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What up welcome in this is the herd wherever you may be and however you may be making as part of your Friday. Thanks so much alongside the very talented joy Taylor.

I'm Doug Gottlieb filling in for Colin Coward. It is March which of course is the greatest college basketball and arguably sports month of the year and man did the end of February go out with a boom.

We actually have baseball to talk about with a record breaking contract Bryce Harper. We got football to talk about with Calamari being either big dollar than people thought that he was and Jason Witton leaving the broadcast booth. We'll get back to that.

We got basketball to talk about with outstanding college hoops huge upset on Fox Sports one last night. Of course the NBA tonight LeBron the older model against Janus the newer model.

We're starting to get into Hey Lakers or must win territory. They've competed well against the top of the league. Now you're getting the team with the best record and the league at home tonight. We got a lot of things to get to morning to you. Joy. How are you? Good morning.

What was your reaction when you heard that Jason Witton was leaving the Monday night football booth after just one year?

I was very surprised and curious. Surprise because that's a huge job to leave and an even bigger job to take leaving the NFL. So you would think that that's something you're very, very committed to.

And curious because I don't know what to expect from him after a year off from football, which I think everyone is just assuming he's going to pick up where he left off and mentally and as far as his teaching abilities and locker room guy and all that.

I'm sure will be seamless, but the football field stuff is what I'm not sure about. Yeah, you don't get faster. Everybody else does a year away after having 63 catches, but not looking great doing it.

Um, I, you know, like it's, it's going to be fascinating. Listen, I agree with you. I was surprised. And look, none of us are blind, deaf or dumb. Oftentimes people who have sat in an analyst chair are a little bit more reasonable in terms of their analysis of it. It's a hard gig.

It's a hard gig to do, especially when you're judged by the entire world. You're the only game you're a standalone game. Whereas if you're on a Sunday at a one o'clock or four o'clock game,

you know, even if there's some other big guys on there's parts of the country that don't hear you. Everyone hears and it's Monday night football, which has been synonymous with the very top in the field, whether or not they don't get the suit bowl. They only get one playoff game. But the fact is being a standalone game. Everyone parses every word you have. And when you compare it against your former quarterback Tony Romo.

It's really hard because everybody loves Roma and look, there's flaws in the hiring for ESPN. They had a completely green crew. Like as much as everyone loves Booker McFarland, he never called NFL games. So much as everybody loves Joe Tess tour. He never called NFL games. So there's no NFL chops, no equity with the audience. It was hard. And he rightfully got some criticism.

But it makes no sense to leave one of those four chairs. Right. It's why I sat here in this very chair before, before cowherd ever got a chance to comment on it when Tony Romo left playing in the NFL.

To be the lead broadcaster lead color man analyst for CBS. They said he's not going back because once you have that chair.

You're at the top of the mountain. You didn't have to climb. You didn't have to fight. You didn't have to wait for a guy to retire. You leapfrog to bunch of steps. You didn't have to do ESPN news overnight. Right. You didn't have to call NFL Europe. You don't have to slog it out. You got one of those big chairs. Never give it up.

So on many levels, it makes no sense. They were going to try and figure out a way to make it work. He would have been better as time went on.

They likely would have moved Burger McFarland into the booth. Now it would have been a good three man booth. And we would have started. Okay. You know what I understand the wittin thing. He would have gotten better. Our expectations would have lessened.

They would have grown together as a crew. He had a four year cut. It makes no sense to leave one of the four big chairs covering the biggest professional sport in the industry.

To go back to playing tight end for the Dallas Cowboys unless.

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