Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Now back to Southie and Dick onWhat's Radio ninety three point three kJ rfn
oh Washington Huskies. See I don'tcrack, You're home for the Huskies and
over stop Rose, back to Crossafter the time out Green Croston inception.
(00:21):
He put it right in the handsof Carson Brunner and he just doesn't get
it over Brunner who's standing right therein front of him. Wow, how
about that. I'm shocked. Thoughwe actually had a radio or TV call
from ninety one, I wasn't sureif that had been invented yet back in
the day. That's suppressive. Thatguy you heard right there tiptoeing the back
of the end zone. I stillremember that play like it was yesterday.
(00:42):
Were you eighteen years old or nineteenin that game? I think I was
a very mature nineteen. You werenineteen years old, a true freshman correct
from Aberdeen Washington, Aberdeen scoring atouchdown in the Rose Bowl in your very
first year. I knowlready remember aboutthat moment, Marri. Could you ever
have envisioned that for yourself when youwere a senior? Can you believe that
we were twelve and oh that yearwe didn't lose a game. I know
(01:03):
that, and well I lived it, Dave, I lived in that right.
But the veteran leadership that we hadwas so impressive because they Napoleon and
myself were the only two freshmen thatdid not red shirt that year. Wow.
So you want to talk about carryingyour water and making sure you weren't
making the old guys mad, thelincol Kennedy's that was just here before that,
before I sat in this chair.He made sure that I did my
(01:25):
job correctly. How'd you get Imean, yes, you're a great player,
but how on a Don James teamwho said what the best freshman or
juniors or whatever the line was,right? How did you even get on
the field as a true freshman witha guy that just despised putting freshmen on
the field dirty pictures? I knewit. I knew it. I threatened
(01:47):
to cut one of the legs onhis tower. Wow. Over, so
he said, hey, you're gonnaplay. You actually just scared me a
little bit right there with that idea. I know that Don is no longer
with us, and he just scaredthe crap out of you from that happens.
Man. So here's the real reasonwhy I played Aaron Pierce was a
senior that year. We had somemaybe fruition at the at the position where
(02:12):
we didn't have a lot of depth. So who's the next guy? Line?
Me? Wow? And I wasable to play, and I was
able to contribute and do my job. And I'll never forget. My first
game was against Stanford. We beathim forty two to seven. Was that
the opener of that year? Yeah? Down there, down there, down
there. Yeah. They recruited mehard. Danny Green was a coach,
Dave Tipton. I chose Washington.I chose the right place. My mom
(02:35):
didn't talk to me for three daysafter. I really shunned Stanford because you
want me to go there? Webeat him forty two to seven. You
beat everybody except Cal forty two seven. In the parking lot after the game
and I said, Mom, Isaid, haven't you got anything? Go
to Stanford? Yeah? What shesaid. And she's like, oh,
I can't believe you said that.Just say, mom, forty seven click.
That's all I gotta know. Andthen Randy Hart, who recruited me
(02:58):
to Washington after he left Washington outcoaching order name and then he yes,
so I'm a scout and I goto visit Stanford. Randy Hart's there.
I connect with him every time Iwent, and it was just a reunion.
It was great. He tell yourmom he finally made it to Stanford,
I said, Coach, I finallydid I love that? Well?
Mark, Mark Bruhner's with us andwe're talking off the air about Carson.
(03:20):
He heard that highlight coming in there, and I just think his legacy just
went up a couple of notches forme over the off season when he just
said, look, man, itwas I think he said, f the
money. Is that correct? Hemay have said screw the money. F
the money some dirty word. Idon't talk like that. We don't controne
that language. I would never evertalk like that ever. Also, I'm
lying, but his his passion,he showed that day that's what you're looking
(03:43):
for. And I don't know.I mean, you can have the money
or you can have the legacy,but you can't have both. Then Carson
Brunner took the legacy. And I'mproud of tell the guy, man,
I know you are too. Heplays the game for the right reasons and
he's our son and my wife andI and our family, my in laws
are here, Bob Laurie, andthen my young son Hudson is here,
who runs the runs the show thatruns the Bruner family. There you go.
(04:06):
But he plays the game for theright reasons and we're so proud of
him for not only what he doeson the field, but what he does
off the field. And he hadhe had some challenges and some choices to
make with the coaching change. Yeah, and talk about that for a little
bit, because that's a real thing, right, Like he came to play
for somebody else, and now there'sa new guy. So take us behind
(04:26):
the scenes as much as you feelcomfortable about how hard that decision was.
Well, this is his fourth headcoach. He's committed here, right,
And you commit to a school,you commit to a program, you commit
to what you're going to get academically, and you commit to being a Husky
legend. And when he was goingthrough the recruiting process, I my wife
and I made sure we didn't reallyput the bumpers up, but I kind
(04:47):
of put him up very quietly,if you know what I'm saying. So
he committed to Washington and he wantedto be a Washington Husky, and I
when he finally made that commitment.I said, son, I said,
what was the driving factor? MeanwhileI'm like, yeah, yeah, finally
he did it. And he's like, Dad, I've always dreamed about running
out of that tunnel. Wow,as a kid. And as soon as
we move back after I retired fromthe playing with the Texans, we bought
(05:10):
the season tickets and we've been everyhome game and he said, Dad,
that was the reason. Why isbecause I've always dreamed about running us out
of that tunnel, and now hegets to do it. And there's always
diversity, there's always things going onon. They come home from the National
Championship Game Tuesday, and then Wednesday, their coach is being interviewed. On
Thursday, he's on a plane toTuscaloosa. I don't fault him at all.
(05:30):
I want to be really clear.Coach to board did an outstanding job
while he was here. That's theclimate of college football these days, and
we need to live with it becausewhat we do is not going to change
it. Everything's going to be theway it is. And what we can
control our attitude. We can controlwhat he's going to do. When he's
in the locker room, he meetsthe new head coach, coach fishing,
he meets the coaching staff. Sonow Carson can control what he can do
(05:55):
with this new staff. And I'vechallenged him to help with this transition because
of that. You need you needleaders awesome, no matter what how great
the new coach is, no matterwhat he says, what he does.
You need people in that locker roomto lead that group to what is being
taught to them and what is beingtold to them. And Carson's champion that,
and I'm really proud of him forthat. Well. I love the
fact and Mark Bruner is joining us. I love the fact that you say
(06:17):
you commit to the university, youcommit to the school and not and not
the coach. If I've said thatone time, I've said it a thousand
times on the air of the lasttwenty five years. But I feel like
I'm losing the battle now. Ifeel like I say that and it doesn't
mean anything anymore because it doesn't seemlike that's the case anymore. But it
encourages me to know that there's atleast one kid out there that's still doing
(06:40):
that. But does it? Itis it hard for you to kind of
grasp that too, that it's justnever going to be the same. It
is hard. It is hard becausethe climate that when I played, you
could transfer, you had to sitout a year. Now people are having
multiple transfers. We just gained aseventh year player right to safety from Oklahoma.
That's right, that's right. He'shopefully going to help us win.
And I'm excited to meet this kidand see him and hopefully he can help
(07:04):
the Huskies win win games next year. But that's what college football has come
to these days, and we can'tchange that. But what we can do
is we can control what goes onin Husky stadiums and what goes on on
Montlake Avenue, right, So whynot find a way to get the best
players that we can here to thisbuilding? And coach Fish has proven that
wherever he's been that he is agood recruiter and he's a good motivator of
(07:26):
young man and let's let him andhis coaching staff do their job. Yeah.
I just can't believe it was thirtythree years ago, dude, that
you guys won that national championship.I mean, there's twenty year old kids
that have no idea what the hellwe're talking about. When I bring up
the ninety one team. So yougot the twenty three team obviously the sixteen
team. But I got to askyou because Mark Bruner is with us,
and you're a scout for the Steelers. You've been working with them now for
a long long time. Troy Fatano. I mean you saw him play a
(07:49):
bunch in person. I assume thatyou were a little influentzo in providing some
data on Troy. Tell us aboutwhat you hope the Steelers are getting in
Troy Fotanu. We were extremely excitedthat we were able to pick him at
twenty. We had no no,don clean that he was going to be
around at twenty. We brought himin for a pre draft interview. You're
allowed to bring in thirty players,right, and so we bring him in
(08:11):
and normally a car service comes andpicks up the players. Well, I
go to our guy and I said, hey, yes, what time is
he getting in? Because O,it's late, It's like almost ten o'clock
at night. I said, well, I want to go pick him up
because you know our meetings are done. He's like, you want to drive
and go pick him up? Isaid, yeah, he's a husky.
You gotta woke him, so allthe restaurants are closed because it's late.
I get him a couple of hamburgersand he looks in the car and he's
(08:31):
like, wait, was that fromme? I was like, yeah,
you're going to be hungry. He'slike, oh man, this is great.
We got to welcome me to HuskyWay. It doesn't take much to
make him happy. A couple ofburgers are he's smiling from air. So
he was a guy that I stoodon the table for and we had when
when we're evaluating our players, wehave a lot of people that are evaluate
him. So our assistant general managercame out to evaluate him. We had
(08:54):
other area scouts, we had overthe top scouts. He was evaluated by
a lot of people and he playedfootball the right way way as as we
as Steelers as we evaluate our players. And we were very, very lucky
and we're happy to have him asa Steeler. I think you guys got
to steal the first round. Idon't think there's any question about it.
And then then the whole thing thatcrops up the last week before the draft
about the knee, right, Imean, maybe that ended up helping you
(09:16):
guys out, but like, whatwas your evaluation of that, because we
hadn't heard about that until like threedays before the draft. We planned that,
didn't you. Yeah, I wasin the darkness, like you dead
serious. I'm not trying to pullyour leg. But there is a lot
of posturing by teams and by mediareports, by agents other agents. Maybe
let's I'm just making this up.Maybe there was an agent that recruited him
(09:37):
and didn't didn't get him, andI don't even know who his agent is.
Oh it's Colin Roberts. Age,excuse me. Colin Roberts is a
wonderful man, by the way,But maybe somebody else was recruiting him and
Colin got him. And yeah,I don't know. There's a myriad of
things. But what you do asa scout is you do your job and
you call your contacts to make surethat what you're what you believe that you
have in your information is correct.You got to a lot of games last
(10:00):
year, Marvin again, Mark brunerswith us. Everyone has their favorite moment
right from the twenty twenty three season. There's so many of them to choose
from. We did a little thingon the air break. We did a
bracket, We did a bracket.It was only sick. It was a
twelve or sixteen plays. I thinkit was twelve. I think it was
twelve. But we could have doneone hundred, right, We could have
gone all day with that thing.And the one that won was the missfield
(10:20):
goal by Oregon to beat the Duckshere in week six, I mean Dylan
Johnson's run against Oregon. Elijah Jackson, do you have a favorite moment as
a fan and a parent from lastyear's team that stands out to you?
Favorite moment, favorite game whatever.Oregon State to me was really was a
fun game. It rain kens alot fun but there was a couple of
things. Again, I'm gonna beselfish here. Unfortunately, Dylan Johnson had
(10:43):
a really nice run going towards theclosing of the end zone. He gets
stripped from behind by Katano Adapu,who's a really good player. So what
happens the very first play on defensepick no receivers running a shallow route.
There's a linebacker to you that comesfrom behind and knocks it out and gets
a fumble and then we recover it. Right, and okay, my kid's
(11:07):
interception, yeah, correct, Well, Jabar had an interception, but but
there were other plays that other playersmade, But that to me not only
was my son. I was probablymy son made a great play, but
that shows what type of resilience andwhat type of team we had last year.
Because we had a really good opportunityfor six points and things didn't go
okay for us, the defense says, Okay, we're going to step up
(11:28):
and we're going to put our offenseback out there the very next play.
That's what we do. So therewere a lot of things that I was
excited about. Okay, my kidmade a great play, but our defense
stepped up and helped out the offenseafter a negative play. So that to
me shows the resilience and what theteam was made of. Was a I
could talk about a lot of otherplays. Oh for sure. You know,
you want to throw a back shoulderfade to Rome. You want to
(11:48):
in Michigan State, the ball bouncesoff and and Polk gets the ball and
finds a way to get to getin the end zone. I mean,
we could go on. We couldbe for a half hour. I could
get another sixty four bracket for you. One of these days, we'll do
like a television show on just thetop hundred plays from that series from that
season make because it was wild.But hey, you look exactly the same
as you did thirty three years ago. It's unbelievable. Man, So grow
(12:11):
old, for God's sakes, bea normal person. Get some gray hair
going up there. Well, Idon't have much left, so wherever I
have. Yeah, you're the man. Mark Goodnes See, everybody all right?
Mark Brunner with us on the radioshow We're gonna break cam Cleland.
Another great husky tight end is gonnaswing by and say hello. We'll wrap
it up for our broadcast next onninety three three KJRFM