‘Please Beat Grambling Normally’

Alright. I want to read something and I want everybody to sit still for it. I wrote this down Monday morning. This is the bar. This is the bar for Michigan State University football in the year two thousand twenty-six. Here it is. Please. Beat Grambling. Normally.

Yep.

Please. Beat Grambling. Normally. That's the ask. That's the entire ask. And I've been saying it since Monday and it has not gotten less funny to me and it has not gotten less sad, and I'll be saying it tomorrow, and I'll be saying it in the parking lot Saturday to strangers.

You said it three times in the promo.

I said it four times in the promo. They cut one of them.

Yeah. No, that's about where we are.

And it's humiliating, Marcus. That's the word. People keep telling me it isn't fair, and I don't care about fair, fair's got nothing to do with anything. This is a program that beat the number two team in the country in a snowstorm. There are men who bled on that field so I could sit in a strip mall in Lansing and say four words into a microphone.

I'd defend normally, actually. I think normally's doing real work in that sentence.

Of course you would. You brought a folder.

There's four pages in it.

Nobody brings a folder to a Grambling game.

Sixty-three. Sixty-three years old and nervous about Grambling. Sir, I'm with you, we're in the same boat and the boat's on fire and there's a twenty-eight-year-old at the wheel.

Can I do the thing I actually care about and then you can make fun of me for it.

Go.

The quarterback. And I want to be careful here, because I don't think Saturday tells you whether he's good. Nobody's finding that out against an FCS defense. But you might find out whether he can play. Which is different. That's a smaller question.

What's the difference.

Good is a November question. Can-he-play is, does the ball come out when it's supposed to come out. That's it. That's all I'm asking for. He takes the snap, he looks where he's supposed to look, he throws it, it's on time, it's boring. If he's holding it that extra half second every snap because he wants to be sure, that's the thing that scares me, and you can see that against anybody. You don't need a good defense to see that.

You're describing throwing the football.

I'm describing throwing it on time, which nineteen-year-olds are bad at! That's the whole reason to watch it!

So we're rooting for boring.

I'd take boring. Yeah. I'd take three hours of boring and go home happy, and I hear how that sounds, and I'm saying it anyway.

Let's go to the phones before he gets to page two. Denny, Charlotte, you're on The Mitt.

Yeah, Dave, hey. So first thing is, my brother-in-law's got the seats, section, I'm not gonna say the section, and he calls me Tuesday. And what I keep coming back to is thirteen. Thirteen. You remember thirteen.

The 2013 team, sure.

So that's my point. And they don't do that no more. And with the Grambling, the Gramb-LING, everybody's saying it's a warmup and I don't think it's a warmup, and my brother-in-law don't think so either and he was there in the snow, he'll tell ya. So. You know what I'm saying.

I don't, Denny. I want to be honest with you, I don't. But you sounded sure about it.

That's all I got. Go Green.

Go Green, Denny.

He said Gramb-LING.

He did.

I'm going to be hearing that at two in the morning.

You want to know what I'm actually mad about this week? It's not the football. I got the parking thing in the mail. The pass. Two hundred and forty dollars. Two forty. It was one-ninety two years ago. One-ninety! And I paid the one-ninety, I didn't say a word, I paid it. Then last year it's two-ten, alright, fine, everything goes up, I'm not a child. Two hundred and forty dollars to put a car on grass. It's a field, Marcus. Nobody built anything. Nobody paved it. There's a man in a vest who points, and I love that man, he's been pointing since my daughter was in a stroller, but that's the operation. That's the whole operation.

Yeah.

And in the same envelope, the same envelope, there's the letter about the seat donation going up. They put both of them in one envelope so you only get mad the one time. That's on purpose. Somebody sat in a room and worked that out.

I don't think anybody —

Somebody did! Somebody in a room! And here's the thing that's really got me, I'm going to pay it. I already paid it. I paid it Tuesday. I paid it before I got mad about it. So what am I doing right now. Two hundred and forty dollars. For grass.

...You want to get back to the —

Because every year it's a little more and every year I go, well. That's my whole contribution. Every year I go well, and then I write the check, and then next August it's two-seventy and I'll go well again.

Okay.

Anyway.

This hour's brought to you by Kowalski Heating and Cooling. Kowalski Heating and Cooling. Family owned since, there's a dash here, somebody was supposed to fill that in. Furnace tune-ups now, before it gets cold, which it will, it does every year. Kowalski. That's the read.

You didn't do the tag.

What tag.

Comfort during collapse.

Oh. Comfort during collapse. There. They renewed on that tag, by the way. They heard it and they renewed.

You sound thrilled about all of it.

It's Thursday, Marcus.

Line four. Trish in Grand Ledge.

Hi. So I've been listening about twenty minutes and I just want to say, gently, I think a low bar in Week 1 is normal? Every team's got a low bar in Week 1. Georgia's bar is low in Week 1. Ours only feels humiliating because we've decided ahead of time that we're the joke, and I don't think we have to take that assignment.

Okay. Keep going.

That's mostly it. I think the new guy might be terrible and I think he might be great and I don't think Saturday tells me which one. So I'm going to go, I'm going to have a nice time, and I'll have an opinion in about six weeks like a normal person. My daughter's in the band, so honestly I'm going for a different reason anyway.

Trish, that was so reasonable that I'm now upset with you specifically.

I know. I'm sorry.

She apologized for being reasonable. Give her the show. Give her my show, I'll do overnights, I'll do the farm report.

She said in eleven seconds what I've been trying to get out for two segments.

She did not, because you keep saying it matters and she's saying it doesn't. Those are opposite.

I'm saying it matters for two weeks. Not for the season, the season's a different thing. If Saturday's a mess, then everything between now and Notre Dame is people arguing about the hire again, and that's two weeks of noise landing on a couple hundred people who are just trying to go to work. That's the cost. It's not a football cost.

That I'll take. And it didn't require a folder.

It's in the folder.

Of course it is.

That kid's going to grow up healthy and it's a tragedy for this radio station.

He'll be back. They always come back.

Alright. It's time. Marcus. Would you like to tell the people of mid-Michigan who is snapping the football on Saturday.

I know where this goes.

SIX FOOT SEVEN. They have got a six-foot-seven offensive TACKLE playing CENTER. Rustin Young. A tackle. At center. On Saturday. In a stadium. In front of people who paid.

That's what the chart says, yes.

Do you know what a center looks like? I'll tell you what a center looks like. A center looks like a mailbox. A center looks like a refrigerator that a family loves. Five-eleven, three hundred and ten pounds, no neck, arms like fire hoses. I have never once in my life been able to pick the center out of a crowd, and that is the point of him.

You've done this bit four times this week.

I'm going to do it four more times. My nephew is six-seven. Six-seven. He cannot get into a Honda Civic. It takes him eleven seconds and there's a sound. And this football program has taken a man built like that and asked him to squat down in a pile and hand a football backwards through his own legs while a three-hundred-and-twenty-pound man tries to fold him.

The Civic thing's good.

The Civic thing is the best thing I've got all week and I came up with it in the shower Tuesday.

Can I do my thing on this one, because I've been going back and forth on it in the car for three days and I'm still not there. I'm at like sixty percent.

Sixty percent which direction.

Sixty percent it's fine. Which is not an endorsement. That's a guy talking himself into something. That's all that is. But here's where I get to. Tall's great at tackle. Nobody in the history of the sport has complained that a tackle was too tall. The problem is a center's whole fight is happening right underneath him, in about a phone booth, and the guy across from him is trying to walk him backwards, and you win that by getting down low, and it's just farther for a six-seven guy to get down there. That's the objection. It's a real objection. I'm not waving at it.

So you agree with me.

No, because the other half is he's on the field for every snap, he makes every call, and he's the best athlete on that line by a good margin. And everywhere else on the line, being the best athlete just makes you good. In the middle it might make the other four better. Might. I said might.

Oh, you've got a theory.

I've got a theory and I'm not telling you it's right. I've heard worse ideas. That's as far as I'll go on it.

Here's my problem. We hired a twenty-eight-year-old who has never played one down of football at any level, and the first football decision he shows the public, the first one, is take the tallest man on the roster and put him under the quarterback. There is no way to explain that to me that sounds like a man who's done this before. And I was in a band, Marcus. I was in a band. You don't move the tuba over to the piccolo chair because he's your best musician.

You were in band?

Two years. Trumpet. Don't.

And I asked him, by the way. I was in that room Tuesday, everybody upstairs was doing the dance, so I asked the kid himself, straight out, is this a good idea. And he says, you ready for this, he says, they told me in June. That's the answer. That's the whole answer. Twelve grown adults with notebooks and nobody had a follow-up because there's nothing to follow up.

He's not going to give you anything. He's never going to give you anything.

He gave me nothing! And I've thought about it every night since!

Why?

I don't know!

Surprised in a new way. Line three. Terry in Portland, you played this position, go ahead.

Yeah, hey. So I snapped four years at a small college, long time ago now, and I want to push back on everybody a little bit here. I was five-eleven. Five-eleven! And I got moved off that ball plenty. Being short don't make you good at it. It makes it easier to be good at it. That ain't the same thing.

Terry, you're the first caller all week who's made me feel something other than dread, and I want you to know I don't trust you.

Well hang on now, I ain't done. The thing I'd be scared of, and I ain't heard one person say it all week, it ain't the height. It's the talking. He's got to look at what they're in, say who's got who, get it right, out loud, in about a second, every play, and then change it if they move around on him. That's a whole language, is what that is. You're supposed to have been speaking it since you were sixteen years old. He started in the spring.

...Say that part again.

And he's got a kid behind him don't know any better than he does. Getting shoved around, that's embarrassing, that's all that is. Getting the call wrong, that's a fella running free at that kid's back. And that one's yours. That one's on you.

Terry. Get off my station. That's the second caller this week to ruin a Saturday I haven't even had yet.

He's right, though. And nobody's asked about that all week. Not one person. Everybody wants to talk about how tall he is.

Because he's SIX SEVEN, MARCUS.

I'm not doing the bit. I'm done doing the bit on this one. Eight months. Eight months of the trombone. Every single day, since December. And it was funny in December, I laughed, I did it myself on this show, I did a whole segment. It's August. It's not funny anymore.

Dave —

And the thing that gets me, the part that actually gets me, is these are people whose program has been fine for ten years and they still have to come find me. They come find me. I'm in a strip mall. What is it you want from me.

You want me to take the —

And I've got no comeback, that's the other half of it. There's no comeback, because he's right. Our head coach played the trombone. That's a true statement about our football program. So he gets to say it and I get to sit here, and that's every day for eight months and it'll be eight more, and they don't get tired. That's what I can't get over. They never get tired.

...Yeah.

Whatever. Line two.

Hey, I'll be quick. I lived down in Louisiana eleven years for work. And I want to say to everybody in this state who's been saying cupcake all week, you don't know what you're talking about. That's a real football school with a real history and they win games doing one thing on purpose, and they're good at that thing. They're not driving up here to be a prop in our little drama.

That's fair, Duane.

And the other thing I'd say. Those guys know exactly how they're being talked about this week. Every one of them has read it. You do not want to be the team that gives a group like that a reason to believe by halftime.

Duane, I'm going to be thinking about that Saturday morning while I'm making eggs and I want you to know I'm not thanking you for it.

He's right, though. Me saying they run the option and they're good at it isn't me being polite about the opponent. Half this state's been talking all week like the other team's a rumor.

Can I do one more and then I'll close the folder.

The folder has been open the entire show.

Cam Edwards. On paper there's nobody else on this roster in his weight class as a football player, and Saturday he ought to look like a different species out there. And if he doesn't, don't look at him. Look at the five in front of him. Because the group nobody trusts on this team is the inside of that line, and against an FCS front you should be able to move somebody. If we can't move anybody Saturday, then in two weeks in South Bend it's going to be a long night for everybody.

Don't say South Bend to me.

It's on the schedule, Dave.

I know it's on the schedule! And now they're wounded, which is worse! Did you see what Miami did to them? Forty-two to six! And the poll still has them third, which is the funniest thing that has ever happened, and in two weeks they will have had fourteen days of the entire country calling them soft, and the first team through that door is us.

Yeah. That's a bad draw. I've tried three different ways to make it sound better in my own head and I can't do it, so I'm not going to sit here and try it on you.

Mark's checked out. Mark, come back and fight.

Mark's at peace. I envy Mark.

Line one. Gary in Owosso.

Hey fellas. So I want to talk about basketball.

Sure.

...Really?

Let him go. Go ahead, Gary.

So the non-conference is out and I've got some thoughts on the December stretch, because if you look at who they've got lined up around the holidays —

Yep.

— and I don't think people are paying attention to it, is my point.

Yeah. Gary, we've got a football game in forty-eight hours.

And I'll be watching it. I'll have it on. I'm just saying, in terms of what actually matters at this university.

Yep.

Izzo's still here, Dave.

He is.

That's all I'm saying.

Yep. Thanks, Gary.

You didn't even fight him.

I didn't have it in me.

Here's what I want Saturday and it's got nothing to do with football. I'm going to pay two hundred and forty dollars to put my car on grass —

Here we go.

— and then I'm going to pay eight dollars for a pretzel, and what I would like for that money is three hours in which nothing embarrassing happens to me. That's the ask. No twelve men on the field. No timeout thirty seconds into the second quarter because nobody knows what personnel's out there. No camera cutting to a sideline where six coaches are pointing in four directions. I want to be bored. I want to sit there and be bored out of my mind by my own football team.

That's what I said about the quarterback and you called me a lawyer for it.

It's different when I say it because I'm not enjoying it.

And the part I don't think anybody's ready for. They run the option and they're good at it. Forty-something carries, and every one of them, somebody different on our defense has got to be standing in exactly the right place. And it's a brand new defense that hasn't played a snap together. If they pop a long run in the first quarter, everybody in this state is going to lose their minds, and honestly that's a completely normal thing to happen to a defense in Week 1. It's just not going to feel normal.

Nothing's going to feel normal.

Sir, do not do that to me on a Thursday.

He's going to send a sign photo next.

He's absolutely going to send a sign photo.

Alright, wrap me up, we've got traffic. Marcus. One sentence, what are you watching.

The first drive. The whole thing, snap to punt. And I know that proves nothing, and I'm going to read the entire season into it anyway, and that's the honest answer.

And me, I'm watching the clock. Not the game clock, the play clock. Because if I see that thing under five and somebody's calling timeout in the first quarter of a Grambling game, I am going to go lie down in Lake Lansing.

It's shallow. You'd be fine.

Good. Saturday. Home opener. 100.9, The Mitt. Please. Beat Grambling. Normally.