November 23, 2022 • 36 mins
EPISODE 82: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: OK maybe I am. (1:58) Trump has about as bad a day as you can have in court and not be Al Pacino in the movie "And Justice For All." But first, I'm worried about The Washington Post profile of new Trump Special Counsel Jack Smith and my haunting fear he is there to run out the clock on behalf of Merrick Garland. A former colleague is quoted as saying "It was understood that the fastest way for a case to die was to give it to (Jack Smith's) Public Integrity Section." (3:00) Happily, though the Post gave not the slightest hint of it, the guy who said that is not just a revenge-obsessed right wing nut job but the worst kind: one who thinks he's an impartial analyst. (6:07) So we can look instead at Trump's FIVE legal setbacks in one day: on the tax case at the Supreme Court (and what Dems can do with the taxes with only 41 days until the GOP takes the house); at the hearing to dismiss the Special Master from the Nuclear Documents Kleptomania case; at Lindsey Graham's Grand Jury appearance in Georgia; at the efforts to revitalize Manhattan's Stormy Daniels hush money case; and at the impending SECOND lawsuit by E. Jean Carroll. No comment from Trump Attorney Lionel Hutz.
B-Block (12:40) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Max in North Carolina (13:40) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Yes, you didn't imagine it. The 2nd Woman produced a tape of Herschel Walker phoning her and saying "this is your stud farm calling, you big sex puppy you," and then he said something much dumber live on Fox News. Herschel's Erection Election plus the AP taking its "Russian missiles in Poland" screw-up and making it much worse and Bolsonaro contesting after all (19:29) IN SPORTS: Lionel Messi's Employers upset Lionel Messi's Team at the World Cup: It's A Messi Situation, plus the Rob Thomson surprise, and what a fan did to Pete Rozelle the day he wouldn't cancel the NFL schedule even after the JFK Assassination (23:14) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Bothsidesist Ashley Parker and GOP Talking Point Merchant Katherine Herridge of CBS can't compete with producer Stew Peters whose movie about supposed deaths after Covid vaccinations "DIED SUDDENLY" actually shows people who a) didn't get vaccinated b) didn't die and c) didn't do anything suddenly.
C-BLOCK (28:44) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It is ESPN's most beloved outtake and since it was about the World Cup, I present it now in annotated form. Ladies and gentlemen: It's the famous "SOCCER BREAKDOWN.":
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio. No,
I am not starting with Herschel Walker's erection election. This
(00:28):
is a serious who in the hell am I fooling? Well?
First of all, this election is more than Harshel Walks
erections about the people. More on that erection later, the
serious stuff. First, Yes, Trump Wednesday had about as mad
a day as one can have in court and not
be al Pacino from the movie and Justice for All
And let's go all through that in a moment too.
(00:50):
But I have been obsessing first about the new Trump
Special Council, Jack Smith, and a profile in The Washington
Post that seemed to confirm my worst suspicions and worst
fears that he was appointed to run out the clock
and to shield Merrick Garland for being accused of running
out the clock. Quoting Jeffrey Cortes, who served as the
acting chief of the FBI's Public Corruption Unit in two
(01:13):
thousand eleven when Smith was his Justice Department counterpart supervising
the public integrity section, writes the Post said he did
not see Smith as quick acting or effective in prosecuting
public officials, quoting Cortes, a at that time, it was
understood that the fastest way for a case to die
was to give it to the Public Integrity Section. Oh
(01:34):
gott oh gott oh gott o God, it's Mueller again,
only with Mueller as an active participant in the whitewash
and the cover up. Quoting Cortes again, the frequency with
which they declined investigative techniques and prosecutions was often a
point of conflict between the FBI and the Justice Department
when Jack was in charge. Assuming a similar series of
(01:55):
facts or a similar situation, I'd be surprised that Public
Integrity Section would even allow the case to be opened,
Cortes said, So it makes me wonder why he'd want
anything to do with the case today. I mean, that's it,
isn't it. That is the worst case scenario that despite
the panoply of assessments from lawyer after lawyer and analyst
(02:16):
after analyst buttressing the common sense logic that you would
only appoint a special counsel if you were going to
prosecute and you needed a buffer to make it look
a political no this, Jeffrey Cortes insisted that Jack Smith
was where good, solid criminal cases went to be covered up,
with the implication that he was there not to prosecute
(02:37):
Julius Sleazier, but to bury his crimes. But Google is
always there for us. This Jeffrey Cortes and the three
scoffing paragraphs and the one cynical words the Washington Post
gave Jeffrey Cortes turn out to be the best endorsement
Jack Smith could possibly get. Jeffrey Cortes a identifies himself
(03:00):
as a nonpartisan analyst, yet he is a frequent guest
Dawn Fox News. He insists he has no respect for politicians,
yet he also insists a corrupt X president should not
be prosecuted just like anybody else. And his links on
Twitter are all to the New York Post and not
in an ironic, my god, people actually believe this is
(03:22):
a newspaper way. And he dismisses congressman and senators and
governors and candidates as quote political fanatics. And then it
turns out all the people he thinks are political fanatics
happened to be Democrats. And he defends Elon Musk, and
he has a Twitter blue checkmark because he paid Elon
(03:42):
Musk eight dollars for it. So with Jeffrey Cortes's unintentional
endorsement of Jack Smith and the rights hilarious complaint that
Smith may not be impartial because his wife donated to
Biden campaign and produced a documentary about Michelle Obama and
Congressman Andy Clyde says that means America has a corrupt,
too tier justice system and who going to tell him
(04:05):
about Jenny Thomas. All that constitutes the good Jack Smith
Special Council news. The mad Jack Smith Special Council news
is that, according to the same Post Pace, Smith is
still in Europe, partly because he's still prosecuting war crimes
at the Hague, partly because the Posts experts believe in
essential part of his role will be finding somebody, anybody
(04:28):
to find him office space in d C. And partly
because he had a bike accident and knee surgery and
he can't travel yet, can't travel, immobilized, forced to stay
in just one place. This, after all, is the goal
for Trump, and it seems we did move closer to
(04:48):
it in five different areas. Wednesday, after three years, the
way was finally cleared for the I r s to
give the House Ways and Means Committee his tax returns.
The Supreme court tersely refused to block it. Unsigned opinion
no published descents, so Trump doesn't even know which of
his legal prostitute to demand his money back from. The
problem remains that in forty one days, the chairmanship of
(05:10):
that committee changes from Democrat Richard Neil to probably Republican
Burn Buchanan, and we don't know how the Republicans will
try to put Trump's returns back into the toothpaste tube.
We only know that they will do so. We also
know that the Democrats, who currently runways and means will
try to get information from those tax returns out in
some way, either via the mandatory Presidential Tax Return Audit
(05:33):
program or some quickly prepared and approved public report by
the committee next month that could focus on anything from
how Trump got seventy three million dollars worth of refunds
to what foreign banks he has borrowed from two discrepancies
between what he said about his net worth or the
value of his companies and what he put in his
tax returns, to whether or not he actually paid his
(05:55):
taxes or has ever made an actual charitable donation in
his life to anything except the Ivana Trump Memorial Scholarship
Fund for caddies at bed Minster. At minimum, there is
hope here that the court's ruling could also pave the
way for any one of several Senate committees still under
Democratic control next year to get all or part of
(06:17):
Trump's tax returns. Meanwhile, back to the Jack Smith nuclear
kleptomania case and the questions from the three judge appeals
panel from the Eleventh Circuit, which yesterday pretty much established
that the judges believed the decision to appoint a special
master to review the documents Trump stole was not merely
a bad one, but an unprecedentedly bad one, and that
(06:38):
the question is how quickly that panel will rule against Trump. Meantime,
Lindsey Graham testified for two hours to the Georgia Grand
Jury investigating Trump's attempt to falsify the election results there,
which just increases the likelihood that everybody else the d A.
Fanny Willis wants to grill, like Mark Meadows and Michael
Flynn will wind up having to address the scheme as well.
(07:00):
Not enough legalities for you. New York City now thinks
it might be able to reacht aren't the Stormy Daniels
hush money case against Trump, But to do so, they
would have to have new evidence, and to get new evidence,
they'd almost have to get it from former Trump CFO
Alan Weisselberg, And so far Weiselberg has not yet flipped
unless there is something they know about in the Manhattan
d A's office that the rest of us don't. But wait,
(07:24):
there's more. You know the e Gene Carol lawsuit against Trump. No, no, no,
that's the first a Gene Carol lawsuit against Trump for defamation.
This is the second a Gene Carol lawsuit against Trump
for sexual assault and battery. And that is going to
be filed in New York on Thursday, because that is
when the one year window opens for victims here to
(07:45):
suthe their abusers, no matter when the assault occurred in
the past. Thursday. Thanksgiving, Yes, Thanksgiving, and my holiday gift
to you will be I'll leave you to make your
own Trump turkey jokes here. Well, first of all, this
(08:06):
election is more than harshel walks erections about the people
still ahead. Yeah you weren't dreaming, you heard it. Asked
about the latest revelations from the woman he pressured into
(08:28):
an abortion, the one he says he's never met, and
doesn't know. He referred to the upcoming Georgia erection with
an r oh herschel more trouble at the World Cup
as Leonel Messi's Argentina team loses to Lionel Messi's Saudi
Arabia employers, and for some of us, the World Cup
(08:48):
itself means two other words, sucker Breakdown, the most beloved
outtaken ESPN's history, complete with Jean Luca Paluca, Rigga Birt's
Beyond Hung's song, and of course Gary Miller. If you've
never heard, you must hear, and if you have heard
it a hundred times you must hear my annotated version.
(09:10):
Anyway in three two one, that's next. This is countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead on Countdown.
Leonel Messi's Saudi Arabia team upsets his Argentina team at
(09:34):
the World Cup, and oh boy, do they have an
ethical problem there even for soccer. Speaking of soccer, it's
the famous soccer Breakdown tape starring Gary Miller, Jeng Nukapuka
and Rigger Bert beyond On song and annotated by me.
Coming up first. In each edition of Countdown, we feature
a dog in need You can help. Every dog has
its day to Wilmington, North Carolina, and poor Max. Max
(09:57):
is a senior. His human died, and, as often happens
under those circumstances, he completely shut down. But the Great
Dane Friends of Rough Love found him a foster. The
foster helped Max to play and be happy again, and
then came the limp and the X rays and the
diagnosis of bone cancer. The good news is dogs like
Max often respond better to oncology treatment than people do.
(10:18):
Plus it's cheaper. Plus if he needs an amputation, he
can handle it. In short, Great Dane Friends needs donations
to help Max, only about bucks short of their goal
on Cuddley. You can find Max there on Cuddly or
on my Twitter feeds, and a retweet of his bio
will also help him. I thank you, and Max thanks you.
(10:49):
Postscripts to the news some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Some story from Atlanta dateline Atlanta, Yeah he
really sent it? Herschel Walker flanked by Ted Cruz and
a visibly startled Lindsey Graham talking to the nodding head
dollar Fox News Sean Hannity after a second woman who
(11:10):
says herschel Walker got her pregnant and pressured her to
get an abortion, revealed that he had threatened suicide if
she didn't abort their child. The interviewer herschel live. It's
always a dangerous thing, especially if Dr Freud is in
the neighborhood. Well, first of all, this election is war
than Herchelwalk disirection about the people. Electile dysfunction. He's fading
(11:34):
at the polls. He's now no better than a schlong shot. Okay,
let's hear it again. Well, first of all, this election
is more than Herchelwalk disirection about the people. Well, first
of all, this election is more than Herchelwalk dis erection
about the people. Well, first of all, this election is
war than Herchelwalk disirection about the people. Well, first of all,
(11:55):
this election is more than Herchelwalk disrection. I'm sorry, it's
my ringtone now than her erection. You say what an idiot.
Walker also insists he does not know the woman in question,
which makes the recorded phone call between them that she
produced yesterday kind of strange. Plus the answering machine message
(12:15):
in which Walker says, this is your stud farm calling
you big sex puppy. You. The woman has challenged Walker
to meet her face to face about the abortion, and
he claims didn't happen because he'd never met her and
doesn't know who she is. Before the Georgia runoff, there
is no comment. Well, yeah, there was kind of a comment. Well,
(12:36):
first of all, this election is more than hersel walking
erections about the people. Stateline, New York. The Associated Press
thought it had settled a controversy when it fired investigative
reporter James Laporta. It was his source who said that
a Russian missile had hit Polish territory last week, when
in fact it was Ukrainian defensive rockets that hit poland
the inaccuracy could have triggered a NATO Article five action
(13:00):
or worse. In fact, the AP has merely traded one
scandal for another. Associated Press slack messages their internal dialogue
shows that Laporta merely advised European Desk editor Laura Left
that he had an American intelligence source, who he noted,
had been vetted by an AP executive who said it
was a Russian missile. The editor Left asked Laporta if
(13:22):
he could write it up quote as an urgent, and
Laporta's reply was no, I'm actually at a doctor's appointment.
What I passed is all I know at the moment.
Three minutes later, with Laporta not on the story and
no other sources coming forward, the editor left sent the
alert out anyway, and Laporta got fired. In September nineteen eighty,
(13:45):
I had a minor argument with my boss at United
Press International, and his boss came back from lunch at
that moment, completely misunderstood what had happened and fired me
on the spot. I was back at work forty eight
hours later because a the boss was also completely drunk,
be he had no cause to do anything to me,
nor write to and see. The Wire Service Guild, which
(14:06):
is now the News Media Guild, which represented u p
I and still represents the AP wasn't much on getting
this money, but it was tenacious against capricious behavior by executives.
Seems like Laporta and the Guild have a huge case
against the Associated Press, which completely scapegoated him. Dateline Brazilia
remember all the grudging respect for Brazilian fascist Jare Bolsonaro
(14:29):
for having not challenged his loss in the presidential election
premature jocularity everybody yesterday Balsonaro challenge because machines, audits invalidate
and how do you say my pillow? In Portuguese and
dateline Louisville. No change in the James Comer scandal. He
(14:49):
is the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee and
has promised investigations of Joe and Hunter Biden, but will
not comment on whether or not he'll investigate the claims
of his own college girlfriend, Marilyn Thomas, that he hit her,
that he threatened her life, that he called her mother
there and threatened Maryland's life, and he tried to cover
up his own role in the abortion of their child
(15:10):
by trying to force Ms Thomas to not use his
name on any of the paperwork. This is Sports Center. Wait,
(15:30):
check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Aberman
in sports. This World Cup has really had everything, homophobia,
threats against players who wanted a protest, homophobia, charging fans
twenty two dollars to drink alcohol at the games, and
now wow. Argentinean star Lionel Messi signed a huge deal
(15:55):
last mate to promote tourism to Saudi Arabia, and the
centerpiece to the Saudiast tourism plan is called Vision twenty
thirty and vision centered on Saudi Arabia's bid for the
twenty thirty World Cup. So Messi, a player for Argentina
in this World Cup, is also being paid by Saudi
Arabia and its efforts to win the rights to host
(16:16):
that World Cup. And yesterday Saudi Arabia upset Argentina two
to one. In fact, Messi and Argentina blew a one
nothing lead in that game. This is already considered one
of the greatest upsets in World Cup history. Messi's team
losing too, Messi's employer, Oops, thank you, Nancy Faus. This
(16:49):
was a big enough deal in Saudi Arabia that some
workers were rewarded today with the day off. In fact,
all workers got the day off. Percent of the country
has the day off in Saudi Arabia, presumably this includes
Saudi employee Leonel mess See baseball. The Athletic reports at
Twist on the Philadelphia Phillies unexpected National League title, even
(17:10):
though they kind of disappeared while up to to one
in the World Series and have not been heard from since.
Veteran coach Rob Thompson took over as manager on June
three of last season, and that turns out to me
about just about four months after he had decided that
two was going to be his last year in baseball
he was gonna retire. He has now changed his mind.
(17:32):
And I have another sports story. As I mentioned yesterday,
we are now fifty nine years removed from the Kennedy assassination,
which means that Thursday is the anniversary of the day
the National Football League played its regular schedule anyway, even
though the President of the United States had been murdered
forty eight hours earlier. I was told a story about
(17:52):
this that I have never found a second source for.
But I cannot imagine that my first source made it
up or got it wrong. My first boss in television
at CNN Sports was named Bill McPhail. He had in
the president of CBS Sports and the way they televise
NFL games then and now, which built pro football in
this country. He and the commissioner Pete rosel pretty much
(18:14):
designed that. Roselle is in the Football Hall of Fame.
Bill McPhail's brother and father are in the Baseball Hall
of Fame. Anyway, Bill mcfail and Roselle also thought football
in primetime was the next Beck's best thing, and they
developed Monday Night Football for CBS, but it did not
do better in the ratings than the Beverly Hillbilly's rerun
did on CBS. The CBS fired McPhail and ABC got
(18:36):
Monday Night Football. Anyway, Roselle and McPhail were great friends
and based in New York and so On Sunday, November,
according to Bill, he and Roselle went to Yankee Stadium
together to watch the Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals
right after the Kennedy assassination. Within weeks, rosel would say
he was mistaken to not have canceled the games that day.
(18:59):
Twenty years later, in an interview, he told me it
was the greatest mistake of his life. But Roselle was
it about one thing. Despite the assassination, despite the grief,
despite Lee Harvey Oswald being shot on live national television
forty minutes before the kickoff of all the NFL games,
attendance for those games was normal, down maybe five hundred
(19:22):
or a thousand per game. There were sixty eight thousand
fans at Yankee Stadium for the Giants game that day.
But Bill McPhail told me that during halftime of that game,
a man appeared at their seats and asked Roselle, are
you Pete Roselle? And when Roselle confirmed it, he, without
a word, punched Roselle in the face. He said nothing,
(19:43):
he walked away. McPhail said he moved to follow the man,
but Roselle stopped him and said, don't I know how
he feels? Had? Its World Cup time, which for some
(20:07):
of us can only mean one thing. It's soccer breakdown time.
The annotated version of an ESPN classic coming up. First
daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and done in Kruger
Effex specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world
three to one? Lebronze Ashley Parker of the Washington Post,
(20:27):
she stepped in it big time. A New York Times
reporter was whining on Twitter that she had a scoop
about Fox getting exclusive coverage of the wedding at the
White House over the weekend, but the Press office had
waived her off her story. Well, Miss Parker jumped in
and won the Both Sides is Um Award for the day,
probably the week, maybe the month. Quoting. I spent four
(20:48):
years covering the Trump White House and two years covering
the Biden White House. What's fascinating is that they both lie,
albeit in very different ways. Trump team was shameless, whereas
Biden team is too cute by half. Miss Parker got
kind of you know, ratio at Last Look at was
ten thousand, eight hundred to two thousand, three hundred fifty
(21:10):
three to nine likes, so she clarified quote. To be clear,
not all lies are created equal, and the magnitude, frequency
and audacity is certainly different. But the Biden White House,
for example, has also waived us off correct reporting about
Biden's Scotus picks, Egypt trip attendees, in private meetings, etcetera.
(21:31):
Ms Parker then got re ratioed at Last Look four thousand,
ninety three to five hundred nineteen to three thirty two likes,
which is actually worse than the first ratio. She has
not tweeted since. The runner up Katherine Harrihage of CBS
News well really a Fox News, but now inexplicably she
(21:52):
appears on CBS. She is back with her quote scoops unquote,
which are actually just leaks handed to her by Republican politicians.
The latest quote CBS News has obtained data from a
laptop up purported to have belonged to Hunter Biden. The
data came directly from the source, who said they provided
it to the FBI under subpoena. In other words, Harriage
(22:14):
and CBS have no idea if it's Hunter Biden's laptop,
or if it's the correct contents of whose ever laptop
it is, or if it's just Charlie Rose's underwear, but
they let Katherine Herridge put it on the air. Anyway.
The joke ultimately maybe on CBS because this headline from
a Washington newspaper house GOP targets Hunter Biden, but voters
(22:37):
say priorities are wrong. That is not from the Washington Post.
It is from the right wing Washington Examiner. And it
makes a huge deal out of the Morning Consult poll
that shows that even among Republicans, only fifty two are
interested in investigating the president's son. This is the most
reasonable thing the Republicans have done in a poll this
(22:57):
year decade. But our winners Stu Peters, the right wing
nut job and producer of the alleged documentary Died Suddenly,
which purports to tell the untold saga of people who
died suddenly after getting vaccinated against COVID nineteen and shows
video of when they died suddenly. The website The Real
(23:20):
truth Or points out that at least four people shown
in the film Collapsing who the producers like Stu Peters
say died suddenly, included Kansas State basketball player Kyante Johnson
and comedian Heather McDonald, and they all four turn out
to have not died at all, let alone died suddenly,
(23:42):
and they've not even gotten sick or injured, and none
of them were filmed just after they got vaccinated. I mean,
Heather McDonald just put out a new edition of our
podcast yesterday, and Kyante Johnson had fourteen points Monday against
Rhode Island, so they're both doing surprisingly well for having
just died suddenly. Stu, remember if you alter the pronunciation
(24:03):
of my name just slightly, it comes stupede Ers Peters,
whose credibility died suddenly. Two day's worse. Parson and the
World to the number one story on the Countdown, and
(24:31):
my favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell.
You may enjoy this one enough to keep a copy.
Happy Holidays. I mentioned Soccer's World Cup being played during
the late autumn for the first time for everybody who
worked at ESPN during the World Cup he held here
in the United States from mid June to mid July.
(24:53):
That phrase the World Cup means only one thing, soccer breakdown.
Gary Miller was one of the backbones of Sports Center.
I had worked with him at CNN. He was strong, competent,
very loud, forceful, He hated mascots, and he had no filter.
(25:14):
He and Dan Patrick were great friends in Atlanta, and
then Gary and Dan left for ESPN within months of
each other. This has been said of me, and so
I say it of Gary with affection. He suffered no
fools gladly, and though his elbows were always up, he
made sure that ninety nine percent of the time when
they bumped into somebody, that somebody had well deserved it.
(25:37):
As near as I can piece together, Gary was doing
the eleven PM Sports Center on Friday night June. Typically,
Dan and I did the eleven Sunday through Thursday. The
story of soccer's nineteen ninety four World Cup, at least
in the first week, was a preponderance of player ejections
red cards handed them by the referee. In those days,
(25:59):
the eleven PM Sports Center included a feature two or
three minutes long on a story that had drummed up
a lot of interest during the first show planning meeting
around three PM. It was a feature called breakdown. It
provided long form analysis in today's when we didn't have
a lot of That. Could be a coach getting fired,
could be the relative credentials of Baseball Hall of Fame candidates.
(26:20):
Could be one fantastic play in a game. Once we
did a dead pan, serious breakdown about injuries to mascots.
A producer or the anchor himself would write the script,
They would prerecord the narration, and then the producer would
edit it. This is pre digital. It was done tape
to tape. It could take hours to edit it, and
(26:41):
the key was to track it to record that narration,
which was done in a tiny wood paneled room wreaking
of mildew that looked and smelled exactly like every suburban
basement reck room in America circa October ninet. That's where
Gary Miller found himself on the night of Friday j
(27:04):
reading a script about soccer players from around the world,
none of whose names he had ever seen before, let
alone tried to pronounce. It was the soccer breakdown in
all senses of the word. The raw tape, the original
version of his tracking session for the script for Soccer Breakdown,
(27:27):
is easily the most beloved bootleg in ESPN's history. In fact,
it is so popular that there are several different cuts
of this bootleg. People have sat down with the original tape,
which runs nearly twenty minutes, and edited it down to
only the best or worst parts. Now, I'm not going
to say I have a copy of the original. I'm
(27:49):
simply going to note that Dan Patrick ran it on
his radio show in two thousand seventeen and posted the
whole segment to YouTube. So yeah, that's where I got
my copy of it. Uh, that's my story and I'm
sticking to it. I'm going to annotate for you what happened.
So let me present this to you in three segments.
(28:11):
It did not start well for Gary, and it got
worse from there. Although Mr Miller gave it its eternal
title and life by going sibilant on the s for
the words soccer, I'll know it only one thing, the
acronym of International Soccer's outfit f I f A Gary,
It's pronounced FIFA Soccer Breakdown. In three to one FIFA
(28:36):
Soccer's governing Party three to one FIFA Soccers three two one.
The red card has become the calling card for this
year's tournament. Seven ejections for three to one witness Romania's
ian blad you against the Swiss is or through christ Uh.
(29:02):
But that was the easy part. Now in script came
the names of the World Cup stars who had been
given red card ejections in the first week of the tournament.
One was the seventeen year old star of the Cameroon team,
Riggerbert's Song, often referred to by his full name Riggerbert's
Song bahog or as it was said in the script,
(29:24):
Riggerbird Bahong song three to one Cameroons, Riggleberg three to Cameroons,
Riggleberg byan Ganzanza Da Da byan Young Song three to
(29:45):
one Cameroons, Riggleberg Banyang song by on Young Song three
to one, three to one. By the way, Riggerbert's Song
is now the manager of the Cameroon team. He's gone
and being the youngest player in the World Cup history
(30:06):
to get a red card to running his nation's team.
I'll interject here that at the start of this final
major clip. Gary Miller says, to somebody who has clearly
entered that tracking room that smelled of mildew, get out
of here. Dan Patrick said that was him. I think
he's mistaken. It doesn't matter much, but there was no
reason for Dan to have been there on a Friday night,
(30:28):
especially if we were not doing the show. And also
there has never been a microphone ever, but Dan has
not spoken into anyway. We have already met Riggerbert Bhano song.
Now meet my guy, the Italian goalie John Luca Polyuka
to get out of there, too, is guilty through too
(30:53):
How long is this tape? Three to one? One one
Cameron's Riggelberg Bunyan song provided a breakaway from Brazil's Babetta
a Bah God Almighty, I hate soccer, Cameroon's Riggleberg Bunyon
Young song, I'm better try that one last time. Two
(31:15):
one Cameroon's Riggleberg bun Yon Young song, I hate this
chalk up Bolivia's Luis Christaldo for both and three to one.
But the most notable red card of the tournament came
on Italian goaltender Jean Luca Palyuka, Paul Yoka, Paul Yucca
(31:35):
from three to one. But the flurry of red cars
thus far as Todd, coaches and players alike to control
their play if they'd like to control their fate in
this tournament. Holy, that is all. The pronunciation of Riggerbert's
song's name is one thing. I was delighted by how
(31:57):
furious Gary got at Gianluca Pallyuka of the Italian team
and the expletive he used to describe him. Richard may
have just heard. In the days that followed, in fact,
the Italian goalie's name became shorthand for me for that
expletive in question. So for the next three years on
Sports Center and after that on Fox Sports News, and
(32:18):
then on my ESPN two show and on Football Night
in America, and then when I returned to Sports Center
in two thousand eighteen, if you heard me say John
Luca Polyuca while we were showing a player making an
error or arguing with an umpire or official, I was
actually implying that the player had just said, uh, John
(32:38):
Luca Polyuca. There's another punch line to this story, of course,
the idea to do this soccer breakdown that's so bedeviled
Gary Miller. The story of red cards in the first
week of the nine World Cup. The idea to do
that came from Gary Miller, never volunteer. I've never been
(32:59):
convinced that Gary was really happy about his immortality, certainly
not in the way my ees and pal Steve Levy
not so secretly glories in the day. He once tried
to say that a New England Patriots player had a
bulging disk, but didn't quite get disc right. But Gary
Miller has been a good sport about this through the
end of his ESPN career in two thousand four and afterwards.
(33:22):
In these days at Channel two and Channel nine in
Los Angeles and most recently at Channel two in Cincinnati,
it isn't hard to understand why this tape is so
famous and the pleasure derived from it so enduring. As
John Klees once said about the real life hotel manager
on whom he based his character from Faulty Towers, he
had this wonderful bad temper. But there are two more things. One,
(33:46):
this occurred exactly a week to the day after the O. J.
Simpson car chase, and people forget now just how disturbing
that was in in America, especially sports America, like at ESPN, that,
with the exception of a few of us who knew,
nobody knew how rotten a human being O. J. Simpson was,
(34:06):
so even a week later we all needed this laugh,
and Gary gave it to us and even larger. The
essence of soccer in every country in which it is
played is that it always allows, and encourages and even
demands that its fans complain about it. And so while
(34:26):
we cherish soccer breakdown and three to one and Rigor
Bert Bahan on Song and Babetto and John Luca Paluka,
to me, it is really about five words that anybody
who hates the game will say. But there are also
five words that any fan of the sport will certainly
use at some point in his life, possibly at some
(34:51):
point today. And they are the five words with which
I will leave you for now. A fah God, Almighty,
I hate soccer. Don't sleep on babette too. I've done
(35:18):
all the damage I can do here. Thanks for listening.
If you're not following or subscribed or whatever, please do so.
In fact, stop a passer by on the street and
get them to subscribe as well. Here are our credits.
Most of the music, including our theme from Beethoven's ninth
was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Philip Channel. They are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration
and keyboards by John Philip Channel, guitars, bass and drums
(35:41):
by Brian Ray, produced by T K O Brothers. Other
Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Alderman theme from ESPN two,
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever,
and in light of Gary Miller's cameo here, our announcer
(36:03):
today was Kenny Maine. Now everything else is pretty much
my fault. So that's countdown for this the six seventh
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Arrest him now while
we still can. New episodes resumed next week. Until then,
I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, good luck,
(36:24):
and Happy Thanksgiving. Countdown with Keith old Woman is a
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(36:45):
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio. No,
I am not starting with Herschel Walker's erection election. This
(00:28):
is a serious who in the hell am I fooling? Well?
First of all, this election is more than Harshel Walks
erections about the people. More on that erection later, the
serious stuff. First, Yes, Trump Wednesday had about as mad
a day as one can have in court and not
be al Pacino from the movie and Justice for All
And let's go all through that in a moment too.
(00:50):
But I have been obsessing first about the new Trump
Special Council, Jack Smith, and a profile in The Washington
Post that seemed to confirm my worst suspicions and worst
fears that he was appointed to run out the clock
and to shield Merrick Garland for being accused of running
out the clock. Quoting Jeffrey Cortes, who served as the
acting chief of the FBI's Public Corruption Unit in two
(01:13):
thousand eleven when Smith was his Justice Department counterpart supervising
the public integrity section, writes the Post said he did
not see Smith as quick acting or effective in prosecuting
public officials, quoting Cortes, a at that time, it was
understood that the fastest way for a case to die
was to give it to the Public Integrity Section. Oh
(01:34):
gott oh gott oh gott o God, it's Mueller again,
only with Mueller as an active participant in the whitewash
and the cover up. Quoting Cortes again, the frequency with
which they declined investigative techniques and prosecutions was often a
point of conflict between the FBI and the Justice Department
when Jack was in charge. Assuming a similar series of
(01:55):
facts or a similar situation, I'd be surprised that Public
Integrity Section would even allow the case to be opened,
Cortes said, So it makes me wonder why he'd want
anything to do with the case today. I mean, that's it,
isn't it. That is the worst case scenario that despite
the panoply of assessments from lawyer after lawyer and analyst
(02:16):
after analyst buttressing the common sense logic that you would
only appoint a special counsel if you were going to
prosecute and you needed a buffer to make it look
a political no this, Jeffrey Cortes insisted that Jack Smith
was where good, solid criminal cases went to be covered up,
with the implication that he was there not to prosecute
(02:37):
Julius Sleazier, but to bury his crimes. But Google is
always there for us. This Jeffrey Cortes and the three
scoffing paragraphs and the one cynical words the Washington Post
gave Jeffrey Cortes turn out to be the best endorsement
Jack Smith could possibly get. Jeffrey Cortes a identifies himself
(03:00):
as a nonpartisan analyst, yet he is a frequent guest
Dawn Fox News. He insists he has no respect for politicians,
yet he also insists a corrupt X president should not
be prosecuted just like anybody else. And his links on
Twitter are all to the New York Post and not
in an ironic, my god, people actually believe this is
(03:22):
a newspaper way. And he dismisses congressman and senators and
governors and candidates as quote political fanatics. And then it
turns out all the people he thinks are political fanatics
happened to be Democrats. And he defends Elon Musk, and
he has a Twitter blue checkmark because he paid Elon
(03:42):
Musk eight dollars for it. So with Jeffrey Cortes's unintentional
endorsement of Jack Smith and the rights hilarious complaint that
Smith may not be impartial because his wife donated to
Biden campaign and produced a documentary about Michelle Obama and
Congressman Andy Clyde says that means America has a corrupt,
too tier justice system and who going to tell him
(04:05):
about Jenny Thomas. All that constitutes the good Jack Smith
Special Council news. The mad Jack Smith Special Council news
is that, according to the same Post Pace, Smith is
still in Europe, partly because he's still prosecuting war crimes
at the Hague, partly because the Posts experts believe in
essential part of his role will be finding somebody, anybody
(04:28):
to find him office space in d C. And partly
because he had a bike accident and knee surgery and
he can't travel yet, can't travel, immobilized, forced to stay
in just one place. This, after all, is the goal
for Trump, and it seems we did move closer to
(04:48):
it in five different areas. Wednesday, after three years, the
way was finally cleared for the I r s to
give the House Ways and Means Committee his tax returns.
The Supreme court tersely refused to block it. Unsigned opinion
no published descents, so Trump doesn't even know which of
his legal prostitute to demand his money back from. The
problem remains that in forty one days, the chairmanship of
(05:10):
that committee changes from Democrat Richard Neil to probably Republican
Burn Buchanan, and we don't know how the Republicans will
try to put Trump's returns back into the toothpaste tube.
We only know that they will do so. We also
know that the Democrats, who currently runways and means will
try to get information from those tax returns out in
some way, either via the mandatory Presidential Tax Return Audit
(05:33):
program or some quickly prepared and approved public report by
the committee next month that could focus on anything from
how Trump got seventy three million dollars worth of refunds
to what foreign banks he has borrowed from two discrepancies
between what he said about his net worth or the
value of his companies and what he put in his
tax returns, to whether or not he actually paid his
(05:55):
taxes or has ever made an actual charitable donation in
his life to anything except the Ivana Trump Memorial Scholarship
Fund for caddies at bed Minster. At minimum, there is
hope here that the court's ruling could also pave the
way for any one of several Senate committees still under
Democratic control next year to get all or part of
(06:17):
Trump's tax returns. Meanwhile, back to the Jack Smith nuclear
kleptomania case and the questions from the three judge appeals
panel from the Eleventh Circuit, which yesterday pretty much established
that the judges believed the decision to appoint a special
master to review the documents Trump stole was not merely
a bad one, but an unprecedentedly bad one, and that
(06:38):
the question is how quickly that panel will rule against Trump. Meantime,
Lindsey Graham testified for two hours to the Georgia Grand
Jury investigating Trump's attempt to falsify the election results there,
which just increases the likelihood that everybody else the d A.
Fanny Willis wants to grill, like Mark Meadows and Michael
Flynn will wind up having to address the scheme as well.
(07:00):
Not enough legalities for you. New York City now thinks
it might be able to reacht aren't the Stormy Daniels
hush money case against Trump, But to do so, they
would have to have new evidence, and to get new evidence,
they'd almost have to get it from former Trump CFO
Alan Weisselberg, And so far Weiselberg has not yet flipped
unless there is something they know about in the Manhattan
d A's office that the rest of us don't. But wait,
(07:24):
there's more. You know the e Gene Carol lawsuit against Trump. No, no, no,
that's the first a Gene Carol lawsuit against Trump for defamation.
This is the second a Gene Carol lawsuit against Trump
for sexual assault and battery. And that is going to
be filed in New York on Thursday, because that is
when the one year window opens for victims here to
(07:45):
suthe their abusers, no matter when the assault occurred in
the past. Thursday. Thanksgiving, Yes, Thanksgiving, and my holiday gift
to you will be I'll leave you to make your
own Trump turkey jokes here. Well, first of all, this
(08:06):
election is more than harshel walks erections about the people
still ahead. Yeah you weren't dreaming, you heard it. Asked
about the latest revelations from the woman he pressured into
(08:28):
an abortion, the one he says he's never met, and
doesn't know. He referred to the upcoming Georgia erection with
an r oh herschel more trouble at the World Cup
as Leonel Messi's Argentina team loses to Lionel Messi's Saudi
Arabia employers, and for some of us, the World Cup
(08:48):
itself means two other words, sucker Breakdown, the most beloved
outtaken ESPN's history, complete with Jean Luca Paluca, Rigga Birt's
Beyond Hung's song, and of course Gary Miller. If you've
never heard, you must hear, and if you have heard
it a hundred times you must hear my annotated version.
(09:10):
Anyway in three two one, that's next. This is countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead on Countdown.
Leonel Messi's Saudi Arabia team upsets his Argentina team at
(09:34):
the World Cup, and oh boy, do they have an
ethical problem there even for soccer. Speaking of soccer, it's
the famous soccer Breakdown tape starring Gary Miller, Jeng Nukapuka
and Rigger Bert beyond On song and annotated by me.
Coming up first. In each edition of Countdown, we feature
a dog in need You can help. Every dog has
its day to Wilmington, North Carolina, and poor Max. Max
(09:57):
is a senior. His human died, and, as often happens
under those circumstances, he completely shut down. But the Great
Dane Friends of Rough Love found him a foster. The
foster helped Max to play and be happy again, and
then came the limp and the X rays and the
diagnosis of bone cancer. The good news is dogs like
Max often respond better to oncology treatment than people do.
(10:18):
Plus it's cheaper. Plus if he needs an amputation, he
can handle it. In short, Great Dane Friends needs donations
to help Max, only about bucks short of their goal
on Cuddley. You can find Max there on Cuddly or
on my Twitter feeds, and a retweet of his bio
will also help him. I thank you, and Max thanks you.
(10:49):
Postscripts to the news some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Some story from Atlanta dateline Atlanta, Yeah he
really sent it? Herschel Walker flanked by Ted Cruz and
a visibly startled Lindsey Graham talking to the nodding head
dollar Fox News Sean Hannity after a second woman who
(11:10):
says herschel Walker got her pregnant and pressured her to
get an abortion, revealed that he had threatened suicide if
she didn't abort their child. The interviewer herschel live. It's
always a dangerous thing, especially if Dr Freud is in
the neighborhood. Well, first of all, this election is war
than Herchelwalk disirection about the people. Electile dysfunction. He's fading
(11:34):
at the polls. He's now no better than a schlong shot. Okay,
let's hear it again. Well, first of all, this election
is more than Herchelwalk disirection about the people. Well, first
of all, this election is more than Herchelwalk dis erection
about the people. Well, first of all, this election is
war than Herchelwalk disirection about the people. Well, first of all,
(11:55):
this election is more than Herchelwalk disrection. I'm sorry, it's
my ringtone now than her erection. You say what an idiot.
Walker also insists he does not know the woman in question,
which makes the recorded phone call between them that she
produced yesterday kind of strange. Plus the answering machine message
(12:15):
in which Walker says, this is your stud farm calling
you big sex puppy. You. The woman has challenged Walker
to meet her face to face about the abortion, and
he claims didn't happen because he'd never met her and
doesn't know who she is. Before the Georgia runoff, there
is no comment. Well, yeah, there was kind of a comment. Well,
(12:36):
first of all, this election is more than hersel walking
erections about the people. Stateline, New York. The Associated Press
thought it had settled a controversy when it fired investigative
reporter James Laporta. It was his source who said that
a Russian missile had hit Polish territory last week, when
in fact it was Ukrainian defensive rockets that hit poland
the inaccuracy could have triggered a NATO Article five action
(13:00):
or worse. In fact, the AP has merely traded one
scandal for another. Associated Press slack messages their internal dialogue
shows that Laporta merely advised European Desk editor Laura Left
that he had an American intelligence source, who he noted,
had been vetted by an AP executive who said it
was a Russian missile. The editor Left asked Laporta if
(13:22):
he could write it up quote as an urgent, and
Laporta's reply was no, I'm actually at a doctor's appointment.
What I passed is all I know at the moment.
Three minutes later, with Laporta not on the story and
no other sources coming forward, the editor left sent the
alert out anyway, and Laporta got fired. In September nineteen eighty,
(13:45):
I had a minor argument with my boss at United
Press International, and his boss came back from lunch at
that moment, completely misunderstood what had happened and fired me
on the spot. I was back at work forty eight
hours later because a the boss was also completely drunk,
be he had no cause to do anything to me,
nor write to and see. The Wire Service Guild, which
(14:06):
is now the News Media Guild, which represented u p
I and still represents the AP wasn't much on getting
this money, but it was tenacious against capricious behavior by executives.
Seems like Laporta and the Guild have a huge case
against the Associated Press, which completely scapegoated him. Dateline Brazilia
remember all the grudging respect for Brazilian fascist Jare Bolsonaro
(14:29):
for having not challenged his loss in the presidential election
premature jocularity everybody yesterday Balsonaro challenge because machines, audits invalidate
and how do you say my pillow? In Portuguese and
dateline Louisville. No change in the James Comer scandal. He
(14:49):
is the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee and
has promised investigations of Joe and Hunter Biden, but will
not comment on whether or not he'll investigate the claims
of his own college girlfriend, Marilyn Thomas, that he hit her,
that he threatened her life, that he called her mother
there and threatened Maryland's life, and he tried to cover
up his own role in the abortion of their child
(15:10):
by trying to force Ms Thomas to not use his
name on any of the paperwork. This is Sports Center. Wait,
(15:30):
check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Aberman
in sports. This World Cup has really had everything, homophobia,
threats against players who wanted a protest, homophobia, charging fans
twenty two dollars to drink alcohol at the games, and
now wow. Argentinean star Lionel Messi signed a huge deal
(15:55):
last mate to promote tourism to Saudi Arabia, and the
centerpiece to the Saudiast tourism plan is called Vision twenty
thirty and vision centered on Saudi Arabia's bid for the
twenty thirty World Cup. So Messi, a player for Argentina
in this World Cup, is also being paid by Saudi
Arabia and its efforts to win the rights to host
(16:16):
that World Cup. And yesterday Saudi Arabia upset Argentina two
to one. In fact, Messi and Argentina blew a one
nothing lead in that game. This is already considered one
of the greatest upsets in World Cup history. Messi's team
losing too, Messi's employer, Oops, thank you, Nancy Faus. This
(16:49):
was a big enough deal in Saudi Arabia that some
workers were rewarded today with the day off. In fact,
all workers got the day off. Percent of the country
has the day off in Saudi Arabia, presumably this includes
Saudi employee Leonel mess See baseball. The Athletic reports at
Twist on the Philadelphia Phillies unexpected National League title, even
(17:10):
though they kind of disappeared while up to to one
in the World Series and have not been heard from since.
Veteran coach Rob Thompson took over as manager on June
three of last season, and that turns out to me
about just about four months after he had decided that
two was going to be his last year in baseball
he was gonna retire. He has now changed his mind.
(17:32):
And I have another sports story. As I mentioned yesterday,
we are now fifty nine years removed from the Kennedy assassination,
which means that Thursday is the anniversary of the day
the National Football League played its regular schedule anyway, even
though the President of the United States had been murdered
forty eight hours earlier. I was told a story about
(17:52):
this that I have never found a second source for.
But I cannot imagine that my first source made it
up or got it wrong. My first boss in television
at CNN Sports was named Bill McPhail. He had in
the president of CBS Sports and the way they televise
NFL games then and now, which built pro football in
this country. He and the commissioner Pete rosel pretty much
(18:14):
designed that. Roselle is in the Football Hall of Fame.
Bill McPhail's brother and father are in the Baseball Hall
of Fame. Anyway, Bill mcfail and Roselle also thought football
in primetime was the next Beck's best thing, and they
developed Monday Night Football for CBS, but it did not
do better in the ratings than the Beverly Hillbilly's rerun
did on CBS. The CBS fired McPhail and ABC got
(18:36):
Monday Night Football. Anyway, Roselle and McPhail were great friends
and based in New York and so On Sunday, November,
according to Bill, he and Roselle went to Yankee Stadium
together to watch the Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals
right after the Kennedy assassination. Within weeks, rosel would say
he was mistaken to not have canceled the games that day.
(18:59):
Twenty years later, in an interview, he told me it
was the greatest mistake of his life. But Roselle was
it about one thing. Despite the assassination, despite the grief,
despite Lee Harvey Oswald being shot on live national television
forty minutes before the kickoff of all the NFL games,
attendance for those games was normal, down maybe five hundred
(19:22):
or a thousand per game. There were sixty eight thousand
fans at Yankee Stadium for the Giants game that day.
But Bill McPhail told me that during halftime of that game,
a man appeared at their seats and asked Roselle, are
you Pete Roselle? And when Roselle confirmed it, he, without
a word, punched Roselle in the face. He said nothing,
(19:43):
he walked away. McPhail said he moved to follow the man,
but Roselle stopped him and said, don't I know how
he feels? Had? Its World Cup time, which for some
(20:07):
of us can only mean one thing. It's soccer breakdown time.
The annotated version of an ESPN classic coming up. First
daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and done in Kruger
Effex specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world
three to one? Lebronze Ashley Parker of the Washington Post,
(20:27):
she stepped in it big time. A New York Times
reporter was whining on Twitter that she had a scoop
about Fox getting exclusive coverage of the wedding at the
White House over the weekend, but the Press office had
waived her off her story. Well, Miss Parker jumped in
and won the Both Sides is Um Award for the day,
probably the week, maybe the month. Quoting. I spent four
(20:48):
years covering the Trump White House and two years covering
the Biden White House. What's fascinating is that they both lie,
albeit in very different ways. Trump team was shameless, whereas
Biden team is too cute by half. Miss Parker got
kind of you know, ratio at Last Look at was
ten thousand, eight hundred to two thousand, three hundred fifty
(21:10):
three to nine likes, so she clarified quote. To be clear,
not all lies are created equal, and the magnitude, frequency
and audacity is certainly different. But the Biden White House,
for example, has also waived us off correct reporting about
Biden's Scotus picks, Egypt trip attendees, in private meetings, etcetera.
(21:31):
Ms Parker then got re ratioed at Last Look four thousand,
ninety three to five hundred nineteen to three thirty two likes,
which is actually worse than the first ratio. She has
not tweeted since. The runner up Katherine Harrihage of CBS
News well really a Fox News, but now inexplicably she
(21:52):
appears on CBS. She is back with her quote scoops unquote,
which are actually just leaks handed to her by Republican politicians.
The latest quote CBS News has obtained data from a
laptop up purported to have belonged to Hunter Biden. The
data came directly from the source, who said they provided
it to the FBI under subpoena. In other words, Harriage
(22:14):
and CBS have no idea if it's Hunter Biden's laptop,
or if it's the correct contents of whose ever laptop
it is, or if it's just Charlie Rose's underwear, but
they let Katherine Herridge put it on the air. Anyway.
The joke ultimately maybe on CBS because this headline from
a Washington newspaper house GOP targets Hunter Biden, but voters
(22:37):
say priorities are wrong. That is not from the Washington Post.
It is from the right wing Washington Examiner. And it
makes a huge deal out of the Morning Consult poll
that shows that even among Republicans, only fifty two are
interested in investigating the president's son. This is the most
reasonable thing the Republicans have done in a poll this
(22:57):
year decade. But our winners Stu Peters, the right wing
nut job and producer of the alleged documentary Died Suddenly,
which purports to tell the untold saga of people who
died suddenly after getting vaccinated against COVID nineteen and shows
video of when they died suddenly. The website The Real
(23:20):
truth Or points out that at least four people shown
in the film Collapsing who the producers like Stu Peters
say died suddenly, included Kansas State basketball player Kyante Johnson
and comedian Heather McDonald, and they all four turn out
to have not died at all, let alone died suddenly,
(23:42):
and they've not even gotten sick or injured, and none
of them were filmed just after they got vaccinated. I mean,
Heather McDonald just put out a new edition of our
podcast yesterday, and Kyante Johnson had fourteen points Monday against
Rhode Island, so they're both doing surprisingly well for having
just died suddenly. Stu, remember if you alter the pronunciation
(24:03):
of my name just slightly, it comes stupede Ers Peters,
whose credibility died suddenly. Two day's worse. Parson and the
World to the number one story on the Countdown, and
(24:31):
my favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell.
You may enjoy this one enough to keep a copy.
Happy Holidays. I mentioned Soccer's World Cup being played during
the late autumn for the first time for everybody who
worked at ESPN during the World Cup he held here
in the United States from mid June to mid July.
(24:53):
That phrase the World Cup means only one thing, soccer breakdown.
Gary Miller was one of the backbones of Sports Center.
I had worked with him at CNN. He was strong, competent,
very loud, forceful, He hated mascots, and he had no filter.
(25:14):
He and Dan Patrick were great friends in Atlanta, and
then Gary and Dan left for ESPN within months of
each other. This has been said of me, and so
I say it of Gary with affection. He suffered no
fools gladly, and though his elbows were always up, he
made sure that ninety nine percent of the time when
they bumped into somebody, that somebody had well deserved it.
(25:37):
As near as I can piece together, Gary was doing
the eleven PM Sports Center on Friday night June. Typically,
Dan and I did the eleven Sunday through Thursday. The
story of soccer's nineteen ninety four World Cup, at least
in the first week, was a preponderance of player ejections
red cards handed them by the referee. In those days,
(25:59):
the eleven PM Sports Center included a feature two or
three minutes long on a story that had drummed up
a lot of interest during the first show planning meeting
around three PM. It was a feature called breakdown. It
provided long form analysis in today's when we didn't have
a lot of That. Could be a coach getting fired,
could be the relative credentials of Baseball Hall of Fame candidates.
(26:20):
Could be one fantastic play in a game. Once we
did a dead pan, serious breakdown about injuries to mascots.
A producer or the anchor himself would write the script,
They would prerecord the narration, and then the producer would
edit it. This is pre digital. It was done tape
to tape. It could take hours to edit it, and
(26:41):
the key was to track it to record that narration,
which was done in a tiny wood paneled room wreaking
of mildew that looked and smelled exactly like every suburban
basement reck room in America circa October ninet. That's where
Gary Miller found himself on the night of Friday j
(27:04):
reading a script about soccer players from around the world,
none of whose names he had ever seen before, let
alone tried to pronounce. It was the soccer breakdown in
all senses of the word. The raw tape, the original
version of his tracking session for the script for Soccer Breakdown,
(27:27):
is easily the most beloved bootleg in ESPN's history. In fact,
it is so popular that there are several different cuts
of this bootleg. People have sat down with the original tape,
which runs nearly twenty minutes, and edited it down to
only the best or worst parts. Now, I'm not going
to say I have a copy of the original. I'm
(27:49):
simply going to note that Dan Patrick ran it on
his radio show in two thousand seventeen and posted the
whole segment to YouTube. So yeah, that's where I got
my copy of it. Uh, that's my story and I'm
sticking to it. I'm going to annotate for you what happened.
So let me present this to you in three segments.
(28:11):
It did not start well for Gary, and it got
worse from there. Although Mr Miller gave it its eternal
title and life by going sibilant on the s for
the words soccer, I'll know it only one thing, the
acronym of International Soccer's outfit f I f A Gary,
It's pronounced FIFA Soccer Breakdown. In three to one FIFA
(28:36):
Soccer's governing Party three to one FIFA Soccers three two one.
The red card has become the calling card for this
year's tournament. Seven ejections for three to one witness Romania's
ian blad you against the Swiss is or through christ Uh.
(29:02):
But that was the easy part. Now in script came
the names of the World Cup stars who had been
given red card ejections in the first week of the tournament.
One was the seventeen year old star of the Cameroon team,
Riggerbert's Song, often referred to by his full name Riggerbert's
Song bahog or as it was said in the script,
(29:24):
Riggerbird Bahong song three to one Cameroons, Riggleberg three to Cameroons,
Riggleberg byan Ganzanza Da Da byan Young Song three to
(29:45):
one Cameroons, Riggleberg Banyang song by on Young Song three
to one, three to one. By the way, Riggerbert's Song
is now the manager of the Cameroon team. He's gone
and being the youngest player in the World Cup history
(30:06):
to get a red card to running his nation's team.
I'll interject here that at the start of this final
major clip. Gary Miller says, to somebody who has clearly
entered that tracking room that smelled of mildew, get out
of here. Dan Patrick said that was him. I think
he's mistaken. It doesn't matter much, but there was no
reason for Dan to have been there on a Friday night,
(30:28):
especially if we were not doing the show. And also
there has never been a microphone ever, but Dan has
not spoken into anyway. We have already met Riggerbert Bhano song.
Now meet my guy, the Italian goalie John Luca Polyuka
to get out of there, too, is guilty through too
(30:53):
How long is this tape? Three to one? One one
Cameron's Riggelberg Bunyan song provided a breakaway from Brazil's Babetta
a Bah God Almighty, I hate soccer, Cameroon's Riggleberg Bunyon
Young song, I'm better try that one last time. Two
(31:15):
one Cameroon's Riggleberg bun Yon Young song, I hate this
chalk up Bolivia's Luis Christaldo for both and three to one.
But the most notable red card of the tournament came
on Italian goaltender Jean Luca Palyuka, Paul Yoka, Paul Yucca
(31:35):
from three to one. But the flurry of red cars
thus far as Todd, coaches and players alike to control
their play if they'd like to control their fate in
this tournament. Holy, that is all. The pronunciation of Riggerbert's
song's name is one thing. I was delighted by how
(31:57):
furious Gary got at Gianluca Pallyuka of the Italian team
and the expletive he used to describe him. Richard may
have just heard. In the days that followed, in fact,
the Italian goalie's name became shorthand for me for that
expletive in question. So for the next three years on
Sports Center and after that on Fox Sports News, and
(32:18):
then on my ESPN two show and on Football Night
in America, and then when I returned to Sports Center
in two thousand eighteen, if you heard me say John
Luca Polyuca while we were showing a player making an
error or arguing with an umpire or official, I was
actually implying that the player had just said, uh, John
(32:38):
Luca Polyuca. There's another punch line to this story, of course,
the idea to do this soccer breakdown that's so bedeviled
Gary Miller. The story of red cards in the first
week of the nine World Cup. The idea to do
that came from Gary Miller, never volunteer. I've never been
(32:59):
convinced that Gary was really happy about his immortality, certainly
not in the way my ees and pal Steve Levy
not so secretly glories in the day. He once tried
to say that a New England Patriots player had a
bulging disk, but didn't quite get disc right. But Gary
Miller has been a good sport about this through the
end of his ESPN career in two thousand four and afterwards.
(33:22):
In these days at Channel two and Channel nine in
Los Angeles and most recently at Channel two in Cincinnati,
it isn't hard to understand why this tape is so
famous and the pleasure derived from it so enduring. As
John Klees once said about the real life hotel manager
on whom he based his character from Faulty Towers, he
had this wonderful bad temper. But there are two more things. One,
(33:46):
this occurred exactly a week to the day after the O. J.
Simpson car chase, and people forget now just how disturbing
that was in in America, especially sports America, like at ESPN, that,
with the exception of a few of us who knew,
nobody knew how rotten a human being O. J. Simpson was,
(34:06):
so even a week later we all needed this laugh,
and Gary gave it to us and even larger. The
essence of soccer in every country in which it is
played is that it always allows, and encourages and even
demands that its fans complain about it. And so while
(34:26):
we cherish soccer breakdown and three to one and Rigor
Bert Bahan on Song and Babetto and John Luca Paluka,
to me, it is really about five words that anybody
who hates the game will say. But there are also
five words that any fan of the sport will certainly
use at some point in his life, possibly at some
(34:51):
point today. And they are the five words with which
I will leave you for now. A fah God, Almighty,
I hate soccer. Don't sleep on babette too. I've done
(35:18):
all the damage I can do here. Thanks for listening.
If you're not following or subscribed or whatever, please do so.
In fact, stop a passer by on the street and
get them to subscribe as well. Here are our credits.
Most of the music, including our theme from Beethoven's ninth
was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Philip Channel. They are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration
and keyboards by John Philip Channel, guitars, bass and drums
(35:41):
by Brian Ray, produced by T K O Brothers. Other
Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Alderman theme from ESPN two,
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever,
and in light of Gary Miller's cameo here, our announcer
(36:03):
today was Kenny Maine. Now everything else is pretty much
my fault. So that's countdown for this the six seventh
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Arrest him now while
we still can. New episodes resumed next week. Until then,
I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, good luck,
(36:24):
and Happy Thanksgiving. Countdown with Keith old Woman is a
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(36:45):
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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