Football is back! And for College Football Sideline Reporter Amanda Guerra, that means the craziness is about to begin. We talk what really happens on the sidelines, chasing down coaches and the wildest stadiums. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Worst College Mascots.
Interview with College Football Sideline Reporter Amanda Guerra
Nick VinZant 0:00
Nick, welcome to profoundly pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode, life on the sidelines and the worst college mascots,
Amanda Guerra 0:23
they'll give us information, you know, essentially kind of their game plan in these meetings, and we have to keep it quiet in college versus NFL. NFL is very much about the game itself. College football, we can tell stories about these kids, not for every college game. Do you need a police escort into the stadium and a police escort out of the stadium?
Nick VinZant 0:44
I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or a review. We really appreciate it really helps us out. So I want to get right to our first guest, because with football season getting underway, I think that she has a really interesting look at what really happens during these games and surrounding these games. This is college football sideline reporter, Amanda Guerra, what's football season like for you? Is football season fundamentally different than other sports seasons?
Amanda Guerra 1:20
Yes, normally, once football season comes, I disappear from everything, like my friends and family, like they know if they want to see me, like I have a heart out by somewhere, like around the middle of August, like I just disappear and I will reappear, sometimes in December, sometimes in January, sometimes it's pushed all the way to February. So it just depends. Yeah, it gets absolutely insane
Nick VinZant 1:47
as you lead up to a game, like, what is the week like for you? The day like for you? Et cetera, et cetera, whatever timeframe works
Amanda Guerra 1:56
for every single game, we will meet with both teams a lot of times, the visiting team. We meet with them on Zoom. So we do a zoom with the head coach, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, and some of the players. So hopefully we do all them at once. Sometimes they're spread out, they can last like a couple hours. So we will go around the horn like, first it's a play by play guy, and then it's the color commentary guy, and then it's me. They ask questions, you know, individually, and then I ask a question. We just kind of go around so we'll talk to each coach for 20 or 30 minutes, some last a little bit longer, and you know, we're asking them they're asking them more about like their game plan, you know, or players that are hurt, or how to pronounce names. I look for more of, like, story lines of, okay, what changed from last game to this game? Like, who are your leaders on the team? Just it changes throughout the different throughout the season. So we meet with both teams, and then we'll travel Thursday for a game, because Friday, we'll meet the home team in person. We'll do it all over again with the home team, and then we head out for the night, Friday night, and we all write all of our own stuff. Takes several hours, so we're normally up pretty late. And I'll put together like 10 set stories for the game that I would like to tell about these players, and then all of my other notes about what the coaches said and what, you know, our experts think should happen. It's a lot of work for not a lot of hits, and you have to be okay with most of your preparation, not even making it into the game, but you always have to be ready for it. Yeah,
Nick VinZant 3:36
that's what I was going to ask, right? It seems like an immense amount of preparation, and then once the game starts, you kind of have no idea what's going to happen. Going to happen or if any of this is going to be
Amanda Guerra 3:44
used. Yeah. So we have always what we call an open so you will always see your sideline reporter at the very beginning of the game, right before kickoff, they'll send it down. And it's really crazy. You think maybe you see them a lot. Our hits are like, 20 seconds long. 2030 seconds. So I have this whole story, whether, like, say it's about the quarterback or something, and he's made some really big changes, and he's getting ready for this really tough team. So I've talked to him, and I have this information. I tell this whole story within about 20 seconds, 25 seconds, and then once the game starts, it really is the flow of the game. I may have all these stories about all these different players, but it really depends on if they're playing in the game or if they're doing well, like, I'm not going to be like, Oh, hey. So this wide receiver over here, you haven't really seen them do anything, but I can tell you a nice story about them, you know, that doesn't go with the flow of the game. So that's why you have to have so much preparation. Because maybe it's like, their, you know, their backup running back who happens to have, like, a phenomenal game, or, like, a really good run or something. I want to be able to have something on that guy, so I can kind of add to the storyline of the game. But then you're also looking for injury reports. Those are a little bit harder. NFL injury reports are easier. Easier than college, because they're more forthcoming. In college, a lot of times we watch a guy get injured and they don't give us any information. We so you have to, like, look at what it is without over speculating. Like, if I see someone get hurt and they come off the field and they're grabbing their right leg, and then they go into the injury tent, and then they come out and they sit on the sideline, and I don't know what's happening. I still have to come up with a report with that little of information, because the viewers at home want to know what's going on with this guy.
Nick VinZant 5:35
You're just bouncing back and forth between both sidelines the whole game, essentially.
Amanda Guerra 5:39
Yeah, normally, we start normally, I'll do one per quarter. I'll kind of switch sidelines, but then it depends. Say, like, a team's down and they're doing really bad, and, you know, their quarterback comes off and it's like, slamming his helmet, you know, down, or maybe he grabs all of his offense around him and, like, wants to give him a speech. Like, I kind of need to be aware of what's going on with each sideline, because maybe I've spent almost the entire half on that sideline, but there's more information coming from it. So I can tell I have what I call a talk back button on my microphone, and I can go up to my producer, and they won't hear me on air. I'm like, hey, I can give you an update on, you know, kind of the atmosphere of what's going on at the sideline. So then I can say, you know, yes, they had the ball taken away from them, but as soon as they came off, you know, their quarterback or their center or something, you know, pulled his team around him and said, you know, guys like, we've got to get it. We just got to get, you know, one play, One down, one at a time. Those are kind of the live stories that I'm looking for on the sideline. So, yeah, it's just or if there's an injury, you know, I have to run to the other sideline. So it's a lot of back and forth. You're never standing still during the game. And then even if you are at one sideline, you're working your way down the field as to where the ball is, because you want to be able to see what's going on. Our
Nick VinZant 6:56
team's pretty forthcoming about it. In the let's stick to kind of college are they pretty forthcoming? Are they glad to have you there? Are they kind of like, Oh, God, we gotta deal with
Amanda Guerra 7:05
this. It depends. It kind of depends, um, and that's always a job of mine, is to get them to like me, essentially, you know, especially when we go into these meetings and, you know, if we're on Zoom or for in person, like we're not dressed up, we're wearing sweatshirts. You know, it's not formal. A lot of times we have snacks or something like that. Um, so I try to be as conversational as possible, and our goal is to never try to put that team in a bad light. You know, even if they're not having a good season, we're looking for the positivity from it, especially myself. So some coaches do not want to give you a lot of information, I will say, like service academy, coaches are very close to the close to the vest, if you will. Some coaches are great. Some are very forthcoming a lot. Sometimes it depends how long they've been coaching. If it's a new coach, you know, you could get a new coach that wants to give you all the information, or you could get a new coach that's scared of the media, so they want to keep everything really close to the best. And a lot of times, the coaches that have been doing it a little bit longer, I think, trust the media more that you know, because they'll give us information, you know, essentially, kind of their game plan in these meetings, and we have to keep it quiet until the games begin. Like, maybe we know a particular player is not going to be playing, but they'll ask us, please don't announce this until the game begins, like, until kickoff, or until right before kickoff, so the other team can't, you know, formulate a plan around that in the game, it depends. You can get kind of both worlds. You can get, like, a very, what we call coach speak answer, you know, it's like, oh, well, we need to get a first down. And, you know, we gotta, we can't turn the ball over. And, you know, blah, blah, blah, we have to be better on special teams. And then sometimes coaches are like, I forget which coach it was, but one time he went in to half time and he came back, he goes, Yeah, I told those guys, like, if they don't want to play, don't come out of the F and locker room. Like, just stand there. Those are the coaches that I love that are, like, really honest about their passion, kind
Nick VinZant 9:15
of switching a little bit of gears in the sense, like, how competitive of an industry is this to get into
Amanda Guerra 9:20
it is competitive. It's small. You can get into it. But as far as kind of climbing in it, there aren't a lot of jobs available, like, if you think about, you know, female sideline reporters, you know, we have CBS, which I work for, Fox, ESPN slash, ABC, NFL Network, and now Amazon, and that's it. I will say, once you are in it, it is very supportive. The females, especially are. It's a tight knit group. We very much watch out for one another. We call each other. You know when the games are going on, and check in with none another. You know whether it's, you know, helping each other with a story, or just what you're wearing that day, or. Are, you know, hey, I just want to wish you good luck, like there's not, you know, backstabbing or anything like that. I will say the females within the sports broadcast industry, industry, excuse me, we are very close knit, and we're very tight. So it's not competitive in that way. It's just more of trying to get your foot in the door and then continue to climb up.
Nick VinZant 10:23
How much do you really kind of have to know about the sport? Everything, everything, like you've got, I don't know anything about football. Like if somebody said, what the four 3d I know there's a four, three and a three, four, and I couldn't tell you what the difference is before
Amanda Guerra 10:37
the I will say, so where you would say, it's competitive, um, it is very hard to grow if you do not know your stuff, because you will be caught very quickly. It will, you know, for instance, if we're doing a segment with someone, or I'll just say, for like, sideline purposes, we have to do a live interview with a coach at the end of the first quarter and at the end of the third quarter, and that's live, and it is one or two questions, and you need to know what to ask him. Nobody's telling you what to ask. So you need to be able to be following the game to know a good question to ask that coach at the end of it. So, you know. And it needs to be a little bit more in depth. It's not just, Oh, what do you want to change in the second half, you know? So in those instances, you really do have to follow, and you have to be able to interpret what they're saying. And a lot of times, you know, it's the same for halftime report, you talk to both coaches. If you're not doing an on camera interview, the sideline job is you interview both coaches off camera. One's going into the tunnel, the other one's coming out of the tunnel, and you have about 30 Seconds to formulate, you know, kind of your your plan in your head to do a live report in about 30 seconds. So in that instance, like, if you don't know football, and you don't understand what they're saying, then then you're going to get caught. And you know, people at home are going to know, and they're going to let you know, and they're going to let your bosses know too. So you definitely have to
Nick VinZant 12:03
study, yeah, and that's okay, like, I'm kind of basing this off the mindset of 10 years ago, right? And that was like, oh, there's women on the sideline of the football game. Like, is that still a thing, or is that? Like, no, that's over with now.
Amanda Guerra 12:17
No, if anything, I get kind of bothered that it's gone the other way, where, like you almost exclusively, only see women on the sideline. So I don't want it to be just women. I want it to be I love seeing women on the sideline, but I would much rather across all spectrums of sports broadcasting. Kind of see it be a mix. You know, sometimes, like, if we if there are a lot of studio shows and, and I get this in that all of the analysts are men, because they're former players, you know, a lot of times they will have a female host. Maybe it's getting, you know, former, you know, having more female analysts, or something like that. So I don't, I love the sideline role belonging to women and them being good at it, but we never want to be hired based on you're a female that can fill this role. You know, all of us want to be hired based on our merits, as opposed to just kind of filling that role as a female who can do a job, if that makes sense,
Nick VinZant 13:23
yeah, yeah. Is the job what you thought it would
Amanda Guerra 13:28
be? Yes, it's definitely more intense and harder than I thought it would be when I first got here. I was only three weeks into the job, and they asked if I could do a sideline job. And I think naively, I thought, oh, yeah, that's fine. And I thought after my first game, like, it went pretty well. And it's one of those where you think maybe, oh, I could do a better, like, a bigger game and be fine, until you realize you need time to grow into those roles, you know, like, like, thankfully, like, there was time before doing, you know, like a smaller game, very late at night on CBS Sports Network, versus doing an SEC game or a big 10 game on big CBS, versus doing an NFL game. You need that time to make those mistakes. So in that way, I can look now, you know, four or five years into it, versus when I did my first game, like I knew nothing.
Nick VinZant 14:22
Are you ready for some harder slash? Listener submitted questions? Sure, I love those favorite place big school, like, Oh, that's a cool environment for a big school
Amanda Guerra 14:32
Georgia. It is out of every college place that I've done. But then also every it is more intense than any NFL practice, specifically their practices and their facilities. It is beyond imaginable the money they have the way Kirby spark runs their practices. He goes around with a microphone or a megaphone, I guess you call it, you. And he is constantly shouting at players. He will call you out in front of everyone a lot of times. Like, NFL practices, they are a little bit serious. But like, you know, there's so much more professionals that, like, it's kind of like, like a run through here and there. Like, a lot of their work is beginning of the season, and Georgia is so intense, it could, like, it's intimidating. And then they go into yoga practice. There's, like, you know, every Tuesday they have a yoga instructor come in, so you're watching all these guys get yelled at by Kirby smart. And then they come in and they take it seriously. They take it super seriously. And because it's working on their flexibility and their breathing and, you know, just their their mindset and stuff like that. But, like, it just, I said, like, their facilities are just, like, what, what am I what this is wild, you know, and then the game set up too, like, that's the one where, like, not for every college game, do you need a police escort into the stadium and a police escort out of the stadium? And that is one of the places where, like, we have police cars getting us in and out, because Athens is so wild in a good way. I love it. I would, I would never, you know, hate on it.
Nick VinZant 16:11
Favorite place, smaller school, like, Oh, that's a sleeper,
Amanda Guerra 16:14
Boise State. I don't know if you can call it a smaller school. Yeah,
Nick VinZant 16:17
that's the only thing I had. Is, like, it was that still small? Or is that the blue field
Amanda Guerra 16:21
is really cool, like, I thought it was going to be weird. And, you know, they have to, like, put in, like, I don't know if it's like, if they put in like, OWL noises or something, I think they have to put in like, some weird noises, because birds will try to dive onto the field thinking that it's water. And then I, like, Boise's stunning, stunningly gorgeous. Um, I would say my other I'm trying to think, um, Utah State is stunning because you have the mountains behind it. It's like, one of the most beautiful places. We have a we have Mountain West so, like, I'm thinking about West schools, and then I am very partial to San Diego State, because they have a women's restroom on the bottom level. Most of them
Nick VinZant 17:05
don't. It's amazing that, the older you get, the really that life just comes down to, like, how close is the bathroom? Yeah, exactly. How do you deal with the kind of the coach speak, right? Because sometimes I'll see these things, and at home, it's kind of fascinating that you hear the reporter and asked this really good question about, like, what are you going to do about their defensive front pushing you back on the left hand line? And the players, like, you know, we just going to take it one game at a time. And like, how do you get a real answer out of somebody? So
Amanda Guerra 17:34
one of two things, a lot, if I'm off camera, I don't do very in depth questions with my coaches, because I try to keep it so conversational with them. Sometimes, like, if we're off camera and I just need an answer, I'm like, Hey, what did you like? What did you hate? What do you want to change? And a lot of times, they kind of give me a more real answer. Um, about that. They're pretty good at giving real answers about specific players, but if they don't want to give me something, I and there's nothing I can do because I get a one chance to talk to them, they're they're walking into the tunnel, they're walking out. I'm very honest with the viewer, and I'm like, Look, you guys know what coach speak is he didn't want to give an answer about it, so that's it, like, you know, this is what I asked him. This is what he said, you know, we know he likes to keep it close to the vest, so apparently, you know, we saw him frustrated on the sideline, you know, late there in the second. And you know, we'll see how it goes. But you know, just didn't feel like, I'm just honest about whatever they said. I think you can turn it into, if they don't give you an answer, you can say they didn't answer you. You don't need to make up something, you know. You can just say they didn't want to answer the question, how has
Nick VinZant 18:50
it changed? How has it changed in the lessons you started? Has it? Has it changed? I guess, is the question.
Amanda Guerra 18:55
Yeah, it's Well, I think the biggest thing where it's changing is meteorites. So, you know, you have Netflix getting in the game. They're doing Christmas games, you know, Amazon is in it. Um, Apple's talked about getting in it. It's, it's changed where for those of us, um, that work for certain companies, once a meteorites deal is gone, you know, for instance, we had the SEC forever, and, you know, here came in ESPN, and they offered more money, and we lost it. I think it's changing in that aspect where, you know, I recently, and I don't know if this is true, I read for, like, a sports fan to watch, like, all of the major sports and stuff like that. It's like $5,000 a year now for, like, streaming and different things like that, you're not just going to ABC, CBS, you know, Fox for your games, like, you know, we work for Paramount, and now we're gonna have UFC. So you're gonna have to have paramount to watch UFC. And I think for a sports fan, that's. Where it's kind of changed, where it's all over the map. I've had a lot of friends talk to me about that the day to day, hasn't I don't think that has really changed so much. Social media has already been there for a while now. I think you need to be very on your toes, because if you do make a mistake, somebody's gonna catch it. I don't read comments because I have friends that are in this industry, and they love reading comments. You know, whether it's a segment that we posted or an interview or something like that, or go see what's trending and why are they trending, I like to go home and keep my my mental piece about me.
Nick VinZant 20:37
Yeah, I can see that. Either you can look at it and kind of just be interested. Or, like, No, you can't go down that road. Yeah, I don't go down that road. Player's name, you had to practice the most to be able to pronounce
Amanda Guerra 20:50
when it comes to those like, you try to, like, see if maybe they have a nickname. And so you're hoping the guys in the booth is how I get around it, say their name first, so that when I reference them, I can just call them, like, by their nickname or something, any of the like, a lot of like, the Hawaiian Pacific Islander names, those are by far the hardest to pronounce, because there's, there's just, there's so much, there's so many syllables, there's so many like, there's just so much of it, and I Respect the hell out of it, like they're beautiful names, but they, they do take a while.
Nick VinZant 21:25
Yeah, if you're not used to it, like your tongue just can't move in that fashion. I remember when to a tongue of ILO came out when he first started, and, like all the announcers said, we can't do this. Right to break away.
Amanda Guerra 21:38
Coach, can Nia, Mata Lolo, I think, oh, sorry, coach. So would you call him Coach Ken,
Nick VinZant 21:47
has n i l change things? Do you feel like n i L has changed the industry?
Amanda Guerra 21:51
Yes, yes. It sucks. No. I mean, like, I'm happy for the players. It stinks for a sideline reporter, because every team's different, you know, like, there's, you go into a team and, you know, even now, like, I mean, some of the top schools in the country, you're like, Okay, who's that quarterback again? Who's that? It's, it's more rare to have a returning quarterback than it is somebody who's transferred in, you know, and so it makes it harder for us to know these teams, it makes it harder for the coaches to put together solid teams. You know, it really takes them a good chunk of the season in order to kind of know what your team's going to look like and how you can compete and different things like that. You know, if you're having like an offensive line and everybody's New, and then your quarterback's new, and your running backs are new, and everything like that, then it's really hard to to understand that gel. I think it's kind of taken away some of the like, you know, the line like, baseball is romantic and stuff like that. How can you not be romantic about baseball? And I think for a while there was, how can you not be romantic about college football? Once the season gets, it gets it's still kind of there. But I think some of the romance has been taken away from
Nick VinZant 23:02
it. How many frequent flyer miles do you have?
Amanda Guerra 23:05
I threw I so I actually I calculated it one time. I flew 33,000 miles last year. So I flew more than any like, you know, they always calculate like which NFL team or which college team is going to fly the furthest. I forget which NFL team it was last year. I think it was think it was UCLA. But either way, whatever it was I was, they were like, at 28 and 30,000 miles. So yeah, it's, it's exactly, it's a lot of time in a plane. I have learned many different ways to fly, on how to sleep on an airplane, very easily.
Nick VinZant 23:39
Um, last question, what do you what's your favorite thing about it?
Amanda Guerra 23:45
The stories these guys have worked so so hard to be there, like people are like, Oh, what's your favorite sport together? What's your favorite team? And when I go into games, I have fallen so in love with these players and these teams that, like I genuinely have no rooting interest, because it doesn't matter what they've everybody has done something to overcome whatever obstacle in the life to get to this level. There's been sacrifice. You know, there's been tremendous hard work, like they care so much, like you want to tell every single player story. So being able to tell some of them is, is just truly remarkable, because they're all amazing kids, and I mean, even the coaches too, but really the players and just and for some of them, that's the highest level they're ever going to get to. You know, you always when you talk to a player after a game, or when you're talking to them in the meeting, or you're calling their game, you want to pretend like that is the biggest moment of their life when it comes to football, because you never know if it's good. To be, and they want to remember that day and that moment for what it is.
Nick VinZant 25:06
I want to thank Amanda so much for joining us. If you want to connect with her, we have linked to her on our social media accounts. We're profoundly pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included her information in the episode description, real quick. I want to take a moment and thank one of the sponsors of our show, Nord VPN, specifically their new product, Nord protect. Nordprotect is an identity theft protection service that you can trust. Just listen to all of these things that it features, credit card monitoring, dark web monitoring, malware, breach alerts, identity theft recovery, cyber extortion protection and online fraud coverage. And right now, they are offering a special discount to our listeners. Profoundly pointless listeners can get 5% off a Nord protect subscription. All you have to do is pick up a plan, set up monitoring, verify your identity, and then enjoy all around identity protection that lets you keep tabs on all of your information, and again, you can get an exclusive 5% discount on Nord protect. All you have to do is use the code that we've put in the episode description, and you can start protecting your identity. It's risk free with a 30 day money back guarantee. Okay, now let's bring in John Shull and get to the pointless part of the show. What room in the house do you think that you will die in bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living
John Shull 26:48
area probably won't be the bathroom. Yeah, I don't think I'm a bathroom guy. I guess I never really thought I would die in my house.
Nick VinZant 26:57
Where do you think that you would die then? Like, where do you envision yourself? Like, how do you think it ends for you,
John Shull 27:04
something tragic, but where whoever knows me is like, Well, that makes sense.
Nick VinZant 27:11
Oh, yeah. Like, you're gonna go through some fault, direct fault of your own.
Speaker 1 27:15
I mean, probably the kitchen.
Nick VinZant 27:18
Yeah, I can see you actually dying in the kitchen. I think I'm more of a living room kind of guy. I see myself more just kind of collapsing in a more public area of the home than dying, like in my bathroom or in the bedroom or in the kitchen. I think I'm just gonna, like, drop dead in a hallway.
John Shull 27:41
But if you die in your living room, does that then become a dead room?
Nick VinZant 27:48
I can't. I almost briefly for a second. There stopped that. Thought about stopping the show forever.
John Shull 27:56
Why dad jokes are funny? What if I throw in garage? No. No, I that. I mean, I would imagine that would be a lot of men's answers, but it would not be my my answer.
Nick VinZant 28:10
Okay, well, I polled the audience. 68% of people said that they would die in the bedroom. 14% say bathroom, 13% say living area. Only 5% say kitchen. I thought more people would have picked the kitchen as a place that they see themselves dying.
John Shull 28:26
I feel like the bedrooms and eat, like that's the easy out, right? Like that's where people seem to pass aways in the bedroom. But let's be honest, that's not where you want to pass out or pass away in. Oh,
Nick VinZant 28:39
I don't think that people pass away in the bedroom. I have had, I won't go into it, but I have had several family members who were found in their home. None of them found in the bedroom. I think if you're going to go the bedroom route, it's unlikely, because that would probably be the kind of circumstances where you would end up in the hospital first. Like if it was going to be kind of a slow decline, I think he would be found. I think he would probably just be in the hospital. That's why I think that, like the more unusual areas of the house, are probably much more likely.
John Shull 29:12
I mean, if I could be found, I would want to be found like the guy from Weekend at Bernie's just sitting up with sunglasses on outside on my deck. Just dead.
Nick VinZant 29:22
When are you ready to talk about your new background?
John Shull 29:26
I mean, it kind of was a mistake, but I'm ready to talk about it whenever you want to.
Nick VinZant 29:32
How do you Okay, scale it one to 10. How do you feel about it? Not don't hedge your bets and be and be a worse about it, like, Well, I really feel like a nine, but I'm gonna say seven so that like nobody's me.
John Shull 29:45
For those of you out there that can't see this, I showed up to the recording with a wallpaper background of what seems to be a dark, lit room, maybe you would find at a i. Dance Club. In the corner of the dance club, couple of neon lights,
Nick VinZant 30:04
yeah, it's kind of like, Oh, you got a hello back there. Now, did you make it? Or did you just pick that as the background?
John Shull 30:12
I just picked it, but I was really just thinking I would be able to UN select it after five minutes, and I clearly I don't know how to do it, and now I'm stuck with it for
Nick VinZant 30:22
this episode. I don't mind the color. I'm a fan of kind of purple. For some reason I've always felt like profoundly pointless is a purplish show. My problem is, is that your Mega head blocks out most of the sign so just says hell all the time. It sure does stuff. It's supposed to say hello, but it's blocked out, so it just says, hell,
John Shull 30:45
my ear takes up half the sign. I also want it to be known that this past weekend, my family and I went to a zoo, and there was a family of gorillas, and my daughter said, Daddy, look at you. Look like the dad gorilla. All upset all the time.
Nick VinZant 31:05
Oh, god, that's how you see you.
John Shull 31:08
But then it started like a chain reaction, because there was a lot of people around this enclosure, by the way, quick shout out to to the Toledo zoo, fantastic zoo, if you're ever in the Midwest. Where's Toledo? By the way, it's in Ohio about it's about an hour south of Detroit, straight down, I 75 place people find themselves regularly to leave. All I'm saying is great Zoo, and it started this whole chain reaction where by the end, there was six or seven kids that were like, look at him. He's unhappy, like the gorilla. I'm like, they were all pointing at you. I'm like, what happened? How did I even get involved in
Nick VinZant 31:43
this? I don't understand. I've never been publicly ridiculed. You were publicly ridiculed by a group of children
John Shull 31:51
fucking they weren't even teenagers. I would get him as a teenager. These were like little kids that you know. Of course, the dad gorilla wasn't doing me any favors, just sitting there looking all pissed off all the time. But then again, I would understand, because he had like five kids in this small exhibit that were being assholes. And then I'm like,
Nick VinZant 32:08
yeah, like, look at these kids do you not represent in public?
Speaker 1 32:14
I don't. I don't know what you mean by that. I don't
Nick VinZant 32:16
know. I just don't understand any situation in which I could find myself being made fun of by 16, like kids I didn't know.
John Shull 32:24
I mean, if I'm my seven year my oldest daughter is a traitor and will turn on me in an instant for a laugh or a reaction.
Nick VinZant 32:33
This is, this is the consequences of something that we have talked about before, the fact that you hurt, I believe your back at some point. You also tore your calf off the bone. Taking one step, and you've portrayed you have allowed this image of weakness to be created by you and your family is noticing that, like you've got to step up. You gotta change your public perception. You have to change the way that your family is. Family is seeing you, because right now they're looking at you and they're like, Oh, this
John Shull 33:05
guy's soft. How they they're comparing me to an angry gorilla. I don't think that's soft. That just means I'm an
Nick VinZant 33:12
ordinary person. Uh, they're insulting you in public.
John Shull 33:15
Well, you know, what did you didn't get dipping dots. So I win. I won that one good. That's That's good.
Nick VinZant 33:22
That's the way to do it. And did you get them? Did you get the dipping dots and rub it in their face that you were getting the Dipp dots and they were not?
Speaker 1 33:29
No, did not get dipping dots. I've
Nick VinZant 33:31
done that before. I've been like, I'm getting it. You aren't.
John Shull 33:36
I find it very hard. And for any parent out there, I'm sure you understand this. It's very hard to get anything without my daughters wanting and, you know, and tell me if this is bad on my part, like, we get an ice cream cone. I get my own. They all get their own. They all want to lick mine before I I've even licked it.
Nick VinZant 33:57
Oh yeah, dude, you just getting walked over by your family. You gotta, like, put your foot down a little bit,
John Shull 34:02
sure. Well, I know, I know. I'm fine. I do not need to certainly move on to shout outs. You
Nick VinZant 34:08
just got to show them that you're not something to be messed with. Don't want to start a respected member of the family. You're not a sad gorilla. You're their dad.
John Shull 34:16
Um, but you're, you're twisting the surround, as you always do, can we get some shout outs and
Nick VinZant 34:22
move on for it, right? Anything to, anything to, anything to get yourself away from facing the truth
John Shull 34:28
after shout outs, I need to, you know, I teased last week that I had a massive
Nick VinZant 34:33
Oh, right, right, right, right. I thought it at first. I thought it was your background. I thought that's was the going to be the big thing?
John Shull 34:39
No, this is, this is way bigger than anything that I probably said on the show in the last five years. Wow. Alright, shout out. So real
Nick VinZant 34:50
fast. So we're gonna finally getting that micro penis fixed, huh? Gonna
John Shull 34:54
speed through these here? Xavier Godwin, Jeff Borg Cameron. Doyle Zach doomerville, Nadia, Kenisha, Jude Grayson, Elam young, Muhammad, McCabe, Justin, Isabella and Brendan O'Leary.
Nick VinZant 35:15
Oh, okay, all right. You
John Shull 35:17
ready for the big announcement?
Nick VinZant 35:18
I'm ready. Can I guess what? It
Speaker 1 35:20
is sure
Nick VinZant 35:24
is it work, personal
Speaker 1 35:27
or personal related, I tell you what I'll give you. You won't give
Nick VinZant 35:30
this at all. So I just, I'm not going to be able to guess it at all. Why don't you just tell me this
John Shull 35:35
Saturday, live from Royal Oak, Michigan. Oh, man, coming to you from rumble in the skate park is the debut, the professional wrestling debut, a Big Bad John.
Nick VinZant 36:02
Oh, that's the face you're gonna make. Then have you practiced? I mean, I don't know. The thing is, is like, I don't know if you look like Big Bad John or big sad John.
John Shull 36:13
So, so I totally understand what you're saying. I get that a lot of people in my life would say, how are you gonna be this, this, this, this body guard. Ish mean character when you look like a teddy bear,
Nick VinZant 36:26
right? What are you going to do? How are you going to be Jamie Lannister when you're Samwell Tarly,
John Shull 36:32
so we did a promo shoot two months ago. Okay, okay. Are you gonna play it? Are you No, no, no. Well, I'm not. I'm not I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna play that. I want to. I want to find the photo for you, though. Okay, okay, okay. And I'm part of a group called the Gam or the grown men. Oh,
Nick VinZant 36:55
and I see what you sit there. You can pass. I mean, you've already got, like, six.
John Shull 36:59
Well, that's kind of our thing here the, you know, we're the grown men, grass men, you know. We don't want to offend the kids. This is a, this is a chill the child's program. So it's the grown men, you know. So regardless, in front of, you know, the millions and millions of people, on Saturday, I will be making my professional wrestling debut, and this isn't a one time deal. Oh, they're gonna have. I have four other appearances throughout the fall coming up at different events.
Nick VinZant 37:33
Are you excited? Are you nervous? Like, what's your mindset heading into your first professional wrestling debut? I
John Shull 37:41
I am not nervous at all. I mean, this is a bucket list item. And, yes, and I'm, it's, it's for a a promotion called superior Championship Wrestling, and they're small, but it's, it's, yeah, it's a bucket list thing. I'm gonna get to walk down the ramp. I'm gonna get to take a bump. I'm, you know, I'm gonna, gonna get to be a professional wrestler. And that, no, that's nobody. Maybe you out there listening, could give a shit. But to me, this is, this is something I wanted to do forever, and the door kind of opened, and here we are. Well,
Nick VinZant 38:17
you gotta step through it. I'm like,
Speaker 1 38:20
I don't plan on just stepping
Nick VinZant 38:22
anyway, practicing. Have you been practicing? Are you just going to wing
John Shull 38:26
it? I mean, I've been pressed so, so Saturday, I'm just debuting. We're debuting our faction, but we're going to be
Nick VinZant 38:33
these are all wrestling terms, by the way, a faction is just a grease,
John Shull 38:38
yes, but it's a Royal Rumble, and our leader is going to be number one in the Royal Rumble, coming out as the number one participant. So we're going to be out there for like 30 minutes, bothering people.
Nick VinZant 38:50
Good, the same as this show, bothering people, all right. Well, just try not to fuck it up.
John Shull 39:01
I won't fuck it up. It's gonna be streamed live as well. So maybe, maybe we can put that on
Nick VinZant 39:09
our social put it in there. I can't wait to see and, yeah, God, like, it's make sure you like, do you have an outfit?
John Shull 39:19
I do. It's a t shirt and, and like, shorts. But, yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's good. I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to decide if I want to put the baby oil on my arms to make them look bigger. I
Nick VinZant 39:34
don't know if it's going to help. I mean, you ideally you want to have muscle showing there for baby oil. I think you're a bigger guy. I think the baby will just makes you look sweaty. Like, Oh no, he's just sweating. It's not like our muscles are glistening. Like, oh,
John Shull 39:49
here it is. So this was our promo photo. Okay, okay, okay, the folks of you out there can't see this, but maybe we can get this out there somehow.
Nick VinZant 39:58
Oh, no. Oh. Oh, my God, your background. Oh, look at these. Look at this group. Look at this group of men have grown. I mean, in I
Speaker 1 40:13
I think I look halfway decent,
Nick VinZant 40:16
yeah. I mean, you look better than I thought it was going to be. I'll say that. Thank you. So you're gonna get to, are you gonna get to like, are you gonna do stuff? Are you gonna, you're gonna talk, yeah. So have the microphone. Are you going Listen? Are you going to play your role, or are you going to make this your moment?
John Shull 40:34
No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna play the role, but apparently I will be having a singles match at some point coming up. So that's,
Nick VinZant 40:44
God, there's just no way that you don't get injured. We have no way that you're not we have
John Shull 40:51
entrance music, you know, we have, I mean, it's a whole thing. Like, you know, the This is, like, you know, this is people's jobs, right? Like, this is independent, oh, somebody did this. Like, right, yeah? Like, like, the promoter, like, this is his job. Like, the champion of this league, this is his gig. Like, this is people's lives. So if I come into it, dicking around and like, you know, like, school boying it up, like, I'll get popped in the face, for real. Like, you know what? I mean,
Nick VinZant 41:20
you can't be the this is what this all flows back to what we talked about. You can't be the person that's not getting respected by six year olds. Wait and you expect to be out here commanding an audience.
John Shull 41:32
Oh, I'm good, trust me, you saw that photo. I turn it on. My teammates are great. Oh yeah, for one of the things involves me, apparently. Now this could change, but I don't know if I should give away the secret,
Nick VinZant 41:50
but I will, well, probably not, if it's supposed to be a secret of the show.
John Shull 41:53
Well, one of the things involves me in a pretty big spot where I have to come through, and if I don't, if I don't come through or do something correctly, I could very well injure the person and myself. So
Nick VinZant 42:10
I need to know, I'm going to watch this. I'm going to live watch it so much, and at first, if you mess something up, the first thing I want you to think of is me being like, well, and he got hurt bouncing off the top rope, or whatever it's called. It's going to be hard for you to do this as someone who's not really a wrestling fan, so, oh, get out of here. We'll put the link in the description. Everybody can watch John. What's your name? Again,
Speaker 1 42:40
the smoker, Bad John.
Nick VinZant 42:42
He could have had a gimmick. You could have been the meat smoker and come out there with, like, a barbecue grill. Like, I'm here to smoke meat. You move to be you could drop down on two knees and then, like, finish him off.
John Shull 42:57
I mean, I I'm not gonna lie, this turns into a career. There's been plenty of wrestlers that have started, you know, around 40 so,
Nick VinZant 43:05
oh, whatever. You never know. You never know when opportunity is going to be knocked. No, there's two things grandpa grandpappy VinZant said to me, you never know when opportunity is going to knock. And you don't have to be good at something to have
John Shull 43:18
fun doing it, and your dick doesn't have to be big to pleasure a woman,
Nick VinZant 43:22
exactly. Someone else can do
John Shull 43:25
it, bro. Pro tip out there for all you men struggling, all right, you ready to move on? Yeah, but that, that was my big announcement, huge. I'm
Nick VinZant 43:33
excited about it. I can't wait to watch it. I cannot wait to watch it. Is it going to be this only live streamed, or is it going to be available recording
John Shull 43:41
as well. You'll be able to watch the recording on YouTube after the fact. Good. You ready for top five time?
Nick VinZant 43:50
So our top five is top five worst college football mascots. I guess it's not really specific to college football, but it's top five worst college mascots. What's your number five? This
John Shull 44:01
one is a homer pick, but they gotta be on any midwesterner or Michiganders list, and Brutus the Buckeye is number five. Easy. Fuck that guy.
Nick VinZant 44:12
It's just like it's named after a nut, right? Yeah,
John Shull 44:16
yeah, and it just makes no sense. And nuts can't walk, they can't talk. It's like the Stanford Cardinal. That's a tree, like stupid, dumb so BS, Brutus the Buckeye, number five.
Nick VinZant 44:30
My number five is Alabama's elephant, Big Al. It just makes no sense to me, like I understand that there's some story behind Big Al, but it's like a joke that, if you have to explain it, it's not good. Like, why is an elephant Alabama's mascot? It's just, it makes no
John Shull 44:48
sense. Yeah, that's a it's another common sense. There's never been an elephant in Alabama. Like, right?
Nick VinZant 44:56
It makes why? It makes the whole school look bad, because it doesn't make. Make any sense. You're like, we're Alabama, let's get an elephant. And everybody else is just like, why are you an elephant? Yeah, and then it's a story that makes sense only to you, and nobody else gets it.
Speaker 1 45:12
You're like, Hey, nice job. Roll
Nick VinZant 45:14
tide, though I do like saying Roll tide
John Shull 45:16
my number four, and I actually want to like this one, but it it, once again, makes no sense. And it's Xavier University. Is the big blue blob, like, just, like, what does it represent? Just a pile of blue fur. Just,
Nick VinZant 45:35
there's the, there's a lot of us.
John Shull 45:38
It's I, I was, I did a little bit of research, and some of the comments on this thing were hilarious. I mean, you should google it, but the best comment I found was somebody going, is this literally Grover from Sesame Street's left testicle?
Nick VinZant 45:53
That's like, some people are brutal, and it's a dumb and I think they have another dumb mascot too, like, it's not just the blue blob, but don't they also have, like, one of the Musketeers.
John Shull 46:04
Well, I thought that's what they were, but apparently, like, I thought that was their mascot, but no, apparently the blue blob is their mascot, like their main mascot. My
Nick VinZant 46:17
number four is Penn State's Nittany Lion, that thing of whoever designed that. I mean, it looks like a nightmare,
John Shull 46:28
yeah, at least it kind of goes with the nickname, at least a little bit. To me, what's the what's pinch? They're the Nittany Lions, right? So at least it's, you know, you can't tell if it's a fucking cougar or a lion. You don't know what is some homeless person that's done math and growing out their hair, but like, yeah, it's terrible. I'm not saying it isn't terrible. It's definitely terrible. To number three. This one's another one that makes no sense to me, and it's the Delta State University fighting okra.
Nick VinZant 47:06
God is just so lame. And it's a, it's literally
John Shull 47:09
an okra with boxing gloves on. And it's like, What in the hell okra is not even, like, intimidating. It's not even a thing
Nick VinZant 47:19
that's where you like, I get the idea of you're kind of going with like, but it means something to our community. But like, you just look like a fool in front of everybody else's eyes. I
John Shull 47:30
mean, I'm not gonna lie. Where do you think Delta State is?
Nick VinZant 47:36
I really don't even have a clue. Delaware, only because Delta State, probably in the south, actually, now that I think about it, like maybe one of the river deltas, Louisiana,
Speaker 1 47:47
Mississippi. Oh,
Nick VinZant 47:49
that makes that down. This all makes more sense. It's
John Shull 47:52
in Cleveland, Mississippi. So they get double negatives. My
Nick VinZant 47:55
number three is West Virginia mountaineers. But really it's any mascot that's just a person essentially cosplaying. Like, you couldn't even get a mascot. You just dressed a guy up in like an overcoat and a pat just like, here's put on this hair, and it's just in person. It's like, Oh, listen, who's our mascot going to be? Just get that guy a hat and this will work.
John Shull 48:22
It's like, oh my, oh my, honorable mention I had the leprechaun from Notre Dame. Oh yeah. I'm surprised that you're five foot seven. You're not a leprechaun like, I'm
Nick VinZant 48:32
surprised that one hasn't been canceled yet. My God, still do that exactly. Surprised. I'm still around a little bit. What was your number two? Did you have number two? Yeah,
John Shull 48:43
no. Well, my number two, and I don't think this is a popular choice, but I can't stand mascots that are actual beings, like the Georgia University Bulldog. Oh, you mean I should say, sorry, University of Georgia Bulldog. Like, no, I don't care. Like, I great, yeah, it is a bulldog, though it's ugly, is what it is, and there should not be real. Like, I think it's Texas that bring out the power or whatever, yeah. Like, no. Like, I'm no. There should No, no,
Nick VinZant 49:20
I'm okay with a dog mascot. Like, I don't think that we should have exotic animals mascots. I don't think that you should be doing that.
John Shull 49:30
Like Wolverines. You're gonna, you're gonna parade around a Wolverine on the side. No, like
Nick VinZant 49:35
an ostrich, you're gonna bring an ostrich out there. Like, I don't think that you should really be I just, I'm, yeah, that's not my thing. I don't even know where this school is. I just saw it and thought, like, God, that's lame. The Evergreen State gooey duck is an animal that like lives in the ocean or in the water and doesn't ever move and looks disgusting.
John Shull 49:59
Wait, there's actually something called a gooey duck.
Nick VinZant 50:03
Yeah, I think you can eat it too. I think it's edible, but it's like, if you look it up, it's one of those things that looks like it's out of somebody's nightmare, a geo
Speaker 1 50:12
dog. Oh, that's all that sounds terrible. Oh, God,
Nick VinZant 50:17
largest burrowing clam in the world. Uh, Evergreen State that must be, actually be in Seattle.
John Shull 50:25
Wait a minute. So it's not even a duck, it's a clam.
Nick VinZant 50:29
It's a clam. It's a very large, long lived, burrowing clam native to the Pacific Northwest that can grow up to three feet long and weigh pounds. They I don't that's the kind of thing like, I don't even want to really look at it. I'm hard pass on the Dewey duck.
John Shull 50:43
I mean, any once again, anything that identifies itself that isn't what it says it is, should not be around. All right. It's number one, once again, probably not a popular opinion, but it's something that has just bothered me since I first saw it. And that is Otto, the orange, the Syracuse orange mascot. Like, first off, I don't know the history of Syracuse. Maybe they're the orange for a reason, but this mascot is an orange. I don't know if there, if there are oranges in Syracuse, New York. Now, I could be wrong, but this mascot just has it just looks dumb to me. It's always been dumb.
Nick VinZant 51:34
Oh, orange became their sole official school color. So they're essentially orange just because that was the school color that they picked was orange. Well, they've been around so long that you could do that kind of thing, where you can just be based off of your color, any mascot where you don't understand it like, Well, why are you that is not going to be a good school mascot, in my opinion.
John Shull 51:54
I just think every time I see it, I'm like, Why? Why are you here? Who did you piss off? I'm sorry for you, fruit,
Nick VinZant 52:05
whatever. My number one is the Wichita State shocker. And I'm from Wichita, and no one even understands in Wichita what the shocker is. It's supposed to be a shock of wheat, but nobody in Kansas is like, yeah, wheat. That's what we really want to be synonymous with. Wheat. We love it. I want to talk about wheat. I want to think about wheat. I want to see wheat Wichita, state. Shocker, even as a Kansas native, is the weirdest thing. Like, what is that thing?
John Shull 52:39
I I think everyone right now is trying to even wonder what a shock of wheat
Nick VinZant 52:44
is. It's a group of it's just like wheat. Like, what do we want to be wheat? Right? That's basically what they're essentially saying is, you know what we aspire to be, plain white bread. Okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of profoundly pointless, I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a rating or review. We love to hear from people. Really appreciate you checking out the show and let us know what you think is the worst mascot. We've started putting polls up on the Spotify versions of episodes, so make your vote count. I guess I'm not good at encouraging people to do things. Like, if you want to do it, it's there be cool. I like to know what people think, but like, I'm not really. I could never be in sales respect to the people who are, but I could never do that.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai