themselves for where they went to school or whatever,
and they try to inject it into everything and it's
just it's it's it's embarrassing. So that part of it was, Yeah,
that was embarrassing. Um. Over time, I've learned to like
appreciate it and laugh at it for what it is,
(42:53):
which is just a stupid joke. Um, like a stupid
joke in a good way, not in all sensitive about
it already type of way. When you get your haircut,
do you enjoy getting the shampoo done first or do
you not want it's shampooed? Oh, that's a good question.
I don't like the shampooing because I feel like it
(43:15):
alters like when you're trying to get if you're a
guy like me who doesn't spend a whole lot of
time like quaffing myself in the morning. Um, I feel
like the I feel like getting it having doing it
when it's wet gives you a misleading view of what
it's gonna look like. So I actually before I like
just going to a barber and just getting it done. Boom.
(43:36):
I love the shampoo. It feels good. It's like a
nice scout massage. Last thing. It kind of rough sometimes though, Nah,
you gotta find the right you gotta find the right
right with the magic fingers, dude. Yeah, last one is
a pop tart or ravioli? Oh, is a pop tart
or ravioli? So ravioli? Is that? What types of ravioli
(43:59):
are there? Is there a ravio that isn't just something
that's stuffed with something else? Is it? Really? I think?
But it's uh, but it's gotta be a pasta. Um,
So it's so pop tart is something wrapped with a
wheat based food stuff, but it's not a it's not
a pasta type of food stuff. So no, it's not. Okay,
(44:19):
I'll respect that. I'll respect that's your perspective question though,
that's actually a really good way to put something. I
gotta try to I gotta try to do something, you know,
from left field with these Drews dozens. So that's why
pop tart is a peta more than it is a
pop tart. Oh, yeah, I go with that. It's a
strawberry jam. It's basically that question is a derivation of
(44:42):
is the hot dog of sandwich? Yeah? Yeah, for super
serial blah blah blah blah. You know, so it was
you know, it was a Confucius first asked that question.
It was the about the pop tart. Yeah, I think
he did Let me tell you something. Let me tell
you something. I took a picture of this the other day.
I was it the I was it the airport, and
I got my fortune cookie at the end, and I'm like, man,
(45:05):
you guys are really committing to the bit of having
like a Chinese restaurant with zero Asian people working in it,
because because this is this is the this was the
ancient Chinese wisdom I got in this fortune cookie. Lay
on it sounds like it could have come from uh,
it could have come from my from my Irish Italian
(45:26):
fourth grade gym teacher. Time heals all wounds, keep your
chin up? What the hell kind of that's a that's
the worst fortune cookie I've ever gotten. That. That's horrible.
From my airport Chinese food, my favorite Chinese food place,
that the air step your game up Chinese food airport spot. Well, hey,
this was awesome. I love love getting together, whether you
(45:47):
love connecting with you. I hope you're doing great. Can't
wait to see again soon. Let's please do this again
in the future, and we'll do it. Well, we'll do
another one, but we won't frame it like an interview
because then I end up talking too much. I will
point else. We wanted to hear from you. We wanted
to hear from Oh boy boy, I don't, I don't.
I talked too much. We need more, We need more,
fifty fifty Drew, Seth, it's not a radio show man,
(46:11):
it's not. But we'll see. Yeah, we'll work it out.
Seth Payne, you're the best. Appreciate the time coffee chat
with Drew and Seth coffee chat with Drew and said,
all right, we'll book that. Man. This is, this has been.
Where are they now?
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!