December 12, 2025 • 28 mins
Ben Maller (produced by Danny G.) has a great Friday for you! He talks: Seat‑hanger sagas to burger pilgrimages—this pod is a carnival of commentary! Plus, Foodie Fun, & more!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Cutbooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the old Republic, a soul fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow to clearing House
of hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth
(00:23):
Hour with Ben Mahller starts right now.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
Mahler and Danny g Radio A happy beginning to your weekend.
We are hanging out together here as we whisper around.
So I did the radio show overnight. I then hung
out with the wife and Moxie and then walked back
(00:52):
into the podcast studio. We're doing the show from the
remote studio, but now back into the podcast studio, and
here we are cooking with gas as we heave. Not
hot takes. But this is this podcast not about the
hot take. It's about something else. But I had a
couple of things I wanted to get to. The take
a seat story, foody fun, and the Real Secret Sauce
(01:17):
all featured on this kickoff to the weekend.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Here a amazing.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Heave ho to the week as we have fun on
the weekend, and we will not be jumping through hoops
on this podcast, So we'll begin with this the seat
on the plane. Now, there are many ways, many ways
to lose a job in the NFL, and having talked
about and documented the NFL over the years on the radio,
(01:47):
I know just about all of them. We talk about
these things regularly on the radio show. You can blow coverages,
you can misevaluate a quarterback, you can pick the wrong
player in the first round of the jibt. You can
forget how to manage a clock like it's a ticking
time bomb. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick kaboom,
(02:07):
the wirings all messed up. And then there's the most
modern NFL way of all. You can lose a job
over a seat assignment on a plane. Not x's and o's,
its seat B three. No, sir, you're not in seat
(02:27):
B three. You've got to go to seat C twenty seven.
But no, I'm always in this seat. Who goofed? I've
got to know. Now entering the chat, Brian Cox with
a y Brian Cox, who lost his Giants assistant coaching
job this week, not because of failed defensive play, although
(02:50):
the Giants weren't great defensively, not because of anemic pass rush.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Although they weren't great in that department.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Instead because the chartered airl line that they used in
the NFL. They have different companies that use to charter flights.
They made a change to the NFL's cast system.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
They changed mid season.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
And b Cox reacted like a man who had lived
his entire football life demanding the queen of soul hum
rispect right that whole Aretha Franklin song back in the day.
So this story resonated with me. The reason I'm bringing
it up and talking to you about this on the podcast.
(03:34):
The thing that resonated with me is because it's not
really about a seat. It's about an ego, the hierarchy, loyalty,
and the unspoken rules of football democracy. It's about how
billion dollar operations operate like middle school cafeterias, and there's
(03:57):
clicks and all that, and selfishly the full disclosure I know,
alf is like, I know why you're talking about this.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Fer dog might not. However, in the olden.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Days, Beat Cox and I we go back. We have
a past, not a great past, not a great past.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
But selfishly it's about Brian Cox, someone I actually knew.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
I don't know him now I have his phone number
if he has the same number he had twenty years ago.
But it always adds a little extra spice to the gumbo.
It always has a little ekra spice. And as I've
gotten older in life and i've my life has taken
me around a number of people. Some of them have
gone on and been very famous. Some of them used
to be famous and are no longer famous.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
And it's just very.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Odd when you see these stories and it's someone that
you crossed path with in life. And that's one of
these examples. Like Brian Cox is a Fox Sports Radio alumnus.
Long before podcast microphones sprouted up like weeds. Brian Cox
co hosted a show with Chris Myers on the early
(05:04):
editions of Fox Sports Radio, not the very beginning, but
shortly after the network started. This goes back to around
the year two thousand and two, two thousand and three,
somewhere in that area.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
I forget.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
He wasn't there long, Brian Cox, but it was maybe
even five. He had been doing some stuff with the
Best damn Sports Show period, so he was paired with
Chris Myers.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
I kin because I care the great Chris Myers.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
And when Chris was off on NFL assignments or NASCAR
or the other television jobs that he had at the time,
I would fill in. And that meant hours, hours in
the radio bunker, the trenches with Brian Cox, a man who,
let's just say, approached life, football and talk radio with
(05:56):
the seriousness of a fourth and goal to win the
Super Bowl. And let me say this, I'm gonna say
it delicately. In the long, storied history of Fox Sports Radio,
Brian Cox is one of a very small handful of
people I simply did not vibe with.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I just didn't.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
It's not a long list. There are people that I
didn't like working with, but I liked as people. There
are people that didn't like me in the style that
I do, but we got along off the radio. My sarcastic, cynical,
side eye eye rolling worldview paired with Brian Cox, who
(06:40):
was from East Saint Louis, Missouri, the baddest part of town,
no nonsense. I mentioned the respect and all that, and
that was a respect above all, that was the ethos,
and that went together Me and him went together like
pineapple and mayonnaise, technically or edible. Both technically or edible,
(07:03):
both deeply upsetting When combined together. The teamwork does not
make the dream work. If the teamwork is not great,
it was combustible or nonexistent or both. And Brian Cox
is a respect guys, we've said capital are that's the currency,
that's the oxygen. Respect is not optional. Not that I
(07:26):
didn't respect him. I just had an interesting way of
saying it. And when you've had the career that he
had had at that time, he was only a little
bit removed from his playing days in the NFL. It's
been twelve years with the Dolphins and the Bears and
the Jets, Patriots and Saints and bled for multiple franchises.
(07:47):
You don't take kindly to being told you're now sitting
in steerage with the luggage in the back of the plane.
And so the Giants moved the assistant coaches to the
back of the plane because I guess they decided they
wanted to change it up during the bye week. And
that's it. That's the spark. The seating chart adjustment, an
(08:09):
organizational shrug, a silent memo that said, you know you
are a little less important today than you were the
last time we went on a plane. Well, I don't
understand why. So Brian Cox reacted apparently poorly. I wasn't there,
(08:30):
and in my head I'm like, well, of course he did.
This is a man who once gave a now iconic,
if you're old enough to remember, iconic double bird salute
to Bill's fans years ago as he was running out
of the tunnel. That was before Bill's Mafia became a brand. Instead,
(08:52):
it was a snow covered mob back in those days.
And this is a man who once gave me an unsolicited,
very vivid, borderline medical conference level description of sports hernia's
surgery that I still remember, against my will. There was
(09:14):
a player that had gotten a sports hernia and we
were debating on the show will this person be able
to come back and play in the NFL? And I said, well,
the sports hernia is not that bad, and Brian Cox
is like, oh, yeah, you want to bet And then
he went through the whole thing and gave me the
whole run down. And so Brian Cox, he does not
(09:35):
bottle things up. He detonates and the giants now they're
saying it was about behavior that teams, generally speaking, always
say it's about behavior. Behavior is the NFL's all purpose
disinfected wipe very important. You gotta have that all purpose
disinfected wipe. And let's not kidd ourselves. This smells like
(09:59):
a convenient excommunication. Cox was a loyalist to Brian Dayball,
the rotund former coach of the Giants, and so Brian
Dable had already been shown the door.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
And I do know from my life experience, when regime
regimes change, whether it's a football team, a radio station,
or whatever it might be, when regimes change, loyalty becomes radioactive.
Like everyone wants.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Loyal people until the new coach comes in and you're
loyal to the old coach.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Everyone knows this.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
And football organizations they preach about family. It's all about
the family until the family photo gets updated. Then suddenly
you're cropped out like an ex spouse.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
And that's just kind of how it goes.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
So Brian Cox proud loud, old school, and.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
He became expendable.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
I got rid of him, and the assignment became the
paper trail. And that's how the modern football world works.
Like nobody gets fired for ideology. They get fired for incidents. Incidents, right,
Nobody gets purged for loyalty. They get purged for conduct
(11:22):
detrimental to the team or conduct unbecoming. Because the NFL
is a reality show that's got hr language.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Because they're big.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
This is not These places start out reasonable, small family businesses,
and then the corporations get involved and we're off to
the races.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
We know that to be be true.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
And what struck me most was not that Brian Cox reacted.
It was that he couldn't not react based on my
interactions with him back in the day. This is the
same league that demands coaches bark, spit, intimidate, and do
all that Monday through Saturday, and then expect them to
(12:09):
nod politely when told to move to the back of
the plane like a middle manager on a budget airline. Hello,
he blew me off at a hotel near Lax. We
get the business model. We understand, it's ironclad. The business model.
(12:33):
It's not worth fighting. Football is the product.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
In theory.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
They sell masculinity like a Cologne commercial. Right, that's it,
and then it punishes you for actually using it. We
sell masculinity and it's like cologne, just don't put any
of this on.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
And here's the uncomfortable truth.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Also, Brian Cox probably wasn't wrong to feel the D
word disrespected. He was just wrong in expressing it in
a language that pretended hierarchy did not exist, based on
what I've read, while.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Enforcing it ruthlessly.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
And so the NFL has always been built on these
silent agreements like who sits where, who speaks when? Who
gets blamed publicly when the team's not going well, who
gets blamed quietly? Who do you cover up for once
you violate the sacred seating chart to fly to some
(13:38):
jerkwater town. Once you violated the seating chart, you're not
arguing logistics. You're challenging authority. And that is when the
hammer comes down. That is when the hammer comes down.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
So you read the teas, I was not surprised at all.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
I was not, not because I know the giants, because
I know Brian Cock, at least the way he was
years and years ago.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
That's the guy I know. He's not a vibes guy.
He's not that.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
He's he's not a role with it guy. That's not
the guy that I was around as I remember. He's
not a hey man, it's just a seat guy. That's
definitely not him. He's a what does that say about
how you see me? Kind of a guy? And in
football perception is everything right. You got to show the respect.
(14:35):
You gotta eat it like a horse. You gotta you
gotta do it. And the story resonated because it's rather petty,
it's deeply human. It's a it's a list, a long
football life reduced to a chair assignment, and for now
his coaching career is on pause.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Pause. It's not with a whistle, but with a boarding pass.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
And the other part of this, it was a it's
a thirty nine minute flight. That's a thirty nine minute
flying time that takes a while longer to take the
plane off the ground and put it away, but the
actual time in the air thirty nine minutes from Foxborough
(15:20):
to the New York City tri state area. It's also
a reminder the NFL doesn't chew people up with drama.
It does it with procedure, right with policy, with the
seating chart, and when you no longer fit the diagram,
(15:40):
it's turnout the loss. The parties over just like that,
and Brian Cox lost a job over a seat.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Let that settle into your later you know, your little
brain there.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
But really he lost it over who he's always kind
of been, at least in my experience with him in
the NFL. Eventually that's enough and they'll just say we've
moved on. We've decided to move on. We're not in
the business with you anymore. That's it. See you later, sucker,
(16:14):
get out of here. Meanwhile, foody fun, it's time for
food he fun. I know, I can't sing as good
as Ohio, and it's a little slow at the end
of the year, holidays coming up. It seems like a
lot of these places that sell the fast food are
waiting until next year to roll out a lot of
(16:35):
new items. I did see Taco Bell Welcome Back, cheesy
dipping burritos and steak garlic nacho fries. No, those sound
pretty good. Those sound pretty good to me. I'm not
going to be going to Taco Bell, but they sound
pretty good. Those nacho the steak garlic nacho fries. I
like steak, I like garlic, I like nachos, I like fries.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I like it all. I love it all.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Sam I am a fan favorite. Cheesy dipping burritos and
steak garlic nacho fries. Nacho fries.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, there you go. I gotta try one of those
if I'm allowed to. Seven to eleven has launched.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
I think we talked about this in the previous episode
long ago, but they've done it. They've launched Japanese style
egg salad sandwiches in US stores. And this is the
viral sandwich that was very popular on social media.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Out of Japan, and it launched.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
It launched a new Japanese style egg salad sandwich at
seven to eleven a bunch of their other locations. So
there is that Dominoes is in the foodie fund. It's
all about the Dominos, the Dominoes. So Domino's offering three
free chocolate lava crunch cakes.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
That's a mouthful.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
That's a mouthful with any online order of ten or
more dollars through the date of December twenty second. So
it's celebrating its sixty fifth birthday on December ninth. And
Dominoes that was just a couple of days ago. Dominoes
offering three free chocolate lava crunch cakes with any online
(18:15):
or it's always online. It is all they need to
track you. It must be online. And if it's not.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Online, you've done something wrong. You've definitely done something wrong.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
So this was this next thing, and it's kind of
a hybrid between foody fun and just the regular nonsense.
But we'll take a rip at it, why not, and
we'll try to sell the soap.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
We do that. That's how it goes.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
So people in Nashville, I think Mike and Nashville sent this.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
I don't. I think it was Mike, but that's a
generic name. It might have been somebody else. It's an
m name. I want to go Mike in Nashville.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
And he said, hey, listen people, he wrote it, says Ben,
I like to show people in my town waited three
hours in a drive through for in and out Burger
this week, three hours, three hours, and he wanted to
get my my reaction to that, well, I didn't see
(19:15):
this story.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
You sent me a link to a story which I
I'm looking at here. I don't think this is fake.
It doesn't look fake to me.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
It looks like a legitimate type of news story that
this is not doctored in some way. It seems pretty legit.
This is a guy that's that's been around and and all. Anyway, listen,
So here's the deal. The person that wrote this has
been around, so it looks like it's it's new. Some
(19:45):
of the stuff is AI. So anyway, three hours, let
that marinate. Three hours. So my thoughts on this, Mic,
I'm just gonna call you Mike, even if that's not
your name. You can, you know, you know, write me
back and yell at me. But you didn't just buy
a double double right, just buy the ble. You donated
the most valuable commodity known to mankind. All those people
online for three hours, three hours, you gave the most
(20:10):
valuable commodity known to mankind.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Time. Time is undefeated.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
You can't venmo it, you can't finance it, you can't
get a refund.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Once it's gone, it's.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Gone, gone, gone, gone, kind of like a bad NFL
head coach after Thanksgiving. Bye, bye, see you later, skater
osta pasta, all that stuff, all that stuff. So I
gotta tell you now, when I was younger, I did
stand online. The most famous one was for a Howard
(20:47):
Stern book signing where there were all these potheads there
and I was not. I was always on the straight
and narrow at that age in particular, and I recall
we were like, oh, we're just gonna go and we're
gonna get these the book signed and all this stuff.
Howard written a book Private Parts, and I remember going
(21:08):
out there and I was there all night. I waited
online all night for the King of Radio, Howard Stern.
And even then, at that age, I was like, what
am I doing? And as I've gotten older, I've gotten
less and less motivated to wait online. I just have
no interest in waiting online. So I mean the fact
that these people went out there.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
You didn't just.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Buy a double double. You donated Again, the most valuable
thing that you have time is unstoppable. Standing in that
line is like it was like waiting. It must have
been like waiting for Space Mountain, except instead of Mickey Mouse,
you're gonna get a double double wrapped in paper and regret.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
It's Disney World for cheeseburgers.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Plus plus you gotta have the animal style fries as well,
minus the rides.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
I would assume no indigestion. Who knows.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
And this is peak America, Peak America America. We complain
we're busy, all right, can plain We're busy glued to
our phones racing the clock. I'm always racing the clock
every day. I do the show. It is a race.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
It's a race.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Against time, and you're just trying to put the thing
together as fast as you can. But then while you're
putting the show together, it'll take you in behind the scenes.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
So you're trying to put the show together. Fine, but
then also there's things going on. So I'll plan stuff
out a lot of.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Times it'll like I can't do that because something else
changed in the story. Once you peak behind the curtain,
there's just not much else for you do, and that's it,
and that's it.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
And so that's where we are on this.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
I mean, this is again, people wait three hours online
in Nashville. This is peak Americana, peak Americana with everything
that goes on, and just to happily idle your engine
for three hours. Like you know, back in the day,
my parents still be ailt waiting for gas during I
guess I think Nixon was president that administration. So the
(23:10):
burger's good. We like in and out burger. It's not
rescue a hostage good. It's not miss your kid's birthday
party good. It's not that good. You could have watched
a movie trilogy. You think the things you could have done,
those of you that waited online for three hours. In Nashville,
you could have watched a movie trilogy. You could have
(23:32):
learned conversational Italian from a Rosetta stone, or listened to
three Malar monologues over and over and over again. One
it's pick an hour, and just over and over and
over and over and over.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
That's the malor math.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
The juice, as we like to say, isn't worth the squeeze,
eat the burger, don't let the burger eat you.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
And that line.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Was wasn't about fast food. People of Nashville didn't just
fall in love with in and out Burger.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
People doing it.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
From what I hear boots on the ground there, Mike,
people were doing it for the TikTok, for the Grams.
So some of those guys that played in Boston are like, hey,
look at us. Now we can get tattoos and we
can grow a beard, and we're not playing for the
Yankees anymore.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
This, that and the other thing.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Now, the real secret sauce, the real secret sauce. You
know what it is, Okay, you do, Okay. The real
secret sauce is fomo. Yeah, and people eat that up.
They love the fomo. They don't want to miss anything,
but fomo is the way to go. I'm a big
fomo guy. Love the fomo. What's new in the world
(24:49):
of nonsense? Well, this podcast is there. It's also by
the way, gingerbread House dass I failed to mention that
at the beginning Today's gingerbread House Desk she got to
get it done a couple weeks before. Did gingerbread houses
last that long? I've made one. I don't remember what
happened to it. I don't remember what happened to it.
(25:11):
It is National Lost and founday today. Well that sounds
like fun. Doesn't that sound like fun?
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah? Did you know fun? Fact?
Speaker 3 (25:20):
The first lost and Found there was a there was
a code to trace lost property.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
It was written in Japan in.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Seven eighteen, not seventeen eighteen, seven eighteen. Then in the
eighteen hundreds there was a system in Peri. Remember they
didn't have the internet in that time. So in Peri,
the leader Napoleon established the first office of Lost and
Found items in Peri. In Paris, so another layer of bureaucracy. Now,
(25:57):
at the time Napoleon didn't know that the Japanese had
come up with this prior. Then in eighteen ninety three,
the Return of the Order. Paris's municipal police. They came
up with tracking down the owners of the collection, the
lost items, all that stuff, all that stuff. So there
(26:21):
it is National Lost and Founday. So that along with
Gingerbread Day, please celebrate appropriately safe and saying we don't
want you getting hurt. We definitely don't want that. It's
National Dingaling Day. Now that's a word. The dingal ing
thing is a fun word that I really should use more.
(26:43):
As I have gotten through the Overnight Show, especially recently,
I've really into the words do hickey thingam a jig
and what you might call it? Like, those are kind
of cool words. I like saying them. They're fun words,
so I kind of go with it. But National Day
ding a Ling Day is just a wonderful piece of
(27:04):
American culture that nobody knows about because one of these fake,
fugazy holidays.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
But it's like a two tier holiday where you.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Preferably by phone, you touch base, you know, you do
the old ding a Ling. National Dingaling Day always takes
place on December twelfth. You can think of it as
a second Halloween. Well doesn't that sound exciting? A second Halloween?
How great is that?
Speaker 1 (27:32):
So no, apparently, no work.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
You're good in that department. All right, we'll get out
on that note. Have a great Friday. I'm gonna go
catch some shut eye here and put the baby to bed,
or put my baby ass to bed, and we'll be
back up later today to have a great Friday, and
then we've got new episodes. Hopefully Danny will be able
to join us at some point on Saturday and Sunday.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
And that's about it.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Have a wonder full rest of your Friday and.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Later, skater or is it? No?
Speaker 3 (28:08):
No, no, it's asta pasta now and then? But now, Danny,
what kind of pasta is it?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Now, okay, I'm a fetichini alfredo guy. Do we have
any We don't have any fetti. We don't have fetichini alfraida. Okay,
I'll go to the store.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Taste like a touchdown in your mouth. I can get
I can get some fetti.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
No, no, no, all right, you just want me to
go Sam, I can go Shozam if you want, jose Am. Anyway,
all right, have a wonderful, wonderful Friday again.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
We'll talk to you next time. Got a murder.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
I gotta go
Cutbooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the old Republic, a soul fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow to clearing House
of hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth
(00:23):
Hour with Ben Mahller starts right now.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
Mahler and Danny g Radio A happy beginning to your weekend.
We are hanging out together here as we whisper around.
So I did the radio show overnight. I then hung
out with the wife and Moxie and then walked back
(00:52):
into the podcast studio. We're doing the show from the
remote studio, but now back into the podcast studio, and
here we are cooking with gas as we heave. Not
hot takes. But this is this podcast not about the
hot take. It's about something else. But I had a
couple of things I wanted to get to. The take
a seat story, foody fun, and the Real Secret Sauce
(01:17):
all featured on this kickoff to the weekend.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Here a amazing.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Heave ho to the week as we have fun on
the weekend, and we will not be jumping through hoops
on this podcast, So we'll begin with this the seat
on the plane. Now, there are many ways, many ways
to lose a job in the NFL, and having talked
about and documented the NFL over the years on the radio,
(01:47):
I know just about all of them. We talk about
these things regularly on the radio show. You can blow coverages,
you can misevaluate a quarterback, you can pick the wrong
player in the first round of the jibt. You can
forget how to manage a clock like it's a ticking
time bomb. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick kaboom,
(02:07):
the wirings all messed up. And then there's the most
modern NFL way of all. You can lose a job
over a seat assignment on a plane. Not x's and o's,
its seat B three. No, sir, you're not in seat
(02:27):
B three. You've got to go to seat C twenty seven.
But no, I'm always in this seat. Who goofed? I've
got to know. Now entering the chat, Brian Cox with
a y Brian Cox, who lost his Giants assistant coaching
job this week, not because of failed defensive play, although
(02:50):
the Giants weren't great defensively, not because of anemic pass rush.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Although they weren't great in that department.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Instead because the chartered airl line that they used in
the NFL. They have different companies that use to charter flights.
They made a change to the NFL's cast system.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
They changed mid season.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
And b Cox reacted like a man who had lived
his entire football life demanding the queen of soul hum
rispect right that whole Aretha Franklin song back in the day.
So this story resonated with me. The reason I'm bringing
it up and talking to you about this on the podcast.
(03:34):
The thing that resonated with me is because it's not
really about a seat. It's about an ego, the hierarchy, loyalty,
and the unspoken rules of football democracy. It's about how
billion dollar operations operate like middle school cafeterias, and there's
(03:57):
clicks and all that, and selfishly the full disclosure I know,
alf is like, I know why you're talking about this.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Fer dog might not. However, in the olden.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Days, Beat Cox and I we go back. We have
a past, not a great past, not a great past.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
But selfishly it's about Brian Cox, someone I actually knew.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
I don't know him now I have his phone number
if he has the same number he had twenty years ago.
But it always adds a little extra spice to the gumbo.
It always has a little ekra spice. And as I've
gotten older in life and i've my life has taken
me around a number of people. Some of them have
gone on and been very famous. Some of them used
to be famous and are no longer famous.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
And it's just very.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Odd when you see these stories and it's someone that
you crossed path with in life. And that's one of
these examples. Like Brian Cox is a Fox Sports Radio alumnus.
Long before podcast microphones sprouted up like weeds. Brian Cox
co hosted a show with Chris Myers on the early
(05:04):
editions of Fox Sports Radio, not the very beginning, but
shortly after the network started. This goes back to around
the year two thousand and two, two thousand and three,
somewhere in that area.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
I forget.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
He wasn't there long, Brian Cox, but it was maybe
even five. He had been doing some stuff with the
Best damn Sports Show period, so he was paired with
Chris Myers.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
I kin because I care the great Chris Myers.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
And when Chris was off on NFL assignments or NASCAR
or the other television jobs that he had at the time,
I would fill in. And that meant hours, hours in
the radio bunker, the trenches with Brian Cox, a man who,
let's just say, approached life, football and talk radio with
(05:56):
the seriousness of a fourth and goal to win the
Super Bowl. And let me say this, I'm gonna say
it delicately. In the long, storied history of Fox Sports Radio,
Brian Cox is one of a very small handful of
people I simply did not vibe with.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I just didn't.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
It's not a long list. There are people that I
didn't like working with, but I liked as people. There
are people that didn't like me in the style that
I do, but we got along off the radio. My sarcastic, cynical,
side eye eye rolling worldview paired with Brian Cox, who
(06:40):
was from East Saint Louis, Missouri, the baddest part of town,
no nonsense. I mentioned the respect and all that, and
that was a respect above all, that was the ethos,
and that went together Me and him went together like
pineapple and mayonnaise, technically or edible. Both technically or edible,
(07:03):
both deeply upsetting When combined together. The teamwork does not
make the dream work. If the teamwork is not great,
it was combustible or nonexistent or both. And Brian Cox
is a respect guys, we've said capital are that's the currency,
that's the oxygen. Respect is not optional. Not that I
(07:26):
didn't respect him. I just had an interesting way of
saying it. And when you've had the career that he
had had at that time, he was only a little
bit removed from his playing days in the NFL. It's
been twelve years with the Dolphins and the Bears and
the Jets, Patriots and Saints and bled for multiple franchises.
(07:47):
You don't take kindly to being told you're now sitting
in steerage with the luggage in the back of the plane.
And so the Giants moved the assistant coaches to the
back of the plane because I guess they decided they
wanted to change it up during the bye week. And
that's it. That's the spark. The seating chart adjustment, an
(08:09):
organizational shrug, a silent memo that said, you know you
are a little less important today than you were the
last time we went on a plane. Well, I don't
understand why. So Brian Cox reacted apparently poorly. I wasn't there,
(08:30):
and in my head I'm like, well, of course he did.
This is a man who once gave a now iconic,
if you're old enough to remember, iconic double bird salute
to Bill's fans years ago as he was running out
of the tunnel. That was before Bill's Mafia became a brand. Instead,
(08:52):
it was a snow covered mob back in those days.
And this is a man who once gave me an unsolicited,
very vivid, borderline medical conference level description of sports hernia's
surgery that I still remember, against my will. There was
(09:14):
a player that had gotten a sports hernia and we
were debating on the show will this person be able
to come back and play in the NFL? And I said, well,
the sports hernia is not that bad, and Brian Cox
is like, oh, yeah, you want to bet And then
he went through the whole thing and gave me the
whole run down. And so Brian Cox, he does not
(09:35):
bottle things up. He detonates and the giants now they're
saying it was about behavior that teams, generally speaking, always
say it's about behavior. Behavior is the NFL's all purpose
disinfected wipe very important. You gotta have that all purpose
disinfected wipe. And let's not kidd ourselves. This smells like
(09:59):
a convenient excommunication. Cox was a loyalist to Brian Dayball,
the rotund former coach of the Giants, and so Brian
Dable had already been shown the door.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
And I do know from my life experience, when regime
regimes change, whether it's a football team, a radio station,
or whatever it might be, when regimes change, loyalty becomes radioactive.
Like everyone wants.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Loyal people until the new coach comes in and you're
loyal to the old coach.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Everyone knows this.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
And football organizations they preach about family. It's all about
the family until the family photo gets updated. Then suddenly
you're cropped out like an ex spouse.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
And that's just kind of how it goes.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
So Brian Cox proud loud, old school, and.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
He became expendable.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
I got rid of him, and the assignment became the
paper trail. And that's how the modern football world works.
Like nobody gets fired for ideology. They get fired for incidents. Incidents, right,
Nobody gets purged for loyalty. They get purged for conduct
(11:22):
detrimental to the team or conduct unbecoming. Because the NFL
is a reality show that's got hr language.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Because they're big.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
This is not These places start out reasonable, small family businesses,
and then the corporations get involved and we're off to
the races.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
We know that to be be true.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
And what struck me most was not that Brian Cox reacted.
It was that he couldn't not react based on my
interactions with him back in the day. This is the
same league that demands coaches bark, spit, intimidate, and do
all that Monday through Saturday, and then expect them to
(12:09):
nod politely when told to move to the back of
the plane like a middle manager on a budget airline. Hello,
he blew me off at a hotel near Lax. We
get the business model. We understand, it's ironclad. The business model.
(12:33):
It's not worth fighting. Football is the product.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
In theory.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
They sell masculinity like a Cologne commercial. Right, that's it,
and then it punishes you for actually using it. We
sell masculinity and it's like cologne, just don't put any
of this on.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
And here's the uncomfortable truth.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Also, Brian Cox probably wasn't wrong to feel the D
word disrespected. He was just wrong in expressing it in
a language that pretended hierarchy did not exist, based on
what I've read, while.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Enforcing it ruthlessly.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
And so the NFL has always been built on these
silent agreements like who sits where, who speaks when? Who
gets blamed publicly when the team's not going well, who
gets blamed quietly? Who do you cover up for once
you violate the sacred seating chart to fly to some
(13:38):
jerkwater town. Once you violated the seating chart, you're not
arguing logistics. You're challenging authority. And that is when the
hammer comes down. That is when the hammer comes down.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
So you read the teas, I was not surprised at all.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
I was not, not because I know the giants, because
I know Brian Cock, at least the way he was
years and years ago.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
That's the guy I know. He's not a vibes guy.
He's not that.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
He's he's not a role with it guy. That's not
the guy that I was around as I remember. He's
not a hey man, it's just a seat guy. That's
definitely not him. He's a what does that say about
how you see me? Kind of a guy? And in
football perception is everything right. You got to show the respect.
(14:35):
You gotta eat it like a horse. You gotta you
gotta do it. And the story resonated because it's rather petty,
it's deeply human. It's a it's a list, a long
football life reduced to a chair assignment, and for now
his coaching career is on pause.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Pause. It's not with a whistle, but with a boarding pass.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
And the other part of this, it was a it's
a thirty nine minute flight. That's a thirty nine minute
flying time that takes a while longer to take the
plane off the ground and put it away, but the
actual time in the air thirty nine minutes from Foxborough
(15:20):
to the New York City tri state area. It's also
a reminder the NFL doesn't chew people up with drama.
It does it with procedure, right with policy, with the
seating chart, and when you no longer fit the diagram,
(15:40):
it's turnout the loss. The parties over just like that,
and Brian Cox lost a job over a seat.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Let that settle into your later you know, your little
brain there.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
But really he lost it over who he's always kind
of been, at least in my experience with him in
the NFL. Eventually that's enough and they'll just say we've
moved on. We've decided to move on. We're not in
the business with you anymore. That's it. See you later, sucker,
(16:14):
get out of here. Meanwhile, foody fun, it's time for
food he fun. I know, I can't sing as good
as Ohio, and it's a little slow at the end
of the year, holidays coming up. It seems like a
lot of these places that sell the fast food are
waiting until next year to roll out a lot of
(16:35):
new items. I did see Taco Bell Welcome Back, cheesy
dipping burritos and steak garlic nacho fries. No, those sound
pretty good. Those sound pretty good to me. I'm not
going to be going to Taco Bell, but they sound
pretty good. Those nacho the steak garlic nacho fries. I
like steak, I like garlic, I like nachos, I like fries.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I like it all. I love it all.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Sam I am a fan favorite. Cheesy dipping burritos and
steak garlic nacho fries. Nacho fries.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, there you go. I gotta try one of those
if I'm allowed to. Seven to eleven has launched.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
I think we talked about this in the previous episode
long ago, but they've done it. They've launched Japanese style
egg salad sandwiches in US stores. And this is the
viral sandwich that was very popular on social media.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Out of Japan, and it launched.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
It launched a new Japanese style egg salad sandwich at
seven to eleven a bunch of their other locations. So
there is that Dominoes is in the foodie fund. It's
all about the Dominos, the Dominoes. So Domino's offering three
free chocolate lava crunch cakes.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
That's a mouthful.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
That's a mouthful with any online order of ten or
more dollars through the date of December twenty second. So
it's celebrating its sixty fifth birthday on December ninth. And
Dominoes that was just a couple of days ago. Dominoes
offering three free chocolate lava crunch cakes with any online
(18:15):
or it's always online. It is all they need to
track you. It must be online. And if it's not.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Online, you've done something wrong. You've definitely done something wrong.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
So this was this next thing, and it's kind of
a hybrid between foody fun and just the regular nonsense.
But we'll take a rip at it, why not, and
we'll try to sell the soap.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
We do that. That's how it goes.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
So people in Nashville, I think Mike and Nashville sent this.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
I don't. I think it was Mike, but that's a
generic name. It might have been somebody else. It's an
m name. I want to go Mike in Nashville.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
And he said, hey, listen people, he wrote it, says Ben,
I like to show people in my town waited three
hours in a drive through for in and out Burger
this week, three hours, three hours, and he wanted to
get my my reaction to that, well, I didn't see
(19:15):
this story.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
You sent me a link to a story which I
I'm looking at here. I don't think this is fake.
It doesn't look fake to me.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
It looks like a legitimate type of news story that
this is not doctored in some way. It seems pretty legit.
This is a guy that's that's been around and and all. Anyway, listen,
So here's the deal. The person that wrote this has
been around, so it looks like it's it's new. Some
(19:45):
of the stuff is AI. So anyway, three hours, let
that marinate. Three hours. So my thoughts on this, Mic,
I'm just gonna call you Mike, even if that's not
your name. You can, you know, you know, write me
back and yell at me. But you didn't just buy
a double double right, just buy the ble. You donated
the most valuable commodity known to mankind. All those people
online for three hours, three hours, you gave the most
(20:10):
valuable commodity known to mankind.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Time. Time is undefeated.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
You can't venmo it, you can't finance it, you can't
get a refund.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Once it's gone, it's.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Gone, gone, gone, gone, kind of like a bad NFL
head coach after Thanksgiving. Bye, bye, see you later, skater
osta pasta, all that stuff, all that stuff. So I
gotta tell you now, when I was younger, I did
stand online. The most famous one was for a Howard
(20:47):
Stern book signing where there were all these potheads there
and I was not. I was always on the straight
and narrow at that age in particular, and I recall
we were like, oh, we're just gonna go and we're
gonna get these the book signed and all this stuff.
Howard written a book Private Parts, and I remember going
(21:08):
out there and I was there all night. I waited
online all night for the King of Radio, Howard Stern.
And even then, at that age, I was like, what
am I doing? And as I've gotten older, I've gotten
less and less motivated to wait online. I just have
no interest in waiting online. So I mean the fact
that these people went out there.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
You didn't just.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Buy a double double. You donated Again, the most valuable
thing that you have time is unstoppable. Standing in that
line is like it was like waiting. It must have
been like waiting for Space Mountain, except instead of Mickey Mouse,
you're gonna get a double double wrapped in paper and regret.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
It's Disney World for cheeseburgers.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Plus plus you gotta have the animal style fries as well,
minus the rides.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
I would assume no indigestion. Who knows.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
And this is peak America, Peak America America. We complain
we're busy, all right, can plain We're busy glued to
our phones racing the clock. I'm always racing the clock
every day. I do the show. It is a race.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
It's a race.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Against time, and you're just trying to put the thing
together as fast as you can. But then while you're
putting the show together, it'll take you in behind the scenes.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
So you're trying to put the show together. Fine, but
then also there's things going on. So I'll plan stuff
out a lot of.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Times it'll like I can't do that because something else
changed in the story. Once you peak behind the curtain,
there's just not much else for you do, and that's it,
and that's it.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
And so that's where we are on this.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
I mean, this is again, people wait three hours online
in Nashville. This is peak Americana, peak Americana with everything
that goes on, and just to happily idle your engine
for three hours. Like you know, back in the day,
my parents still be ailt waiting for gas during I
guess I think Nixon was president that administration. So the
(23:10):
burger's good. We like in and out burger. It's not
rescue a hostage good. It's not miss your kid's birthday
party good. It's not that good. You could have watched
a movie trilogy. You think the things you could have done,
those of you that waited online for three hours. In Nashville,
you could have watched a movie trilogy. You could have
(23:32):
learned conversational Italian from a Rosetta stone, or listened to
three Malar monologues over and over and over again. One
it's pick an hour, and just over and over and
over and over and over.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
That's the malor math.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
The juice, as we like to say, isn't worth the squeeze,
eat the burger, don't let the burger eat you.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
And that line.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Was wasn't about fast food. People of Nashville didn't just
fall in love with in and out Burger.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
People doing it.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
From what I hear boots on the ground there, Mike,
people were doing it for the TikTok, for the Grams.
So some of those guys that played in Boston are like, hey,
look at us. Now we can get tattoos and we
can grow a beard, and we're not playing for the
Yankees anymore.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
This, that and the other thing.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Now, the real secret sauce, the real secret sauce. You
know what it is, Okay, you do, Okay. The real
secret sauce is fomo. Yeah, and people eat that up.
They love the fomo. They don't want to miss anything,
but fomo is the way to go. I'm a big
fomo guy. Love the fomo. What's new in the world
(24:49):
of nonsense? Well, this podcast is there. It's also by
the way, gingerbread House dass I failed to mention that
at the beginning Today's gingerbread House Desk she got to
get it done a couple weeks before. Did gingerbread houses
last that long? I've made one. I don't remember what
happened to it. I don't remember what happened to it.
(25:11):
It is National Lost and founday today. Well that sounds
like fun. Doesn't that sound like fun?
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah? Did you know fun? Fact?
Speaker 3 (25:20):
The first lost and Found there was a there was
a code to trace lost property.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
It was written in Japan in.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Seven eighteen, not seventeen eighteen, seven eighteen. Then in the
eighteen hundreds there was a system in Peri. Remember they
didn't have the internet in that time. So in Peri,
the leader Napoleon established the first office of Lost and
Found items in Peri. In Paris, so another layer of bureaucracy. Now,
(25:57):
at the time Napoleon didn't know that the Japanese had
come up with this prior. Then in eighteen ninety three,
the Return of the Order. Paris's municipal police. They came
up with tracking down the owners of the collection, the
lost items, all that stuff, all that stuff. So there
(26:21):
it is National Lost and Founday. So that along with
Gingerbread Day, please celebrate appropriately safe and saying we don't
want you getting hurt. We definitely don't want that. It's
National Dingaling Day. Now that's a word. The dingal ing
thing is a fun word that I really should use more.
(26:43):
As I have gotten through the Overnight Show, especially recently,
I've really into the words do hickey thingam a jig
and what you might call it? Like, those are kind
of cool words. I like saying them. They're fun words,
so I kind of go with it. But National Day
ding a Ling Day is just a wonderful piece of
(27:04):
American culture that nobody knows about because one of these fake,
fugazy holidays.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
But it's like a two tier holiday where you.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Preferably by phone, you touch base, you know, you do
the old ding a Ling. National Dingaling Day always takes
place on December twelfth. You can think of it as
a second Halloween. Well doesn't that sound exciting? A second Halloween?
How great is that?
Speaker 1 (27:32):
So no, apparently, no work.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
You're good in that department. All right, we'll get out
on that note. Have a great Friday. I'm gonna go
catch some shut eye here and put the baby to bed,
or put my baby ass to bed, and we'll be
back up later today to have a great Friday, and
then we've got new episodes. Hopefully Danny will be able
to join us at some point on Saturday and Sunday.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
And that's about it.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Have a wonder full rest of your Friday and.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Later, skater or is it? No?
Speaker 3 (28:08):
No, no, it's asta pasta now and then? But now, Danny,
what kind of pasta is it?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Now, okay, I'm a fetichini alfredo guy. Do we have
any We don't have any fetti. We don't have fetichini alfraida. Okay,
I'll go to the store.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Taste like a touchdown in your mouth. I can get
I can get some fetti.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
No, no, no, all right, you just want me to
go Sam, I can go Shozam if you want, jose Am. Anyway,
all right, have a wonderful, wonderful Friday again.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
We'll talk to you next time. Got a murder.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
I gotta go
Host
Ben Maller
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