Welcome, everybody to the Total Soccer Show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell.

I am very excited to be here with you all today, even though I am ill, and hopefully my voice holds up because I get to talk MLS playoffs.

And that is a real thing, Joe Lowry.

Last night I considered texting you and Jeff to say,

I don't know if I can do it today.

And then I thought, I watched these playoffs games.

They were good.

I want to talk about them.

So here we are.

Yeah, baby.

Fighting through that.

Usually it's CCL fever.

I guess now CCC fever.

Now it's MLS playoff fever.

There's fever.

Somewhere there's fever. Somewhere there's fever and we're going to pretend it's good and not bad and that you feel like crap. Jeff Ruder and any names you would like to throw out to MLS playoff fever slash viral illness? Yeah, you're doing your Michael Jordan or Jordan Morris flu game right now, right? Like this is you really locking in and saying the moment calls for it and I can't miss it. And it's inspirational to a lot of a generation of young podcast hosts aspiring who are listening to this wanting to fill what you do. Thank you, Jeff.

I truly think about that sometimes about like if I tried to explain a quote unquote

hardship of doing this job, I cannot tell you how quickly people's eyes would glaze over and they

would be disinterested. Rightfully so.

I was talking to a dad at pickup at my daughter's school the other day who's a firefighter, and he was just telling me about the day he'd had. And I was like, yeah, man, you know, sometimes like audition won't save properly. And it's just a whole thing. Not quite the same. Not quite the same burden is all I'm saying. and slowly realize when it comes to podcasting.

It's not the same.

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