You know, obviously you've had a great long story career as a sports writer, and accidental sports writer is actually I think one of the best

you know sort of memoirs written in the field I you know read that a few years ago you know long

career lots of books but I'm to focus here for a few minutes

on the whole ESPN thing, as you know,

the last couple of years, particularly

with the Flakeate around here,

there was a lot of heat locally on the SPN.

You were the ombudsman before Brady.

We've tried to get Brady on here.

He doesn't really want a part of it for now,

which I guess I can understand.

But can you just walk me through the process

of how you wound up as the ombudsman of the ESPN?

I wish I could, Kirk Kirk I got a call from a now former ESPN

executive named John Walsh and he said would you like to be on a shortlist

everybody wants to be on a shortlist and it turned out that they were

looking for an ombudsman I was was the fifth one, I was not the first, and it came at a really interesting time in their history.

The stormy relations with Bill Simmons, the blow up over concussions with Goodell,

and they're pulling out of a PBS documentary, domestic violence flaring,

and their own struggle with the bottom line, which is, as I came to understand, kind of what the

SBN is about.

So you got, but you wound up getting hired and, you know, when you get hired are you told you know don't discuss this

...