His three years on the field with the Maryland Terps showed him to be a No. 12 overall selection but it’s been his annual coat drives and lifelong commitment to College Park that earned longtime NFL pass rusher Shawne Merriman a natural seat in the Maryland Terrapins Hall of Fame earlier this month. He discussed the honor with Nestor here as well as words about Maxx Crosby, the Ravens and the Chargers path to winning in Los Angeles.

Shawne Merriman discussed his induction into the Maryland Terps Hall of Fame, expressing surprise and pride. He highlighted his commitment to the university, emphasizing the importance of staying home and setting a trend for DMV athletes. Merriman reflected on his upbringing in Prince George’s County and the significance of his decision to attend Maryland. He also touched on the NFL’s Max Crosby trade debacle, criticizing the Ravens’ handling of the situation. Additionally, Merriman shared insights on the Chargers’ off-season, health challenges, and the team’s potential with new GM Joe Ortiz and coach Brandon Staley.

• [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Prepare and bring Maryland treasure scratch-off tickets to give away on the Maryland Crab Cake Tour in June (presented by GBMC).
• [ ] Coordinate the annual Lights Out coat/canned food drive date with AJ Francis and target holding it the second or third week of November.
• [ ] Schedule and confirm a return appearance on the show in November (aim for second or third week in November).

Shawne Merriman’s Induction into Maryland Terps Hall of Fame

• Nestor Aparicio introduces the show and mentions various local events and sports updates.
• Nestor Aparicio welcomes Shawne Merriman, highlighting his achievements and recent induction into the Maryland Terps Hall of Fame.
• Shawne Merriman shares his surprise and excitement about the induction, initially thinking he was there for a different event.
• Shawne Merriman reflects on his commitment to giving back without expecting anything in return, including the Hall of Fame honor.

Shawne Merriman’s Connection to Maryland

• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman discuss the significance of the Maryland Hall of Fame to Shawne, comparing it to the NFL Hall of Fame.
• Shawne Merriman talks about his upbringing in Prince George’s County and his decision to stay home and play for Maryland.
• Shawne Merriman emphasizes the importance of setting a trend for other DMV area athletes to stay home and play for their local university.
• Nestor Aparicio reminisces about his long career in radio and his connection to various Maryland athletes and sports figures.

The DMV Area and Its Unique Identity

• Shawne Merriman describes the DMV area as its own country, with a unique culture and talent pool.
• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman discuss the special bond and pride that DMV residents have for their area.
• Shawne Merriman highlights the grit and determination required to succeed in the DMV area, contributing to its unique identity.
• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman talk about the challenges and opportunities for athletes in the DMV area, including the impact of NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) deals.

Shawne Merriman’s Commitment to Maryland

• Nestor Aparicio asks Shawne Merriman about his commitment to Maryland and the impact of his actions on other athletes.
• Shawne Merriman shares his mission to set a trend for other DMV area athletes to stay home and play for their local university.
• Shawne Merriman reflects on the importance of his decision to stay home and its impact on the DMV area.
• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman discuss the challenges and rewards of staying committed to one’s roots and community.

Shawne Merriman’s Family and Legacy

• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman discuss the importance of family and legacy in Shawne’s life.
• Shawne Merriman shares the moment he told his son about his induction into the Maryland Hall of Fame.
• Shawne Merriman reflects on the impact of his actions on his family and the next generation of athletes.
• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman discuss the importance of setting a positive example for future generations.

The Impact of NIL Deals on College Athletes

• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman discuss the impact of NIL deals on college athletes and their decision-making process.
• Shawne Merriman shares his thoughts on the importance of athletes being able to profit from their name, image, and likeness.
• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman talk about the challenges and opportunities presented by NIL deals for college athletes.
• Shawne Merriman emphasizes the need for guardrails and ethical considerations in the NIL market.

The NFL and Max Crosby Trade

• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman discuss the NFL trade involving Max Crosby and the Ravens.
• Shawne Merriman shares his thoughts on the trade and the impact on Max Crosby and his family.
• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman discuss the business side of the trade and the moral implications.
• Shawne Merriman reflects on the importance of treating athletes and their families with respect in the NFL.

The Chargers and Future Plans

• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman discuss the current state of the Chargers and their future plans.
• Shawne Merriman highlights the importance of health and consistency for the Chargers’ success.
• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman talk about the impact of the Chargers’ new stadium and their growing presence in LA.
• Shawne Merriman shares his excitement about the Chargers’ new leadership and their commitment to winning.

The Future of College Sports and NIL Deals

• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman discuss the future of college sports and the impact of NIL deals.
• Shawne Merriman shares his thoughts on the need for guardrails and ethical considerations in the NIL market.
• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman talk about the challenges and opportunities presented by NIL deals for college athletes.
• Shawne Merriman emphasizes the importance of athletes being able to profit from their name, image, and likeness while maintaining their commitment to their schools.

Final Thoughts and Future Plans

• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman wrap up the conversation with final thoughts and future plans.
• Shawne Merriman shares his excitement about his upcoming events and commitments.
• Nestor Aparicio thanks Shawne Merriman for joining the show and highlights his contributions to the Maryland community.
• Nestor Aparicio and Shawne Merriman discuss the importance of staying connected and giving back to the community.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Maryland Terps, Hall of Fame, Shawne Merriman, NFL, University of Maryland, DMV area, NIL, Max Crosby, Trey Hendrickson, Chargers, health, Justin Herbert, Jim Harbaugh, Joe Ortiz, Baltimore.

SPEAKERS

Shawne Merriman, Nestor Aparicio

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Nestor Aparicio  00:01

Welcome home. We are W N S T A M 1570 Towson Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive, trying to get summer in here at some point. I am wearing my Farnham and Dermer sweatshirt here as we get through Memorial Day. I will have Ravens, or excuse me, Maryland treasure scratch-offs to give away as we get into June on the Maryland Crab Cake Tour, also presented by our friends at GBMC. Lots going on here. It’s been a crazy month with the horse race, the Orioles falling out of things. Obviously, the Ravens get back on the field with a new head coach, and I saw the news out of Maryland, and I saw an event in New York that showed up my timeline, because I’m connected to all sorts of terps, I had Bonnie Bernstein on last week, so I had Miss Terp on as well. But Sean Merriman makes his way back on here, not just his lights out and NFL guy, successful Maryland guy, and coat drive guy, but now Terp Hall of Fame. Dude, I would have thought you were already in. I gotta be honest with you, I don’t know much about, I don’t follow every hall of fame, but I know you were excited to get this call,

Shawne Merriman  01:06

I was, and the crazy thing is, I didn’t get the call, I thought I was there for something completely different, you know, Jim, the new ID that came in, you know, he said I told him when he first came in, I said, hey, when you guys got events, whether it’s fundraising, whether it’s NILS, whatever you guys need me there, count me in. So, when they reached out to me to come to New York, I originally thought that I was coming out there, you know, bunch of Maryland alumni, you know, potential, you know, donors and everything else. So I was like, okay, cool, let me come out here, get on the mic, and you know, kind of, you know, do my thing. And right when I go up to talk, you know. I saw Mike Locksley, Coach Loxley, come walking on the stage, and then, and I said, “Okay, something, you know, something’s off, but it hasn’t hit me yet. I don’t, I don’t fully understand that what’s going on. And, man, to be to say I was surprised, you know, just one of the things I said on the stage is that I never look for anything in return, right? I don’t look for anything patch on the back or whatever. We’ll probably talk about a coach drive at some point, just finishing my 23rd annual last year. Y’all expect anything in return, you know, including Hall of Fame or any accolades. I just feel like you’re supposed to do it. My attitude is always you’re supposed to do it. And so it was a, it was one of the best experiences of my life, man, because I got a chance to talk about me going to Maryland and having all these other colleges, staying home, being from Prince George’s County. So it was a very, very special day.

Nestor Aparicio  02:32

I saw Joe Smith as well, and I’m thinking, you know, you cheered for him, I cheered for him, right? Like, you know, the notion that this is something that happened to you, had you ever thought about it at all? I mean, I’m sure you were like maybe on a ballot for the NFL or Pro Football Hall of Fame as well, and votes, things like that, but did the Maryland part of it, what in your mind in 2020 years, you know, whatever it’s been made this the time some way,

Shawne Merriman  03:01

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I don’t know exactly what lined up with the time, but I’ll tell you this: going to the Hall of Fame at the University of Maryland is more important to me than the NFL. I just think that it symbolizes something completely different for me. You know, how I grew up in PG County, and I talked about it a bit on the stage, how it was rough in the late 80s and 90s in PG County and Washington, DC, I mean, it was tough times, and then coming out of, you know, coming out of high school, have an opportunity to go to anywhere in the country that I wanted to, and I never took a visit to another school, it was, I was going to Maryland, that was it, because I wanted to be the first, you know, kind of big name player to come from the DMV area to stay home, everyone else was going to, you know, the Penn State, Ohio State’s, Florida, Florida State, Texas, but for me it was important to kind of set a trend, and it did exactly that. I mean, Vernon Davis, who was a top-ranked recruit coming out, he stayed home, he came, went to University of Maryland, he ended up being a six-picking overall NFL draft when he came out, so that to me had more significance than anything I’ve ever done in the NFL, just because where I grew up and how I grew up.

Nestor Aparicio  04:08

Sean, I gotta tell you, man, this is my 35th year on the radio in Baltimore, right? I’ve been on every single day of my life I’ve been doing this, including when Joe Smith was playing, and we didn’t have a football team here, there was no Ravens here, the baseball team was on strike that year that Joe Smith caught fire, the three or four months that he played here and wound up being Joe Smith. I was thinking about where you came along, and you’re much younger than me. I mean, I feel like I’ve known you half of my life. I’m 57 You’re really a generation, a generation and a half behind me. I was going to ask you, like Len Bias, dude, you were like one, you were like two, and like, like I’m thinking about even Walt Williams, right? All of these people that you rub elbows with, including Len Elmore, and all of those guys, Tom McMillin, who I saw play in 73 you know, I was five years old, but I remember it vividly. We all have these errors of Terp them through all of this, Bonnie. Bernstein came down from Jersey. I don’t know what makes people go there or stay here. Can you put your head into where you were at that moment and what was making Maryland so important to you then that all these years later you would get something that clearly means a lot to you? Right,

Shawne Merriman  05:18

you know, I say this, a D, I think the DMV is his own country. I really do. I mean, between Maryland, DC, Balti, you know, Baltimore people

Nestor Aparicio  05:26

don’t

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Nestor Aparicio  05:27

consider Baltimore to DMV to see, you know, up here we got..

Shawne Merriman  05:30

I get it, I get it, but you know, and talking about in proximity, right?

Nestor Aparicio  05:35

Well, listen, when the Terps would get anybody from Maryland, Keith Booth, anyone, it was a big deal, I mean, Baltimore considers Maryland its school, so it’s the thing we sort of share, for sure. No,

Shawne Merriman  05:45

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no, for sure, for sure.

Nestor Aparicio  05:47

Then the Capitals or the Wizards, or anything like that,

Shawne Merriman  05:49

you can kind of geographically put it anywhere you want, but I group everything together, because, as you know, in 40 minutes you can get to all three places, right? I mean, it’s just, it’s that close. There’s something special about that, the DMV area, that area that is unlike anywhere else in the country, and I, you know, this is coming from playing in San Diego, playing in Buffalo, you know, spending time in Florida, Miami, at a home in Miami, you know, now live in Vegas, DMV is different, it’s like its own separate thing that you won’t, you won’t see the lingo, that I mean, there’s so much in, you got the Baltimore accents, you got guys, you know, people, when I talk to people, and I’m in other people in the country, they are, “Where are you from? “Where your accent? They don’t even know, and I said, “That’s why it’s just, it’s, it’s his own thing. And the talent, forget sports for a minute, just on entertainment, look at how many entertainers came out of that DMV area that this made it as a mega star, right? It has, we have a nucleus, like something’s out there with people like to say, you know, something’s in the water, something’s out there that’s much different than anywhere in the, in a country, and that’s because it’s, you know, you got to have a backbone, right, you got to have a backbone, you got to have some fight, you got to have some grit to come out of the places that we came out of to get to where we are now, because if you don’t, you won’t make it. Well, none of us, including myself, will be sitting here if you didn’t have grit coming from the DMV area.

Nestor Aparicio  07:16

What were your other options? I mean, you weren’t given an option in the NFL, you get drafted, you go charges, boom, right, 12th, you wish you were 11th, probably, or 10th, or ninth at that point, right? But for you, that this was a time in your life where you could pick where you wanted to go, and I think that that’s the weird part for all these kids with N I L and picking where they’re going and getting paid to go where they’re going. It’s more like a job at the mall and moving around, or whatever, as I see it, the first five years into this thing, but you were from a different era, where you know people knew who you were, they were coming and recruiting, as you said it was pressure to stay, and also sort of adventure to leave, right? I mean, if a certain school wanted you, I don’t even know who the hot shots were then, I mean, they’re all the same blue bloods of Alabama’s Nebraska’s, you see, I mean, all these big names, go, any of the Florida’s, any of the SEC’s little ACC with ACC back then, right?

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Shawne Merriman  08:04

Yeah, yeah. And so you know, my thing was that I don’t know why I was thinking like this at a young age, but it was much bigger than me. I’ve always felt that it was much bigger than me. It was almost like setting the tone for everybody else to come after me, that I had to be the one to do it. I was the first Division One player to come out, football player to come out of my high school. There was no one that went d1 so even have these offers and all these, all these opportunities. No one even had that in all the school’s history, right? I was the first one. Then you go to University of Maryland, you stay home. The number one player in that DMV area, or the top player, has never stayed home, has never stayed. The number one player coming out of DC, Maryland, Virginia, never stayed home. I wanted to be the first, and so I think that I had a mission, like the mission was bigger than me, that I was going to commit to it, lock into it, and nothing was going to change it. My mind was set up, and I don’t care who came and saw me. I don’t care who I talked to, or what offers I had. It was just my.. I still have a 301 number, right? I still got a 301 Like, I, you know, there’s something special that will always resonate and be home for me in the DMV.

Nestor Aparicio  09:17

Sean Merriman is my guest. He’s now a Terp Hall of Famer. He, Hall of Famer, were you with this honor and all of that? What’s the first thing that came to mind for friends, family, all this? Because I saw the video of it, and I was watching everything that was going on, and then again, I had a bunch of friends that were there, and people that support the Terps, and donors, and whatnot, as well as player, former players of mine, they’re Facebook friends of mine, that were all.. it felt like, you know, an evening of surprises, and the element of surprise for you was pretty obvious, I think.

Shawne Merriman  09:47

Yeah, in fact, when I got off the stage, the first person I text was my son, and I said, I texted him, said, “Dude, I got into the University of Maryland Hall of Fame. He FaceTiming, and he got on Facetime and said, “Dad, I know. I said, what do you mean? You know, he said, I’ve been new, because they were trying to set it up to get me either back to the school or some at some event to do it. My son knew

Nestor Aparicio  10:09

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people were in on this to make sure that you went right, yeah, because it would have been like you had, you know, you do lights out, you do these things, maybe you didn’t, you wouldn’t have elected to go to the event, maybe.

Shawne Merriman  10:21

No, no, no. Just, you know, I’ve already, in fact, Jim did the, the ad, he, he came up to me after that. He said, Sean, you had no idea it was doing this, and you kept your word. When I first came in, the first week, when I met him, when he came in, they said, you’ll be there if I needed you, and they called me and said, ‘Jim, need you out of this event. I came not knowing that I was going to be inducted into the, to the Hall of Fame, the University of Maryland, so, and he came up, said, “Man, this is, you know, just honorable for you to do this, because I had just got back from Greece with the Chargers and the NFL, and that’s literally turned around within 24 hours, packed my bag from Las Vegas, and jumped on the plane in New York, and so again, man, it all of it was worth it. It was worth it. It’ll go down as one of the best days of my life, because some of those names you mentioned before, I mean, yeah, I was one or two years old when Lin Bias was playing, or whatever the deal was, but Limbius was to us, me coming in was talked like Michael, like, like Michael Jordan.

Nestor Aparicio  11:18

I don’t

Nestor Aparicio  11:18

think Joe Smith shaped you wanting to go to Maryland, that was your era, right? Like,

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Shawne Merriman  11:21

oh, for sure.

Nestor Aparicio  11:22

I mean, that made you fall in love with the Terps that era more so than Bob Wade, where they didn’t win much during that,

Shawne Merriman  11:28

100% You know, I got a chance to talk to Joe, and yeah, I rode the bus over, and Steve Blake was there, and Chris Wilcox, and Taj Holden, and Lonnie got to see Lonnie Baxter, all these, get Juan Dixon, I’ve been seen in over 15 years in

Nestor Aparicio  11:44

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person. I mean, we all feel like you all know each other, and I feel like you’ve been in a room with Bonnie Bernstein and John Lucas and Tom McMillan, and just generation, black, white, different sports, male, female, because it’s, you know, it’s Marilyn. I just feel like there’s a Hall of Justice or Super Club, or something, of all of you that you would wind up interacting and knowing each other through the years for something honoring anyone there, and especially with your night. I mean, you come back for a quarter of a century now doing jackets, it’s not like you’re a stranger to the campus, you literally give more than just face and showing up and doing a wave, I mean, you’re physically there every year, and physically within the phone all year long, setting that thing up. That’s not an easy thing you do every year.

Shawne Merriman  12:28

No, no. And the thing is, with a lot of the guys you just talked about, you know, we text here and there, you know, throughout the year, and stuff like that. But, you know, they may go to a game, and I might go to two or three games later. We, we miss each other, so we never get a chance to see each other in person, and

Nestor Aparicio  12:43

homecoming isn’t like a thing where everybody does it,

Shawne Merriman  12:45

right, right, right, you know, you know, like I typically go to a couple Maryland games a year, I’ll go, you know, one game of my own, and I’ll go back for the, for the co-drive, and I’ll find out, like, oh, you know, Decoyl Jackson was here a game ago, and I’m like, I just missed the quail, and I talked to him all the time on the phone, but I don’t get a chance to see him in person, so that the

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Nestor Aparicio  13:01

Ravens alums are the same thing. They never seem to organize it. They miss each, you know, it’s gets complicated. We get a little older, right?

Shawne Merriman  13:08

Well, you got, you got so many people, you know, different walks of life, right? You know, Steve Blake lives down in Orlando with his family, and you know, so.. and I’m like, okay, next time I’m in Orlando, I’ll..

Nestor Aparicio  13:18

15 years for a lot of these guys, it’s a long time, man.

Shawne Merriman  13:21

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It’s a long time, man. That

Nestor Aparicio  13:22

shocks me in some ways. Yeah,

Shawne Merriman  13:23

it was. It was good, man. To

Nestor Aparicio  13:25

hell,

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Nestor Aparicio  13:26

it’s been 25 since they won.

Shawne Merriman  13:28

Yeah, but you know, but think about that, right? I mean, you know, I went to Maryland, oh 203, and oh four, right? When I came in, that’s when they just won a national championship. So one of the things I said on stage, I said I was 17 years old when I came to the campus, and I’m seeing Juan Dixon and all the guys I just mentioned, Chris Wilcox, and so, and Steve Blake, so I’m seeing them as a 17 year old kid. So, I think that, and I don’t know if it works for you in your industry, and what you’re doing, like somebody could be, say, somebody you admire, somebody you came in and you was in awe of, right? You know, you’re much older than me, but and they can be older than you, and you’re still looking at them like, man, this is somebody I always look up to. So, you can be a grown, a grown man, have a family, be established, but you’ll never forget that feeling of me, 17 years old, meeting Juan Dixon and Steve Blake, and that team won a championship. That feeling never goes away,

Nestor Aparicio  14:21

John Merriman is our guest, talking all things, so let’s just get modern with this, because I do want to get into some NFL stuff, and rushing the passer, Max Cross, being Trey Henderson, and all that, saying Chargers with you and Greece, and all that, the Terp thing, the Big 10, the N I L, you know, you’re vested in it, it’s different, it’s in your bloodline, I watch from the outside, I can root for it, root against it, like people, not like people, like teams when they, when they’re bad, like the basketball team was this year. You’re just not putting your schedule and making it happen. Sometimes Baltimore and College Park feel closer, sometimes they feel really distant, they feel much more distant when the teams aren’t winning at all. I know that Payne Jew as a Terp alum and now a Hall of Famer with everyone else, but dude, it’s so hard to win, and it’s not like it used to be, or it’ll ever be. Forget the ACC at Duke and North Carolina on the basketball side, but what the football side represents for trying to spend money with the Ohio States and the Penn State’s, and I only say cheat with them anymore, it’s and there’s no cheating going on anymore, it’s just a big cash grab. I don’t know how this shakes out, and I don’t know how I would feel about it if I were as vested as you, and you’re spending good American money and not winning. It’s almost like being an Orioles fan.

Shawne Merriman  15:36

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Yeah, but I’ll say this, and I’m not, you know, Mike Coach Loxley knows he has to win. I mean, he says that all the time, and I think he really, he really believes that, but when you, when someone else in your conference have three or four times the amount of budget that you do, it’s difficult, right? Because maybe that four or five star recruit from Baltimore, that four or five star recruit from Washington, DC, or PG County, if someone offering him way more over here now? He would even take a little less right to stay home, but the gap can’t be so big where you, he got to make a financial decision. Even my son, my son is coming up in the air, he just got, he just won the Under Armor MVP for the camp a few weeks ago, and

Nestor Aparicio  16:16

you know who

Nestor Aparicio  16:16

does he?

Shawne Merriman  16:17

He’s 16, he goes,

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Nestor Aparicio  16:18

so he’s really in decision making.

Shawne Merriman  16:20

My son goes, Justin Murray goes to St. Francis in Baltimore,

Nestor Aparicio  16:23

but it’s not the same thing as it was before, because you’re just choosing year to year at this point. There’s no four year commitment, or your case, three, you know, whatever it would be. It literally is a nine month commitment, right? Maybe less than that for 17 year old kid, the way they would think about

Shawne Merriman  16:38

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it. I think by the time my son gets that age and get in college, and I think the rule, I think they’re going to be a lot of guardrails around this NIL thing. They’re already starting to put things in place where you know you just can’t take people’s money and then get up and leave, right? There’s there’s no business in this, in this country at least, where you can take a million bucks from a school and say, you know what, I don’t like you guys this year, let me go somewhere else, and I’m gonna keep the million bucks, right? That’s called a lawsuit in real life. I mean, that’s what that is. And I think that by that time there’s going to be a guard, you know, some guard rails around what they are capable of doing, right? Because, right, that is, it’s the wild wild west. And I’ve always said from day one that I believe the guys should get paid. Always, I believe they should have been able to do signings for jerseys, their own cars, their own name, that’s their name, they, that’s their last name, they earn that, and they should be doing appearances and some kind of car deal or something like that, because they need cars, you know, to get around, but you know, it’s gotten to the point where it literally is the wild wild west, you know, guys can get $2 million and have no chance of really starting or being a player in the NFL, so in fact they’ll be making more in college than they ever will see in the pros, and so a lot of these guys like, okay, well, if they’re throwing this money at me now, let me take this money, because I don’t know what’s going to happen now. Fortunately, like a guy like myself, where I knew by the time the end of my freshman, beginning my sophomore year, that I got a real shot to being drafted, and probably highly drafted in NFL. I didn’t have that mindset, but you take a guy now that may go from college football and play in the CFL, might go to the UFL, and you’re making somebody’s gonna pay you 2 million bucks. Yeah, take the money, because it’s there. I mean, that’d be stupid for anyone to tell them not to, especially when you don’t know your future

Nestor Aparicio  18:20

well. I mean, your boy’s going to have a whole different path than you, and you might have not been mr. Terp if Penn State would offer you more money back in the day, right? If that was part of the game, and it wasn’t a lot of places you guys were offering envelopes and places we’ll never know about, and some we found out about, but the new market for this is you’re going to be advising your kid to get what he can get, right? I mean, that that’s what every parent would do at this point, right?

Shawne Merriman  18:47

Yeah, man, of course. And he knows that I wanted to go to University of Maryland, and all every decision my son makes is his decision. We talk about it, and then his, it’s always his final decision, no matter what. That’s, that’s how that’s that’s our agreement. But you know, at the same time, if you know someone’s offering an astronomical amount of money, and Maryland can’t do it, then he would have to make that decision. I would never advise him to say, “You know what, I went to Maryland, I want you to go to Maryland, I know you want to go to Maryland, let’s go to Maryland. When someone else is offering three and four or five times as much as they can do,

Nestor Aparicio  19:19

but again,

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Nestor Aparicio  19:20

doc, I’ve never met anybody that took less money to take you. I mean, unless you maybe 1% of 1% would work for less. Well,

Shawne Merriman  19:27

it depends on how much money. It depends on how much left, how much the range is, right? Somebody offer you a million and somebody offer you 1.3 somewhere else, and you like it’s in your backyard. He’s going to a school that he wants to go to, so you’re talking about a few $100,000 you can make that up at some point, but if someone’s giving you a million and somebody else giving you two and a half million, it’s hard to say no to 1.5 million, $2 million at that age, because it’s life, it’s a lifetime, you know, changing moment for a couple extra couple million bucks. As a college athlete,

Nestor Aparicio  20:02

John Merriman is my guest. Let’s get to the NFL. Here he is now a Terps Hall of Famer. What did you make of the Crosby thing? I mean, you caught you, you follow the league. I rarely have you on where you’re not more informed than me about staying up for not even being a media member, being, you know, involved with the Chargers as you are, but you love the league, you love the sport. I’m sure the draft was on for three days for you a couple of weeks ago. Give me your insights or intel, because you would have been that kind of player. You had your minute where you were the Max Crosby of the league, and you know, moving around, and they tell you you’re going, and you should, I mean, the experience that Max Crosby portrayed on his podcast, in regard to the Ravens, and in regard to Eric Acosta and Jesse Minter, it was less than flattering.

Shawne Merriman  20:45

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Yeah, well, this is my thing with that. This isn’t the first time that’s happened with them, where this that situation. Now, I’ve never seen it happen with somebody as highly talented as a Max Crosby. You know, we’ve seen guys come in as free agents, we’ve seen guys come in that might have been later on draft picks, maybe not as much, not as notable, right, coming into the door, but you know the guy just had knee surgery, you know, he’s not fully healthy, so obviously he’s not going, you’re getting all this information pre him getting there, so to get on a plane, a flight, fly across the country, have his family there in the building, I think that’s where the feathers get for me, anyway. The feathers get a bit ruffled because you’re dragging people’s families and their livelihood. And hey, we gotta, we gotta move in a few weeks, we gotta pack, we gotta, you know, get our real estate agent. When you start getting the fancy people, not looking at the overall thing, they just think that Max flew in by itself, took the physical, they said no, he’s back on a plane back in, back in Las Vegas. It didn’t work that way, you know. You get a call like that, you’re being traded somewhere, the first thing you start doing is looking at real estate agents, right? Start looking at, you know, does your kids have school, are they going to finish school this year, are we transferring school? You start looking at that stuff immediately, which schools are to go go to this Best Buy facility, or which area? There’s a lot. So, the problem I had in that entire situation was that when you start getting people’s families and having those kind of changes, I think you crossed the line. I don’t care about the business side as much. The business is business. The NFL is going to do what they do, but when you start to go through that line and make a trade for God, you know, just had knee surgery, you know it, and then you make and you back out from from that standpoint, I got a problem with that.

Nestor Aparicio  22:32

Well, what’s just a back out? It was a backup, back out, and a welcome in Trey Hendrickson, so you know it clearly was a bait and switch, as was seen by everyone. I don’t.. I thought there was honor amongst those thieves, and I’ve said that to a few people. You know, Peter King was on recently, and just some different people to judge it and say it’s not the way that most of the league does business, and it’s certainly not a very honorable thing that the Ravens did. Yeah,

Shawne Merriman  22:59

I think. I think from a morally standpoint, you’re 100% right. Morally, I don’t think it was right at all. Business wise, I’m actually okay with that, because you got to nobody, especially in NFL, and I would do the same thing as a general manager. You’re not putting all your eggs in one basket with one guy for any reason, you got to vet, you know, three, four guys, like, hey, what is this contract out here? How long we can extend them? What are we going to do in this guy in the scheme? So, you’re looking at three or four different options. I wasn’t shocked that they did the deal with Trey Hendrickson, because it’s already been put in sensei that he was going to be there. He’s been asking for an extension, they won’t do it. So, he’s a guy that was on their market anyway. I don’t, the business side, I’m completely fine with. I’m just thinking, when you go down the path of actually making the trade, right, that means you sign paperwork, you sent it into the NFL, you got lawyers involved, you got, you know, so the agents involved, attorney, you got, you got all this stuff happening, so you’ve already gone down the pipeline. This is not a guy off the street, you just walking in. He went, ‘Who hasn’t played in two years? And you need to do a physical if you see the guy is healthy or not. It’s publicly known that the guy just got surgery a few months ago, and he probably won’t be ready, you know, or maybe not be ready to start at the start of training camp. We knew that. So, if you’re making that decision, this wasn’t like a phone call to the Raiders. Hey, we like next Cross. We want to get him here today. No, there’s a vetting process, just like how they knew they wanted. If that didn’t work out, they were going to trade Trey Hendrickson. So, again, this wasn’t an easy process that they had to go down in order to make that decision in the first place.

Nestor Aparicio  24:37

Were you in love with the deal for the Ravens to give up the ones they wouldn’t have the guard now from Penn State, but they would have, I guess, Crosby in a different structure. I mean, who knows where that goes, and Linda Bomb winds up going to Las Vegas through all of this. But did you love Max Crosby in a Jesse Minter defense with the Ravens with Roquan Smith? Now Matt Abigay apparently coming back as well, um. Um, for that 48 hours, dude, I thought Super Bowl, you know, they’re back to being a Super Bowl contender from eight and nine, and from firing Harbaugh, and if Lamar is right, Derek Henry, and all the other pieces that you like about the Ravens, I thought Max Crosby’s a game changer for them in a way that I’m, you know, even with Matabiki coming back, I’m not absolutely bullish that they’re going to win 13 games or that they’re the absolute best team in the division. Although it’s hard to like Pittsburgh, you can’t like Cleveland, Cincinnati, we’ve seen their defense, so I guess sort of by default they’re going to be the perceived as the better team in any of these circumstances. But to win a Super Bowl, I thought the Max Crosby thing was kind of brilliant when it went down, and even two months later I look at it and say I think they would have been a better team with a better player. That’s that’s where I was.

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Shawne Merriman  25:50

I, I think that there’s five guys, five players in each position that’s worth a two first round draft picks. There’s five guys, right? So you’re talking about the pass rushes, you got a Max Crosby, Miles Garrett, Micah Parsons, you know, it may be less than that, right, but what I’m saying is somewhere around five or less guys in every position that I think is worth two first round picks, Max Crosby, one of them, so I don’t, I don’t think that was a problem at all, because he can instantly get on the field healthy, we’ll talk about a healthy Max Crosby. He gets on the field right now, he has instantly one player has instantly upgraded your entire defense, that means one more takeover, a turnover, one more sack of game, one more this, one more that can ultimately win you a game, especially those close ones. So, having a guy like Max Crosby is good to win three games, so that’s how I evaluate, you know, talent. If someone’s going to make a big, a big splash and giving up two first round picks,

Nestor Aparicio  26:48

you feel that way about Henderson, or no?

Shawne Merriman  26:51

No,

Nestor Aparicio  26:53

8

okay,

Shawne Merriman  26:53

no, but, but the, but again, the, I mean, he got a nice deal, and I don’t get me wrong, it’s not a shot at him. I think he’s a, I think he’s a hell of a player, and I think he’s been consistent and done well for a long period of time. Like, consistency is always when everything else, but I’ll say this: you know, teams line up, and they’re not saying, ‘Hey, we need to find out where Trey Hendrickson is on every play, right? We need to look at him and base how what we’re going to run on offense based on where he lines up, that’s how I look at

Nestor Aparicio  27:23

they might run at him on the run side for him.

Shawne Merriman  27:25

Yeah, I mean it’s very possible, and that too, right? I mean, that can be a possibility. Look at him, say, “Hey, we can run to this side, double team, he can’t play the run as well, whatever the deal is, right? But my thing is, you got, you know, a handful of guys that can dictate what somebody else doing the other side of the ball, and Max is one of them.

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Nestor Aparicio  27:44

How are the Chargers, Sean Merriman? What’s going on out there?

Shawne Merriman  27:47

The thing is, with the Chargers, it’s always been health, right? It was a lot of talk, and they didn’t have a whole lot of off-season moves, and all you know, the Raiders making the big splash, and the Ravens making a big splash, trying to bring in Max Crosby, and this player going here, and Chiefs upgrading their running back. I mean, the Chargers didn’t have to do much. Their problem was health. The problem was health. If that team was healthy last year, I, they still got into the playoffs when everything has happened. Joe Walk going down for half the year, Rashawn Slater’s out for the full season, both your running backs, one being on IR permanently for the season, the other one going out for half the season with a high ankle sprain. I mean, they were just depleted and they still got to the playoffs. The Chargers’ biggest problem last year, they couldn’t block nobody, right? And so, if you add that, just that little element of being able to give Justin Herbert two more seconds to throw the ball, you’re talking about a Super Bowl team, so why, why are we going to go out and make this these big splashes during the off season? Well, we’re not that far off anyway, we just care about health.

Nestor Aparicio  28:52

I will be in El Segundo two weeks from Sunday night, awaiting Getty Lee, Alex Lifesin, and their new drummer, Rush begins their tour outside of El Segundo, so every dude, every time I go out there, I had a girlfriend in El Segundo about 30 years ago that I actually met in San Diego when you were playing for Chargers, but I El Segundo, and what the Chargers have done in the South Bay, there I thought, like, it will never catch on, people won’t buy the jerseys, nobody from San Diego will come up, you win, you got a star player that new arena that they built down there that glows in the dark, and all of that. Um, it’s kind of wild, and I know you’ve been going to LA all your life as well, too, to go in there and see Chargers make a little dents, I think, in Rams land there a little bit in LA,

Shawne Merriman  29:38

8

100% And I’ll tell you, because I was with them from San Diego to the transition to that, the small soccer stadium, StubHub Stadium, that was..

Nestor Aparicio  29:46

I saw a game there, I saw Lamar play there.

Shawne Merriman  29:48

Yeah, and you know, I was at that game as well. So, and I saw them getting up to LA in the new stadium and having a trouble.. the first year was like 5050 other teams, right? And then. It, you know, Justin Herbert came in, they started playing a little bit better, and then you know, went to 6040 7030 and it’s still about 8020 It’s remain that, because it’s LA, right? LA is a melting pot for everybody else. I mean, don’t get me wrong, like people not leaving LA and moving to Cleveland unless you got a damn good job waiting on you, right? I mean, so everybody moves to California, especially LA, it’s a big hub, so you expected to see when a, when a Steelers travel well, you expected to see when the Broncos travel well to be 20 30% you know, jerseys in there, but overall they’ve turned that thing around, and you need to turn things around by winning, and they’ve done that,

Nestor Aparicio  30:38

and the Jim Harbaugh factors also, it, I, I’m not wearing Chargers blue here, but it will pass for that. Certainly, there’s been some more pizzazz the last two or three years, for sure, right?

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Shawne Merriman  30:50

Yeah, because he brings a level of excitement and let a level of hope, and you know, for so many years we’ve heard that the ownership was cheap, they didn’t want to pay for anybody, they want to do this, they didn’t want to do that, and all of a sudden they go out and make a big commitment with Jim Hobby, and they show, like, we’re trying to win, and more importantly, now bring in Mike McDaniels, we’re really trying to win, right? New GM, my Joe Ortiz, I love Joe Ortiz of Death. I mean, he texted me the other day,

Nestor Aparicio  31:15

telling I said hello when you talk, I will, I was my guy,

Shawne Merriman  31:18

he texted me the other day about the university with the Hall of Fame, the University of Maryland, and it was pretty cool that he reached out, but you talked to Joe Ortiz before a game, it’s.. it feels like you’re talking to a player, he has that about him, where he felt like you give him a helmet, he may go into the game, right, and it’s no shot at Tom Telesco, when he was there, Tom’s more of a, you know, kind of a laid-back numbers data kind of a analyst, which is good, because he’s, I think, he’s good at what he do, but I think George T’s attitude and the way he goes about it trickles down to the coaching staff, trickles down to the players, and that’s how that thing works.

Nestor Aparicio  31:53

8

George t1’s of my favorites, Sean Merriman here, he is a Hall of Fame terp at this point. I will bet you would do, you don’t have a date on your coats, right? It’s always in November, right?

Shawne Merriman  32:03

Yeah, it’ll be second or third week in November. Just trying to figure out if you know we can get that, because AJ Francis also has his, his canned food drive, so I’ll try to coordinate with him so we can do it on the same day.

Nestor Aparicio  32:14

All right, well, get back in here in November, hopefully the Terps are four and two by the time you get to something, do you know something on the right side of North for Loxley, who also we swabbed him for the bone marrow red shoe number years ago, and we were doing all that for There Goes My Hero, and for leukemia and cancer patients as well. Sean Merriman can be found out in the Lights Out community and anywhere the Chargers are. What were you doing in Greece, man? Anything fun?

Shawne Merriman  32:37

Yeah, man, they’re trying to, you know, as you see the NFL schedule this year, and then we’re in

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Nestor Aparicio  32:42

Brazil, dude. Yeah,

Shawne Merriman  32:43

yeah. So you know, trying to expand the, expand the franchise and possibly have a game out there one day. I don’t know, but just just opening the doors to more these countries about, you know, just football and NFL, and expand the game.

Nestor Aparicio  32:56

Spanos offering you Uzo in Greece, is that what he’s doing? Domiciano’s Santorini,

Shawne Merriman  33:02

8

no, but I would love to get back on his payroll, so that’d be nice.

Nestor Aparicio  33:05

Jim Harbaugh offered me some, some ouzo coming out of the limo a couple years ago after he took the job out there. The San Diego Superchargers are now the Los Angeles Chargers, even though I’m going to San Diego looking for the Padres two weeks from now on my LA excursion. My thanks to Josh for making this thing happen here, Josh Rimmer, son of the great Jeff Rimmer, of also of Columbus Blue Jackets Hall of Fame history, as well. My thanks to him for always tracking down Sean and bringing him in. Nice to have a Hall of Famer on here. I’ve had a little, I’ve had some Terps fun around here lately. McMillan’s been on, Bernstein’s been on. I gotta, I gotta chase Len Elmore down before it’s all over with. I am Nestor. We are WNST AM 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stop talking. Baltimore positive. Stay with

Nestor Aparicio  33:50

us.