Celebrated author John Feinstein discusses his new book, “The Ancient Eight,” focusing on Ivy League football traditions highlighting the league’s unique rules, such as no expansion, no transfer portal, and no postseason games. And then, they discussed Lamar Jackson and American politics…
John Feinstein discussed his new book, “The Ancient Eight,” focusing on Ivy League football traditions. He highlighted the league’s unique rules, such as no expansion, no transfer portal, and no postseason games. Feinstein noted that Ivy League schools have 15 players in the NFL and emphasized their commitment to academics and athletics. He shared stories of Ivy League athletes, including a Harvard quarterback who stayed despite being benched and a Penn wrestler who became a football star. Feinstein also touched on the political climate and the challenges faced by the Democratic Party, expressing concerns about the future direction of the country.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Ivy League, football traditions, John Feinstein, book release, NFL players, academic commitment, no transfer portal, 10-week season, FCS tournament, no bowl games, financial aid, graduation rates, legacy athletes, Lamar Jackson, political concerns
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, John Feinstein
Nestor Aparicio 00:02
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, taussel, Baltimore, Baltimore, positive. We are positively into the holiday season. I have my first shot at eggnog this morning in my royal farms golfing. We’re getting the Maryland crab cake tour holiday edition out trim up the tree. We’re gonna have Marilyn lottery scratch offs give away from the Maryland lottery. Also our friends at Jiffy Lube, multi care, powering Luke back and forth to ravens and getting us into this Orioles off season and this new election thing we’ve done here in America, amongst a bunch of other things, we will be all over the area, crab case, talking about all sorts of things. No one I love having on the program more than this guy. I invited him on during that Baltimore V Washington war last month during my birthday. And he’s like, wow, come on now, but I got a book coming out. And I’m like, You always got a book coming out? Well, you don’t always have a 50th book coming out. So I read up on this. John Feinstein is our defending champion of all things Baltimore, UMBC and the Washington Post and basketball. And I don’t know where he stands on n, i L, but I’m gonna find out. He has written a new book. He has told me about this for the last I don’t know, with three years, John, how long you work on an Ivy League book? It feels like this isn’t new. News to me that you’re doing this ivy league thing, because you have been discussing it with me for a couple of football seasons, I think, right? Well,
John Feinstein 01:22
I did the research last season Nestor, I came up with the idea prior to the 2023 season. I’ve always liked working with Ivy League athletes and coaches. You know, it’s almost a stereotype to say that they’re smart, but they are smart and they’re good football players too. There’s about 15 of them in the NFL right now, and that’s sort of each year you have 1214, 15 Ivy Leaguers in the NFL so they can play. And I enjoy doing the book. It’s called the ancient eight because the Ivy League has been eight teams forever and will be eight teams forever more. Unlike other leagues, they’re not playing a
Nestor Aparicio 02:03
club, isn’t it? You know what I mean, there’s no expansion in the ivy No, no,
John Feinstein 02:06
no, no expansion, no realignment. Paul feinbaum brought up to me yesterday that the ACC has expect expressed interest in some of the ACC schools that are good academic schools have expressed interest in joining the Ivy League. That’ll never happen. The Ivy League wants no part of them. They’ve got their eight schools. They’re all good academically. They’re all committed to the idea that they’re going to play good football, but they’re not going to sell their souls. They’re not going to be Nils. The transfer portal is almost non existent in Ivy League schools. Last season, Princeton’s quarterback was the first transfer that they had had at Princeton since 1988 when Jason Garrett transferred from Columbia because his dad got fired at Columbia. So you know, the ivy League’s unique. They play 10 straight weeks. There are no by weeks they don’t play postseason, which I disagree with. I think the Presidents should let the champion play in postseason like they do in all other sports. But it’s, tends to it’s a sprint and a marathon. You can’t play a bowl game if you go to school, right? No, no. Well, Ivy League schools are, well, I
Nestor Aparicio 03:12
mean, every, every kid, that’s what coach is selling, the kid the coach is selling, even at Navy, the coach is selling a bowl game, right? Like you you have that. And I know you’ve written about Navy and aren’t you, you know, we’ll get into all of your books and and why you picked this one specifically, but you’re bringing up things that like you’re saying, I’m so shotgun. I’m like, hold on, hold on. Because I don’t, you know, I’ve been covering sports a long time, 40 years. Newspaper guy all that did all the box scores in the agate back in the day. And, you know, I don’t know what makes Holy Cross different than Yale. I know they play each other once in a while. But I also grew up when I was seven, eight years old, and I knew Harvard was different and Yale was different because John Kennedy, you know what I mean? Like, I knew all of that stuff in the 70s, but the sports side of it, I still had, maybe never until 30 seconds ago, thought you can’t go to a bowl game. Oh, my God, like I love I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it that way. Well, let
John Feinstein 04:07
me clarify. The Ivy League plays in the FCS. They don’t play in the FBS. They wouldn’t go to bowl games under any circumstance, but they would play in the FCS tournament, which seems to be won by North Dakota State every year. But they, you know, they
Nestor Aparicio 04:23
ever played Division One teams? Or am I dreaming that never happened? Not anymore. Not Oh, okay, I feel like Maryland could have played Harvard in a football game 25 it feels like they could have, well
John Feinstein 04:34
years ago, when the Ivy League was first playing football in the 19th century, in the early 20th century, they won national
Nestor Aparicio 04:40
championships. So they never play outside of their conference. Is that what you’re they do? They play three
John Feinstein 04:44
non conference games. But you mentioned Holy Cross, which is an FCS power Harvard played them last year and actually beat them, which was quite an upset. They played Patriot League teams, teams like Fordham, teams that that tell. Soon they could play which has been very good at times in the FCS. But so they play seven conference games against the other seven teams, and then they play three non conference games, and they’re all played in 10 weeks. As I said. They play Lafayette, they play Lehigh, teams like that out of conference, and then they play seven conference games.
Nestor Aparicio 05:19
It felt like their league in my agate fell between whatever the conferences were at that point, and put them in like they were. I think of them in that scope. And I obviously, you know, you know, Towson and North Dakota State. They are, what they are, and how they play in that and the whole n, i l screwed all of this up. Give me your background in college, and because you’re You’re famous for writing about Indiana, you’re famous for writing about Duke. You’re famous and you know, Dookie V gets associated with places, but you’re associated with Maryland in a big, big way. What did you know as a young man about Ivy Leagues? And what even drew you to this book and things that you learned that I learning right now, like I feel like a dumbass for not knowing this stuff being on the radio for 40 years, I feel ignorant. I really do
John Feinstein 06:11
well, you shouldn’t feel ignorant. Everybody has their likes, their loves, their dislikes, but I grew up in New York City, and I used to ride the subway, the number one train up Manhattan to the tip of Manhattan. And I went to Columbia games at Baker field as a kid. Columbia was terrible, but they played teams like Yale with Calvin Hill. They played teams like Cornell with Ed Marinaro. So I grew up watching Ivy League football. You could buy a ticket for $4 on games. Very
Nestor Aparicio 06:41
accessible for you. Oh, yeah, okay, very accessible. They
John Feinstein 06:44
played on Saturdays. They all played set. They all played Saturday. It
Nestor Aparicio 06:48
was a place you could get on the train and go to a game, right for you
06:52
easily. And
Nestor Aparicio 06:53
how many options did you have in because Manhattan didn’t have a lot of football, right? I mean, right. I mean, literally,
John Feinstein 06:59
right? No, my parents used to take me to one army Nate army game a year, and army was about an hour away from us, but I regularly went to Columbia games. It was a way to see college football, and I could buy a ticket for $4 and sit on a 40 yard line on game day. So I enjoyed it. And after I went away to college, I still followed the Ivy League because I’ve been following it all my life. Columbia had a good basketball team back then. You might remember, remember Jim McMillan, who played on Lakers championship teams later. But when I went to the post, whenever there was an Ivy League story worth writing, I would ask to write it, I would I would volunteer it, because I knew I would get a good interview out of whoever the player was. I knew I’d get access that they would set me up to talk to him. And so I kept following the Ivy League. And the Ivy Leagues had some very good basketball teams. As you know, Penn went to the Final Four in 1979 Princeton went to the Sweet 16 two years ago. Harvard went to the second round two years in a row. So that Princeton has
Nestor Aparicio 08:04
a long history of basketball and a unique style. Quite frankly, there’s a Princeton way of doing things, right? Yeah,
John Feinstein 08:10
Princeton offense that Pete Carril invented. So I did a book you may or may not remember it 20 years ago, called the last amateurs, that was about Patriot League basketball, and my agent, my my my publisher, my editor, and Bob Woodward, who’s been an advisor for me for 40 years, said, why would you write a book on that nobody will buy it? Well, as it turned out, it was a best seller. And the reason it was a best seller was because you don’t have to be rich and famous Nestor to have a great story to tell. I learned that when I was a police reporter years ago, the people who were involved in accidents or shootings or whatever could have stories to tell. So after I did my book on David Fauci a couple years ago, I went to my editor and said, I’d like to do a book on Ivy League football. I’m still fascinated by it and by the kids who play it. And fortunately for me, he had read the last amateurs and liked it and knew it had been a best seller. So he said, That’s a great idea. Let’s do it. So I did it, and I could not have had more cooperation or access from the eight schools and the players and coaches. It was terrific.
Nestor Aparicio 09:20
This is where the writer in me wants to hear about the outline of this, and you know, more a modern version of a book you already wrote, sort of a different way, in a different conference, in a different time, and you’ve done 50 books. So I mean, my God, dude, I stopped at three or three and a half, about four on Angelos. And I’m like, I’m done. I don’t need any more deep dives. But first off, the fact that you keep writing them means people keep reading them. And I think that that’s a really important thing, that when I wrote my last one, I lost hope in the country, when I’ve talked to people who had never read a book in their life but loved the ravens and had a purple basement. So writing sports books to your point, finding the audience, well, you gotta prove. The literary group of people. I wax political in a moment, and I’m going to use you said Woodward, so I’m going to say, you know Washington Post, and we’ll talk about the T word and the new presidency. But what is the Ivy League today? I mean, I I think of bush and Yale, dear friend of mine, gave a speech locally. Jason Pappas, big Yale guy, gave a speech yesterday that I listened to, I think, a good pizza in New Haven. When I’ve been there Princeton, I think a basketball and I had a friend that went, you know, I think of my friends that went there Dartmouth, being in New York. But I don’t know much other than famous, you know, who went to Brown or who went to a place. I don’t think of them as a sports place. I do think of it as sort of a weird place for a lot of money and a club and some sort of reverence, in a way that probably would make me itch a little bit being a Dundalk guy, you know,
John Feinstein 10:55
well, understandable and and the Ivy League is known, is known, first and foremost, for elite academics and for kids who pay a lot of money to go to school there. Now there are no athletic scholarships in the Ivy League. So if you recruit a football player, basketball player, whatever, you have to come up with a financial plan for him to go to that school. Now they are generous in terms of financial aid, particularly for athletes, as you might expect, but you have to understand, going in, you’re not going to get any else. Nobody’s going to have a $20 million payroll for a team in the Ivy League. You go there to go to college, you are expected to go for four years. You are expected not to transfer. Very few players lead the Ivy League, because even if they’re unhappy with their football life, and that happens with Ivy League schools, like with anybody else, and they work
Nestor Aparicio 11:48
their whole freaking life to get into Dartmouth, they’re not leaving
John Feinstein 11:51
Exactly, exactly, literally, all right, starting quarterback, unless
Nestor Aparicio 11:55
they’re flunking out or having a mental I mean, having a crisis. But right? I mean, but this is the serious of serious people going making it this far, right? Well,
John Feinstein 12:05
last year, Harvard starting quarterback got benched halfway through the season. He was a junior, and he was told that there was a kid named Jaden Craig, who was a sophomore, who was going to take his starting spot. Well, in today’s world, most kids in that situation would transfer. They’d go somewhere where they could they could play, they go somewhere maybe where maybe they could get paid. Well, he didn’t leave. He’s going to graduate. He He’s played wide receiver this season, and he’s going to graduate next spring. Because you don’t leave Harvard. You’ve already put three years into an A Harvard education. You don’t walk away from that. Or Dartmouth, as you said, or any of the Ivy League schools. Kids really do not transfer and that. And then, as I said, they’re not paid. They don’t get involved in bidding wars for how much they’re going to get paid to play football. They just play football because
Nestor Aparicio 12:51
they’re on these campuses these days. John, I don’t even know, like, how many kids go to Harvard? How many kids play football? And then I would ask you, how many kids, like, flunk out of heart. You know, I would just think, like as a kid, that worked hard to get as good as I could get on my SCT scores, and, you know, they were better than Chris Washburn’s, but probably less than yours, you know, but, but, you know, I was, I was an okay student, but I was an okay student, trying to go to Towson and trying to go to Maryland, trying to go to Delaware, trying to, you know, I went to UB, right, and to community college, but I remember that pathway 40 years ago as a kid. What is that feeling look like having you spend some time there. Now for the non football player, well,
John Feinstein 13:30
most of the kid the schools are range from Dartmouth, which is about 30 504,000 to Harvard, which has about eight, 9000 so they’re smaller than public schools, and they also, when you go there, if you get in there, you have higher SATs than you or me, and you’re smart, and you know what you’re walking into. You know if you go to one of those schools, it’s going to be hard academically, so most kids, having gotten the chance to go there, to go to one of those schools, are going to work hard enough that they rarely flunk out. That’s not because it’s easy. It’s because they work hard and because they’re smart. That’s how they got into an Ivy League school in the first place, and every once in a while, because of family tragedy or something that forces them to transfer. I’m talking about kids in general, not just athletes. They will transfer. But it’s very rare. 95% of the football players who go to an Ivy League school graduate four years later, and they there’s no fifth year unless you have a season an injury that causes you to miss the whole season, and then you have to apply in order to come back for a fifth year. It’s very rare. They also don’t let graduate students play. So in other words, if you played somewhere and you want to transfer into Harvard for a graduate grad student here, you can’t do it. You have to be an undergraduate in order to play at Harvard. Or you. Yale, or any of the other Ivy League schools, there’s
Nestor Aparicio 15:01
no side door in, right? There’s no, like, there was no side door for you or me to get get into Harvard, right? Well,
John Feinstein 15:08
the funny story is, my dad was a teacher at Yale. He was an adjunct professor there, and being a depression era kid, he’d gone to City College in New York, couldn’t afford to go to an Ivy League school, and very much wanted me to go to an Ivy League school. And I had a chance because I was a decent swimmer, and I got into Yale, I got into Duke, and I wanted to go to Duke because of the weather, because of the basketball, because it had a great swimming pool. Yale had this old pool in the basement where you could smell the chlorine once you walked into the building. So I told him I wanted to go to Duke, and he was giving me all the reasons to go to Yale. And I said, Oh,
Nestor Aparicio 15:46
wow. So your dad, like, I was going to ask you how many of the next questions about football players and legacy? But, like, I think of these schools as, like, not that you have to know somebody. It’s almost like somebody in your family had to go there, not just, well,
John Feinstein 16:02
it doesn’t help as much as you might think. One of my best friends, Jackson deal. He and his wife both went to Yale. They had a daughter who was, you know, like an ace student all through high school, and she didn’t
Nestor Aparicio 16:12
get in, right? I mean, like, Yeah, fine,
John Feinstein 16:17
but yeah, she was crushed. So you
Nestor Aparicio 16:20
had a chance, and you were getting pushed into it, and you pushed out of it. I
John Feinstein 16:24
did. And wow, all right, my dad, finally, I’ve got to go to college, Dad, where I want to go, not where you want me to go. And he said, Well, you didn’t even apply where I wanted you to go. I said, What are you talking about? He said, I wanted you to go to Harvard. I said, Dad, you never said a word about Harvard. He said, Well, I knew you couldn’t get in there. So, so it’s not easy. No matter who you are, even if you’re an athlete, it’s not that easy. One of the things that happens a lot with Ivy League schools is they’ll recruit a kid he’s a good student because he has to be, and admissions won’t take him because they don’t think he’s a good enough student. So it is different. I mean, anybody, you know, if anybody applies to an ACC school who’s, who’s an athlete and the coaches want him, they get in. You know? You know that? I know that. We all know that gene banks, the great player at Duke, had like 650 on his boards, but he got in because he was a great player. And Bill Foster said, We need him, excuse me, Nestor to rebuild, and he came and he went, became a star. He also graduated in four years because he was, you know, it was one of those cultural bias things with the SATs. He’s an inner city black kid, and his SATs didn’t reflect how smart he is, which is one reason I’m not a big sat fan. But the point is that if you go to one of these schools, you’re not going to get an n, i L, I can say that you’re probably not, almost certainly not going to transfer. And the reason for the title of the book, the ancient eight, is you’re not going to be part of another league. At any point, you’re going to be part of the Ivy League. Because the Ivy League has been the Ivy League since 1954 eight schools. Same eight schools will be the Ivy League in 50 years from now. Same eight schools.
Nestor Aparicio 18:05
Last thing on the book is that question of, first off, the plot of the book. And all your plots seem to be a season, you know, on the brink or in the in the in the in the muck, whatever it is. And I think this is sort of peeling back the onion of a story for what you researched last year, but storyline, and then the other part of that is how many little feinsteins Were there out there that played football at school X whose kid was on a team like I eight schools. I’m wondering how many legacy running backs linemen whose dad was Matt Burke, for lack of better. Well,
John Feinstein 18:39
there were legacies, and probably the most famous one, Ed Marinaro finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting in 1971 and went on to play for the Vikings for 10 years. His son, Eddie, is a wide receiver at Cornell right now. So there are certainly instances of that where kids whose fathers or grandfathers played football or or didn’t play football, but often did who are playing in the Ivy League today? There are a lot. There’s quite a bit of that, and almost always they’re kids who made the decision to go Ivy League because of their family background. As for the plot here, you know, I never anticipate a plot going into a book. I just try to let my reporting lead me. And I had no idea when I started this book that buddy Stevens, the coach at Dartmouth, was going to be killed when he was hit by a truck while riding his bicycle on vacation in March of 2023 he lived for six more months, but he was never got out of the hospital. He was he lost a leg. I mean, it’s a tragedy, horrible tragedy, and Sammy McCorkle, who had been his assistant coach for 19 years at Dartmouth, took over. First, he was an acting coach, then he was an interim coach, and then they finally made him the coach in October, but he took over. They had lost another they lost a player. Cancer during the off season. I mean, it was a nightmare up at Dartmouth, and they ended up tying for the Ivy League title. They won their last three games and tied with Yale and Harvard for the Ivy League title. Amazing story. I never anticipated that would be the part of the story, but it was a huge part of the story, obviously. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 20:18
the book is out. Please go purchase it on the ancient eight. John Feinstein is our guest, of course, one of our defending champions around here, and I’ll bring you back on we’ll talk about the book in the Ivy League and all that stuff. I’ll be smarter by then, because you’re going to make me smarter. Last football thing smarter well before we get into the new American democracy and what constitutes leadership, which we’ve questioned before Lamar, and where we are in the Lamar story, in the journey, and whether he wins this week, last week, Pittsburgh, week charges week, whenever anybody hears this around the holidays, even in the midst of a third sort of MVP run here, I talked to John Eisenberg, one of our mutual Friends, and in your author club, you know about his book on black quarterbacks and the whole history of all of that, but what do you make of Lamar gonna be hell of a book at some point? And not many people know much about him, in a way, and he’s not marketed in that way through a VP. Here, it’s like, maybe the Super Bowl comes this year. Maybe it never comes. Who knows, but a guy like you would be a guy that would probably want to get in there and dig on something like this and learn something, because he’s doing something sort of supernatural here, right?
John Feinstein 21:30
Supernatural is a good word Nestor, because remember, 31 teams passed on him when he came out of Louisville, and if it twice, he was a free agent, and then he was a free agent. Good point, but, but when he came out of Louisville, excuse me, credit to Ozzie Newsome and Eric takasa and John Harbaugh and Steve Bucha, because they look past the stereotypes about black quarterbacks as John Eisenberg wrote. And the fact is that because Lamar was black and because he was fast, they wanted to make him a wide receiver or a running back. And that was a stereotype that existed, really, until Lamar. Lamar changed the way scouts looked at Black quarterbacks. A year later, Kyler Murray was the first pick in the draft, and this past year, the first two picks in the draft were both black quarterbacks, Caleb Williams and Jaden Daniels. And before 2018 I don’t believe that would have happened. And in fact, the year before Lamar came out, who was the number two pick in the draft for the Chicago Bears, Mitch Trubisky, the immortal Mitch Trubisky. And they passed on Patrick mahomes, and they passed on Watson, who, back then, was a great player and was a great player, until his personal problems emerged a few years ago. So what Lamar has done is he has changed the stereotype. It’s not just that he proved that he could be a great quarterback. He has changed the stereotype. He’s won two MVPs, there’s a good chance he’ll win a third. You know, Dan Marino never won a Super Bowl. He’s in the Hall of Fame. Dan Fauci never made a Super Bowl. He’s in the Hall of Fame. I believe Lamar will win a Super Bowl, or more, more than one Super Bowl. He’s only 27 but that question is still out there, because he hasn’t done it yet, and it’s a legitimate question to raise. Well, I
Nestor Aparicio 23:21
think in the case of Lamar, for me, now that I can do revisionist history on my own words, which are you can find anywhere on YouTube for the day he was drafted on I’ve never liked quarterbacks running into linebackers. I’ve never thought that’s a good recipe. This had nothing to do with race. It had nothing to do with rebuilding the entire team around him, which, if you draft a Lamar, you’re not committed to a quarterback. You’re committed to a different way of thinking, way of thinking about
John Feinstein 23:48
the night the day after he got drafted, Joe Flacco, who I was writing about then in my quarterback book called his wife, and his wife said, What does this mean? And she he said that day, it means everything has changed. It means they are going to change the offense for him, because you don’t draft somebody number one without planning to build your offense around him
Nestor Aparicio 24:09
well, and it was a late first round pick they got the extra year. I mean, Joe describes that years the worst year of his life, right? Like, just everything about it was awful and, you know, and I could sense that count that’s having been around there for a decade and being in the locker room and feeling it all but so Lamar enters to that enters on a Super Bowl winning quarterback, on a big contract, getting semi hurt, and then Wally pipped, kind of, sort of loses the first playoff game when everybody’s screaming to get him in there. I mean, we got a book here, right? Mom’s the agent. Nobody can handle that. He doesn’t really do any marketing, and when he does, it looks like a Saturday Night Live skit that whatever that that gym thing was, he told a fan to perform falaci. I mean, like, it’s crazy, crazy stuff. And you. We’re only six year I mean, and it looks like he’s going to be able to do this. And a couple things have changed rules for quarterbacks and sliding and getting out of bounds and avoiding contact, which he’s gotten better at. He wasn’t great at in the beginning, and it cost him a couple of seasons. Cost him a couple of late seasons. And then there’s this horse of a running back they brought in. And John, I’m not smart about much. You’ve known me for decades. So you know I’m not real smart. But I got that. I got the receipts on this. I tweeted out back before I got the blue skies, about a year ago. Actually put on Facebook trading deadline last year. There were some scuttle but that they could get there coming. And I put out the tweet said, Too bad they didn’t get him. It really would have made them unstoppable. I guess we’ll never know that was like a November 4 thing they got him. It certainly feels like what they’ve done here. And to your point, he’ll win a Super Bowl because they’re going to be good at putting things around him. He’s he’s not in Cleveland, he’s in Baltimore, right? And so being in the middle of this and feeling it sort of again. You do get the vibe that there’s a this is we’re writing a Jordan s kind of book, a game changer, paradigm shift kind of book.
John Feinstein 26:10
Yeah. I also think Lamar is a lot more thoughtful than Jordan. Jordan was a guy who said, Show me the money, and still does. And instead of listening to Dean Smith, after he got out of college, he listened to David Fauci, and that changed his life a lot for the worst, and Jordan’s done fine, don’t get me wrong, but I think Lamar is a thoughtful guy. I think he’s bright guy. I think he will do good things away from football. And I think right now, though, the question with this year’s ravens is the defense. We know the offense will score, as you said, adding Derrick Henry to Lamar, the offense is has scored, will score a lot of points, but it’s also a defense that gave up 29 points to a Cleveland team that hadn’t scored 20 all year. So I worry about the defense. I worry about how they’ll do against good teams in postseason on the defensive side of the ball, but it’s not going to be Lamar is not going to be the reason they lose. The reason they lose, if they lose, will be the defense.
Nestor Aparicio 27:09
I think the thing that they realized in Scouting him, while everybody else is calling him a running back and a wide receiver, and this is another chapter in the book, is just the growth mindset and the belief, the belief that he could get better at throwing the football, that he was already very good, but he was underrated. And you want to make him something he’s not, but he threw long balls. He threw for a lot of yards, reading defenses, working in pistol, revamping the offense, having wide receivers that could block early on, guys like Willie Snead, that played angry, having a tight end, you know, all of that now the running back part, but the part for him that had to come that a lot of guys didn’t believe in, a lot of guys, a lot of football guys, a lot of quarterback guys, a lot of coaches. They just didn’t think that he would get better at throwing the football.
John Feinstein 27:55
Yeah, and he’s gotten better at everything that he does. Nestor, you’re talking about reading defenses. You’re talking about making decisions on the fly, and he has improved at throwing the football. And great athletes improve. I mean, go back to Jordan. Jordan was not a great shooter in college. He was great athlete, and he made plays, but he was not a great shooter. Then in the NBA, he made himself into a great shooter. That’s why he was unstoppable. And Lamar has made himself into a better pass or more accurate passer. He always had the strength of arm strength, but now he’s a more accurate passer, and he makes better decisions with the football.
Nestor Aparicio 28:29
Did you not write one of your books? Maybe the 23rd book on the on the Baltimore Ravens of Kyle bowler? And as Brian Billick once said to you, and I don’t know if it’s in your book or not, but I know he said it to me a million times as my business partner, your potential is going to get me fired, son. And you know, Kyle Boler was one of those guys could throw the ball over damn near mountains like Uncle Rico, you know. But, and I love Kyle. I mean, Kyle Good, good person. I mean, ever meet a better guy? Just I ran into him on vacation with my wife. We were in Maui, our first time we’d ever gone to Y. First five minutes we’re in a Y, put our stuff down the room, went down to the pool, and I’m in the pool, and it’s me and Kyle bowler and his kids. Just, it was like something out of like with the Twilight Zone, you know. And we caught up and we had dinner. We wound up. I had a Hawaiian vacation with Kyle bowler and his Miss California wife, Carrie prazi. So like and their kids were lovely, but, um, but he was a guy that the belief was, we can have him throw the ball better yet. When Lamar came, a lot of teams said, what, he’s never going to throw the ball well enough. And that’s an interesting book unto itself as Raven history between you and me.
John Feinstein 29:45
Yeah, it is. And one of the very few mistakes that Ozzie Newsome ever made, because they were wowed by Kyle bowler in the interview during the combine, and he’d had a great senior year at Cal and he was a terrific. Kid, and they said they traded to get a number one pick so they could draft him, and it just never worked out, unfortunately. And as as you said, he worked at it. They brought in Jim fossil to coach him, and it just didn’t work out. But again, you’ll never meet a better kid, better person. He’s not a kid.
Nestor Aparicio 30:17
Well, that’s how hard it is though, that when you have skill set, you have the tools you’ve done it. Everybody believes in you for every you know. Joey Harrington, Jamarcus Russell, just go through it. It’s just, anytime you’re Tom Brady, it’s just an incredible story, right? Even Patrick mahomes, plenty of teams, you know, he wasn’t right, yeah,
John Feinstein 30:38
he was the 10th pick in the draft. And as I said, the Chicago Bears that year traded up to get Mitchell Trubisky. And where’s Mitchell Trubisky right now? He’s backing up in Buffalo, whereas Patrick mahomes has already won three Super Bowls. John
Nestor Aparicio 30:53
Feinstein is always generous with his time. Please go buy his new book, his old book. He’s got 50 of them. Buy the 50 catalog. Are you doing that one yet all gold plated, like I hope he is. You can find all of his books. Is John Feinstein books, alright, breaking the action here. We don’t stick to sports guys like you and me, and you do keys and Yalies. And just tell me whatever you want to say. I mean, Woodward, the post where we’re going, I don’t think you’re going to quell my fears. You may fan I
John Feinstein 31:26
don’t think I will, because I probably have the same fears that you have. I was, needless to say, as somebody who’s worked at the post for 45 years, disappointed when the post did not endorse anybody for president. That was a Jeff Bezos thing. It was not the editorial board. In fact, for a while it looked as if the editorial board might resign in mass, but they were talked out of it by cooler heads, and I’m glad that they were but that was a huge disappointment. Bob Woodward has been a friend, a mentor and a hero since I worked for him on the Metro staff. When I first got to the post, he taught me more about being a reporter than anybody I ever knew, or certainly anybody I ever worked for, and he’s still a friend to this day. And I have his new book. I have not yet read it. I’ve been very busy since I moved but I’m certainly going to read it, because if Bob wrote it, it’s true, and it’s full of stuff that you and I both don’t know,
Nestor Aparicio 32:22
how about simple as that, right? Like that, that, that’s all. So are you shocked by the outcome of of any of this? And, you know, I guess in in my heart of hearts, it might be the first conversation I’ve had on the air about it. Um, that’s how much I respect you, because I do this all day long. But I don’t have to talk about it, but I will the morning after the Biden debate, and it was so obvious that right the Democratic Party’s putting a cadaver up. Is the incapable a president who’s not with it all the time the way we it’s not John Kennedy in his prime right? So the then comma is going to be involved in this, and she’s just put up, and there’s no primer. So my independent friends went nuts. The Republicans are like, you don’t even what the hell I’m I know Gavin Newsom this much through people and whatever. And I’m like, he could win. I mean, I’m thinking to myself, who are they going to put up? They gotta put they can’t do this. Please don’t turn the country of don’t let Trump just take the country put up. And there was, and if my first thought was, they didn’t vote for Hillary eight years ago, but Obama got elected twice. Is it a male thing? Is it a black thing? Is it a competency thing? It’s certainly not he’s a criminal, and she’s the kind of person that puts criminals away, and that’s all she’s ever done, and that she’s incompetent or hadn’t been a senator, hadn’t been real Vice President, I don’t know that she should have been more capable in the vice presidency to feel like it’s there. They didn’t want to usurp what he was supposed to look like, I mean, just all of it. Now that I’m here writing the post mortem on all of it, I would say that I felt a lot of confidence as it went on. But that’s just that, that to me, is I bought into the liberal message a little too hard to think that it was just going to happen, you know, yeah,
John Feinstein 34:20
I mean, you put a lot on the table there. Biden did have to drop out after that debate. There was no question in my mind about it, and obviously no question in a lot of minds about it. And
Nestor Aparicio 34:31
he stole the President as we sit here and talk right now, that much later,
John Feinstein 34:35
exactly right? And there was no we didn’t know enough about Kamala Harris to have her run for president. Usually, when you run for president, you go through the primaries and people get to know you. They get to know who you are and why you want to vote for them. We never had that chance with Kamala Harris, and I voted for her clearly, but the Democrats did not. Handle the whole situation well, granted, it was a very difficult situation to have a president who can’t really run for re election, isn’t mentally capable of running for re election, and yet he was going to be the nominee until the debate happened, and I was like, you towards the end, I started to think she was going to win. I thought because Trump was acting so crazy that people would would say, you know, we can’t elect him president. But I was wrong, way wrong. I
Nestor Aparicio 35:29
went to the garden last week for the Pink Floyd thing, and I realized seven days earlier there was a, there was literally a hate rally going on in there, I mean,
John Feinstein 35:37
and that’s what, that’s what he does, and he does it very effectively, and now he’s going to be the president, and he’s going to have both houses of Congress, and I have no idea what’s going to happen, but I’m not very optimistic right now about what’s going to happen in this country, and it also it’s a symptom of what’s going on in this country. Steve Kerr and I are very good friends, and his politics are the same as mine. And I sent him a text the day after the election about how unhappy I was, and he said, This is what our country is now. And he’s right. I mean, you that that’s what elections are for, to determine the direction of the country, and the direction of the country right now is towards Donald Trump.
Nestor Aparicio 36:18
Well, it’s amazing that they say you sports and politics don’t mix. And you tell Steve Kerr’s family that, or you tell pop of bitch, you know what? I mean, the people that stand out on the front lines of all of this to discuss it and and try to do it capably. I, you know, I’m out of words. Love you, miss you. Go. We’ll go to a basketball game. I still trying to Dick. Girardi keeps telling me about the pulester. I haven’t been to a basketball game there. Yeah. I mean, maybe one day, jump in the car, we’ll go get a cheese state, go to pulester, take a train or something. But like, I gotta start, I gotta get out and circulate a little bit, and the n, i l thing, I can’t begin to tell you how much it’s just been a damper on my spirit for college sports and in general, just my interest, like so I’m trying to stay engaged in the sports thing in some way. But I think what’s going to happen in the country is far more interesting in the next couple
John Feinstein 37:09
years, unfortunately. But if you go to the place, good ball. So I highly recommend it.
Nestor Aparicio 37:20
You just broke up on me. Say that again. If I go to the palestra, what
John Feinstein 37:26
if you go to the if you go to the palestra, you won’t see any ni L’s. You won’t see kids transferring up. Five minutes later, you’ll see Ivy League athletes playing college basketball, just as in the the, just, I get nervous sometimes, just as in the ancient eight, you’ll be reading about real college athletes and real college students. Any
Nestor Aparicio 37:51
of the kids play basketball too and football? Uh, it has
John Feinstein 37:55
happened. I don’t think currently anybody does, no, I
Nestor Aparicio 37:58
just think, you know, they don’t have a lot of kids on some of these campuses. So you know, the
John Feinstein 38:02
best story about that is a kid named Joey slackman who went to Penn as a wrestler, 4.0 GPA from kid from Long Island went to Penn as a wrestler, decided he missed playing football, which he’d done in high school, and he walked on the football team and ended up, four years later, as the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year, and his career ended one game before the finish. He he ripped up his collarbone making a tackle, and the
Nestor Aparicio 38:30
game wrestle, right? What then he couldn’t wrestle after that?
John Feinstein 38:33
Well, he couldn’t play football after that. Right? Several weeks he had to have surgery, but at that moment, the doctors told him his college career was over, and the game went into overtime, and in the second overtime, as Harvard was driving toward what would have been a winning score, he said to his coach, Ray pierna, I’m going back in. And he said, but you’re hurt. You need surgery. I don’t care. I’m going back in. I’m not ending my college football career. Standing on the sideline, he went back in and made a goal line tackle with a broken collarbone. And the game, he pushed the game into a third overtime, where Harvard did win, but he said, I went out on my terms. I went out as a football player, not standing on the sidelines. And he ended up not only as a defensive player of the year, but was recruited by 30 FBS schools for a grad year, and is now playing at Florida. Look
Nestor Aparicio 39:22
at this. These stories you come up with, the things that John Feinstein can unearth. One unleashed on the ancient eight campuses, including Yale, where I guess you spent some of your formative time as a kid. Uh, when I need a new haven pizza recommendation, I’m coming to you. Alright, I
John Feinstein 39:37
got a couple. There are a lot of good ones. That’s
Nestor Aparicio 39:39
what I hear. I’m going to go real, real hungry, just like when I go to Manhattan. Go get the book The ancient eight. It’s out for the holidays. John is out doing the media tour. Always a pleasure to spend time with you. We will. We’ll pray together for the future of America and the college sports. I am Nestor. We are W, N, S T. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stop talking. Baltimore. Posse.
