The moral compass of Ottawa Sports media, Ian Mendes
The Full 60 with Craig Custance
The Athletic
4.8 • 595 Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2021
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ian Mendes, the host of The Athletic Hockey Show is Craig's guest this week on the Full 60.
Ian discusses the positive vibes coming out of Ottawa, as the Senators future looks very bright with some of the NHL's best young talent on the roster.
Mendes shares his philosophy on life, including his passion to learn from young people, his quest to learn about gender and race rights, as the moral compass of the Ottawa Sports scene vows to use his platform for good to make his corner of the Earth a better place, Plus Ian shares the story of the medical battle that his daughter Elissa went through early on in her life, and the support that she and the entire Mendes family felt from the sports world.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Full 60 featuring Craig Custins and presented by The Athletic. Each week we'll |
| 0:12.3 | dive into the biggest stories in hockey while bringing in unique voices to entertain and explain |
| 0:17.9 | all aspects of the game. Hey, this is Craig and welcome to this week's |
| 0:21.7 | episode of the full 60 and I am thrilled to be joined by, and I'm happy to say it's the |
| 0:27.3 | athletics Ian Mendez. We've called him other things in the past, other companies at least, |
| 0:33.0 | attached to his name. Finally, we got him under the right side of the ledger here. He has been called |
| 0:38.1 | a national treasure in Canada. And that's a fact. I am not making that up. He is, and I want him on, |
| 0:47.2 | we'll talk a little Ottawa to start because he's so plugged in there. But Ian has done so much |
| 0:53.8 | in his career, has so many great stories. |
| 0:56.5 | I just love diving into that, how people end up from being a mascot to working in PR to working |
| 1:02.4 | at radio TV. The path, people know my obsession with that. And Ian is somebody I think you can all |
| 1:07.7 | learn from. Ian, thank you for doing this. How are you? |
| 1:28.6 | Listen, you've set the bar high here, Craig. So I thought everybody had to be a mascot at some point to get into this industry. You were never a mascot? I was Sparty at Michigan State University. No, I wasn't strong enough. He's ripped if you've ever seen Sparty. They wouldn't even let me near him. Oh my gosh. I did one of the, this is a variety off track. One of the first interviews I ever did at |
| 1:33.1 | Michigan State was this with this guy named John Spirit, Johnny Spirit, who would paint his body |
| 1:38.4 | and ride his bike to every Michigan State away game. And this guy was an interesting fella. And I remember doing an on TV, |
| 1:47.4 | one of the things with Johnny Spirit during a volleyball game in East Lansing, Michigan. So I've |
| 1:54.7 | interviewed mascots. I don't even know if it's a mascot. I wouldn't say mascot. Well, no, if you |
| 1:58.9 | spoke to him, he's not a mascot. He's not a mascot. That's the number one rule as a mascot. You can't say anything. Did you read the Sharkey story? You know, as somebody who's been there, being suspended, yeah. Being suspended in the air and never breaking character. I would have ripped the head off of my shark costume so fast to signal for like the fire crew or something to get me out of there. |
| 2:17.9 | Oh yeah. |
| 2:18.2 | Kevin Kerr's did such a great job in that story because the number of people that he got |
| 2:22.6 | to, whether it was Mike Ritchie or just the broadcasters at the game, like that was such |
| 2:27.8 | a well done story. |
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