Sal Paolantonio joins the show to talk about his career as a writer, reporter, tv personality and fighter of pirates. 

Yes before donning the sets of millions of sports viewers for ESPN, Sal Pal was at the helm of ships for the Navy, rescuing Vietnamese refugees from being kidnapped from, yes, modern day pirates.

We talk about his time as a political reporter, including his best-selling book on former Philly Mayor Frank Rizzo, and discuss how one transitions from politics to covering the Eagles.  In this town, that’s not a far leap.

We compare the current Brett Favre saga with that of T.O. and ask Sal which was worse.  We then go in depth about the Favre trade, but form a standpoint of how it impacted Sal standing outside in Tampa while Jay Glazer of Fox was in the airport reporting Favre’s trade to the Jets.  There’s some pretty interesting notes in there about the entire day, and you can tell, Sal doesn’t like getting scooped.  That leads us to the a question about the 24-hour news cycle and how that impacts both ESPN and the people who work there.

We talk about Sal’s two football books, The Paolantonio Report about the most over-and-underrated players in history and his upcoming book, How Football Explains America which is a detailed and analytical look at how the game of football mirrors society throughout the time of our country. 

We end with some talk on the Birds and get his thoughts on Jimmy Rollins’ recent comments about the fans of the city.  Oh, and we couldn’t let him go withtout taking shots at Merrill Hodge and, yet again, Jaws’ glasses.