November 30, 2021 • 46 mins
Cassie Calvert talks with Aditi Kinkhabwala of the NFL Network and CBS Sports about life as a female sports reporter and mom, sharing stories from the AFC North and her journey in the NFL media business.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
For this episode of the Purple Chair Podcast, we're stepping
outside the Ravens organization. You've heard from a lot of
influential voices from right here inside the castle, but today's
guest has a unique perspective. A d. D. Kinkop walla
field reporter at the NFL Network, is based in Pittsburgh. Yep,
that's right, I said Pittsburgh. A d. D Is focused
(00:28):
on the a f C North for the NFL Network
and covers the Ravens regularly. She can really put this
organization into perspective of one of the toughest divisions in
the NFL. So, without further ado, welcome A d. D.
To the Purple Chair Podcast. So, like I mentioned, we
were talking before we jumped in here, you have a
very unique perspective on the organization, which we'll get to.
But to sign us set the stage for listeners, how
(00:50):
did you get to your current role at the NFL Network.
I was actually a newspaper writer. My first job out
of college was covering high school football at the San
Antonio Express News, which was sort of crazy because I
was born in New York City. I grew up in
New Jersey. I went to Cornell, I had accepted this
job as a financial analyst for Bloomberg, which, if you
know anything about me, makes no sense because I suck
(01:11):
at math and I can't sit still. But whatever, this
is what I've done. And then a week before I graduated,
the sports editor of the San Antonio Express News said, UM,
I've got this great job and I think you'd be perfect.
You should come an interview. And my first thought was Texas,
No way. And then my second thought was what would
make my Indian mother go a little bit crazy. So
(01:33):
I just decided, you know, I'll go on this free
trip to Texas and I'll check out the city that
I've never been to. Whatever, And I just completely fell
in love with the idea of telling stories and every
day being different and exploring a new part of the world.
And the guy that hired me actually is still my
mentor to this day. He even spoke at my wedding.
(01:54):
So then I was a newspaper writer for some time.
I was you know, eventually I was writing at the
Wall Street Journal covering the NFL and I was asked
it was before the Giants played the forty Niners in
the NFC title game. That's when John Harbaugh's brother Jim
was the head coach of the forty Niners. So it
was two thousands in twelve, I um was on TV
(02:19):
for exactly three and a half minutes for the NFL Network,
just talking about the Giants in advance of this game.
And then a couple of months later they offered me
a job, and it was sort of like it was
really insane because I'd never done any TV. I didn't know,
you know what an i FB was. I didn't know
that when you were in Superdome you don't need to
yell in the microphone because the microphone so strong. But
(02:39):
you know, whatever, you learned on the job, which is
kind of journalism. And so now I have been at
the NFL Network since two thousand twelve, which is the
longest I've ever been anywhere. And if anyone is wondering,
I started writing it a newspaper when I was twelve
years old. I started at the NFL Network when I
was sixteen. You know, if I'm really not as old
as that makes me sound, yeah, exactly. So when you
(03:00):
were writing for newspaper, did you ever see yourself making
the jump to TV or just it was too good
of an opportunity to pass up when it did come along. Yeah,
I think that. Um. I really loved the art of writing.
I loved the craft of writing, the taste of words.
And I'm the daughter of a math professor who was
a physicist and a chemical engineer. And my father, the
(03:21):
chemical engineer, always told me that writing was the most
valuable skill you could have because he worked with these
unbelievably brilliant people who had brilliant ideas that were basically
worthless because they couldn't explain them. And so I really
actually wanted to be a lawyer. Writing was just something
that I enjoyed, I was good at, I was into.
(03:42):
I never really thought about TV because it is going
to sound terrible, But when I was a newspaper writer,
I'd have these long involved conversations and TV reporters would
come in with their fake eyelashes and you know, or
they're like hair gel male female, whatever, and ask these
like SoundBite driven questions, how do you feel? And I
(04:02):
always thought like, I don't want to do that. I
want to have these really long involved conversations about when
you choose to stunt or what you know whatever. Um,
And then I realized when you get into TV that
sometimes you have to ask that question to get the
sound bite because it's about the sound bite, and you
don't have the freedom to parse, you know, twelve quotes.
It just you know, at the time that it was happening,
(04:23):
newspapers were sort of shrinking, losing money. I think people
were not reading as much. You know, Twitter existed, but
it was still like a little bit new, and so
we were moving into this phase of people want things
in thirty seconds sound bites and a hundred and forty characters,
and there wasn't as much of an appetite for the
two thousand word daily story in the Wall Street Journal.
(04:44):
And it was actually it's funny because Cassie, the year
before I had had um a job offer from ESPN,
not necessarily on TV, but just a job offer, and
my sports editor had done everything he could to keep me,
and so I stayed. And then when the NFL network
came was one year later, and he was just like,
you know what I think this is, this is the
wave of the future, and this is a great opportunity
(05:06):
for you and you should just go. And so here
I am, and I now know how to put on
fake eyelash that is a true like that Ivy League
degree and I could do the glue now. It took
a while, but I love that. Um. So, as a
national reporter now who covers his focus on the a
f C North and based out of Pittsburgh, you end
(05:27):
up covering the Ravens quite a bit obviously being in
the division and you have this be have this broader
perspective of the division as a whole. What stands out
to you about the Ravens in this division just how
um tremendously true to the idea of team they are.
And UM, I don't know if I'm gonna get in
trouble for revealing this, but whatever. Al Villanueva is the guy.
(05:50):
He of course is playing left tackle for you right now.
He started this season playing right tackle. He was with
the Steelers for a long time, and um, the Steelers
were not going to bring him back, and he and I,
you know, talked a little bit something and at some
point we were kind of talking about the Ravens and
I said, all, you just need to go on a visit,
like you just you are going to get in there
and you are going to love talking to coach Harbor
(06:13):
for X Y and z I'm not going to tell
you what, but just you know, I gave him all
this whatever, blah blah blah. And so he goes on
his visit and that evening I get a message from him, Okay,
you were completely right. And then on the day that
he signed, because then I was pushing him, I'm like,
you just gotta go, you gotta go. You have to
experience this. And then the day he signed, he sent
(06:33):
me a message and he said, I listened to you.
And so I think what's so interesting is that with
the Steelers and the Ravens, both you have these organizations
that are you know, steeped in tradition, maybe the Steelers
just because they're older a little bit more, but there's
this sense that these are two great organizations that believe
(06:54):
in consistency, believe in stability, have completely invested ownership, and
have these coaches that are called players coaches. And yet
for all the connective tissue, they're also very very different.
And these two coaches are players coaches in very different ways.
And it's that old cliche of there's a different way
(07:14):
to skin a cat. You know, there are two ways
to skin a cat, and so I think one of
my favorite parts of the job, Cassie, is to be
able to go to different organizations and have that perspective too.
When you only cover one team, I was a New
York Giants beat writer, so I only knew the Giants.
I only knew the way that Tom Coughlin did things,
and I only knew the way Eli Manning did things.
(07:36):
But when you cover a lot of teams, you get
this idea of saying, Okay, this is how you can
do right by your players, and this is also how
you can do right by your players, and this is
how you can work. And that's how you can work.
And I'll give you another example. You know, I've covered
now this division for you know, close to ten years,
and I was at a training camp practice this year
(07:57):
with the Browns, and I was so struck by the
energy level, by the pace, by the tempo, by the
way the players worked, by the level of intensity. Because
for years and years, the way the Ravens practiced and
the way the Steelers practiced was very different than the
way the Browns practiced. Now I'll just say this right now,
(08:20):
nobody practices harder than the Ravens. So the Ravens practice
really hard. The Steelers practice, um, not quite as hard,
but very professionally also, it's very professional outfit, and the
Browns were matching that level of professionalism, that type of focus,
that tempo, that energy, that intensity. And I actually made
(08:41):
a point of it, and I asked Baker Mayfield about it,
and you know, he kind of laughed because it was
so true. He totally agreed that, you know, practice is
very different than when he first got there. But it
felt like I only had the ability to say that
because I've spent so many years being at Ravens training
camp and being at Steelers training camp, and being a
(09:01):
Bengals training camp, and you know all the other training
camps around the country that I've been to. That's really interesting.
I never would have thought of like noticing that in
a practice when like we do see the changes of
the round organization as making like broadly, but like when
you really get in the minutia like how a practice
is structure and seeing that carry over, that's fascinating. And yeah,
most people probably wouldn't notice that. Yeah, but I think
(09:22):
that that, you know, for me, covering football has always
been you know, like a jail break, a jail break
screen or like a Blitzer inaudible, Like those are all fun, right,
But for me, it's about the people and the personalities
and how does teamwork and how do you work together?
And do you work for the guy next to you
or not? What motivates you, how do you motivate people,
(09:43):
like what makes a great leader? Those are the things
that really sort of get me going. And so, I mean,
I remember my first year at the NFL Network. The
Eagles at the time had um Mike Vick and like
this tremendous loaded roster and they we're talking about how
they had so much swag and they were a dream
(10:03):
team and you know, all of that. And then I
went straight from Eagles camp to Falcon's camp, and the
Falcons had a Sante Samuel at the time in their
secondary and I just remember the way he was talking
so much trash to Matt Ryan on the practice field,
and I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, that
is swag. Like if you need to tell me you
(10:23):
have swag, it's not the same as actually witnessing it.
And this was, you know, my first experience as a
national reporter going to different places, and it was just like,
that's part of what you need to use in your toolbox.
You have to remember every experience you've had and how
does it relate to what you're seeing in front of you. Sure,
when you went from kind of being a beat reporter
(10:44):
to covering nationally, did you find it hard to kind
of manage? You know, now I have to maintain all
these relationships like everywhere, not just like one organization and
like show up and like you know, established that. It's
definitely hard. It's really hard in the age of COVID
when you can't get into a locker room and have
a conversation, and football sadly doesn't necessarily have the same continuity.
(11:07):
So like I think the last time that I was
in your locker room, the most intense conversations that I
had were with Willie Sneed, who's gone. Jimmy Smith, who
of course is still there but you know, is one
of the older guys. Um Orlando Brown who's gone, you know,
Robert Griffin. Robert Griffin and I were talking about his
third daughter, you know, like he's gone as well. He's
(11:28):
so that's difficult when you don't um get in there
in front of people face to face. I think that
you also just have to recognize that your job is
a little different. You know, when you're a beat you
need to know every single thing, who's hurt, who's up
for a contract, who's got a minor tweak, who's got
you know, in my job, it's not necessary to um
(11:52):
gloss over transactional things. But maybe when you're a beat reporter,
you're speaking to your fan base. So if I'm covering
the Ravens as a beat, I'm talking to Ravens fans
who know every single thing there is about the Ravens.
If I'm national, I'm talking to thirty two different fan bases.
So I hope I can give Ravens fans something that
maybe they don't necessarily get just from my perspective. But
(12:16):
then I'm educating thirty one other fan bases on what's
happening in Baltimore or owing smells. Yeah, totally. I totally
get the player, like the relationships too, because that's tough,
even like internally, you know, like you get to know
guys working with them every day, and then it's a
business and they might not be there the next year
and the go to guy that you used to always
go to for something is no longer there, and so
it's kind of like you kind of have to start
(12:37):
over sometimes even just like you know, being internal. Um,
we talked about this a little bit, but obviously the
Steelers Ravens rivalry is arguably one of the best in
the NFL of my favorite rest But how have you
seen it change in your time covering the division? You
talked about how the Steelers are so steeped in tradition
and but they have some similarities, but they're also like differences.
(12:58):
But how have you seen the rivalry kind of change
as your hat it has it their basketball games, that's
what they are like. It doesn't matter what happens for
the first three and a half quarters, you know it's
going to come down at the very end. I mean,
I think about some of the best games that I've
been at, the Thanksgiving the first Thanksgiving that I was married,
I think that was two thousand thirteen in Baltimore when
(13:19):
Mike Tomlin nearly tripped Jakobe Jones and then the Steelers
seemingly they're down by eight and it's a last minute
drive and you think that Heath Miller's in, but he's not,
and you think Levian Bell is in, but his helmet goes,
you know, falls off his head whatever, and it gets
called back and then you know there's a two point
conversion in Emmanuel Sanders, who's one of the most consistent
receivers in the NFL to this day, drops that two
(13:39):
point conversion that I think about the Christmas Day in
Pittsburgh when uh, you know it was in Pittsburgh. They
call it the Immaculate extension. When Ben Roethlisberger there's fourteen
seconds left, they're playing for the division. Ben Roethlisberger has
absolutely no business throwing the ball shy of the end
zone to Antonio Brown, but he does. There's three guys
can verging on a b and Eric Weddle is in
(14:02):
perfect position to make that tackle. And how Antonio Brown
somehow extends his arm over the goal line, you know,
and to stand on the field to be at the
goal line for plays like that. Even you know, who
was it who beat the Steelers were really good, the
Ravens were struggling. The Steelers go into Baltimore and it
was Ryan Mallett, right like Ryan Mallett beats the Steelers
(14:24):
or last year that whole COVID game. It was my birthday,
a Wednesday afternoon game. I mean, we've been waiting for
this game for a week. They were supposed to play Thanksgiving.
The Ravens come in there with a team that Mike
Tomalin basically all but calls a JV team, save the
Steelers everything they could handle. And then a few days later,
Washington comes in gives the Steelers their first loss, and
(14:45):
Chase Young tells me after the game, oh, yeah, we
saw what B Moore did. B Moore gave us the blueprint,
you know. And I just think that that's the magic
of rivalries. Though it doesn't matter what your record is
when you go in, it doesn't matter who's healthier who's not.
It's just you know, you're going to get this unbelievably
hard fought game. And I think the piece that I
really love about this rivalry is that there's always been
(15:08):
while there's always been an edge, there's been such a
great level of respect. You know, for a few years,
the Steelers and the Bengals were really going back and forth.
Think about when Andy Dalton and Vanta's perfect and Adam
Jones and A. J. Green were all there right, and
the Bengals were on a run of five straight playoff exppearances,
and the Stewards Bengals played really tough games, like they
(15:30):
they all had like all these fifteen yard penalties and
roughing and unsportsmanlike and you know, like just there was
nastiness and I don't know, like, to me, that's not
really fun. I mean, maybe it's funny to some people,
but to me, it just feels like you're you're skating
way too close to I don't like that. The the
(15:54):
nastiness of the Ravens Ravens Steelers, it's just way better.
It's just between the line, you know. Yeah, one of
my favorite games I'll ever like it was actually Ravens
not favorite games, but when the coolest, coolest experiences for
me in the league was like my first Ravens Steelers
game at Steelers and we ended up losing, but I
(16:14):
just remember like being down on the field like because
I was down there because I was it was really
close obviously, and I didn't know which way it was
gonna go, so I had to be down here if
we win, do you like? Postgame interviews and all those things,
and the terrible towels were just going and everyone's screaming
and I got chills, and I'm like, this isn't even
like my team, you know, like I'm on the other sideline,
and I was like, this is wild, and like, like
you said, it just it doesn't matter. Like last year
(16:35):
was crazy, Like you have all these guys active in
the practice squad because of COVID and we had no
business even being in that game, and yet there we are.
You know, I went to Duke and so I always
had the Duke Carolina rivalry, and to me, that's the
only thing that really compares to that. Like you have
the two teams that are always good. You know, it's
always going to be a fun showing, no matter like
what what the year it is, like what each team
(16:58):
is supposed to be, whatever the records are, like, it
always is a fun one. So and There's and they
play a very similar brand of football in the sense
that it's like hard nosed, fundamental, You're always going to
have a great defense. And it's kind of you know,
like you look at the Ravens this year, for all
the people that left, you have no question that Wink
was going to create a great defense. Like it's just
you know, someone made this line about the Ravens. They
(17:20):
don't even remember who it was, but it was like
they never rebuild. They just reload. And that's exactly what
the Ravens defenses. When I started, it was Ray Lewis,
you know, and then it was Terrell Suggs and then
you know, Matt Judon was a guy and that like
and it just doesn't even matter. But yeah, and it's
it's fun too, again, like I said, because there are
a lot of organizational similarities and you appreciate the way
(17:43):
both families really care about their players and go about
their business. Um, yeah, that's fun. But nothing compares to
the Castle. I mean the facility in the country, although
I haven't been so far. I mean, that's a stadium
that's not their headquarters. I've heard that that's amazing. Yeah,
what did you think of Vegas? Was Allegiance really amazing?
I was not in Vegas unfortunately, but yeah, I've heard
(18:05):
great things. It's all the new, shiny indoor stadium. That's
They're pretty cool. I guess. Yeah, Well we'll find out
at the Super Bowl about l A. Right, yeah, exactly. Well.
I have a friend that just started working there, so
she's like, le's see you in February. I'm like, all right,
all right, right, I'm sure it's on Seohn Harbot's calendar, right, yeah, exactly.
Do you have any favorite moments They read stories from
(18:28):
your time covering the Ravens that really have stood out
to you. Oh gosh, I'll put you on the spot
a little bit. Sorry, They're just so many, you know,
there's just a lot of good people there. Um. I
remember last year. You know, last year was such a
hard year because my favorite part of the job is
getting to talk to people. I wouldn't do this if
(18:49):
I didn't have those conversations. And it's like I just
referenced earlier. I met R. G three when he was
a rookie and he was draft in Washington, like covered
him and then you know like after that, Um, we
both had babies, we both got married, you know, like
life changed, and here we are in the Ravens locker
room and we're talking about, um, how he has three
(19:11):
daughters and you know, maybe I'd give it one more
shot for a boy, but if not, he's done. And
you know this, that and the other, and um it's
personal conversations like that where you feel that you get
to connect with someone somehow, And so last year we
didn't get any of that because reporters had to stay
in this moat in the stands. You know, ten rows away.
(19:31):
You're not allowed on the field, you're not in the
locker room. Every interaction with a player was via zoom,
which is basically just a big scrum you have to
wait to be called on. And um I was. I
can't even remember who it was. It was like the
middle of this season. I'm in Baltimore, Calais Campbell didn't play.
Why could I not think of who it was? I
(19:51):
feel like it was a Florida team, But anyway, whatever,
I was there in the middle of the season and
after the game, Um, John Harpall was walking off the field,
and I was waiting to do my postgame interview, which
you know last year we used to do from like
the reporter stands on the stands in the players in there.
So John Harball was walking off the field and he
just stopped to say hi. So we're yelling at each
other over the railing, and I asked how his daughter
(20:13):
is doing it notre dame, and how the season is
going and this and that, and he asked me about, uh,
you know how old my daughter is. Now I've got
a son, and um, I have a daughter who was
born prematurely in Cleveland, so he's like, how old is
she now and what's going on? And then he just
was like, you know, I don't know how you do it.
And it just felt like such a human personal moment.
(20:33):
And it's those moments like I can give you, you know,
like what's an amazing There have been so many amazing
football moments, you know, like I'm sure I could sit
here and say this catch or Lamar Jackson doing that,
or Thursday night last year in Cleveland. I know it's
not Baltimore, but in Cleveland, being at that game, and
I remember pregame making a hit about you know, for
(20:56):
as much as we talk about Lamar Jackson in this
run game rapport that he has with Mark Andrews and
Willie Snead and when he meets him, and then at
the end of the game, who is catching the ball?
Who is he going to? And of course, you know,
because it's all about me, I'm staring they like. But anyway,
so you know, like there are a gazillion amazing football moments,
(21:18):
but it's those personal conversations. It's the personal connections. It's
um the first week of the season last year, I
was in Baltimore. Cleveland was there. It was Cleveland, Baltimore,
and I remember Jimmy Smith was warming up and he
was running around and I'm ten, rose up and I'm
like Jimmy and he goes D D and it was
like a person. Because it had been a year and
a half since I talked to anybody other than in
(21:39):
my family, you know. So it's just it's moments like that,
I think I don't know that I could do it.
Even this year when they said that they were keeping
us out of the locker room, I was just like,
I can't do this job anymore because he was that.
And I think it's important to have that perspective too
when you tell a story, you know, when you everybody's
(21:59):
a human, you know. And I'm sure people in Baltimore
don't think that of Ben Roethlisberger. But Ben Roethlisberger is
getting the crap beat out of him right now. And
I don't know when you are, you know when this
is posting. But the poor man is thirty nine years old, Okay,
like he's thirty nine years old, and the Steelers gave
him an offensive line that cannot block, that cannot protect,
that cannot clear time that cannot make space for this
(22:21):
run game. And he's got three kids, and he's a
human and he's thirty nine years old. You know, Like now,
it's just I don't know that that's the best example.
But again, if you don't ever interact with them, they're
a Jersey number, sure, but if you talk to them,
and I've I mean, I'll openly say this in Ben
(22:42):
Roethlisberger would admit this, like we have not. We've had
quite a bit of friction over the course of many years,
and I won't waste anybody's time talking about it. But
I just references my daughter was born two months early.
When I was in Cleveland to cover a game. I
was supposed to cover the Titans Browns Week one opener,
and I all of a sudden went into emergency labor.
(23:02):
One of the nicest messages that I got was from
Ben Roethlisberger. It's about humanity, you know, Like we're all
humans who are all in this together. We all care
about what we're doing. We're all very passionate about what
we're doing. Sometimes that's a conflict with each other. But
I think when you recognize that, you really can advance
(23:23):
whatever it is you're trying to do whatever story you're
trying to tell in that piece. When you can have
the personal interaction, that just enhances the ability to do
that absolutely. You reference like being a mom and working
from home during the pandemic, and there's a lot of
moms across the world balancing having kids at home, and
I'm sure that had to be tough, but you have
the unique, you know, challenge to have, Like you're also
on live television from home. So how did you how
(23:46):
did you do that? I don't know that I did.
Sometimes I'm surprised I'm still employed. Um. Yeah, we've definitely
had some you know, babies screaming in the background. We
occasionally had a five year old boy walking into a shot.
But you know what, I think that we just needed
to like lean into it in some ways. And uh,
(24:07):
last year, my son kind of became a TV star.
He ended up you know, like the NFL network put
him on TV multiple times just to put him on TV.
UM my daughter once interrupted a shot and it was
a very funny moment. I think that what was hard
is that UM players and coaches were so so understanding
(24:30):
because many of them were living that same life. And
I'll go back. I'll go back to Ben Roethlisberger. In fact,
one of the first zooms we had um when we
were kind of in this new paradigm, was with Ben
Roethlisberger and um, my husband was watching my daughter or
maybe we had a babysitter someone, and my daughter just
starts wailing in the background when it was my turn
(24:53):
to ask a question. And I was so embarrassed, and
I was just like, oh my god, I'm so sorry,
and he goes, oh, no, it makes me feel like
at home, it's great. And I remember the Steers had
a tight Endvance McDonald who did the same thing. And
then I remember I was on a Brown's um zoom
when you know, I didn't have any childcare, I didn't
have anybody to help. It was head coach Kevin Stefanski,
(25:15):
and my daughter was cooing. She wasn't crying, but I mean,
she's a baby. She was cooling. What are you gonna like,
stick your kid in a closet? And so I apologized
and Kevin Stefanski said, oh, no, big deal, and a
Browns fan came after me on Twitter like just and
it turned into this very viral thing. In fact, um,
because I apologize this guy just talked about how you know,
(25:35):
annoying my children are and how ridiculous this is an
unprofessional and I apologized to the guy first. Then I
kind of got piste off and I was just like,
you know, maybe this is a time to show each
other grace. And you know, even if my kids are annoying,
good thing, I love them. Whatever, it turned into this thing.
Peter King wrote about it in his column, and Andrew Barry,
(25:58):
the Brown's GM actually ended up calling me, and just
because he and his wife were living the exact same life.
You know, like we're all trying to juggle at this moment,
and so you know, it's not ideal. I would think
I'm a better mom when I get out of my
house every so often let my kids miss me. It's
interesting though, because like in some ways, you know, it
(26:19):
made something that's so impersonal feel more personal. And like
with the draft, like it was so neat to see
guys at home with their families, and like that's something
that we never get to see usually. But like on
the flip side, you know, like you know, no one's
criticizing players for having their families there in those moments,
you know, and like we had to remember a zoom
dating back to like early pandemic with Mark Ingram, and
(26:41):
like his daughter popped in the back and it was precious,
you know, and like you love that. So we do
get those kind of like unique moments that you don't
see otherwise because of zoom, but it can be so
like impersonal too. I just think there's a lot more
forgiveness for I mean, remember a few years ago when
was the guy in the BBC. He was talking and
then all of a sudden, like his daughter or like
(27:01):
his baby runs in and his wife is like trying
to snatch them out, and it was just this like
adorable suite. I just tend to feel and I'm not
one of those like rabble rousing women, but I just
tend to feel that like women have a little less
room for that because we're already trying to prove we
can juggle and where our ambition lies, and how focused
(27:21):
we are and how professional we are. You know. I
had a boss that told me when I had a
child that I should just be content and that I
couldn't do this job anymore. And I was like, actually,
my ambition is even higher than it was before my
son was born. Because right now I want my son
to go to the school bus stop and say, my
mommy kicks button takes names, you know, like it matters
(27:42):
even more right now that both my son and my
daughter see me doing this, whereas before it was just me.
So I mean, I don't know, I just but that's
the other thing too. I would say, Cassie's that I
spent twenty years ignoring the haters and the trolls and
that you should stick in the kitchen, and I'm done
doing that, you know, like when they came after my children,
(28:03):
it was just and now I'll you know, I don't
respond to every troll by any means, but every so often,
like just on Sunday, someone told me that my face
was annoying, and so I was like, okay, well, you know,
this is the face that I was born with. I
can't do anything about it. But if I bother you
that much, you can unfollow me, you know. And I
just feel like if we don't call out bad behavior,
(28:24):
when is it ever going to change? You know, nothing
has changed in the twenty years that I've done this.
Andrew Kramer, the great legendary ANDREWA. Kramer, is one of
my mentors. We talk about, you know, thirty forty years ago,
I'm dealing with the same crap for twenty years that
she dealt with. What's going to change when it's my
daughter's turn or when it's your turn ten years from
(28:47):
now if we don't stand up and say no, no, absolutely,
I'm here for it. I'm here for calling it out.
I do it. I gon't get as much as you,
but like it's just ridiculous. And I mean like players
get it too. Yeah, you know, like I don't know how,
Like I see like the Ravens mentions to get in
my personal mentions, but like they get it on this
like extreme other level that I'm like, I just how
(29:07):
do you even block that out at that point? I
don't know, but I know and that that's true. Players
get it. People forget that players are human beings and
that players work their tails off. I'll use Pittsburgh again.
T J. Watt was going through this contract negotiation and
people were just like, you get paid to play a game,
like oh whatever, you got to practice for two hours
and you want million, And it's like, no, this is
(29:29):
a profession and the same for us, and I don't
I just think that it's so easy in this day
and age to come after people. And I know half
the people that send me nasty tweets are probably the
same people that, like at the stadium are asking me
for a picture with them, you know, like they'd never
do it to my face. But I just think that
at some point we have to say enough, you know,
like it's not acceptable to talk to women this way.
(29:52):
It's not acceptable to talk to professional men who are
trying their hardest and doing their best to just I
don't know, it's a level of discourse, and I don't
that I'm going to make a difference, but maybe, you know,
one step at a time, we have to believe right absolutely.
I watched this profile on you, and I think this
quote is pretty pertinent to this, and I just loved it.
Really stuck with me. You said representation does matter. But
(30:14):
I don't want the first thing that you say about
me to be, oh, she's Indian American, Oh she's a woman,
Oh she's the only mother. I don't want that. I
want the first thing that you say about me to
be she's a damn good reporter. And I love that,
Like that just really struck me that it's kind of
like what we're talking about right here, that it's not
about our genders, it's not about race. It's about what
you're telling, the information that you're giving, and that it's
(30:35):
the best that it can be well. And that's and
at the end of the day, that's what it's supposed
to be about, right, It's not like how many women
of color are there, how many women are there, how
many tall people are there, how many short people are there,
how many young people are there. It's just supposed to
be about the quality of your work. And um, it's
hard because we should all be proud of where we
(30:56):
come from and the points of view that we represent
and the example that we set for other people. But
at the end of the day, none of that means
anything if you're not really really good at what it
is you do. And so it is really important to me,
and I'll tell you you know, like, at no point,
(31:17):
at no point did I ever think, Okay, I should
get this because I'm the girl, or I should get
this because I'm a minority, or I should like it
was just I should get this because I'm good. I
should get this because I'm the best one to do this.
I hope that everybody who's in their position feels really
good about the work that they're doing and that that
is their number one calling card, because it certainly doesn't
(31:37):
say on my business card that I'm Indian American or
a mom. So we're talking about, you know, navigating being
a female in the industry, but you kind of have
the added level of also being the only Indian American
on their talent network, really, you know, only Indian American
woman talking about sports and national television period. You have
to kind of navigate both there, Like how do you
(31:58):
do that? I feel that it's an incredible opportunity, Cassie,
because if you know anything about Indian American families, or
generally Asian American families, there's a big focus on stem,
on math and science, on sort of traditional routes. You know.
When I was growing up, I remember my mom telling
me that every single one of her friends kids was
(32:18):
a doctor or a hedge fund person, which she got
out of my brother eventually, But like I was the
only newspaper writer. And I think it's important again this
goes back to representation. I think it's important to say
that anybody can chase any sort of dream, as traditional
or untraditional as it is, and just because someone else
hasn't done it before you doesn't mean that you can't
(32:40):
do it. And so going back to even when I
was a newspaper writer, I would get emails from Indian
fathers of daughters and sons who would say, you are
such a great example to my daughter or to my son,
And all I would think is, Wow, you're more involved
than my parents were, however, many years ago, which is
(33:02):
not fair to my parents because obviously I could never
have done this if they didn't give me the freedom
to go chase something crazy. But I do think that
sometimes it's very, very scary to do something that hasn't
been done. And um, when I had my first son,
there were no there had not been a female reporter.
(33:25):
I believe there had not been a female reporter who
had had a baby while she was a reporter. So
at the time, you know, Kara Henderson was at the
NFL network and had a son, Alex Flanagan had three children,
was a reporter. I don't know if any of them
actually gave birth while they were at the network, but
at the time, I was the first sort of traveling
correspondent who's in the field who works crazy hours, which
(33:47):
is very different than being an anchor, which is kind
of more of like a nine to five um who
was having a baby. And I was young enough and
excited enough, it was like, who cares that no one's
ever done it? I'll do it. Then when I was
pregnant with my second, I was just like, oh my god,
nobody still has a baby, nobody has two, and how
do you do it? And how do you? And it
was sort of like I needed to look at Tracy
(34:08):
Wolfson who has three children and does it. It was
comforting to see it is possible. People can indeed do this.
They can juggle this, They can manage being a present
mother and still chasing their professional pursuits. So that's how
I feel about being an Indian American woman doing something
(34:29):
very very odd and unusual. And I will just say
this that there are I think eight or nine or
maybe even ten doctors in my family, all with the
last name Kinkabullah. But if you google Kinkabla like so
so much for being the black sheep. Right at least
(34:49):
there's something I love that. Are there any like you
know you mentioned being on the road when you were
carrying your children like, was there any unique challenges to
like like logistically doing that. Oh my gosh, yeah, but
the world has changed. And actually I've got a great
Ravens story about that. So um, I mean, I hope
that your listeners are okay with this. Probably most of
(35:10):
them were nursed themselves, so I was a nursing mom
and when you um go on the road, you need
to pump your breast milk. And with my son, this
was an impossibility in a lot of places, you know,
Like I remember one club telling me to go use
the female restroom someplace. I was telling me, you know,
like all I asked for was a closet and a plug,
and it was, you know whatever. I remember covering a
(35:31):
divisional playoff game in Denver and I had ninety six
ounces of breast milk that I had to take through
the Denver International Airport. The t s a agent like
spilled some of it. Then I missed my connection in
Boston and I had to dump all this milk and
it was just and if you know, I mean, are
you a mom? I'm not? Okay. They call this liquid gold,
(35:52):
So maybe one day at some point you'll not like
I cried having to throw away nine ounces and breast milk. Okay.
Fast forward to four years later, my daughter is born.
Almost everybody has a dedicated nursing room. The Ravens, by
the way, have an absolutely gorgeous nursing room. All the
teams will, let you know, have let me use these rooms.
The National Football League will fed X your breast milk homb.
(36:16):
So when I went to the Comboune in Combine in
two thousand nineteen, just before the pandemic kid, instead of
having to carry that milk holmb, I just packed it
in fed X and dry ice and it got home
before I did. So the world is evolving. And here's
my Ravens story. The first time around, when I was struggling,
and you know, I was dealing with some teams that
wouldn't give me space and you know, either at a
(36:38):
stadium or in their facility, I remember calling Andrea Kramer
and saying, what do I do? And Andrea tells me
a story about how twenty years earlier, Brian Billick would
get out of his office and just leave so she
could sit at the head coaches desk and pump breast
milk for her son, Will who is now in college,
(37:01):
and just a brilliant, badass and all of that. And
then you know, I've gotten to work with coach Billock
at the NFL Network. Just a gem of a human being. Again,
this all comes back to football is about great people. Yeah.
So I've got chills. Uh yeah, just so anyway, so
that's you know, that's part of the fun um, part
(37:22):
of the you know, my son's gotten some really incredible
experiences simply because of you know what mommy does, which
goes back to that whole thing that my job matters
even more. Uh yeah, But you know, the juggle is
the juggle, and I think that that's why we'd like
to think we're superwomen because we figure out how to
do it or we call the women who have done
it before us and we asked them to help us.
(37:43):
And it's not only women, you know, men are I
think I can't even remember the last time I came
to Baltimore last year and I needed a pumping room.
I mean it must have been Patrick Gleeson or tomp
like some one of them that I asked and was like, hey,
do you have a place for me to do it?
You know, So it's not just women look out for
you switching gears a little bit because I want to
make sure we get to this. You have a new
(38:05):
podcast also, and it's called NFL Explained, and you go
behind the scenes to explain how and why, like the
NFL's biggest events, rules and concepts came to be. And
I understand that. Ironically, you had Justin Tucker on to
talk all things goal posts and we're recording this the
week after the Lions game where his record breaking sixty
six field sixty six yard field goal bounced on the
(38:27):
goal post and then went in. So just tell fans
like what they can accept from this podcast. It's such
a cool concept to me. You know what, when they
first approached me about this, I sort of wasn't really
sure because, like I said, I love talking to people
and this is just going to be like history lesson
after history lesson. But then you get so into it,
you know, like our first one was how did every
(38:47):
NFC team get its name? And some of them are
obvious and some of them are not, and just you know,
like there are things that you wonder So the goal post. Actually,
one of my CBS producers who's one of my best friends, Amy,
actually said that to me. She's like I've always wondered
about goal posts, like why are they that high? Why
are they yellow? Why are they at the back of
the end zone instead of the front of the end zone,
(39:08):
Like why are they shaped like that? What? So we
start doing that and it's true, like you see them.
You can't play a game without goal posts. There's so
many fascinating facts about goal posts. And I called a
guy whose family has manufactured football equipment since the nineteen
twenties and who it's been building goal posts for the
NFL since nineteen eighty. He gave me a bunch of
(39:29):
great stuff. And then, of course, if we're going to
talk about goal posts, we have to get the best
kicker in the game. Who's Justin Tucker. So I call
the Ravens and I said, can you please get him
for me? For just a few minutes. He was fantastic.
And one of the stories that I was telling him is,
you know all these stories about these kickers that could
tell if the crossbar. So there's two parts of this.
Let me tell the first part. So it's because of
(39:50):
Justin Tucker that the uprights are thirty five ft in
the air. Before Justin Tucker, the uprights were thirty feet
in the air. And then a game that I was at,
I believe it was two thousand twelve. It was a
Sunday night game between the Patriots and the Ravens, and
in fact I wrote off of that game as well.
And to me it was the Tory Smith game because
Tory Smith's brother had passed away that morning and at
(40:13):
four in the afternoon, Tory had decided to play, and
he scored two touchdowns, had a monster game, and Tory
Smith to this day remains one of my favorite people
in football ever. So to me, that was the Tory
Smith game. But to Bill Belichick, that was the Justin
Tucker game because Justin Tucker hit a field goal that
as time was expiring to win the game, so high
(40:35):
that Belichick insisted the ball was I believe, to the
left of the upright, not the right whatever, once wide
of the upright. Tucker said it was absolutely, you know,
straight within the upright, and the reft ruled it whatever.
So then Bill Belichick brought forth a rule to the
NFL asking to make the uprights forty ft in the
(40:57):
air instead of thirty There's a cool worry why it
had to be thirty five, but you need to listen
to the if I'll explained wherever you listen to your podcast,
I'll tell you why they settled on thirty five. You know.
So that's the Justin Tucker Engle. So obviously he's the
best kicker in the game. He's part of why goal
Post Change. We wanted him on. And then I happen
to tell him how Neil Gilman, this guy who manufactures
(41:17):
goal posts, is telling me all these stories about these
kickers who can tell if the crossbar is just an
in short or if one of the uprights is leaning
a little bit. So I said to Justin, do you
like check out every goal post that you go into?
And what he actually said was, I try not to
be too familiar with the uprights in the crossbar because
I don't really want the ball getting too close. And
(41:38):
then he said, and I swear he's like, but you
guys are making me think that maybe I should check
this out more. And then two weeks later, you know
it's exactly where the crossbar is so that he could
knock the ball off of the crossbar. I mean, I'm
the on the planet in his head, you be getting
very aware of where all those things are it's all
(42:00):
a herd attack. But if it works out, I guess,
But I mean, it's unbelievable. And then he has another
great story on the pod about that kick that changed
the uprights his shoe disintegrated. Did you know that? I
did not know. Yeah, So that kick that won that
game in two thousand and twelve against the Patriots, his
shoe actually fell apart, which prompted this whole thing. How
(42:22):
do you not have a shoe deal? Like? How did
he not get a shoe deal out of that? Like?
He kicked it so hard he broke his shoe. I
don't know if he broke it from the kick or
if like the shoe was disintegrating anyway. I don't know.
You'll have to listen to the podcast again to see
how he says it exactly. But what I took away
from it is that he basically told me, can you
get me a Jordan shoe deal? Sure? Aim is high
(42:46):
as we possibly can. Right, they'll be listening to the podcast.
We'll get Justin Tucker a deal out of it. It'll
be great. Sure, How does the best kicker in the
game not have a shoe deal? It's a great question,
I guess. Our equipment. Guys just take good care of him.
But he definitely deserves his own I mean every kicker
and playing high school football would be wearing his fleets
like no brainer. Yes, so maybe he should have his
(43:08):
own mind. Probably I don't understand. So Lamar Jackson can
have his own line and Bean can have his own line.
And that's one of my favorite things about John Harbaugh
is that he wears like this goofy. He s goofy
like sorry, no offense, but some of it is really
goofy looking. He loves his Lamar New era sweatshirt Ay
Apparel sweatsirt. He every winter he's got the wild Dog.
(43:29):
He said, it's the warmest slectorate that he has. He's
wearing it every day and I love it, like it
looked so cool. Harves has a little bit of swag.
See that's of being a player's coaches, right, supporting your players.
That's the stuff that I love about him. Like what
he was joking about how his wife gave him a
hard time that that Thursday night game he had the
goofy glasses on, Like it's going to go down in
(43:53):
history is one of the all time games. It's gonna
be replayed on NFL Network for years, and he's gonna
be wearing dorky glasses. Yeah, she'll never let him live
that one down. That's that's that's our job, his wife.
Let me tell you, alright, one last thing before I
let you go. We finished each episode with a little
purple hot seat, just a little game of this or that.
Since you're in Steeler's territory that there's a theme to
(44:15):
these um so I might get you in a little
bit of trouble with this one, but not not too
much so. The first one is m T. Bank Stadium
or Heinz Field for what for food? The halftime food
is way better at MMT Bank stadiums box food is
better dealer's choice on the tight lines. I feel like
the food is just the safest way to go. That's fair.
(44:36):
I'll give you that. I don't really want to talk
about the fans or the site. Win you get. You
get to take it however you want it. The second
one is Ed Reid or Troy Palmalo. Oh man, I've
got to go with Troy. I'm sorry, I love it,
but I have to go with Troy. That's okay. Crab
cakes or PERMANI Brothers. Okay, permitt there's it's the most
(45:00):
overrated sandwich on the planet. Okay, Like who puts saggy
French fries on a sandwich? I have no problem saying that.
That's just. And you know what's funny is that, Um,
I'm actually friends with I shouldn't even say this. I
hope she'd never listen to it. I'm friends with a
woman who's like part of the Permanni Brothers family line.
But yeah, I'm from New York. You know, Like I
(45:24):
like pizza. Okay, pizza it is two more one o'clock
or a night game. Oh one o'clock all the time,
all at the time. Night games you just sit around
all day waiting for kickoff. And I just told you
I have two little kids. I get really tired, you know,
like by midnight. Let's past my bedtime for sure. There
you go. And then if you played, would you play
(45:46):
defense or offense? Defense? I would much rather hit than
get hit. It fair perfect. Thank you so much for
your time. This was great. I just had I had
a great, great time. I really appreciate it. I really
loved this conversation with the d D. Thanks so much
for tuning in don't forget to leave us a review.
If you're enjoying the podcast, subscribe and share with all
your friends. New episodes drop every other Tuesday. I'll talk
(46:09):
to you soon. M
For this episode of the Purple Chair Podcast, we're stepping
outside the Ravens organization. You've heard from a lot of
influential voices from right here inside the castle, but today's
guest has a unique perspective. A d. D. Kinkop walla
field reporter at the NFL Network, is based in Pittsburgh. Yep,
that's right, I said Pittsburgh. A d. D Is focused
(00:28):
on the a f C North for the NFL Network
and covers the Ravens regularly. She can really put this
organization into perspective of one of the toughest divisions in
the NFL. So, without further ado, welcome A d. D.
To the Purple Chair Podcast. So, like I mentioned, we
were talking before we jumped in here, you have a
very unique perspective on the organization, which we'll get to.
But to sign us set the stage for listeners, how
(00:50):
did you get to your current role at the NFL Network.
I was actually a newspaper writer. My first job out
of college was covering high school football at the San
Antonio Express News, which was sort of crazy because I
was born in New York City. I grew up in
New Jersey. I went to Cornell, I had accepted this
job as a financial analyst for Bloomberg, which, if you
know anything about me, makes no sense because I suck
(01:11):
at math and I can't sit still. But whatever, this
is what I've done. And then a week before I graduated,
the sports editor of the San Antonio Express News said, UM,
I've got this great job and I think you'd be perfect.
You should come an interview. And my first thought was Texas,
No way. And then my second thought was what would
make my Indian mother go a little bit crazy. So
(01:33):
I just decided, you know, I'll go on this free
trip to Texas and I'll check out the city that
I've never been to. Whatever, And I just completely fell
in love with the idea of telling stories and every
day being different and exploring a new part of the world.
And the guy that hired me actually is still my
mentor to this day. He even spoke at my wedding.
(01:54):
So then I was a newspaper writer for some time.
I was you know, eventually I was writing at the
Wall Street Journal covering the NFL and I was asked
it was before the Giants played the forty Niners in
the NFC title game. That's when John Harbaugh's brother Jim
was the head coach of the forty Niners. So it
was two thousands in twelve, I um was on TV
(02:19):
for exactly three and a half minutes for the NFL Network,
just talking about the Giants in advance of this game.
And then a couple of months later they offered me
a job, and it was sort of like it was
really insane because I'd never done any TV. I didn't know,
you know what an i FB was. I didn't know
that when you were in Superdome you don't need to
yell in the microphone because the microphone so strong. But
(02:39):
you know, whatever, you learned on the job, which is
kind of journalism. And so now I have been at
the NFL Network since two thousand twelve, which is the
longest I've ever been anywhere. And if anyone is wondering,
I started writing it a newspaper when I was twelve
years old. I started at the NFL Network when I
was sixteen. You know, if I'm really not as old
as that makes me sound, yeah, exactly. So when you
(03:00):
were writing for newspaper, did you ever see yourself making
the jump to TV or just it was too good
of an opportunity to pass up when it did come along. Yeah,
I think that. Um. I really loved the art of writing.
I loved the craft of writing, the taste of words.
And I'm the daughter of a math professor who was
a physicist and a chemical engineer. And my father, the
(03:21):
chemical engineer, always told me that writing was the most
valuable skill you could have because he worked with these
unbelievably brilliant people who had brilliant ideas that were basically
worthless because they couldn't explain them. And so I really
actually wanted to be a lawyer. Writing was just something
that I enjoyed, I was good at, I was into.
(03:42):
I never really thought about TV because it is going
to sound terrible, But when I was a newspaper writer,
I'd have these long involved conversations and TV reporters would
come in with their fake eyelashes and you know, or
they're like hair gel male female, whatever, and ask these
like SoundBite driven questions, how do you feel? And I
(04:02):
always thought like, I don't want to do that. I
want to have these really long involved conversations about when
you choose to stunt or what you know whatever. Um,
And then I realized when you get into TV that
sometimes you have to ask that question to get the
sound bite because it's about the sound bite, and you
don't have the freedom to parse, you know, twelve quotes.
It just you know, at the time that it was happening,
(04:23):
newspapers were sort of shrinking, losing money. I think people
were not reading as much. You know, Twitter existed, but
it was still like a little bit new, and so
we were moving into this phase of people want things
in thirty seconds sound bites and a hundred and forty characters,
and there wasn't as much of an appetite for the
two thousand word daily story in the Wall Street Journal.
(04:44):
And it was actually it's funny because Cassie, the year
before I had had um a job offer from ESPN,
not necessarily on TV, but just a job offer, and
my sports editor had done everything he could to keep me,
and so I stayed. And then when the NFL network
came was one year later, and he was just like,
you know what I think this is, this is the
wave of the future, and this is a great opportunity
(05:06):
for you and you should just go. And so here
I am, and I now know how to put on
fake eyelash that is a true like that Ivy League
degree and I could do the glue now. It took
a while, but I love that. Um. So, as a
national reporter now who covers his focus on the a
f C North and based out of Pittsburgh, you end
(05:27):
up covering the Ravens quite a bit obviously being in
the division and you have this be have this broader
perspective of the division as a whole. What stands out
to you about the Ravens in this division just how
um tremendously true to the idea of team they are.
And UM, I don't know if I'm gonna get in
trouble for revealing this, but whatever. Al Villanueva is the guy.
(05:50):
He of course is playing left tackle for you right now.
He started this season playing right tackle. He was with
the Steelers for a long time, and um, the Steelers
were not going to bring him back, and he and I,
you know, talked a little bit something and at some
point we were kind of talking about the Ravens and
I said, all, you just need to go on a visit,
like you just you are going to get in there
and you are going to love talking to coach Harbor
(06:13):
for X Y and z I'm not going to tell
you what, but just you know, I gave him all
this whatever, blah blah blah. And so he goes on
his visit and that evening I get a message from him, Okay,
you were completely right. And then on the day that
he signed, because then I was pushing him, I'm like,
you just gotta go, you gotta go. You have to
experience this. And then the day he signed, he sent
(06:33):
me a message and he said, I listened to you.
And so I think what's so interesting is that with
the Steelers and the Ravens, both you have these organizations
that are you know, steeped in tradition, maybe the Steelers
just because they're older a little bit more, but there's
this sense that these are two great organizations that believe
(06:54):
in consistency, believe in stability, have completely invested ownership, and
have these coaches that are called players coaches. And yet
for all the connective tissue, they're also very very different.
And these two coaches are players coaches in very different ways.
And it's that old cliche of there's a different way
(07:14):
to skin a cat. You know, there are two ways
to skin a cat, and so I think one of
my favorite parts of the job, Cassie, is to be
able to go to different organizations and have that perspective too.
When you only cover one team, I was a New
York Giants beat writer, so I only knew the Giants.
I only knew the way that Tom Coughlin did things,
and I only knew the way Eli Manning did things.
(07:36):
But when you cover a lot of teams, you get
this idea of saying, Okay, this is how you can
do right by your players, and this is also how
you can do right by your players, and this is
how you can work. And that's how you can work.
And I'll give you another example. You know, I've covered
now this division for you know, close to ten years,
and I was at a training camp practice this year
(07:57):
with the Browns, and I was so struck by the
energy level, by the pace, by the tempo, by the
way the players worked, by the level of intensity. Because
for years and years, the way the Ravens practiced and
the way the Steelers practiced was very different than the
way the Browns practiced. Now I'll just say this right now,
(08:20):
nobody practices harder than the Ravens. So the Ravens practice
really hard. The Steelers practice, um, not quite as hard,
but very professionally also, it's very professional outfit, and the
Browns were matching that level of professionalism, that type of focus,
that tempo, that energy, that intensity. And I actually made
(08:41):
a point of it, and I asked Baker Mayfield about it,
and you know, he kind of laughed because it was
so true. He totally agreed that, you know, practice is
very different than when he first got there. But it
felt like I only had the ability to say that
because I've spent so many years being at Ravens training
camp and being at Steelers training camp, and being a
(09:01):
Bengals training camp, and you know all the other training
camps around the country that I've been to. That's really interesting.
I never would have thought of like noticing that in
a practice when like we do see the changes of
the round organization as making like broadly, but like when
you really get in the minutia like how a practice
is structure and seeing that carry over, that's fascinating. And yeah,
most people probably wouldn't notice that. Yeah, but I think
(09:22):
that that, you know, for me, covering football has always
been you know, like a jail break, a jail break
screen or like a Blitzer inaudible, Like those are all fun, right,
But for me, it's about the people and the personalities
and how does teamwork and how do you work together?
And do you work for the guy next to you
or not? What motivates you, how do you motivate people,
(09:43):
like what makes a great leader? Those are the things
that really sort of get me going. And so, I mean,
I remember my first year at the NFL Network. The
Eagles at the time had um Mike Vick and like
this tremendous loaded roster and they we're talking about how
they had so much swag and they were a dream
(10:03):
team and you know, all of that. And then I
went straight from Eagles camp to Falcon's camp, and the
Falcons had a Sante Samuel at the time in their
secondary and I just remember the way he was talking
so much trash to Matt Ryan on the practice field,
and I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, that
is swag. Like if you need to tell me you
(10:23):
have swag, it's not the same as actually witnessing it.
And this was, you know, my first experience as a
national reporter going to different places, and it was just like,
that's part of what you need to use in your toolbox.
You have to remember every experience you've had and how
does it relate to what you're seeing in front of you. Sure,
when you went from kind of being a beat reporter
(10:44):
to covering nationally, did you find it hard to kind
of manage? You know, now I have to maintain all
these relationships like everywhere, not just like one organization and
like show up and like you know, established that. It's
definitely hard. It's really hard in the age of COVID
when you can't get into a locker room and have
a conversation, and football sadly doesn't necessarily have the same continuity.
(11:07):
So like I think the last time that I was
in your locker room, the most intense conversations that I
had were with Willie Sneed, who's gone. Jimmy Smith, who
of course is still there but you know, is one
of the older guys. Um Orlando Brown who's gone, you know,
Robert Griffin. Robert Griffin and I were talking about his
third daughter, you know, like he's gone as well. He's
(11:28):
so that's difficult when you don't um get in there
in front of people face to face. I think that
you also just have to recognize that your job is
a little different. You know, when you're a beat you
need to know every single thing, who's hurt, who's up
for a contract, who's got a minor tweak, who's got
you know, in my job, it's not necessary to um
(11:52):
gloss over transactional things. But maybe when you're a beat reporter,
you're speaking to your fan base. So if I'm covering
the Ravens as a beat, I'm talking to Ravens fans
who know every single thing there is about the Ravens.
If I'm national, I'm talking to thirty two different fan bases.
So I hope I can give Ravens fans something that
maybe they don't necessarily get just from my perspective. But
(12:16):
then I'm educating thirty one other fan bases on what's
happening in Baltimore or owing smells. Yeah, totally. I totally
get the player, like the relationships too, because that's tough,
even like internally, you know, like you get to know
guys working with them every day, and then it's a
business and they might not be there the next year
and the go to guy that you used to always
go to for something is no longer there, and so
it's kind of like you kind of have to start
(12:37):
over sometimes even just like you know, being internal. Um,
we talked about this a little bit, but obviously the
Steelers Ravens rivalry is arguably one of the best in
the NFL of my favorite rest But how have you
seen it change in your time covering the division? You
talked about how the Steelers are so steeped in tradition
and but they have some similarities, but they're also like differences.
(12:58):
But how have you seen the rivalry kind of change
as your hat it has it their basketball games, that's
what they are like. It doesn't matter what happens for
the first three and a half quarters, you know it's
going to come down at the very end. I mean,
I think about some of the best games that I've
been at, the Thanksgiving the first Thanksgiving that I was married,
I think that was two thousand thirteen in Baltimore when
(13:19):
Mike Tomlin nearly tripped Jakobe Jones and then the Steelers
seemingly they're down by eight and it's a last minute
drive and you think that Heath Miller's in, but he's not,
and you think Levian Bell is in, but his helmet goes,
you know, falls off his head whatever, and it gets
called back and then you know there's a two point
conversion in Emmanuel Sanders, who's one of the most consistent
receivers in the NFL to this day, drops that two
(13:39):
point conversion that I think about the Christmas Day in
Pittsburgh when uh, you know it was in Pittsburgh. They
call it the Immaculate extension. When Ben Roethlisberger there's fourteen
seconds left, they're playing for the division. Ben Roethlisberger has
absolutely no business throwing the ball shy of the end
zone to Antonio Brown, but he does. There's three guys
can verging on a b and Eric Weddle is in
(14:02):
perfect position to make that tackle. And how Antonio Brown
somehow extends his arm over the goal line, you know,
and to stand on the field to be at the
goal line for plays like that. Even you know, who
was it who beat the Steelers were really good, the
Ravens were struggling. The Steelers go into Baltimore and it
was Ryan Mallett, right like Ryan Mallett beats the Steelers
(14:24):
or last year that whole COVID game. It was my birthday,
a Wednesday afternoon game. I mean, we've been waiting for
this game for a week. They were supposed to play Thanksgiving.
The Ravens come in there with a team that Mike
Tomalin basically all but calls a JV team, save the
Steelers everything they could handle. And then a few days later,
Washington comes in gives the Steelers their first loss, and
(14:45):
Chase Young tells me after the game, oh, yeah, we
saw what B Moore did. B Moore gave us the blueprint,
you know. And I just think that that's the magic
of rivalries. Though it doesn't matter what your record is
when you go in, it doesn't matter who's healthier who's not.
It's just you know, you're going to get this unbelievably
hard fought game. And I think the piece that I
really love about this rivalry is that there's always been
(15:08):
while there's always been an edge, there's been such a
great level of respect. You know, for a few years,
the Steelers and the Bengals were really going back and forth.
Think about when Andy Dalton and Vanta's perfect and Adam
Jones and A. J. Green were all there right, and
the Bengals were on a run of five straight playoff exppearances,
and the Stewards Bengals played really tough games, like they
(15:30):
they all had like all these fifteen yard penalties and
roughing and unsportsmanlike and you know, like just there was
nastiness and I don't know, like, to me, that's not
really fun. I mean, maybe it's funny to some people,
but to me, it just feels like you're you're skating
way too close to I don't like that. The the
(15:54):
nastiness of the Ravens Ravens Steelers, it's just way better.
It's just between the line, you know. Yeah, one of
my favorite games I'll ever like it was actually Ravens
not favorite games, but when the coolest, coolest experiences for
me in the league was like my first Ravens Steelers
game at Steelers and we ended up losing, but I
(16:14):
just remember like being down on the field like because
I was down there because I was it was really
close obviously, and I didn't know which way it was
gonna go, so I had to be down here if
we win, do you like? Postgame interviews and all those things,
and the terrible towels were just going and everyone's screaming
and I got chills, and I'm like, this isn't even
like my team, you know, like I'm on the other sideline,
and I was like, this is wild, and like, like
you said, it just it doesn't matter. Like last year
(16:35):
was crazy, Like you have all these guys active in
the practice squad because of COVID and we had no
business even being in that game, and yet there we are.
You know, I went to Duke and so I always
had the Duke Carolina rivalry, and to me, that's the
only thing that really compares to that. Like you have
the two teams that are always good. You know, it's
always going to be a fun showing, no matter like
what what the year it is, like what each team
(16:58):
is supposed to be, whatever the records are, like, it
always is a fun one. So and There's and they
play a very similar brand of football in the sense
that it's like hard nosed, fundamental, You're always going to
have a great defense. And it's kind of you know,
like you look at the Ravens this year, for all
the people that left, you have no question that Wink
was going to create a great defense. Like it's just
you know, someone made this line about the Ravens. They
(17:20):
don't even remember who it was, but it was like
they never rebuild. They just reload. And that's exactly what
the Ravens defenses. When I started, it was Ray Lewis,
you know, and then it was Terrell Suggs and then
you know, Matt Judon was a guy and that like
and it just doesn't even matter. But yeah, and it's
it's fun too, again, like I said, because there are
a lot of organizational similarities and you appreciate the way
(17:43):
both families really care about their players and go about
their business. Um, yeah, that's fun. But nothing compares to
the Castle. I mean the facility in the country, although
I haven't been so far. I mean, that's a stadium
that's not their headquarters. I've heard that that's amazing. Yeah,
what did you think of Vegas? Was Allegiance really amazing?
I was not in Vegas unfortunately, but yeah, I've heard
(18:05):
great things. It's all the new, shiny indoor stadium. That's
They're pretty cool. I guess. Yeah, Well we'll find out
at the Super Bowl about l A. Right, yeah, exactly. Well.
I have a friend that just started working there, so
she's like, le's see you in February. I'm like, all right,
all right, right, I'm sure it's on Seohn Harbot's calendar, right, yeah, exactly.
Do you have any favorite moments They read stories from
(18:28):
your time covering the Ravens that really have stood out
to you. Oh gosh, I'll put you on the spot
a little bit. Sorry, They're just so many, you know,
there's just a lot of good people there. Um. I
remember last year. You know, last year was such a
hard year because my favorite part of the job is
getting to talk to people. I wouldn't do this if
(18:49):
I didn't have those conversations. And it's like I just
referenced earlier. I met R. G three when he was
a rookie and he was draft in Washington, like covered
him and then you know like after that, Um, we
both had babies, we both got married, you know, like
life changed, and here we are in the Ravens locker
room and we're talking about, um, how he has three
(19:11):
daughters and you know, maybe I'd give it one more
shot for a boy, but if not, he's done. And
you know this, that and the other, and um it's
personal conversations like that where you feel that you get
to connect with someone somehow, And so last year we
didn't get any of that because reporters had to stay
in this moat in the stands. You know, ten rows away.
(19:31):
You're not allowed on the field, you're not in the
locker room. Every interaction with a player was via zoom,
which is basically just a big scrum you have to
wait to be called on. And um I was. I
can't even remember who it was. It was like the
middle of this season. I'm in Baltimore, Calais Campbell didn't play.
Why could I not think of who it was? I
(19:51):
feel like it was a Florida team, But anyway, whatever,
I was there in the middle of the season and
after the game, Um, John Harpall was walking off the field,
and I was waiting to do my postgame interview, which
you know last year we used to do from like
the reporter stands on the stands in the players in there.
So John Harball was walking off the field and he
just stopped to say hi. So we're yelling at each
other over the railing, and I asked how his daughter
(20:13):
is doing it notre dame, and how the season is
going and this and that, and he asked me about, uh,
you know how old my daughter is. Now I've got
a son, and um, I have a daughter who was
born prematurely in Cleveland, so he's like, how old is
she now and what's going on? And then he just
was like, you know, I don't know how you do it.
And it just felt like such a human personal moment.
(20:33):
And it's those moments like I can give you, you know,
like what's an amazing There have been so many amazing
football moments, you know, like I'm sure I could sit
here and say this catch or Lamar Jackson doing that,
or Thursday night last year in Cleveland. I know it's
not Baltimore, but in Cleveland, being at that game, and
I remember pregame making a hit about you know, for
(20:56):
as much as we talk about Lamar Jackson in this
run game rapport that he has with Mark Andrews and
Willie Snead and when he meets him, and then at
the end of the game, who is catching the ball?
Who is he going to? And of course, you know,
because it's all about me, I'm staring they like. But anyway,
so you know, like there are a gazillion amazing football moments,
(21:18):
but it's those personal conversations. It's the personal connections. It's
um the first week of the season last year, I
was in Baltimore. Cleveland was there. It was Cleveland, Baltimore,
and I remember Jimmy Smith was warming up and he
was running around and I'm ten, rose up and I'm
like Jimmy and he goes D D and it was
like a person. Because it had been a year and
a half since I talked to anybody other than in
(21:39):
my family, you know. So it's just it's moments like that,
I think I don't know that I could do it.
Even this year when they said that they were keeping
us out of the locker room, I was just like,
I can't do this job anymore because he was that.
And I think it's important to have that perspective too
when you tell a story, you know, when you everybody's
(21:59):
a human, you know. And I'm sure people in Baltimore
don't think that of Ben Roethlisberger. But Ben Roethlisberger is
getting the crap beat out of him right now. And
I don't know when you are, you know when this
is posting. But the poor man is thirty nine years old, Okay,
like he's thirty nine years old, and the Steelers gave
him an offensive line that cannot block, that cannot protect,
that cannot clear time that cannot make space for this
(22:21):
run game. And he's got three kids, and he's a
human and he's thirty nine years old. You know, Like now,
it's just I don't know that that's the best example.
But again, if you don't ever interact with them, they're
a Jersey number, sure, but if you talk to them,
and I've I mean, I'll openly say this in Ben
(22:42):
Roethlisberger would admit this, like we have not. We've had
quite a bit of friction over the course of many years,
and I won't waste anybody's time talking about it. But
I just references my daughter was born two months early.
When I was in Cleveland to cover a game. I
was supposed to cover the Titans Browns Week one opener,
and I all of a sudden went into emergency labor.
(23:02):
One of the nicest messages that I got was from
Ben Roethlisberger. It's about humanity, you know, Like we're all
humans who are all in this together. We all care
about what we're doing. We're all very passionate about what
we're doing. Sometimes that's a conflict with each other. But
I think when you recognize that, you really can advance
(23:23):
whatever it is you're trying to do whatever story you're
trying to tell in that piece. When you can have
the personal interaction, that just enhances the ability to do
that absolutely. You reference like being a mom and working
from home during the pandemic, and there's a lot of
moms across the world balancing having kids at home, and
I'm sure that had to be tough, but you have
the unique, you know, challenge to have, Like you're also
on live television from home. So how did you how
(23:46):
did you do that? I don't know that I did.
Sometimes I'm surprised I'm still employed. Um. Yeah, we've definitely
had some you know, babies screaming in the background. We
occasionally had a five year old boy walking into a shot.
But you know what, I think that we just needed
to like lean into it in some ways. And uh,
(24:07):
last year, my son kind of became a TV star.
He ended up you know, like the NFL network put
him on TV multiple times just to put him on TV.
UM my daughter once interrupted a shot and it was
a very funny moment. I think that what was hard
is that UM players and coaches were so so understanding
(24:30):
because many of them were living that same life. And
I'll go back. I'll go back to Ben Roethlisberger. In fact,
one of the first zooms we had um when we
were kind of in this new paradigm, was with Ben
Roethlisberger and um, my husband was watching my daughter or
maybe we had a babysitter someone, and my daughter just
starts wailing in the background when it was my turn
(24:53):
to ask a question. And I was so embarrassed, and
I was just like, oh my god, I'm so sorry,
and he goes, oh, no, it makes me feel like
at home, it's great. And I remember the Steers had
a tight Endvance McDonald who did the same thing. And
then I remember I was on a Brown's um zoom
when you know, I didn't have any childcare, I didn't
have anybody to help. It was head coach Kevin Stefanski,
(25:15):
and my daughter was cooing. She wasn't crying, but I mean,
she's a baby. She was cooling. What are you gonna like,
stick your kid in a closet? And so I apologized
and Kevin Stefanski said, oh, no, big deal, and a
Browns fan came after me on Twitter like just and
it turned into this very viral thing. In fact, um,
because I apologize this guy just talked about how you know,
(25:35):
annoying my children are and how ridiculous this is an
unprofessional and I apologized to the guy first. Then I
kind of got piste off and I was just like,
you know, maybe this is a time to show each
other grace. And you know, even if my kids are annoying,
good thing, I love them. Whatever, it turned into this thing.
Peter King wrote about it in his column, and Andrew Barry,
(25:58):
the Brown's GM actually ended up calling me, and just
because he and his wife were living the exact same life.
You know, like we're all trying to juggle at this moment,
and so you know, it's not ideal. I would think
I'm a better mom when I get out of my
house every so often let my kids miss me. It's
interesting though, because like in some ways, you know, it
(26:19):
made something that's so impersonal feel more personal. And like
with the draft, like it was so neat to see
guys at home with their families, and like that's something
that we never get to see usually. But like on
the flip side, you know, like you know, no one's
criticizing players for having their families there in those moments,
you know, and like we had to remember a zoom
dating back to like early pandemic with Mark Ingram, and
(26:41):
like his daughter popped in the back and it was precious,
you know, and like you love that. So we do
get those kind of like unique moments that you don't
see otherwise because of zoom, but it can be so
like impersonal too. I just think there's a lot more
forgiveness for I mean, remember a few years ago when
was the guy in the BBC. He was talking and
then all of a sudden, like his daughter or like
(27:01):
his baby runs in and his wife is like trying
to snatch them out, and it was just this like
adorable suite. I just tend to feel and I'm not
one of those like rabble rousing women, but I just
tend to feel that like women have a little less
room for that because we're already trying to prove we
can juggle and where our ambition lies, and how focused
(27:21):
we are and how professional we are. You know. I
had a boss that told me when I had a
child that I should just be content and that I
couldn't do this job anymore. And I was like, actually,
my ambition is even higher than it was before my
son was born. Because right now I want my son
to go to the school bus stop and say, my
mommy kicks button takes names, you know, like it matters
(27:42):
even more right now that both my son and my
daughter see me doing this, whereas before it was just me.
So I mean, I don't know, I just but that's
the other thing too. I would say, Cassie's that I
spent twenty years ignoring the haters and the trolls and
that you should stick in the kitchen, and I'm done
doing that, you know, like when they came after my children,
(28:03):
it was just and now I'll you know, I don't
respond to every troll by any means, but every so often,
like just on Sunday, someone told me that my face
was annoying, and so I was like, okay, well, you know,
this is the face that I was born with. I
can't do anything about it. But if I bother you
that much, you can unfollow me, you know. And I
just feel like if we don't call out bad behavior,
(28:24):
when is it ever going to change? You know, nothing
has changed in the twenty years that I've done this.
Andrew Kramer, the great legendary ANDREWA. Kramer, is one of
my mentors. We talk about, you know, thirty forty years ago,
I'm dealing with the same crap for twenty years that
she dealt with. What's going to change when it's my
daughter's turn or when it's your turn ten years from
(28:47):
now if we don't stand up and say no, no, absolutely,
I'm here for it. I'm here for calling it out.
I do it. I gon't get as much as you,
but like it's just ridiculous. And I mean like players
get it too. Yeah, you know, like I don't know how,
Like I see like the Ravens mentions to get in
my personal mentions, but like they get it on this
like extreme other level that I'm like, I just how
(29:07):
do you even block that out at that point? I
don't know, but I know and that that's true. Players
get it. People forget that players are human beings and
that players work their tails off. I'll use Pittsburgh again.
T J. Watt was going through this contract negotiation and
people were just like, you get paid to play a game,
like oh whatever, you got to practice for two hours
and you want million, And it's like, no, this is
(29:29):
a profession and the same for us, and I don't
I just think that it's so easy in this day
and age to come after people. And I know half
the people that send me nasty tweets are probably the
same people that, like at the stadium are asking me
for a picture with them, you know, like they'd never
do it to my face. But I just think that
at some point we have to say enough, you know,
like it's not acceptable to talk to women this way.
(29:52):
It's not acceptable to talk to professional men who are
trying their hardest and doing their best to just I
don't know, it's a level of discourse, and I don't
that I'm going to make a difference, but maybe, you know,
one step at a time, we have to believe right absolutely.
I watched this profile on you, and I think this
quote is pretty pertinent to this, and I just loved it.
Really stuck with me. You said representation does matter. But
(30:14):
I don't want the first thing that you say about
me to be, oh, she's Indian American, Oh she's a woman,
Oh she's the only mother. I don't want that. I
want the first thing that you say about me to
be she's a damn good reporter. And I love that,
Like that just really struck me that it's kind of
like what we're talking about right here, that it's not
about our genders, it's not about race. It's about what
you're telling, the information that you're giving, and that it's
(30:35):
the best that it can be well. And that's and
at the end of the day, that's what it's supposed
to be about, right, It's not like how many women
of color are there, how many women are there, how
many tall people are there, how many short people are there,
how many young people are there. It's just supposed to
be about the quality of your work. And um, it's
hard because we should all be proud of where we
(30:56):
come from and the points of view that we represent
and the example that we set for other people. But
at the end of the day, none of that means
anything if you're not really really good at what it
is you do. And so it is really important to me,
and I'll tell you you know, like, at no point,
(31:17):
at no point did I ever think, Okay, I should
get this because I'm the girl, or I should get
this because I'm a minority, or I should like it
was just I should get this because I'm good. I
should get this because I'm the best one to do this.
I hope that everybody who's in their position feels really
good about the work that they're doing and that that
is their number one calling card, because it certainly doesn't
(31:37):
say on my business card that I'm Indian American or
a mom. So we're talking about, you know, navigating being
a female in the industry, but you kind of have
the added level of also being the only Indian American
on their talent network, really, you know, only Indian American
woman talking about sports and national television period. You have
to kind of navigate both there, Like how do you
(31:58):
do that? I feel that it's an incredible opportunity, Cassie,
because if you know anything about Indian American families, or
generally Asian American families, there's a big focus on stem,
on math and science, on sort of traditional routes. You know.
When I was growing up, I remember my mom telling
me that every single one of her friends kids was
(32:18):
a doctor or a hedge fund person, which she got
out of my brother eventually, But like I was the
only newspaper writer. And I think it's important again this
goes back to representation. I think it's important to say
that anybody can chase any sort of dream, as traditional
or untraditional as it is, and just because someone else
hasn't done it before you doesn't mean that you can't
(32:40):
do it. And so going back to even when I
was a newspaper writer, I would get emails from Indian
fathers of daughters and sons who would say, you are
such a great example to my daughter or to my son,
And all I would think is, Wow, you're more involved
than my parents were, however, many years ago, which is
(33:02):
not fair to my parents because obviously I could never
have done this if they didn't give me the freedom
to go chase something crazy. But I do think that
sometimes it's very, very scary to do something that hasn't
been done. And um, when I had my first son,
there were no there had not been a female reporter.
(33:25):
I believe there had not been a female reporter who
had had a baby while she was a reporter. So
at the time, you know, Kara Henderson was at the
NFL network and had a son, Alex Flanagan had three children,
was a reporter. I don't know if any of them
actually gave birth while they were at the network, but
at the time, I was the first sort of traveling
correspondent who's in the field who works crazy hours, which
(33:47):
is very different than being an anchor, which is kind
of more of like a nine to five um who
was having a baby. And I was young enough and
excited enough, it was like, who cares that no one's
ever done it? I'll do it. Then when I was
pregnant with my second, I was just like, oh my god,
nobody still has a baby, nobody has two, and how
do you do it? And how do you? And it
was sort of like I needed to look at Tracy
(34:08):
Wolfson who has three children and does it. It was
comforting to see it is possible. People can indeed do this.
They can juggle this, They can manage being a present
mother and still chasing their professional pursuits. So that's how
I feel about being an Indian American woman doing something
(34:29):
very very odd and unusual. And I will just say
this that there are I think eight or nine or
maybe even ten doctors in my family, all with the
last name Kinkabullah. But if you google Kinkabla like so
so much for being the black sheep. Right at least
(34:49):
there's something I love that. Are there any like you
know you mentioned being on the road when you were
carrying your children like, was there any unique challenges to
like like logistically doing that. Oh my gosh, yeah, but
the world has changed. And actually I've got a great
Ravens story about that. So um, I mean, I hope
that your listeners are okay with this. Probably most of
(35:10):
them were nursed themselves, so I was a nursing mom
and when you um go on the road, you need
to pump your breast milk. And with my son, this
was an impossibility in a lot of places, you know,
Like I remember one club telling me to go use
the female restroom someplace. I was telling me, you know,
like all I asked for was a closet and a plug,
and it was, you know whatever. I remember covering a
(35:31):
divisional playoff game in Denver and I had ninety six
ounces of breast milk that I had to take through
the Denver International Airport. The t s a agent like
spilled some of it. Then I missed my connection in
Boston and I had to dump all this milk and
it was just and if you know, I mean, are
you a mom? I'm not? Okay. They call this liquid gold,
(35:52):
So maybe one day at some point you'll not like
I cried having to throw away nine ounces and breast milk. Okay.
Fast forward to four years later, my daughter is born.
Almost everybody has a dedicated nursing room. The Ravens, by
the way, have an absolutely gorgeous nursing room. All the
teams will, let you know, have let me use these rooms.
The National Football League will fed X your breast milk homb.
(36:16):
So when I went to the Comboune in Combine in
two thousand nineteen, just before the pandemic kid, instead of
having to carry that milk holmb, I just packed it
in fed X and dry ice and it got home
before I did. So the world is evolving. And here's
my Ravens story. The first time around, when I was struggling,
and you know, I was dealing with some teams that
wouldn't give me space and you know, either at a
(36:38):
stadium or in their facility, I remember calling Andrea Kramer
and saying, what do I do? And Andrea tells me
a story about how twenty years earlier, Brian Billick would
get out of his office and just leave so she
could sit at the head coaches desk and pump breast
milk for her son, Will who is now in college,
(37:01):
and just a brilliant, badass and all of that. And
then you know, I've gotten to work with coach Billock
at the NFL Network. Just a gem of a human being. Again,
this all comes back to football is about great people. Yeah.
So I've got chills. Uh yeah, just so anyway, so
that's you know, that's part of the fun um, part
(37:22):
of the you know, my son's gotten some really incredible
experiences simply because of you know what mommy does, which
goes back to that whole thing that my job matters
even more. Uh yeah, But you know, the juggle is
the juggle, and I think that that's why we'd like
to think we're superwomen because we figure out how to
do it or we call the women who have done
it before us and we asked them to help us.
(37:43):
And it's not only women, you know, men are I
think I can't even remember the last time I came
to Baltimore last year and I needed a pumping room.
I mean it must have been Patrick Gleeson or tomp
like some one of them that I asked and was like, hey,
do you have a place for me to do it?
You know, So it's not just women look out for
you switching gears a little bit because I want to
make sure we get to this. You have a new
(38:05):
podcast also, and it's called NFL Explained, and you go
behind the scenes to explain how and why, like the
NFL's biggest events, rules and concepts came to be. And
I understand that. Ironically, you had Justin Tucker on to
talk all things goal posts and we're recording this the
week after the Lions game where his record breaking sixty
six field sixty six yard field goal bounced on the
(38:27):
goal post and then went in. So just tell fans
like what they can accept from this podcast. It's such
a cool concept to me. You know what, when they
first approached me about this, I sort of wasn't really
sure because, like I said, I love talking to people
and this is just going to be like history lesson
after history lesson. But then you get so into it,
you know, like our first one was how did every
(38:47):
NFC team get its name? And some of them are
obvious and some of them are not, and just you know,
like there are things that you wonder So the goal post. Actually,
one of my CBS producers who's one of my best friends, Amy,
actually said that to me. She's like I've always wondered
about goal posts, like why are they that high? Why
are they yellow? Why are they at the back of
the end zone instead of the front of the end zone,
(39:08):
Like why are they shaped like that? What? So we
start doing that and it's true, like you see them.
You can't play a game without goal posts. There's so
many fascinating facts about goal posts. And I called a
guy whose family has manufactured football equipment since the nineteen
twenties and who it's been building goal posts for the
NFL since nineteen eighty. He gave me a bunch of
(39:29):
great stuff. And then, of course, if we're going to
talk about goal posts, we have to get the best
kicker in the game. Who's Justin Tucker. So I call
the Ravens and I said, can you please get him
for me? For just a few minutes. He was fantastic.
And one of the stories that I was telling him is,
you know all these stories about these kickers that could
tell if the crossbar. So there's two parts of this.
Let me tell the first part. So it's because of
(39:50):
Justin Tucker that the uprights are thirty five ft in
the air. Before Justin Tucker, the uprights were thirty feet
in the air. And then a game that I was at,
I believe it was two thousand twelve. It was a
Sunday night game between the Patriots and the Ravens, and
in fact I wrote off of that game as well.
And to me it was the Tory Smith game because
Tory Smith's brother had passed away that morning and at
(40:13):
four in the afternoon, Tory had decided to play, and
he scored two touchdowns, had a monster game, and Tory
Smith to this day remains one of my favorite people
in football ever. So to me, that was the Tory
Smith game. But to Bill Belichick, that was the Justin
Tucker game because Justin Tucker hit a field goal that
as time was expiring to win the game, so high
(40:35):
that Belichick insisted the ball was I believe, to the
left of the upright, not the right whatever, once wide
of the upright. Tucker said it was absolutely, you know,
straight within the upright, and the reft ruled it whatever.
So then Bill Belichick brought forth a rule to the
NFL asking to make the uprights forty ft in the
(40:57):
air instead of thirty There's a cool worry why it
had to be thirty five, but you need to listen
to the if I'll explained wherever you listen to your podcast,
I'll tell you why they settled on thirty five. You know.
So that's the Justin Tucker Engle. So obviously he's the
best kicker in the game. He's part of why goal
Post Change. We wanted him on. And then I happen
to tell him how Neil Gilman, this guy who manufactures
(41:17):
goal posts, is telling me all these stories about these
kickers who can tell if the crossbar is just an
in short or if one of the uprights is leaning
a little bit. So I said to Justin, do you
like check out every goal post that you go into?
And what he actually said was, I try not to
be too familiar with the uprights in the crossbar because
I don't really want the ball getting too close. And
(41:38):
then he said, and I swear he's like, but you
guys are making me think that maybe I should check
this out more. And then two weeks later, you know
it's exactly where the crossbar is so that he could
knock the ball off of the crossbar. I mean, I'm
the on the planet in his head, you be getting
very aware of where all those things are it's all
(42:00):
a herd attack. But if it works out, I guess,
But I mean, it's unbelievable. And then he has another
great story on the pod about that kick that changed
the uprights his shoe disintegrated. Did you know that? I
did not know. Yeah, So that kick that won that
game in two thousand and twelve against the Patriots, his
shoe actually fell apart, which prompted this whole thing. How
(42:22):
do you not have a shoe deal? Like? How did
he not get a shoe deal out of that? Like?
He kicked it so hard he broke his shoe. I
don't know if he broke it from the kick or
if like the shoe was disintegrating anyway. I don't know.
You'll have to listen to the podcast again to see
how he says it exactly. But what I took away
from it is that he basically told me, can you
get me a Jordan shoe deal? Sure? Aim is high
(42:46):
as we possibly can. Right, they'll be listening to the podcast.
We'll get Justin Tucker a deal out of it. It'll
be great. Sure, How does the best kicker in the
game not have a shoe deal? It's a great question,
I guess. Our equipment. Guys just take good care of him.
But he definitely deserves his own I mean every kicker
and playing high school football would be wearing his fleets
like no brainer. Yes, so maybe he should have his
(43:08):
own mind. Probably I don't understand. So Lamar Jackson can
have his own line and Bean can have his own line.
And that's one of my favorite things about John Harbaugh
is that he wears like this goofy. He s goofy
like sorry, no offense, but some of it is really
goofy looking. He loves his Lamar New era sweatshirt Ay
Apparel sweatsirt. He every winter he's got the wild Dog.
(43:29):
He said, it's the warmest slectorate that he has. He's
wearing it every day and I love it, like it
looked so cool. Harves has a little bit of swag.
See that's of being a player's coaches, right, supporting your players.
That's the stuff that I love about him. Like what
he was joking about how his wife gave him a
hard time that that Thursday night game he had the
goofy glasses on, Like it's going to go down in
(43:53):
history is one of the all time games. It's gonna
be replayed on NFL Network for years, and he's gonna
be wearing dorky glasses. Yeah, she'll never let him live
that one down. That's that's that's our job, his wife.
Let me tell you, alright, one last thing before I
let you go. We finished each episode with a little
purple hot seat, just a little game of this or that.
Since you're in Steeler's territory that there's a theme to
(44:15):
these um so I might get you in a little
bit of trouble with this one, but not not too
much so. The first one is m T. Bank Stadium
or Heinz Field for what for food? The halftime food
is way better at MMT Bank stadiums box food is
better dealer's choice on the tight lines. I feel like
the food is just the safest way to go. That's fair.
(44:36):
I'll give you that. I don't really want to talk
about the fans or the site. Win you get. You
get to take it however you want it. The second
one is Ed Reid or Troy Palmalo. Oh man, I've
got to go with Troy. I'm sorry, I love it,
but I have to go with Troy. That's okay. Crab
cakes or PERMANI Brothers. Okay, permitt there's it's the most
(45:00):
overrated sandwich on the planet. Okay, Like who puts saggy
French fries on a sandwich? I have no problem saying that.
That's just. And you know what's funny is that, Um,
I'm actually friends with I shouldn't even say this. I
hope she'd never listen to it. I'm friends with a
woman who's like part of the Permanni Brothers family line.
But yeah, I'm from New York. You know, Like I
(45:24):
like pizza. Okay, pizza it is two more one o'clock
or a night game. Oh one o'clock all the time,
all at the time. Night games you just sit around
all day waiting for kickoff. And I just told you
I have two little kids. I get really tired, you know,
like by midnight. Let's past my bedtime for sure. There
you go. And then if you played, would you play
(45:46):
defense or offense? Defense? I would much rather hit than
get hit. It fair perfect. Thank you so much for
your time. This was great. I just had I had
a great, great time. I really appreciate it. I really
loved this conversation with the d D. Thanks so much
for tuning in don't forget to leave us a review.
If you're enjoying the podcast, subscribe and share with all
your friends. New episodes drop every other Tuesday. I'll talk
(46:09):
to you soon. M
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