Trey Wingo – host of ESPN’s NFL Live – joins the show to talk about this country’s fascination with football and ESPN.  If you ever wanted to hear two guys who were emailng each other at 4:15 am talk on the phone 11 hours later, trying diligently to hide in their voices the immense amount of caffeine streaming through their veins (note: I assume on his part, and I know on mine), do we have a show for you.

We chat about the year-round transformation of the NFL, and if that is attributable to the jingoistic nature of our country. 

We talk about former athletes invading analyst desks and broadcast booths on every station and if he thinks its fair that athletes get to play the sports we grew up wanting to play AND get to cover those sports as well.  I ask him if he thinks Kornheiser is better than Kornheiser thinks Kornheiser is, and I ask him who he’d put in the Monday Night Football booth, if they let him book one game.

In the best moment of the interview, I ask about the way blogs have covered some of his colleagues, including Chris Berman’s videos and Sean Salisbury’s phone photos, and (as expected) he does a great job of deflecting before mentioning that he things blogs have evolved, and will continue to evolve.  He even dropped this on my lap:

    “Remember when ESPN started, we were nothing.  In 1979, you couldn’t find  us with a police blotter.  You could hide from the authorities on ESPN.  And I think the thing that ESPN has done better, that nobody gives it credit for … we went from being the mom and pop shop – we were the bloggers, essentially, in 1979.  We were trying to find a way to put something on the air that somebody would pay attention to. 

“And somewhere along the way, over a vast period of time, we went from the mom and pop shop, the blogger that nobody really reads so we can say whatever we want out there, to suddenly the most powerful entity in sports in this country. “

Yes, he said that ESPN started out as a blog.  There’s hope for all of us yet.

We also talk about SpyGate, and if ESPN over-covered the story, before addressing the rash of robberies and assaults that seem to be afflicting NFL players, most recently putting Javon Walker in the hospital.

Shifting gears to a lighter subject, we talk women’s basketball.  Hey, Trey is the host of the NCAA tourney, so we talk a little women’s hoops. 

To finish, I ask him why everyone is afraid of Tiger Woods, and I rip Tiger for acting like such a child on the course – throwing clubs, cursing, dropping his putter on the green.  Well, Tiger’s out for the year, so I guess that’s that.

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