May 26, 2025 • 47 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's happening? Everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Welcome into Memorial Day Monday at ISS Texans All Access.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
I'm your host, John Harris foot Playan, a sideline reporter for.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Your Houston Texans, and obviously on a day as such,
we recognize all of those that have given their lives
for this country, fighting for our military and fighting for
all of us here back in the United States. Much
love to everybody that has given their lives, given their time,
their effort, their blood, their sweat, their tears for this country.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
A hearty salute to you.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
On this Monday, and on this Monday, we're going to
recognize a great American.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
He being Seth Pain.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Set joined us for what was one of the best
discussions I think we've had with a former player, cohort friend.
He is all of that, and we just dove right
in and figured, you know what this is about the
length of a show, So let's do it. Memorial Monday
Show with Seth Pain, original Texan.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Let's rock all right?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Joining us now, Seth Payne, and this is not your
normal Seth Pain type visit where we talk about it's
game day. Everybody's at fever pitch right now. The hair
is standing up in the back of my neck. It
is anyway, but for different reasons, because we're going to
talk to Seth about his life and career and the
rest of it.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
Seth, how's it going.
Speaker 5 (01:20):
It's good. I'm flattered that you would have me on.
Thank you. Well. I never do interviews about myself anymore,
so I'm a little out of practice.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
You know, when you were a player, you were a
go to guy because you were such a good interview
and I'm sure you still do, and I know you
do a lot of out of town stuff about hey,
what's up with the Texans this week's game or the
draft or whatever, but it's not really about Seth Pain.
What was it like when you were a player and
people peppering you with questions and a lot of that
was about the game too, but you got a lot
(01:50):
of life of Seth Payn type interviews as well.
Speaker 5 (01:55):
That was always interesting and it's nice that people are
interested in you. Yes, the one thing I remember learning
very early on my rookie year because it wasn't like
I'd had a bunch of interviews in high school or college,
because I didn't go to high profile schools and I
wasn't a high profile player. I remember I remember just
kind of philosophizing about how there's certain parts of getting
(02:19):
a college education that are either probably overblown or at
least overrated the system. I think perhaps maybe over I
remember just kind of casually just talking about it, and
when that's put into print form and it's the pro
football player says going to college is overrated, I was like, oh,
(02:40):
I got to be really careful about how I discussed
these things, because it's not like these days where you
can have a podcast and talk about it for forty
five minutes. I tried to talk with Nuance about something
that ended up being kind of something that somebody people
were angry about, so that there was always when you're
an athlete, and when people complain about bland quotes from athletes,
(03:01):
it's that usually most of them know and understand that,
like any little thing, any answer I give about this
is going to be blown up and dissected so many
different ways that I'm just I'm just going to go
with the Bland route. Seth.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
If you'd have been a player now and you talk
about podcasts, there's so many different players with podcasts now,
and I always kind of cringe when I'm like, oh god,
somebody said on his podcast about this and that the other.
I mean, I'm on Ross Saint Brown and his brother Equanimius.
There's always something that happens between them. Would you have
ever started your own podcast as a player?
Speaker 5 (03:35):
No, no, no, because I was the opposite, I think,
just with the dynamic that I just talked about. And
then also, I mean it was a different time too,
where there was still more of there were clear lines
between the media and players, and there was always a
feeling that you don't want to be uh. I won't
use the term that you would use, but basically somebody
(03:57):
who was a little too liberal with the media, you're
like a media hussy. Yeah, And I always I always
felt that, you know, my first responsibility, first and foremost
was to my teammates, and as I got older, I
actually probably be started being less and less available to
the media, just in that I never wanted to be
the guy, especially if you're on a struggling team that
(04:20):
that gave one of those sound bites or something that
could be used the wrong way. So I definitely I
would have shied away from it just because I wouldn't
want to do And you know how it is when
you get on a podcast, you get, you get, you
hit that forty five minute mark, and all of a sudden,
you forget that you're talking into a microphone. And that's when,
all of a sudden, yeah, yeah, unintentionally criticize a teammate
or something. So I probably I probably wouldn't have been
(04:42):
into it all that much.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
That is so well said. It's kind of like the
Runners High.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
You know, you reach a point where it doesn't matter anymore,
and I think your right sets we need a term
for that, at the forty five minute mark approximately of
a podcast, where it just all breaks down, All the
walls come down, the filters are off, and that's when
the good stuff really comes out.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
I've got a physiological explanation for that too, because the
Runners High, it is around the forty five minute mark
where your body kind of kicks into burning fat more
than carbohydrates, and you do It's a different feel and
whatever however that happens psychologically, I think the same thing
happens around forty five minutes. When we had when John
and I were interviewing Rusty Hardin and Russia made a
(05:22):
comment about the legality of certain things that can happen
in a massage. It was like, at the forty seven
minute mark of the interview, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
That and that was the money.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
It was the money quote absolutely, and I thought, oh
my gosh, he just destroyed the whole industry with one quote.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Affected it.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
I should say, not destroyed, because I guess it's still
going on.
Speaker 5 (05:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I mean, set you go from you know, a podcast
where you talk pretty much, you talked for four hours.
How comfortable have you gotten in doing that every single
day and finding topics that you could talk about where
you know, obviously you take breaks every fifteen to twenty
minutes or or though it might be. But I know,
listen you gouts, I know the pattern from seven to
seven forty one, you guys go straight through. Do you
(06:05):
have some of those same kind of moments when you
guys are going at that pace?
Speaker 5 (06:08):
I think no, because I mean, for one, so much
of it is about the person you're paired with. Like
obviously you guys have an awesome chemistry, and there's a
trust factor that starts to build into it where you
don't worry about it. And with Sean, I mean, for one,
Sean is so good at preparing and getting ready for
the show that I never feel like we don't know
(06:29):
where we're going, and really, for the most part, as
long as we have a couple bullet points about something,
I know. It's the way it works with Sean and
I is almost like he's my teacher and he's giving
me reading assignments, and by and large, I'm pretty good
at you know, Like I don't, I try to have
more than a surface level understanding of what we're going
to be talking about. So I'm reading articles, I'm watching
(06:52):
extra I'm trying to seek out other people's opinions, and
so for us, it's usually it feels like there's a
lot of meat on left on the bone, like we
have a we have a hard time getting to our
break on time because we always feel like there's something
extra to talk about. And I've and I've been lucky
because I've only had two co hosts, and Meltzer and
I were kind of that same way. So I don't
I can't really speak to what it would be like
(07:15):
if I was with somebody that I hated, that wasn't
saying things that that tweak your tweak my mind. Like
I always go into a segment knowing that Sean's going
to say something that I didn't think about, or have
a perspective that I that I hadn't thought of. So
it's it's fun because it's just you can be curious,
you know, and you can kind of approach things with
(07:36):
an open mind and have an actual conversation. So that
that part of it for me, just by virtue of
having a really good co host. I don't like. I
never it's hard to explain to people, like I hate
it when I hate it when I hate it when
a non sports radio listener ask me what I do,
because it always ends up sounding vapid, but like, hey,
(07:56):
so what do you do? And I'm like, well, oh, oh,
about sports and stuff every day.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
For four hours, like yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
But people don't understand how difficult it can be because
four hours is.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
You know, half the hour, because four hours.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Man to keep coming up with things that will engage
listeners for four freaking hours.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
That's tougher than people think.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
It is absolutely tougher, and you know, Sean is so
well organized, like Seth says. But Seth, one of my
most memorable shows I felt like was filling in and
you were driving. I think it was when you were
with Meltzer, but you drove and I sat in the
passenger seat or the shotgun seat or whatever you want
to call it. And I love that day because you
were just riffing and you know, you were kind of
(08:44):
all over the place in a good way.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
Though.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
It was awesome. I mean, I forget what we talked about,
but it was. It was a memorable show because it
just felt so stream of consciousness. And sometimes I like
those two but it's hard to do that every day.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
You can't. Don't try this at home, right Yeah, No.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
Yeah, that's it's a different dynamic, you know, if you've
got And that's a fun thing about right now, is
there really are no rules when it comes to hey, like,
if you're a young person that wants to make it
in sports media, there are a million different routes you
can take via social media or television or radio or
anything else like that. And you know there's people doing
things now and very successful at it that twenty years ago,
(09:22):
if he said this is what I'm going to do
on sports radio, every single suit in the industry would say, oh,
you're an idiot, You're not going to make it. And
now some of those guys are making like millions of
dollars a year doing it, but it is it's a
matter of just like ultimately it's be interesting and in
sports radio, because so many people are listening in your car,
you've got to figure out a way to to keep
(09:42):
it within the guide. The guide rails enough that you know,
people can latch onto it and listen and not be
taken off on so many different tangents within a you know,
a ten to fifteen segment of.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Time seth We always talk about this when we were
on a team where like, oh, yeah, that guy's good,
and Mark mentioned it. You were kind of to go
to back where you're playing with the Texans, and we
think about this all the time. Ooh, this guy would
be great in the media when he's done with his career. Oh,
this guy would be fantastic in the media. There's some
guys that you would think, no, that guy shouldn't even
be in the media, and then it gets in it and.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
You're like, oh, he's actually pretty good.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
When did you have an idea that going into the
quote unquote media sports talk business was something that you
thought a you'd be good at and be you would
enjoy it.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
Was I want to say this two thousand and ten
or twenty eleven, when I was just I was doing
my own thing, and I had a couple of different
businesses that I was kind of, you know, partly involved in,
but not really doing full time stuff. And I was
kind of still searching because I had a plan for
what I wanted to do when I was done playing.
And I realized in about six months, like no hate
it still, I just searched for what I wanted to do.
(10:48):
And John Granado ended up calling me about some issue.
I think the issue was. It was when Tony Dungee
was calling out the Texans for taking injuries to stop drives.
So Granado up to just have me on and he
started having me on weekly sometime around that period.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
With me with me you come one.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
At one time it was John and you, and then
another teame it was John and Seanyp for a while
and and I started to realize, you know, and John
gave me some encouragement, and at the same time, Mark
started calling me up to ask me for some things,
and Mark gave me encouragement. So I just ended up.
You know, I had a talk with my wife and
I said let's just let's take a trip to Houston
and meet some people and see what opportunities there are.
(11:33):
And so I came down to Houston in twenty eleven,
I think twenty twelve, and Mark, you know, I went,
I went on every radio station in town. We have
like nineteen different rated sports radio stations in Houston, and
give the point and Mark, Mark like really put a
good pitch together for me to come do some work
(11:53):
with sports Radio six ten. So and I got a
lot of encouragement from Mark and so I, you know,
Andy and I and just decided, all right, we're gonna
pick up We're going to move back to Houston and
see what happens. We'll give it a season to see
what happens. So and Mark put me on and I
was really I didn't have a lot of confidence at all.
And Mark allowed me to do a lot of stuff
(12:16):
way before I thought I was ready to do it,
and gave me a lot of opportunities. So by the
end of yeah, by twenty thirteen, in January that year
is when you know, Mark was with the Texans at
the time, but Sports Radio sixtent offered me a full
time job to do the middays of Mike Meltzer and
I still I'd say about three years into it, I
(12:37):
felt like, Okay, I might I might actually be an
actual solid citizen at this job.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
I so this is good stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
And it's all coming back now because in twenty twelve,
that was the first year of Texans Radio as we
understand it now, and you and Ted did a show,
Seth and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and we put it on
Wednesday nights. It was one hour Ted Johnson Seth Payne
talking football and it was awesome. I mean, these two
guys just talking ball, and I thought this should be
(13:04):
on every day. This should be a full time show.
This is better than anything I'm doing at the time.
And this is before you were a glint in my eye, Johnny.
So that that was fun, and obviously you had the
aptitude to do it.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
You're doing a great job at it right now.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Let's go back, though, Let's go back a little bit
here and we'll bounce all over the place. But I
want to go back to Clifton Springs because I get
a real George Bailey and Bedford Falls vibe from Clifton Springs,
where you are from.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
That's the name of the town.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
Right. Well, I was born in Clifton Springs at the
hospital there, but I grew up in Farmington, New York,
and Victor in New York, same school district.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
All right, will you tell me what it was like
growing up there for Seth Paint, because we hear you
talk about farming. We hear this stuff, and I think
that people need to know Seth.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
All right, Well, that's a it's a long and winding road.
I okay. So the farming side of it was my
dad's side of the family. So when I was born,
I lived on a dairy farm with my mom and
dad and then his family, you know, his cousins is
great uncle, and I had like three different branches of
the family, all had farms up in upstate New York.
(14:14):
And when I was around five or six years old,
my family moved to North Carolina. They picked up the
whole operation, moved to North Carolina, and I lived down
there for a couple of years. Then family split up
and I went back with my mom where you know,
she moved back up to where we were from, but
where I still had a lot of farming family up there.
(14:35):
So at any given time, I was either you know,
in summers, I'd be in North Carolina with my dad
at his farm. And then as I got older, up
in New York, where my main residence was, I still
had all the people in my family, my cousins that
were farmers, and I would and my grandfather still had
his farm up there. I would work on their farms
(14:56):
in the summers and after schools at time and everything.
So it was it was kind of cool because, you know,
I had a single mom, and my mom, my mom
busted her butt like she was going to school, going
to college, taking night classes for years before she finally
got her bachelor's degree, but also working full time. But
I also had the support group of you know, my
(15:16):
grandma was still there. I'd go to her house after school.
I'd have my my grandfather on the other side of
the family to go on their farm and spend a
lot of time with them. So it was I was
like single, you know, grew up in a single parent household,
but I also had a boatload of support from my grandparents,
which was, you know, looking back on it was was
(15:37):
just vital and crucial. I just I had a lot
more structure in my life than a lot of other
kids did Seth?
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Have you ever talked to Kate Stover about this?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Because Caid grew up on a farm, and in fact,
that's what he wants to do with his life when
he's done, is raised cattle on his farm.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
I don't know if you've ever had she had's chance
to talk to kid?
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (15:56):
But how did how did growing up on a farm
change you as a player?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Did it?
Speaker 5 (16:02):
Yeah? I think? You know? With Kaid, I think and
I haven't talked to him about the farming side of stuff.
I want to. I'd love to just go up and
just do like a video project on his farm. For one.
I'll say this, I was always jealous of the beef
farmers because it just seemed like a much less I
don't want to say it's a less labor intensive life,
but it's a less labor intensive life than dairy farming.
(16:22):
Dairy farming, it's just those damn cows have to get
milked every damn day, twice for three times a day.
Or beef it's a little bit more. You raise your
crops to feed the beef, you let them be. So
I'm always I was always jealous of beef farmers, which
he is, but the big thing about it is, you know,
regardless of weather. You know, if you've got livestock, they've
(16:42):
got to be fed every day, and it doesn't matter
what the weather is, and it doesn't matter how tired
you are, you just you have to do it. And
as a kid, the I think maybe the most valuable
part of it is that the responsibility that you're given
is that a lot of your chores are like you're
you doing a good job at your chores have a
(17:04):
specific cause and effect on whether that animal thrives and
it even survives, or whether they get sick or anything.
And then the other side of it is just like
the really hard physical work when you're and it's not
just that it's hard physical work, it's hard physical work
when you're also miserable because it's either hot out or
it's zero degrees, and it kind of sets the bar
(17:24):
for what difficulty is and anything everything else is pretty
much below that, other than wrestling practice. So like you
kind of so if you can wrestle and work on
a farm, there's nothing you do in sports that ever
feels nearly as hard as that. So a lot of
the stuff that you do in the way you operate
on a team. I think they used to love, you know,
(17:47):
when there were more farm kids around. Coaches loved farm
kids because they do anything you ask and they'll do
it at one hundred miles per hour and they don't
complain about it because that's just it's kind of the
way they've been trained to do it from the time
they were five years old.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Wow, well said, hey, how does your brother fit into
all this?
Speaker 5 (18:05):
Okay, so my brother he toughened me up by beating
the crap out and he was a much better wrestler
than I was too. He was three years older than me.
But Dan was a really, really good wrestler. He ended
up being an All American at Clarion, a Division one
All American, and then he started he was doing really
well wrestling internationally before he kind of he just one
(18:26):
thing to find about wrestlers is they reach a point
where they're like, I've had enough. This is like I've
been sucking weight my whole life. Oh, he just got
fed up with it. But yeah, he was like classic
older brother that we we got a lot. We got
along a lot better as we got older. You know,
when he stopped being my tormentor as much as a
mentor and the biggest thing that especially as I got
(18:49):
into high school and he was somebody I really looked
up to. He was the kind of guy that I realized, like, man,
there were times where my I realized my brother believed
in me more than I did myself. And when somebody
gives you those pep talks and tells you what you
can do and what they think you're capable of, it's
(19:10):
it gives you that ability almost like empowers you to
believe in yourself in a way that maybe you don't naturally.
And that's the lastson I've always tried to remember when
you're talking with either when you're an athlete and you're
working with athletes younger than yourself, or you know, you're
a ten year VET and you're talking to rookies, it's
a man. Just just believing in somebody in and of
(19:30):
itself can have a huge effect on them and can
it can raise them up above and beyond where a
lot of other people might believe they could be just
because you because if you genuinely believe in them and
you see the good in them, it's like it's something
I see with Demiko. You know, Dimiko, I think he
really he believes in these guys' strengths and he wants
to see them achieve it. And it just it's it
(19:53):
carries so much more power than any of the words
you say, necessarily, as long as it comes with a
real belief.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Wow, I've so much to say about your brother relationship,
because well, first of all, an All American at Clarion.
That's a big time wrestling school. Because they were in
that they might still be in that e WL, the
Eastern Wrestling League. Penn State was in that league before
the Big Ten, and that was a separate league.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
It was just wrestling.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
It was East Stroudsburg and Lockehaven and Clarion.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
And Penn State.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
It was wild to have all these kinds of schools
in this big time wrestling collegiate league. But he was
an All American and rugby became his thing after he graduated, right,
and he played it professionally, coached it. Now he's CEO
of Rugby International whatever the outfit is he was.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
Yeah, he was rugby CEO of Rugby USA and then
also COO of Rugby America's I believe for a while,
like now he's semi retired, but yeah, he's one of
these guys. He's just a he's like a crazy one
of those super competitive, good at everything type of athletes.
But he was a late bloomer, so he never really
(21:00):
he never really blossomed in football because he had he
had a growth He had his growth for late in
high school. So wrestling was kind of the perfect sport
for him. But he got Yeah, he kind of he
he picked up rugby in away on the mental side
of things that I think was freakishly fast, so he
was able to kind of grasp the sport and then
(21:22):
because he was a wrestler and he had the endurance
for it, he really picked up. He ended up playing
on the Rugby World Cup, you know, within a few
years of really picking up the sport and launching himself
into it full time and ended up making it his career.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
SE's one of the things I'd love to write a
scouting report, especially on an offense.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Steven's lineman is state championship wrestler.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah, never lost about of wrestling, And I know we
talked to Justin Britt about this a few years ago,
and he was more of a mindset that the wrestling
was it was more about the one on one competition
as opposed to anything technical. But it feels like the wrestlers,
like you see guys on the football field, you can tell, oh,
that guy was a wrestler. And I remember doing that
(22:06):
at the Senior Bowl. I told a guy who's a
wrestler a standby some media. I was like, you wrestled,
didn't you? And he's like, yeah, how'd you know? And
these media asked me afterwards. It's like, you can just tell,
how did wrestling help you as a football player or
did it?
Speaker 5 (22:19):
I know one hundred percent it really really helped. I
mean the biggest thing, especially an interior defensive line or
interior offensive line, is that you just learn the importance
of body positioning and just how much you know, like
having your weight in the right place really matters. And
then you're just you're constantly just trying to figure out
ways to move people. And your hands are really important too,
(22:41):
So like all that stuff, it's kind of it's I mean,
it's a martial art. Really you don't people don't really
think of it, but it's a martial art just high
school and Olympic wrestling in and of itself. So there's
that side of it, and then yeah, there's the mental
toughness side of it too, is just that you're out
there on your own in front of a bunch of people,
(23:02):
and it's it's emotionally devastating when you lose when you're
a young kid, because it's embar It's like getting beat
up in a fist fight, you know, and you have
to learn how to process all that stuff and how
to come back from it. But the the hand fighting,
because I wasn't a good athlete at all by defensive
tackle standards, but because I was able to use my
hands really well and to use my body weight, it
(23:23):
made a big difference. And yeah, you see it with
like Mason Graham. Mason Graham was a high school wrestler.
Was he not attack with my house state? I think
you see it clearly with him. I was kind of
surprised that Gray's abel wasn't a high school wrestler because
there when I when I saw him the first time,
I was like, Oh, that kid looks like a wrestler.
So he kind of knows how to uses he knows
how to uses hips and us his body like a wrestler.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
But what he doesn't do what you pointed out and
is dead on he doesn't use his hands very well,
and wrestlers know how to use their hands really well.
It's I always find sort of sort of fascinating because
you know, growing up, we didn't have we didn't have
wrestling here. But I get to Brown and Mark, you
were at Penn State for a while. You see what
kind of psychomaniacs those dudes are. Yeah, they're unbelievable. Like
(24:07):
our full back, his name is Chris Takarski. He played
at full back at two fifteen two and fifteen pounds.
The season was over and even before the season was
over he started cutting. But by the time they got
to wrestling season, he was one seventy seven.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Oh my god, I was like, they do that.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
It blew my mind.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
Just wrestle heavier because because the.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
Heavier guys are sucking down the wrest exactly. You know
what about that though, John The biggest thing that honestly,
you can try to tell high school kids this all
the time and they just don't want to believe it
because everybody's so obsessed with the bench best. As a wrestler,
you know, pull ups and the peg board and all
that stuff, that's the thing, And as a bigger guy
(24:51):
I was a bigger, like, a longer, lengthier wrestler, like,
I was never nearly as good at pull ups as
a lot of the smaller guys. And you just you're
always you want to be able to do a bunch
of that's a big thing. You want to be able
to do the peg board. And I, as an NFL player,
I was considered a pretty strong guy. That was more
my calling card. And I swear I was never a
(25:11):
good bench press guy, but I could do you know,
when I was three hundred and fifteen pounds, I could do
weighted pull ups and there's a lot that comes with
the push and pull that it served me really really
well when it came to hand fighting and some of
the more physical sides of the game that like if
you're a high school kid alignment especially that can whip
(25:34):
out fifteen pull ups. That's freaky strength for a three
hundred and fifteen pound dude. And it has way more
of an impact in football than people want to believe
because they just they want to have the big bench press.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yep, it's all about the bench press.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Thankfully, Cornell saw through all of that, made sure that
Seth stayed home, and then he became an NFL prospect.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
We just got to saw that next right here on
Texans All Access.
Speaker 6 (25:57):
Welcome back to Memorial Day issue of Texans All Actress
from Texas Radio Studio. I'm John Harris, football and a
sideline reporter, one half of the inter Lab podcast crew.
Drew and I will have a podcast later this week,
presumably after OTAs gave you kind of our thoughts on
what's happened at OTA's and while we're out there Ota'
I'm sure we're going to run it to our guy,
Seth Payne. That's what this show is dedicated to and
(26:19):
who it's dedicated to. We did a great, great interview
with him a few a few weeks ago, and it
was awesome, and we hit a number of different things.
We got to that point now where Seth, and he's
talked about this a lot on radio.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
You know, how did he how'd he get to Cornell?
What happened? What made him a prospect that Cornell wanted?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
And then how in turn did he become an NFL
prospect while at Cornell?
Speaker 1 (26:45):
It starts right.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
Here, but tell me why Cornell.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
My senior year in high school, I played real well,
but we had a head coach who probably wasn't the
best high school coach. Good guy, good guy. He got
fired and had had really zero discussions with him at
I'll ever about playing in college or anything. It just
wasn't we weren't like a pipeline to colleges. So Sean
(27:10):
O'Day and I were working out another offensive lineman, a
friend of mine who we were big weight room partners
and everything. We're working out in the weight room on
our own and we look in the coach's office, the
vacant coaches office was a stack of questionneers on from colleges.
So I'm like, I don't I talked to a couple
of Division III schools in the area, like Hobart and
(27:30):
University of Rochester. They go around and they look at like,
you know, all Greater Rochester team. So I just started
kind of shuffling through and we just we just we
filled out our own questionneers and set them off to
those schools, and Cornell was one of them. So I
got I got a visit from the Cornell coach a
(27:51):
few weeks later, and he was watching film with you know,
one of our position coaches in the office and coach
to Stefano. He'd end up being my defense line coach
and uh, and I kind of got called in and
I'm like, I'm trying to figure out if they they
figured out my ruse I built this thing out, and
I'm like a Dave Connon was the position coach, and
I'm looking at him. I'm like, I I hope he
(28:12):
didn't say it. Oh, we didn't say that obviously. Seth
filled this out but coached the step. And I was
watching the watching my film with me and he's like, so, uh,
who's uh who's been talking to you? And I listed
the local He's like, so that's uh, that's it. Huh Okay,
let's uh, let's schedule you for a visit and and
he put on the full court press. So I I
(28:35):
kind of was in a spot where I didn't know.
I didn't know for sure that I even wanted to
go to college. I knew that if I wanted to
go to college, like, I did really well with my
grades and everything. And then I had a lot of
family members that went to Cornell, so there was an
appeal there just because I'd been to Cornell games when
I was a kid. I had my uncle played football
at Cornell. Uh, but it wasn't. I. I really was
(28:56):
in a mindset where I wasn't sure what I was
going to do after high school, and I I was
thinking about going up to work on a fishing boat
in Alaska for a year or two, and then I
was going to enlist in the Marines. I kind of
had an appetite for an adventure. And Uh, but but
you know, Cornell. I got into Cornell and they wanted
me to play football, so I went that route. But
(29:17):
it was it totally wasn't like any kind of a
focused approach or anything like that. It really was just
a good blend of circumstances with a little bit with
a little bit of low grade fraud by me.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Well, after after four years of making the mistake of
going to Cornell instead of going to a place like Brown,
you are now an NFL draft prospect. And I remember
I was in Jacksonville and at the time, and I
was thrilled anytime an ivy leaguer is mentioned as a
you know, day two, day three potential pick, like I'm
I'm all about it, and.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
I was so excited.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
But when for you did the NFL become any kind
of reality like Hey, this actually my might be a
thing that I need to be, that I need to
consider with my life. Because I know a lot of
guys that you played with. I don't know personally, but
I played with a lot of them at Brown. Now
were the kind of the same way of we're gonna
play our four years and that's it. We know we're
(30:14):
going on to some kind of financial investment job, or
we're going on to work for you know, JP Morgan,
or somebody's gonna go be a lawyer, whatever the case
might be. There are many of us that end up
being NFL players, But you did When was that a
reality for you? When did you see, oh, my gosh,
this actually might come to fruition?
Speaker 5 (30:32):
I think, you know, I always I you know, I
worked really hard at football because I loved it, and
you know, I just loved being on the team. But
I didn't really have the NFL aspirations my first couple
of years. And at that point, you know, there's a
period where nobody had been drafted out of the IVY
League in fifteen years or so, I think, in a
(30:52):
long time. But my junior year scouts, that's when scouts
come around, and I got some positive feedback from some
scout that you know, had said that they were interested
or whatever. But we also at the same time got
a new strength coach named Tom Howley, who was the
first time that the program had a full time strength coach.
Like that's how that's how kind of behind the times
(31:13):
the IVY League was at that time. But Tom Howley
had he had played at Wake Forest, No, he played
at TWU lane, but he'd been a Division one strength coach,
and he told me, you know, in my position coach
Pete the Stefano had conversations with me about how this
is a real thing, and so I kind of put
myself full bore into it my junior year and then
(31:36):
in that offseason headed into my senior year and I
stayed stayed at Cornell in the summer, which wasn't typical
at the time either, but just working with Di Stefano
as a position coach, and he was an awesome, awesome
position coach. He taught me much better tech. I had
better technique coming to the league than the vast majority
of SEC guys, big ten guys, anybody like that. But
(31:56):
Tom Howley kind of just transformed my body and my approach.
So that spring before my senior year and then summer
before my senior year. That was that was my goal,
But it hadn't been my lifelong goal or anything. It
was just kind of the seed was planted by junior year.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Wow, so the seed was planted. You end up going
to the fourth round. What was draft weekend like for you?
Because this was Saturday Sunday. It was rounds one, two,
three on Saturday, four through seven on Sunday.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
What was that weekend like? Did you think maybe I
go in the.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Third and then Saturday ends You're thinking, oh my gosh,
what's gonna happen?
Speaker 4 (32:30):
How did that play out for you?
Speaker 5 (32:32):
I was blissfully ignorant. Especially there wasn't you know, the
level of coverage online and everywhere else. It just wasn't
the same as it is now. So I just knew
from my agent that I had a chance of going
probably somewhere between the third and sixth round. You know
what I wasn't prepared for. It was just how long
the process is. Because I knew I wasn't going in
(32:54):
the first round, but you sit there on that first
day in May, it's a long time. Yeah, yeah, And
every time you see somebody else go you're like, Yep,
that definitely wasn't me. It's just rejection after rejection after rejection.
And I want to say that at that time, the
first three rounds were on the first day and then
(33:15):
four were on the second day. So I got a
call from the I got a call from the Cowboys
defensive line coach sometime during the third round that that
year or that day on the first day, and then
he said, hey, Seth, you know you're the last. This
will be interesting and John will probably remember this exact scenario.
(33:35):
He said, you're the last defensive tackle that we would
consider drafting. And I just want to let you know,
if we draft the defensive tackle, we're either going to
take you with our last pick in the third round
or our first pick in the fourth round. And then
I sat and I watched, and then lo and behold
they end up taking the kid out of Syracuse, Antonio
something or other with the third round pick, a defensive tackle.
(34:01):
What the hell is this all about? Yeah? I kinda,
and I still I was just a I was a rube.
I didn't know what was going on or anything. So
I had bigger right, we'll wait and see. And so
the fourth round, I got taken relatively early that day,
and then it was just a whirlwind. But the Cowboys coach,
to his credit, called and said, hey, Seth, I really
(34:21):
I feel bad about that. I just want to let
you know we'd had that guy off our board because
of injury concerns. But the owner stepped in and said that,
uh no, we're going to go with the guy from
the bigger school at this point. So Jerry Jones meddled
with me and uh and I would didn't, thank God,
because I would have been a disaster in Dallas. I
wasn't mature enough to handle that environment.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Oh really, now it all makes sense. I mean, nineteen
ten makes all kinds of sense.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
I mean you got the ultimate revenge against Jerry Jones
and the Cowboys.
Speaker 5 (34:51):
I mean, oh yeah, I carried it with me. Yeah yeah.
I felt jilted and I screwed over by the Cowboys
my entire career.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
I mean, first of all, you're you're an eye the player.
And then, like you said, you got pass. Did you
how much of a chip on his shoulder did you
play with throughout your career?
Speaker 4 (35:07):
Seth?
Speaker 5 (35:09):
Pretty big? I think you know. The first when I
got into a training camp the first thought I had,
And honestly, in writers I remember telling a couple of
writers this and they kind of chuckled at me. I was,
like I said, honestly, I felt like practice in the
Ivy League was harder than going against some of the
(35:30):
rookies and yeah, whatever, Like I don't know, those guys,
like some of those offensive linemen, they weren't gonna ever
make it in the NFL because they were six foot tall,
but they fought their butts off. Yeah, and in the
Ivy League. The one thing about it is, you know,
now there's a lot more you know, technically there's no scholarships,
but there's a lot of there's a lot of there's
a lot of kids that aren't paying to go to
(35:50):
school there. Yeah, but like the kids like I took
out school loans to go to college and play football,
and there was a scrappiness. And I think there are
a lot of guys that were real tough athletes that
were six foot tall but would fight you, yep. And
and I'd go up against some of this. So, honestly,
the thought I had was a lot of especially when
I was going against rookies or guys that were drafted
(36:13):
higher than me. It was like this dude, this dude
got a scholarship and got drafted just because he had
an overactive pituitary. Glenn, but he's a punk and I'm
going to kick his ass. Ooh, And I kind of
carried that with me for a long time, especially with
high draft picks. I'm like, oh, you know what, because
you went through cuberty a couple of years earlier than me,
you got a scholarship, and you went to a big
(36:33):
high school and you got and you got treated like
a prince, and then here you are in the NFL.
I'm going to kick your ass and and that it's
a good attitude to have in life.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
I've heard the Coughlin stories. Andre talks about it because
he was in camp once with the Jags, that if
you're five minutes early, you're ten minutes late, stuff like that.
And you've talked about Coughlin from time to time on
the show. But what kind of impact did he make
on your career and life playing for Tom Coughlin, is't you?
Speaker 5 (37:03):
I think the biggest thing with Coughlin was, you know,
he came out of that Parcels school where it's like
they want to keep you uncomfortable all the time. They
just they never want you to feel like they don't
want you to feel too good about yourself. You know.
It's very very old school, but it's man. It's it's
(37:25):
like going through basic training. You just you learn to
be mentally tough. You learn that I'm not I'm not
fighting for scraps or praise or anything like that. You're
just supposed to do your job and that you're constantly
going to be no matter how well you're playing, you're
going to be under constant scrutiny. And the thing about
Coughlin that was cool was it was he was consistent
(37:47):
with it. He did not play favorites at all. I
remember Beselli telling me that that Cofflin had never once
told the Selli that he had a good game, you know,
like it's just it's it's not the way I would
operate if I were coach, but it's you know, and
it's different. There's different ways to do it, and you
can be a successful a lot of different ways. But
as a player, you just you had to learn to
(38:09):
be really really mentally tough because it wasn't and just
take a lot of pride in doing your job and
doing things for your teammates and that you're just you're
never safe and u and it teaches you to kind
of that constant like a healthy paranoia that all right,
boy whatever, that's great. Yeah, did a good job, but man,
I got a there's somebody gun in for me next week, Seth.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
You went to an expansion team, well twice, but it
started in Jacksonville. Where you go to expansion team. You
got there in ninety seven n seven, so that's your
first year that they had only been playing for a
couple of years. With the year prior ninety six they
ended up going to the AFC Championship Game. I mean
that was a year where I mean it, I was,
I lived there, I saw the whole thing. I was like,
(38:52):
this is incredible an expansion team getting to that level.
But it still was an expansion team. What was that light?
Going down to Jacksonville place where they only had the
NFL for the three years before you got there.
Speaker 5 (39:03):
It was really cool. And you know, and again you
just as a college kid, you just don't know what
you're getting into. So everything that happens, and especially when
you go to a smaller school, there's so many things
that you've never done before, like play in front of
seventy five thousand people and play again. I remember one
of the first games, well, the first preseason game I
ever had. Jim Kelly was doing the color commentary, so
(39:28):
I had a production meeting with Jim Kelly, and I
grew up a Bills fan throughout that whole era, and
Jim Kelly had just retired, and it was just it
was surreal I was sitting I was sitting in a
meeting with Jim Kelly asking me questions about things about me,
and I was kind of blown away by it. So
like that the whole experience of being a rookie is
(39:49):
kind of mind blowing. But the Jacksonville environment was cool because,
for one, they still very much had a lot of
old school NFL veterans, like I got hazed the way,
not as bad as like the Saints back in the
day or anything, but like I got, you know, you're
still a rookie, and you better know your spot and
(40:10):
know your role and shut up and don't you know,
don't don't act like a rookie. You know, better to
be seen and not heard all that type of stuff.
But you learned a lot from guys like like Jeff
Logman and John Yorkovic and all those guys in that
defensive line meeting room. I had a lot of crusty,
old old school NFL veterans that kind of like in
(40:31):
line with playing for Tom Cofflin. It was just it
was it was a bygone era. It was like a
last fumes of a bygone era of the NFL. But
I'm glad I got to see a little bit of it,
all right.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
So you played in an AFC championship game nineteen ninety nine.
The Jags have a phenomenal season, but lose twice to
the Titans in the regular season, and here you are
again with them, and you almost had a shot at
the Bills if the Music City miracle never occurs, so
that would have been interesting, but you lose to them
for the third time. Dom Capers is the defensive coordinator.
(41:04):
I remember him telling me how tough Steve McNair was
to deal with in those games. But when you look
back on that set, because man, the Texans have never
played in an AFC championship game, and I often think
if you lose an AFC championship game, it's gonna be
almost worse almost than losing the Super Bowl, because at
least you went to the Super Bowl and you can
say we won the AFC.
Speaker 4 (41:24):
But what do you look back on that season?
Speaker 3 (41:27):
What kind of eyes do you look back on that
season with, Hey, we were fourteen and two, we were outstanding,
we made it to the AFC Championship Game. Or is
it just total bitterness that you lost at home to
the Titans.
Speaker 5 (41:39):
No, I think a lot of it is. Man. You
just you really learn how hard it is to just
capitalize on everything and for everything to come all together.
Because we were that year. Our defense was extremely good
for the first three quarters of the season, and then
a couple we had some bad injuries that hurt us,
and then we fell off off towards the end, and
(42:01):
we weren't the same defense in the postseason. I think
as we were in the regular season.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Man, I saw that ninety nine defense up close and personal.
It was pretty damn nasty. There's no question about that. Okay,
Seth comes to Houston two thousand and two. We all
know about that Night one victory. We asked Seth about it.
We got a surprising response. Stay tuned for that right
here in Texans All Access. We're going fall a slave
this money edition this Memorial Day at issue of Texans
(42:27):
All Access. I am John Harris footballanalist, sideline reporter, and
we are diving deep with our guys Seth Pain. We
had a really fun discussion and we've gotten to that
point where Seth has now joined the Texans, and so
we asked him what was the coolest thing about the
expansion Draft.
Speaker 5 (42:46):
The coolest thing about the expansion Draft and the whole
experience was, honestly, the draft itself was they did it
like a miniature Madison Square garden and you know, people
who are watching and that might have been you know,
some of some of you guys were there. It was
kind of mind blowing because there were so many parts
of that whole experience, and then being in the city
(43:08):
that first week where it felt like, oh wow, this
is this is a big city, like and this is
a different this is there There are a lot of,
like in a good way, kind of cliche Texas moments
of where like they just do things bigger in Texas.
And I still didn't know anything about Houston and how
unique it is within Texas and everything, but I felt like,
(43:29):
holy crap, this is this is this is gonna be different,
and it's gonna be big, and it's gonna be fun,
and that whole experience that you're playing with the veterans
that we had on that defense, I learned a lot
from Jamie Sharper and Aaron Glenn and Marcus Coleman and
all those guys. We had so many really good veteran
defensive players that it was that side of it. Despite
(43:54):
not having success with a win loss record, you know,
when we were here, I really just I felt like
I really learned learned a lot about football from that
whole environment. It was. It was a really good group
of guys.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
My final, our final. I guess at this point, what
is your memory, like, how do you classify and categorize
the Cowboy game September eight, two thousand and two. I mean,
you have played in an AFC championship game. You had
that phenomenal run with the Jags in ninety nine. I
guess you can always you can always play an AFC
Championship game, which is easier said than done, we know,
(44:29):
but there's only one first game of the franchise history
that you can participate in.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
But you tell me, how do you regard that?
Speaker 5 (44:36):
Now? I just you know i'd keep it in that
same theme of man, this is just big. And I
had played in Jacksonville for five years, but that's a
different stadium, different city, different environment, and I had just
never been part of that much combined and focused energy
(45:00):
from the fans down onto the field. And there was
that moment there at the end of the game when
we got the safety and ended up, you know, stealing
the game. It just I it was almost like an
out of body experience. I don't remember anything about that
place specifically because I was so tired, and I just
remember having the feeling of almost like the energy permeating
(45:24):
my body because it was so loud, and I was
completely in that unconscious mode when you're tired and you're
just going on instinct and training and everything, and it
just it felt like the energy is seeping into you
and you're getting like almost pushed along by the noise
and the environment and everything. It was just it was
(45:46):
it was one of the Honestly, it was one of
the most unique experiences of my life. It was really
It's one of the things. I'm fifty years old, I've
been honest ear with fifty years, and I don't I've
never experienced anything like that, and I never will again.
It was just amazing.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
I want to play that for the team. Yeah, the
night before they host the AFC Championship game. You know
what I mean that.
Speaker 4 (46:09):
But the way you just said that is so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
You know, I'm up in the booth that night and
I've I just called the national championship game at the
University of Miami and the Rose Bowl. That was my
last football accounted that I called. And then the next
one is this and there's just nothing like it. There's
nothing like that night.
Speaker 4 (46:25):
So that was beautiful, Seth.
Speaker 5 (46:26):
It was really really cool, and it's cool that people
remember it, you know this many years later. It's really
it's it's it's cool to be part of it. It's
a very unique. It's one of those things where you're
outside of Houston you just wouldn't get it because, okay,
what it's a regular season game and uh what's what's
it ultimately matter at the end of the year. It
was just it was very very unique.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
It was really cool, larger than life and so are you, Seth.
Thanks so much for being with us, and we got
to do this again because I have like fifty other
questions so many we get to talk about some of
the great stories of the early days, like guys like
guys who came along and went like Steve Foley, you
know people.
Speaker 5 (47:00):
Yeah, fully strong arm in the battle Red Jerseys on off,
Bob mcnare at the end of that.
Speaker 4 (47:05):
Game, Oh my god, two thousand and three.
Speaker 5 (47:06):
Played in battle Red and we won the game and
Steve fully grabs mister mcnaarry. He's like, we get to
keep the jerseys.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
Yeah, that's right, a win over the Carolina Panthers two
thousand and three. Never forget it, all right, Seth, thanks
a lot, Thank you.
Speaker 5 (47:23):
No, and I know you're is. One of the first
lessons you taught me, Mark, is that you have forty questions.
You want to have forty questions going to an interview,
and then the really good ones you only get the
three of them.
Speaker 4 (47:31):
That's right, that's true. That's true.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
That means it's a good interview.
Speaker 4 (47:34):
That's that's good. But you're the best.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Thanks man, Thanks guys, No, cap set is the best man.
Really appreciate him joining us and all of you for listening.
That was a great listen. Wanted you to hear that again.
Great stuff. OTAs this week will be covering all we
got you covered right here on Texans All Access. Well
see tomorrow buddy, and as always, go Texans
What's happening? Everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Welcome into Memorial Day Monday at ISS Texans All Access.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
I'm your host, John Harris foot Playan, a sideline reporter for.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Your Houston Texans, and obviously on a day as such,
we recognize all of those that have given their lives
for this country, fighting for our military and fighting for
all of us here back in the United States. Much
love to everybody that has given their lives, given their time,
their effort, their blood, their sweat, their tears for this country.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
A hearty salute to you.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
On this Monday, and on this Monday, we're going to
recognize a great American.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
He being Seth Pain.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Set joined us for what was one of the best
discussions I think we've had with a former player, cohort friend.
He is all of that, and we just dove right
in and figured, you know what this is about the
length of a show, So let's do it. Memorial Monday
Show with Seth Pain, original Texan.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Let's rock all right?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Joining us now, Seth Payne, and this is not your
normal Seth Pain type visit where we talk about it's
game day. Everybody's at fever pitch right now. The hair
is standing up in the back of my neck. It
is anyway, but for different reasons, because we're going to
talk to Seth about his life and career and the
rest of it.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
Seth, how's it going.
Speaker 5 (01:20):
It's good. I'm flattered that you would have me on.
Thank you. Well. I never do interviews about myself anymore,
so I'm a little out of practice.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
You know, when you were a player, you were a
go to guy because you were such a good interview
and I'm sure you still do, and I know you
do a lot of out of town stuff about hey,
what's up with the Texans this week's game or the
draft or whatever, but it's not really about Seth Pain.
What was it like when you were a player and
people peppering you with questions and a lot of that
was about the game too, but you got a lot
(01:50):
of life of Seth Payn type interviews as well.
Speaker 5 (01:55):
That was always interesting and it's nice that people are
interested in you. Yes, the one thing I remember learning
very early on my rookie year because it wasn't like
I'd had a bunch of interviews in high school or college,
because I didn't go to high profile schools and I
wasn't a high profile player. I remember I remember just
kind of philosophizing about how there's certain parts of getting
(02:19):
a college education that are either probably overblown or at
least overrated the system. I think perhaps maybe over I
remember just kind of casually just talking about it, and
when that's put into print form and it's the pro
football player says going to college is overrated, I was like, oh,
(02:40):
I got to be really careful about how I discussed
these things, because it's not like these days where you
can have a podcast and talk about it for forty
five minutes. I tried to talk with Nuance about something
that ended up being kind of something that somebody people
were angry about, so that there was always when you're
an athlete, and when people complain about bland quotes from athletes,
(03:01):
it's that usually most of them know and understand that,
like any little thing, any answer I give about this
is going to be blown up and dissected so many
different ways that I'm just I'm just going to go
with the Bland route. Seth.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
If you'd have been a player now and you talk
about podcasts, there's so many different players with podcasts now,
and I always kind of cringe when I'm like, oh god,
somebody said on his podcast about this and that the other.
I mean, I'm on Ross Saint Brown and his brother Equanimius.
There's always something that happens between them. Would you have
ever started your own podcast as a player?
Speaker 5 (03:35):
No, no, no, because I was the opposite, I think,
just with the dynamic that I just talked about. And
then also, I mean it was a different time too,
where there was still more of there were clear lines
between the media and players, and there was always a
feeling that you don't want to be uh. I won't
use the term that you would use, but basically somebody
(03:57):
who was a little too liberal with the media, you're
like a media hussy. Yeah, And I always I always
felt that, you know, my first responsibility, first and foremost
was to my teammates, and as I got older, I
actually probably be started being less and less available to
the media, just in that I never wanted to be
the guy, especially if you're on a struggling team that
(04:20):
that gave one of those sound bites or something that
could be used the wrong way. So I definitely I
would have shied away from it just because I wouldn't
want to do And you know how it is when
you get on a podcast, you get, you get, you
hit that forty five minute mark, and all of a sudden,
you forget that you're talking into a microphone. And that's when,
all of a sudden, yeah, yeah, unintentionally criticize a teammate
or something. So I probably I probably wouldn't have been
(04:42):
into it all that much.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
That is so well said. It's kind of like the
Runners High.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
You know, you reach a point where it doesn't matter anymore,
and I think your right sets we need a term
for that, at the forty five minute mark approximately of
a podcast, where it just all breaks down, All the
walls come down, the filters are off, and that's when
the good stuff really comes out.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
I've got a physiological explanation for that too, because the
Runners High, it is around the forty five minute mark
where your body kind of kicks into burning fat more
than carbohydrates, and you do It's a different feel and
whatever however that happens psychologically, I think the same thing
happens around forty five minutes. When we had when John
and I were interviewing Rusty Hardin and Russia made a
(05:22):
comment about the legality of certain things that can happen
in a massage. It was like, at the forty seven
minute mark of the interview, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
That and that was the money.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
It was the money quote absolutely, and I thought, oh
my gosh, he just destroyed the whole industry with one quote.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Affected it.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
I should say, not destroyed, because I guess it's still
going on.
Speaker 5 (05:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I mean, set you go from you know, a podcast
where you talk pretty much, you talked for four hours.
How comfortable have you gotten in doing that every single
day and finding topics that you could talk about where
you know, obviously you take breaks every fifteen to twenty
minutes or or though it might be. But I know,
listen you gouts, I know the pattern from seven to
seven forty one, you guys go straight through. Do you
(06:05):
have some of those same kind of moments when you
guys are going at that pace?
Speaker 5 (06:08):
I think no, because I mean, for one, so much
of it is about the person you're paired with. Like
obviously you guys have an awesome chemistry, and there's a
trust factor that starts to build into it where you
don't worry about it. And with Sean, I mean, for one,
Sean is so good at preparing and getting ready for
the show that I never feel like we don't know
(06:29):
where we're going, and really, for the most part, as
long as we have a couple bullet points about something,
I know. It's the way it works with Sean and
I is almost like he's my teacher and he's giving
me reading assignments, and by and large, I'm pretty good
at you know, Like I don't, I try to have
more than a surface level understanding of what we're going
to be talking about. So I'm reading articles, I'm watching
(06:52):
extra I'm trying to seek out other people's opinions, and
so for us, it's usually it feels like there's a
lot of meat on left on the bone, like we
have a we have a hard time getting to our
break on time because we always feel like there's something
extra to talk about. And I've and I've been lucky
because I've only had two co hosts, and Meltzer and
I were kind of that same way. So I don't
I can't really speak to what it would be like
(07:15):
if I was with somebody that I hated, that wasn't
saying things that that tweak your tweak my mind. Like
I always go into a segment knowing that Sean's going
to say something that I didn't think about, or have
a perspective that I that I hadn't thought of. So
it's it's fun because it's just you can be curious,
you know, and you can kind of approach things with
(07:36):
an open mind and have an actual conversation. So that
that part of it for me, just by virtue of
having a really good co host. I don't like. I
never it's hard to explain to people, like I hate
it when I hate it when I hate it when
a non sports radio listener ask me what I do,
because it always ends up sounding vapid, but like, hey,
(07:56):
so what do you do? And I'm like, well, oh, oh,
about sports and stuff every day.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
For four hours, like yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
But people don't understand how difficult it can be because
four hours is.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
You know, half the hour, because four hours.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Man to keep coming up with things that will engage
listeners for four freaking hours.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
That's tougher than people think.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
It is absolutely tougher, and you know, Sean is so
well organized, like Seth says. But Seth, one of my
most memorable shows I felt like was filling in and
you were driving. I think it was when you were
with Meltzer, but you drove and I sat in the
passenger seat or the shotgun seat or whatever you want
to call it. And I love that day because you
were just riffing and you know, you were kind of
(08:44):
all over the place in a good way.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
Though.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
It was awesome. I mean, I forget what we talked about,
but it was. It was a memorable show because it
just felt so stream of consciousness. And sometimes I like
those two but it's hard to do that every day.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
You can't. Don't try this at home, right Yeah, No.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
Yeah, that's it's a different dynamic, you know, if you've
got And that's a fun thing about right now, is
there really are no rules when it comes to hey, like,
if you're a young person that wants to make it
in sports media, there are a million different routes you
can take via social media or television or radio or
anything else like that. And you know there's people doing
things now and very successful at it that twenty years ago,
(09:22):
if he said this is what I'm going to do
on sports radio, every single suit in the industry would say, oh,
you're an idiot, You're not going to make it. And
now some of those guys are making like millions of
dollars a year doing it, but it is it's a
matter of just like ultimately it's be interesting and in
sports radio, because so many people are listening in your car,
you've got to figure out a way to to keep
(09:42):
it within the guide. The guide rails enough that you know,
people can latch onto it and listen and not be
taken off on so many different tangents within a you know,
a ten to fifteen segment of.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Time seth We always talk about this when we were
on a team where like, oh, yeah, that guy's good,
and Mark mentioned it. You were kind of to go
to back where you're playing with the Texans, and we
think about this all the time. Ooh, this guy would
be great in the media when he's done with his career. Oh,
this guy would be fantastic in the media. There's some
guys that you would think, no, that guy shouldn't even
be in the media, and then it gets in it and.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
You're like, oh, he's actually pretty good.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
When did you have an idea that going into the
quote unquote media sports talk business was something that you
thought a you'd be good at and be you would
enjoy it.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
Was I want to say this two thousand and ten
or twenty eleven, when I was just I was doing
my own thing, and I had a couple of different
businesses that I was kind of, you know, partly involved in,
but not really doing full time stuff. And I was
kind of still searching because I had a plan for
what I wanted to do when I was done playing.
And I realized in about six months, like no hate
it still, I just searched for what I wanted to do.
(10:48):
And John Granado ended up calling me about some issue.
I think the issue was. It was when Tony Dungee
was calling out the Texans for taking injuries to stop drives.
So Granado up to just have me on and he
started having me on weekly sometime around that period.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
With me with me you come one.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
At one time it was John and you, and then
another teame it was John and Seanyp for a while
and and I started to realize, you know, and John
gave me some encouragement, and at the same time, Mark
started calling me up to ask me for some things,
and Mark gave me encouragement. So I just ended up.
You know, I had a talk with my wife and
I said let's just let's take a trip to Houston
and meet some people and see what opportunities there are.
(11:33):
And so I came down to Houston in twenty eleven,
I think twenty twelve, and Mark, you know, I went,
I went on every radio station in town. We have
like nineteen different rated sports radio stations in Houston, and
give the point and Mark, Mark like really put a
good pitch together for me to come do some work
(11:53):
with sports Radio six ten. So and I got a
lot of encouragement from Mark and so I, you know,
Andy and I and just decided, all right, we're gonna
pick up We're going to move back to Houston and
see what happens. We'll give it a season to see
what happens. So and Mark put me on and I
was really I didn't have a lot of confidence at all.
And Mark allowed me to do a lot of stuff
(12:16):
way before I thought I was ready to do it,
and gave me a lot of opportunities. So by the
end of yeah, by twenty thirteen, in January that year
is when you know, Mark was with the Texans at
the time, but Sports Radio sixtent offered me a full
time job to do the middays of Mike Meltzer and
I still I'd say about three years into it, I
(12:37):
felt like, Okay, I might I might actually be an
actual solid citizen at this job.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
I so this is good stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
And it's all coming back now because in twenty twelve,
that was the first year of Texans Radio as we
understand it now, and you and Ted did a show,
Seth and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and we put it on
Wednesday nights. It was one hour Ted Johnson Seth Payne
talking football and it was awesome. I mean, these two
guys just talking ball, and I thought this should be
(13:04):
on every day. This should be a full time show.
This is better than anything I'm doing at the time.
And this is before you were a glint in my eye, Johnny.
So that that was fun, and obviously you had the
aptitude to do it.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
You're doing a great job at it right now.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Let's go back, though, Let's go back a little bit
here and we'll bounce all over the place. But I
want to go back to Clifton Springs because I get
a real George Bailey and Bedford Falls vibe from Clifton Springs,
where you are from.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
That's the name of the town.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
Right. Well, I was born in Clifton Springs at the
hospital there, but I grew up in Farmington, New York,
and Victor in New York, same school district.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
All right, will you tell me what it was like
growing up there for Seth Paint, because we hear you
talk about farming. We hear this stuff, and I think
that people need to know Seth.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
All right, Well, that's a it's a long and winding road.
I okay. So the farming side of it was my
dad's side of the family. So when I was born,
I lived on a dairy farm with my mom and
dad and then his family, you know, his cousins is
great uncle, and I had like three different branches of
the family, all had farms up in upstate New York.
(14:14):
And when I was around five or six years old,
my family moved to North Carolina. They picked up the
whole operation, moved to North Carolina, and I lived down
there for a couple of years. Then family split up
and I went back with my mom where you know,
she moved back up to where we were from, but
where I still had a lot of farming family up there.
(14:35):
So at any given time, I was either you know,
in summers, I'd be in North Carolina with my dad
at his farm. And then as I got older, up
in New York, where my main residence was, I still
had all the people in my family, my cousins that
were farmers, and I would and my grandfather still had
his farm up there. I would work on their farms
(14:56):
in the summers and after schools at time and everything.
So it was it was kind of cool because, you know,
I had a single mom, and my mom, my mom
busted her butt like she was going to school, going
to college, taking night classes for years before she finally
got her bachelor's degree, but also working full time. But
I also had the support group of you know, my
(15:16):
grandma was still there. I'd go to her house after school.
I'd have my my grandfather on the other side of
the family to go on their farm and spend a
lot of time with them. So it was I was
like single, you know, grew up in a single parent household,
but I also had a boatload of support from my grandparents,
which was, you know, looking back on it was was
(15:37):
just vital and crucial. I just I had a lot
more structure in my life than a lot of other
kids did Seth?
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Have you ever talked to Kate Stover about this?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Because Caid grew up on a farm, and in fact,
that's what he wants to do with his life when
he's done, is raised cattle on his farm.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
I don't know if you've ever had she had's chance
to talk to kid?
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (15:56):
But how did how did growing up on a farm
change you as a player?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Did it?
Speaker 5 (16:02):
Yeah? I think? You know? With Kaid, I think and
I haven't talked to him about the farming side of stuff.
I want to. I'd love to just go up and
just do like a video project on his farm. For one.
I'll say this, I was always jealous of the beef
farmers because it just seemed like a much less I
don't want to say it's a less labor intensive life,
but it's a less labor intensive life than dairy farming.
(16:22):
Dairy farming, it's just those damn cows have to get
milked every damn day, twice for three times a day.
Or beef it's a little bit more. You raise your
crops to feed the beef, you let them be. So
I'm always I was always jealous of beef farmers, which
he is, but the big thing about it is, you know,
regardless of weather. You know, if you've got livestock, they've
(16:42):
got to be fed every day, and it doesn't matter
what the weather is, and it doesn't matter how tired
you are, you just you have to do it. And
as a kid, the I think maybe the most valuable
part of it is that the responsibility that you're given
is that a lot of your chores are like you're
you doing a good job at your chores have a
(17:04):
specific cause and effect on whether that animal thrives and
it even survives, or whether they get sick or anything.
And then the other side of it is just like
the really hard physical work when you're and it's not
just that it's hard physical work, it's hard physical work
when you're also miserable because it's either hot out or
it's zero degrees, and it kind of sets the bar
(17:24):
for what difficulty is and anything everything else is pretty
much below that, other than wrestling practice. So like you
kind of so if you can wrestle and work on
a farm, there's nothing you do in sports that ever
feels nearly as hard as that. So a lot of
the stuff that you do in the way you operate
on a team. I think they used to love, you know,
(17:47):
when there were more farm kids around. Coaches loved farm
kids because they do anything you ask and they'll do
it at one hundred miles per hour and they don't
complain about it because that's just it's kind of the
way they've been trained to do it from the time
they were five years old.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Wow, well said, hey, how does your brother fit into
all this?
Speaker 5 (18:05):
Okay, so my brother he toughened me up by beating
the crap out and he was a much better wrestler
than I was too. He was three years older than me.
But Dan was a really, really good wrestler. He ended
up being an All American at Clarion, a Division one
All American, and then he started he was doing really
well wrestling internationally before he kind of he just one
(18:26):
thing to find about wrestlers is they reach a point
where they're like, I've had enough. This is like I've
been sucking weight my whole life. Oh, he just got
fed up with it. But yeah, he was like classic
older brother that we we got a lot. We got
along a lot better as we got older. You know,
when he stopped being my tormentor as much as a
mentor and the biggest thing that especially as I got
(18:49):
into high school and he was somebody I really looked
up to. He was the kind of guy that I realized, like, man,
there were times where my I realized my brother believed
in me more than I did myself. And when somebody
gives you those pep talks and tells you what you
can do and what they think you're capable of, it's
(19:10):
it gives you that ability almost like empowers you to
believe in yourself in a way that maybe you don't naturally.
And that's the lastson I've always tried to remember when
you're talking with either when you're an athlete and you're
working with athletes younger than yourself, or you know, you're
a ten year VET and you're talking to rookies, it's
a man. Just just believing in somebody in and of
(19:30):
itself can have a huge effect on them and can
it can raise them up above and beyond where a
lot of other people might believe they could be just
because you because if you genuinely believe in them and
you see the good in them, it's like it's something
I see with Demiko. You know, Dimiko, I think he
really he believes in these guys' strengths and he wants
to see them achieve it. And it just it's it
(19:53):
carries so much more power than any of the words
you say, necessarily, as long as it comes with a
real belief.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Wow, I've so much to say about your brother relationship,
because well, first of all, an All American at Clarion.
That's a big time wrestling school. Because they were in
that they might still be in that e WL, the
Eastern Wrestling League. Penn State was in that league before
the Big Ten, and that was a separate league.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
It was just wrestling.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
It was East Stroudsburg and Lockehaven and Clarion.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
And Penn State.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
It was wild to have all these kinds of schools
in this big time wrestling collegiate league. But he was
an All American and rugby became his thing after he graduated, right,
and he played it professionally, coached it. Now he's CEO
of Rugby International whatever the outfit is he was.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
Yeah, he was rugby CEO of Rugby USA and then
also COO of Rugby America's I believe for a while,
like now he's semi retired, but yeah, he's one of
these guys. He's just a he's like a crazy one
of those super competitive, good at everything type of athletes.
But he was a late bloomer, so he never really
(21:00):
he never really blossomed in football because he had he
had a growth He had his growth for late in
high school. So wrestling was kind of the perfect sport
for him. But he got Yeah, he kind of he
he picked up rugby in away on the mental side
of things that I think was freakishly fast, so he
was able to kind of grasp the sport and then
(21:22):
because he was a wrestler and he had the endurance
for it, he really picked up. He ended up playing
on the Rugby World Cup, you know, within a few
years of really picking up the sport and launching himself
into it full time and ended up making it his career.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
SE's one of the things I'd love to write a
scouting report, especially on an offense.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Steven's lineman is state championship wrestler.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah, never lost about of wrestling, And I know we
talked to Justin Britt about this a few years ago,
and he was more of a mindset that the wrestling
was it was more about the one on one competition
as opposed to anything technical. But it feels like the wrestlers,
like you see guys on the football field, you can tell, oh,
that guy was a wrestler. And I remember doing that
(22:06):
at the Senior Bowl. I told a guy who's a
wrestler a standby some media. I was like, you wrestled,
didn't you? And he's like, yeah, how'd you know? And
these media asked me afterwards. It's like, you can just tell,
how did wrestling help you as a football player or
did it?
Speaker 5 (22:19):
I know one hundred percent it really really helped. I
mean the biggest thing, especially an interior defensive line or
interior offensive line, is that you just learn the importance
of body positioning and just how much you know, like
having your weight in the right place really matters. And
then you're just you're constantly just trying to figure out
ways to move people. And your hands are really important too,
(22:41):
So like all that stuff, it's kind of it's I mean,
it's a martial art. Really you don't people don't really
think of it, but it's a martial art just high
school and Olympic wrestling in and of itself. So there's
that side of it, and then yeah, there's the mental
toughness side of it too, is just that you're out
there on your own in front of a bunch of people,
(23:02):
and it's it's emotionally devastating when you lose when you're
a young kid, because it's embar It's like getting beat
up in a fist fight, you know, and you have
to learn how to process all that stuff and how
to come back from it. But the the hand fighting,
because I wasn't a good athlete at all by defensive
tackle standards, but because I was able to use my
hands really well and to use my body weight, it
(23:23):
made a big difference. And yeah, you see it with
like Mason Graham. Mason Graham was a high school wrestler.
Was he not attack with my house state? I think
you see it clearly with him. I was kind of
surprised that Gray's abel wasn't a high school wrestler because
there when I when I saw him the first time,
I was like, Oh, that kid looks like a wrestler.
So he kind of knows how to uses he knows
how to uses hips and us his body like a wrestler.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
But what he doesn't do what you pointed out and
is dead on he doesn't use his hands very well,
and wrestlers know how to use their hands really well.
It's I always find sort of sort of fascinating because
you know, growing up, we didn't have we didn't have
wrestling here. But I get to Brown and Mark, you
were at Penn State for a while. You see what
kind of psychomaniacs those dudes are. Yeah, they're unbelievable. Like
(24:07):
our full back, his name is Chris Takarski. He played
at full back at two fifteen two and fifteen pounds.
The season was over and even before the season was
over he started cutting. But by the time they got
to wrestling season, he was one seventy seven.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Oh my god, I was like, they do that.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
It blew my mind.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
Just wrestle heavier because because the.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
Heavier guys are sucking down the wrest exactly. You know
what about that though, John The biggest thing that honestly,
you can try to tell high school kids this all
the time and they just don't want to believe it
because everybody's so obsessed with the bench best. As a wrestler,
you know, pull ups and the peg board and all
that stuff, that's the thing, And as a bigger guy
(24:51):
I was a bigger, like, a longer, lengthier wrestler, like,
I was never nearly as good at pull ups as
a lot of the smaller guys. And you just you're
always you want to be able to do a bunch
of that's a big thing. You want to be able
to do the peg board. And I, as an NFL player,
I was considered a pretty strong guy. That was more
my calling card. And I swear I was never a
(25:11):
good bench press guy, but I could do you know,
when I was three hundred and fifteen pounds, I could do
weighted pull ups and there's a lot that comes with
the push and pull that it served me really really
well when it came to hand fighting and some of
the more physical sides of the game that like if
you're a high school kid alignment especially that can whip
(25:34):
out fifteen pull ups. That's freaky strength for a three
hundred and fifteen pound dude. And it has way more
of an impact in football than people want to believe
because they just they want to have the big bench press.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yep, it's all about the bench press.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Thankfully, Cornell saw through all of that, made sure that
Seth stayed home, and then he became an NFL prospect.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
We just got to saw that next right here on
Texans All Access.
Speaker 6 (25:57):
Welcome back to Memorial Day issue of Texans All Actress
from Texas Radio Studio. I'm John Harris, football and a
sideline reporter, one half of the inter Lab podcast crew.
Drew and I will have a podcast later this week,
presumably after OTAs gave you kind of our thoughts on
what's happened at OTA's and while we're out there Ota'
I'm sure we're going to run it to our guy,
Seth Payne. That's what this show is dedicated to and
(26:19):
who it's dedicated to. We did a great, great interview
with him a few a few weeks ago, and it
was awesome, and we hit a number of different things.
We got to that point now where Seth, and he's
talked about this a lot on radio.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
You know, how did he how'd he get to Cornell?
What happened? What made him a prospect that Cornell wanted?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
And then how in turn did he become an NFL
prospect while at Cornell?
Speaker 1 (26:45):
It starts right.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
Here, but tell me why Cornell.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
My senior year in high school, I played real well,
but we had a head coach who probably wasn't the
best high school coach. Good guy, good guy. He got
fired and had had really zero discussions with him at
I'll ever about playing in college or anything. It just
wasn't we weren't like a pipeline to colleges. So Sean
(27:10):
O'Day and I were working out another offensive lineman, a
friend of mine who we were big weight room partners
and everything. We're working out in the weight room on
our own and we look in the coach's office, the
vacant coaches office was a stack of questionneers on from colleges.
So I'm like, I don't I talked to a couple
of Division III schools in the area, like Hobart and
(27:30):
University of Rochester. They go around and they look at like,
you know, all Greater Rochester team. So I just started
kind of shuffling through and we just we just we
filled out our own questionneers and set them off to
those schools, and Cornell was one of them. So I
got I got a visit from the Cornell coach a
(27:51):
few weeks later, and he was watching film with you know,
one of our position coaches in the office and coach
to Stefano. He'd end up being my defense line coach
and uh, and I kind of got called in and
I'm like, I'm trying to figure out if they they
figured out my ruse I built this thing out, and
I'm like a Dave Connon was the position coach, and
I'm looking at him. I'm like, I I hope he
(28:12):
didn't say it. Oh, we didn't say that obviously. Seth
filled this out but coached the step. And I was
watching the watching my film with me and he's like, so, uh,
who's uh who's been talking to you? And I listed
the local He's like, so that's uh, that's it. Huh Okay,
let's uh, let's schedule you for a visit and and
he put on the full court press. So I I
(28:35):
kind of was in a spot where I didn't know.
I didn't know for sure that I even wanted to
go to college. I knew that if I wanted to
go to college, like, I did really well with my
grades and everything. And then I had a lot of
family members that went to Cornell, so there was an
appeal there just because I'd been to Cornell games when
I was a kid. I had my uncle played football
at Cornell. Uh, but it wasn't. I. I really was
(28:56):
in a mindset where I wasn't sure what I was
going to do after high school, and I I was
thinking about going up to work on a fishing boat
in Alaska for a year or two, and then I
was going to enlist in the Marines. I kind of
had an appetite for an adventure. And Uh, but but
you know, Cornell. I got into Cornell and they wanted
me to play football, so I went that route. But
(29:17):
it was it totally wasn't like any kind of a
focused approach or anything like that. It really was just
a good blend of circumstances with a little bit with
a little bit of low grade fraud by me.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Well, after after four years of making the mistake of
going to Cornell instead of going to a place like Brown,
you are now an NFL draft prospect. And I remember
I was in Jacksonville and at the time, and I
was thrilled anytime an ivy leaguer is mentioned as a
you know, day two, day three potential pick, like I'm
I'm all about it, and.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
I was so excited.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
But when for you did the NFL become any kind
of reality like Hey, this actually my might be a
thing that I need to be, that I need to
consider with my life. Because I know a lot of
guys that you played with. I don't know personally, but
I played with a lot of them at Brown. Now
were the kind of the same way of we're gonna
play our four years and that's it. We know we're
(30:14):
going on to some kind of financial investment job, or
we're going on to work for you know, JP Morgan,
or somebody's gonna go be a lawyer, whatever the case
might be. There are many of us that end up
being NFL players, But you did When was that a
reality for you? When did you see, oh, my gosh,
this actually might come to fruition?
Speaker 5 (30:32):
I think, you know, I always I you know, I
worked really hard at football because I loved it, and
you know, I just loved being on the team. But
I didn't really have the NFL aspirations my first couple
of years. And at that point, you know, there's a
period where nobody had been drafted out of the IVY
League in fifteen years or so, I think, in a
(30:52):
long time. But my junior year scouts, that's when scouts
come around, and I got some positive feedback from some
scout that you know, had said that they were interested
or whatever. But we also at the same time got
a new strength coach named Tom Howley, who was the
first time that the program had a full time strength coach.
Like that's how that's how kind of behind the times
(31:13):
the IVY League was at that time. But Tom Howley
had he had played at Wake Forest, No, he played
at TWU lane, but he'd been a Division one strength coach,
and he told me, you know, in my position coach
Pete the Stefano had conversations with me about how this
is a real thing, and so I kind of put
myself full bore into it my junior year and then
(31:36):
in that offseason headed into my senior year and I
stayed stayed at Cornell in the summer, which wasn't typical
at the time either, but just working with Di Stefano
as a position coach, and he was an awesome, awesome
position coach. He taught me much better tech. I had
better technique coming to the league than the vast majority
of SEC guys, big ten guys, anybody like that. But
(31:56):
Tom Howley kind of just transformed my body and my approach.
So that spring before my senior year and then summer
before my senior year. That was that was my goal,
But it hadn't been my lifelong goal or anything. It
was just kind of the seed was planted by junior year.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Wow, so the seed was planted. You end up going
to the fourth round. What was draft weekend like for you?
Because this was Saturday Sunday. It was rounds one, two,
three on Saturday, four through seven on Sunday.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
What was that weekend like? Did you think maybe I
go in the.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Third and then Saturday ends You're thinking, oh my gosh,
what's gonna happen?
Speaker 4 (32:30):
How did that play out for you?
Speaker 5 (32:32):
I was blissfully ignorant. Especially there wasn't you know, the
level of coverage online and everywhere else. It just wasn't
the same as it is now. So I just knew
from my agent that I had a chance of going
probably somewhere between the third and sixth round. You know
what I wasn't prepared for. It was just how long
the process is. Because I knew I wasn't going in
(32:54):
the first round, but you sit there on that first
day in May, it's a long time. Yeah, yeah, And
every time you see somebody else go you're like, Yep,
that definitely wasn't me. It's just rejection after rejection after rejection.
And I want to say that at that time, the
first three rounds were on the first day and then
(33:15):
four were on the second day. So I got a
call from the I got a call from the Cowboys
defensive line coach sometime during the third round that that
year or that day on the first day, and then
he said, hey, Seth, you know you're the last. This
will be interesting and John will probably remember this exact scenario.
(33:35):
He said, you're the last defensive tackle that we would
consider drafting. And I just want to let you know,
if we draft the defensive tackle, we're either going to
take you with our last pick in the third round
or our first pick in the fourth round. And then
I sat and I watched, and then lo and behold
they end up taking the kid out of Syracuse, Antonio
something or other with the third round pick, a defensive tackle.
(34:01):
What the hell is this all about? Yeah? I kinda,
and I still I was just a I was a rube.
I didn't know what was going on or anything. So
I had bigger right, we'll wait and see. And so
the fourth round, I got taken relatively early that day,
and then it was just a whirlwind. But the Cowboys coach,
to his credit, called and said, hey, Seth, I really
(34:21):
I feel bad about that. I just want to let
you know we'd had that guy off our board because
of injury concerns. But the owner stepped in and said that,
uh no, we're going to go with the guy from
the bigger school at this point. So Jerry Jones meddled
with me and uh and I would didn't, thank God,
because I would have been a disaster in Dallas. I
wasn't mature enough to handle that environment.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Oh really, now it all makes sense. I mean, nineteen
ten makes all kinds of sense.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
I mean you got the ultimate revenge against Jerry Jones
and the Cowboys.
Speaker 5 (34:51):
I mean, oh yeah, I carried it with me. Yeah yeah.
I felt jilted and I screwed over by the Cowboys
my entire career.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
I mean, first of all, you're you're an eye the player.
And then, like you said, you got pass. Did you
how much of a chip on his shoulder did you
play with throughout your career?
Speaker 4 (35:07):
Seth?
Speaker 5 (35:09):
Pretty big? I think you know. The first when I
got into a training camp the first thought I had,
And honestly, in writers I remember telling a couple of
writers this and they kind of chuckled at me. I was,
like I said, honestly, I felt like practice in the
Ivy League was harder than going against some of the
(35:30):
rookies and yeah, whatever, Like I don't know, those guys,
like some of those offensive linemen, they weren't gonna ever
make it in the NFL because they were six foot tall,
but they fought their butts off. Yeah, and in the
Ivy League. The one thing about it is, you know,
now there's a lot more you know, technically there's no scholarships,
but there's a lot of there's a lot of there's
a lot of kids that aren't paying to go to
(35:50):
school there. Yeah, but like the kids like I took
out school loans to go to college and play football,
and there was a scrappiness. And I think there are
a lot of guys that were real tough athletes that
were six foot tall but would fight you, yep. And
and I'd go up against some of this. So, honestly,
the thought I had was a lot of especially when
I was going against rookies or guys that were drafted
(36:13):
higher than me. It was like this dude, this dude
got a scholarship and got drafted just because he had
an overactive pituitary. Glenn, but he's a punk and I'm
going to kick his ass. Ooh, And I kind of
carried that with me for a long time, especially with
high draft picks. I'm like, oh, you know what, because
you went through cuberty a couple of years earlier than me,
you got a scholarship, and you went to a big
(36:33):
high school and you got and you got treated like
a prince, and then here you are in the NFL.
I'm going to kick your ass and and that it's
a good attitude to have in life.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
I've heard the Coughlin stories. Andre talks about it because
he was in camp once with the Jags, that if
you're five minutes early, you're ten minutes late, stuff like that.
And you've talked about Coughlin from time to time on
the show. But what kind of impact did he make
on your career and life playing for Tom Coughlin, is't you?
Speaker 5 (37:03):
I think the biggest thing with Coughlin was, you know,
he came out of that Parcels school where it's like
they want to keep you uncomfortable all the time. They
just they never want you to feel like they don't
want you to feel too good about yourself. You know.
It's very very old school, but it's man. It's it's
(37:25):
like going through basic training. You just you learn to
be mentally tough. You learn that I'm not I'm not
fighting for scraps or praise or anything like that. You're
just supposed to do your job and that you're constantly
going to be no matter how well you're playing, you're
going to be under constant scrutiny. And the thing about
Coughlin that was cool was it was he was consistent
(37:47):
with it. He did not play favorites at all. I
remember Beselli telling me that that Cofflin had never once
told the Selli that he had a good game, you know,
like it's just it's it's not the way I would
operate if I were coach, but it's you know, and
it's different. There's different ways to do it, and you
can be a successful a lot of different ways. But
as a player, you just you had to learn to
(38:09):
be really really mentally tough because it wasn't and just
take a lot of pride in doing your job and
doing things for your teammates and that you're just you're
never safe and u and it teaches you to kind
of that constant like a healthy paranoia that all right,
boy whatever, that's great. Yeah, did a good job, but man,
I got a there's somebody gun in for me next week, Seth.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
You went to an expansion team, well twice, but it
started in Jacksonville. Where you go to expansion team. You
got there in ninety seven n seven, so that's your
first year that they had only been playing for a
couple of years. With the year prior ninety six they
ended up going to the AFC Championship Game. I mean
that was a year where I mean it, I was,
I lived there, I saw the whole thing. I was like,
(38:52):
this is incredible an expansion team getting to that level.
But it still was an expansion team. What was that light?
Going down to Jacksonville place where they only had the
NFL for the three years before you got there.
Speaker 5 (39:03):
It was really cool. And you know, and again you
just as a college kid, you just don't know what
you're getting into. So everything that happens, and especially when
you go to a smaller school, there's so many things
that you've never done before, like play in front of
seventy five thousand people and play again. I remember one
of the first games, well, the first preseason game I
ever had. Jim Kelly was doing the color commentary, so
(39:28):
I had a production meeting with Jim Kelly, and I
grew up a Bills fan throughout that whole era, and
Jim Kelly had just retired, and it was just it
was surreal I was sitting I was sitting in a
meeting with Jim Kelly asking me questions about things about me,
and I was kind of blown away by it. So
like that the whole experience of being a rookie is
(39:49):
kind of mind blowing. But the Jacksonville environment was cool because,
for one, they still very much had a lot of
old school NFL veterans, like I got hazed the way,
not as bad as like the Saints back in the
day or anything, but like I got, you know, you're
still a rookie, and you better know your spot and
(40:10):
know your role and shut up and don't you know,
don't don't act like a rookie. You know, better to
be seen and not heard all that type of stuff.
But you learned a lot from guys like like Jeff
Logman and John Yorkovic and all those guys in that
defensive line meeting room. I had a lot of crusty,
old old school NFL veterans that kind of like in
(40:31):
line with playing for Tom Cofflin. It was just it
was it was a bygone era. It was like a
last fumes of a bygone era of the NFL. But
I'm glad I got to see a little bit of it,
all right.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
So you played in an AFC championship game nineteen ninety nine.
The Jags have a phenomenal season, but lose twice to
the Titans in the regular season, and here you are
again with them, and you almost had a shot at
the Bills if the Music City miracle never occurs, so
that would have been interesting, but you lose to them
for the third time. Dom Capers is the defensive coordinator.
(41:04):
I remember him telling me how tough Steve McNair was
to deal with in those games. But when you look
back on that set, because man, the Texans have never
played in an AFC championship game, and I often think
if you lose an AFC championship game, it's gonna be
almost worse almost than losing the Super Bowl, because at
least you went to the Super Bowl and you can
say we won the AFC.
Speaker 4 (41:24):
But what do you look back on that season?
Speaker 3 (41:27):
What kind of eyes do you look back on that
season with, Hey, we were fourteen and two, we were outstanding,
we made it to the AFC Championship Game. Or is
it just total bitterness that you lost at home to
the Titans.
Speaker 5 (41:39):
No, I think a lot of it is. Man. You
just you really learn how hard it is to just
capitalize on everything and for everything to come all together.
Because we were that year. Our defense was extremely good
for the first three quarters of the season, and then
a couple we had some bad injuries that hurt us,
and then we fell off off towards the end, and
(42:01):
we weren't the same defense in the postseason. I think
as we were in the regular season.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Man, I saw that ninety nine defense up close and personal.
It was pretty damn nasty. There's no question about that. Okay,
Seth comes to Houston two thousand and two. We all
know about that Night one victory. We asked Seth about it.
We got a surprising response. Stay tuned for that right
here in Texans All Access. We're going fall a slave
this money edition this Memorial Day at issue of Texans
(42:27):
All Access. I am John Harris footballanalist, sideline reporter, and
we are diving deep with our guys Seth Pain. We
had a really fun discussion and we've gotten to that
point where Seth has now joined the Texans, and so
we asked him what was the coolest thing about the
expansion Draft.
Speaker 5 (42:46):
The coolest thing about the expansion Draft and the whole
experience was, honestly, the draft itself was they did it
like a miniature Madison Square garden and you know, people
who are watching and that might have been you know,
some of some of you guys were there. It was
kind of mind blowing because there were so many parts
of that whole experience, and then being in the city
(43:08):
that first week where it felt like, oh wow, this
is this is a big city, like and this is
a different this is there There are a lot of,
like in a good way, kind of cliche Texas moments
of where like they just do things bigger in Texas.
And I still didn't know anything about Houston and how
unique it is within Texas and everything, but I felt like,
(43:29):
holy crap, this is this is this is gonna be different,
and it's gonna be big, and it's gonna be fun,
and that whole experience that you're playing with the veterans
that we had on that defense, I learned a lot
from Jamie Sharper and Aaron Glenn and Marcus Coleman and
all those guys. We had so many really good veteran
defensive players that it was that side of it. Despite
(43:54):
not having success with a win loss record, you know,
when we were here, I really just I felt like
I really learned learned a lot about football from that
whole environment. It was. It was a really good group
of guys.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
My final, our final. I guess at this point, what
is your memory, like, how do you classify and categorize
the Cowboy game September eight, two thousand and two. I mean,
you have played in an AFC championship game. You had
that phenomenal run with the Jags in ninety nine. I
guess you can always you can always play an AFC
Championship game, which is easier said than done, we know,
(44:29):
but there's only one first game of the franchise history
that you can participate in.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
But you tell me, how do you regard that?
Speaker 5 (44:36):
Now? I just you know i'd keep it in that
same theme of man, this is just big. And I
had played in Jacksonville for five years, but that's a
different stadium, different city, different environment, and I had just
never been part of that much combined and focused energy
(45:00):
from the fans down onto the field. And there was
that moment there at the end of the game when
we got the safety and ended up, you know, stealing
the game. It just I it was almost like an
out of body experience. I don't remember anything about that
place specifically because I was so tired, and I just
remember having the feeling of almost like the energy permeating
(45:24):
my body because it was so loud, and I was
completely in that unconscious mode when you're tired and you're
just going on instinct and training and everything, and it
just it felt like the energy is seeping into you
and you're getting like almost pushed along by the noise
and the environment and everything. It was just it was
(45:46):
it was one of the Honestly, it was one of
the most unique experiences of my life. It was really
It's one of the things. I'm fifty years old, I've
been honest ear with fifty years, and I don't I've
never experienced anything like that, and I never will again.
It was just amazing.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
I want to play that for the team. Yeah, the
night before they host the AFC Championship game. You know
what I mean that.
Speaker 4 (46:09):
But the way you just said that is so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
You know, I'm up in the booth that night and
I've I just called the national championship game at the
University of Miami and the Rose Bowl. That was my
last football accounted that I called. And then the next
one is this and there's just nothing like it. There's
nothing like that night.
Speaker 4 (46:25):
So that was beautiful, Seth.
Speaker 5 (46:26):
It was really really cool, and it's cool that people
remember it, you know this many years later. It's really
it's it's it's cool to be part of it. It's
a very unique. It's one of those things where you're
outside of Houston you just wouldn't get it because, okay,
what it's a regular season game and uh what's what's
it ultimately matter at the end of the year. It
was just it was very very unique.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
It was really cool, larger than life and so are you, Seth.
Thanks so much for being with us, and we got
to do this again because I have like fifty other
questions so many we get to talk about some of
the great stories of the early days, like guys like
guys who came along and went like Steve Foley, you
know people.
Speaker 5 (47:00):
Yeah, fully strong arm in the battle Red Jerseys on off,
Bob mcnare at the end of that.
Speaker 4 (47:05):
Game, Oh my god, two thousand and three.
Speaker 5 (47:06):
Played in battle Red and we won the game and
Steve fully grabs mister mcnaarry. He's like, we get to
keep the jerseys.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
Yeah, that's right, a win over the Carolina Panthers two
thousand and three. Never forget it, all right, Seth, thanks
a lot, Thank you.
Speaker 5 (47:23):
No, and I know you're is. One of the first
lessons you taught me, Mark, is that you have forty questions.
You want to have forty questions going to an interview,
and then the really good ones you only get the
three of them.
Speaker 4 (47:31):
That's right, that's true. That's true.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
That means it's a good interview.
Speaker 4 (47:34):
That's that's good. But you're the best.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Thanks man, Thanks guys, No, cap set is the best man.
Really appreciate him joining us and all of you for listening.
That was a great listen. Wanted you to hear that again.
Great stuff. OTAs this week will be covering all we
got you covered right here on Texans All Access. Well
see tomorrow buddy, and as always, go Texans
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