BONUS: Dan Sits Down with Greg Cote Following The End of His Miami Herald Career

I have purposely not told Greg Cody much of what it is that we're doing here and I have purposely not had very much conversation, although I've checked in with him several times, to see how he is doing because I actually wanted you to have a few days to process everything that happened here and talk to you about what happened to you because I was both heartbroken and angry on your behalf when I heard the way that someone who is a mentor to me, one of my best friends, someone that I love, didn't get to write the ending the way that he wanted to write the ending. So I ask you quite genuinely here, how are you doing? I'm doing well, sometimes I almost felt guilty the last few days that I'm not sufficiently angry or upset because it may seem weird to hear but part of me is relieved. Part of me feels like a weight has lifted off my shoulder because as you know, I've been thinking about and talking about retirement for a couple of years now, trying to figure out the win and the how. On one level, when I say the hero, you know the Miami hero didn't let me go, it was the money people above the hero level who did it, but it was almost a relief to me, you know because the hero made the decision for me that I was waffling on, you know I might have waffled for another year or two. I didn't think you were ever going to do it, I've been telling you to do it for how long now. Right, yeah, you're right and so when I told my wife that what had happened, she was the first call I made, I said, you have a minute, she said, yes, I said, are you sitting? She said, yes, and I said, I've just been laid off by the herald and her first reaction was, oh good, those were the first words she said, oh good because for the reasons that I just spoke about, I think she got tired of hearing me say, when am I going to do it? How should I do it? I have a semi-retirement where I'm no longer full time but I'm still doing this and this. And this makes it a clean break. So as hurtful as it is, but like I said on my own podcast, it's hurtful mostly to my ego and my vanity and those are things that need to be put in their place and sometimes it takes an effort to see the higher road and the larger picture which is, look, I had a long career, a much longer career than most, I think it was a successful career, I have my health for a guy my age, I have a great family and friends and I got plenty of money and all that stuff. And so I just don't choose to go out with a flame thrower, I'd rather go out with gratitude. That could still change because of a business decision that has yet to be made but I'm hopeful of it that will continue to have sort of a clean break. Well but I don't think that this has been linear from when I have checked in with you, your response has been a little bit different every time, every day. It's not quite, so today we're talking about this and you're talking about it publicly and you've had some practice at talking about this publicly but every time I've checked in with you, your feeling has been a little bit different including today when you said I feel a little bit of invisible. Yeah, I mean there's been a lot of different emotions for me and I think of myself as very even killed emotionally but yeah there have been times like one hour of a day, I'll be abulliant, I'll be singing to myself in the house and I'll just feel like a weight's been lifted and that's the good side and then an hour later maybe I'll go through an hour where I feel a little depressed, you know, where what I've been for a half a century has been snatched from me, not on my timeline and not by my direct wishes or timetable but by a decision that my own herald people didn't want, like John DeVine, my immediate boss, the sports department editor, wonderful man, he's been great to me, he's heartbroken that these cuts have happened to his department, I've spoken more to him in the past week than I usually do in a month and so this is McClatchy, this is the hedge fund that owns McClatchy and the Miami herald has nothing to do with it, their hands are tied. But I can understand all of this, it could be logical, you could be grateful, you can be taking the high road and you can be classy and I can still be indignant about the idea that while a corporation doesn't own you much beyond this Arctic cold, asking at the end, "Hey, how might you want to do this?" So it feels like it's a little more on your terms than you being surprised by somebody who's the chief revenue officer who you've never spoken to, by phone telling you, "Hey, 54 years, go fuck yourself." Yeah, no, no, I see that and I feel some of that, you know, did I want the news to come to me by phone from someone I absolutely had never heard of or met on my birthday? No, that's not what I wanted and, you know, but I sort of, that's the way corporations work, you know. Okay, but it doesn't have to be like that, though Greg, okay, look, I don't think I'm clamoring for anything other than just simple respect for more than half a century of loving a place and you were good to that place and it was also good to you and you can be grateful and you don't have to be angry or you can smother that anger, but just the respect of, "Hey, would you like to have a 1% voice on how this is done as opposed to it being done for you?" I don't think that's too much to ask. No, and I wish I had that. I wish I did have that. You know, I elected to, in revealing that I'd been laid off, I elected to say that I'd been laid off because I didn't want to let Maclatchee or the hedge fund off the hook on that. I could have said, "I retired," and nobody would have called me a liar. I could have said, "This is on my term. Maybe the best spin for me would have been to say, "I've decided to retire." Although that would have been so disingenuous because it's just as football season is starting. Yeah, but you could have written the ending with them if, look, this is what I'm talking about, a modicum of care allows you to craft it however you wanted at the end without it costing them anything more financially, except just simply respecting an employee of 54 years. And you weren't the only one let go, and Michelle Kaufman's not getting this standing ovation for a week. And I imagine this is a lot harder for her. And she's an actual pie in here in our industry when we're just sort of followers of people who came before us. Right. No, that's true, but Michelle and I are in better shape than most. If I'm going to be very honest and say something, I probably shouldn't say. Someone has started to go fund me page for all of the 30 people laid off, and they asked me if I wanted to be involved, and I said, "No, I don't want to take a cent from. I'm fine. I don't want to take a cent from anybody who deserves needs the money more than I." And Michelle said the same thing. So we're both fortunate from a financial standpoint and everything. We're both at great long careers, but I'm not going to sugarcoat what you said. It's absolutely true that the Harold could have made it a more palatable ending for me if people I knew, if John Devine, my immediate boss. It's just human care, Greg. I know. You say corporations do this, and it's happening all over journalism, and yes and yes. But just it's 54 years, have a monochrome of human decency, respect, and care. I agree. But I don't think anybody is special to the hedge fund. I don't think anyone is special. I think this would have happened to Edwin Pope. I honestly think in my heart that somebody would have called him on the phone when he was in his late 70s and said, "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but nobody's special." I went through a minute where I thought to myself, "Geez, I thought I was invincible in a way. I thought I was beyond these layoffs because I'm the main sports columnist. I'm pretty good, pretty popular. They're not going to do this to me. I'll be the last man standing." And then that's when I realized that nobody is special to the hedge fund. All they're looking at is bottom lines and salaries and money, and the hero could have come to me and said, "Hey, we need you to take a big pay cut. I might have done it. I might have negotiated a deal where, "All right, give me half my money just to say you're giving me something. Let me work the rest of the football season, and I'm done in February." But this is what I'm talking about. If a modicum of human care they absolutely could have saved more money. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, because this is the way it works is the fact that they're laying me off means I get a. 54 years of severance. Yeah, it's a pretty good severance package. Now, their severance ceiling is like 26 years or whatever, but it's still a big severance package. Even my wife's like, "Wow." So I'm not complaining financially or anything like that. And I'm not talking about my- here and I'm also while I speak a little bit on your behalf, even though you haven't asked me to and I don't think you want me to very much. There are a lot of people angry because these kind of connections are rare and when people grow up reading you, they grow up with you. Anybody who's been in this market knows that for 50 years your name and the writing underneath it means something and that has a certain value that is hard to find in entertainment. I'm surprised to hear you say, though, that when we talked to Dave Hyde a couple of months ago, who was basically your peer at the Sun Sentinel, 15 fewer years in the industry and he told us, yeah, hedge fund came in and grabbed me and your response then was, well, I got a good relationship with my bosses. You really didn't think this was in any way around the corner. No, I didn't. I still haven't come to grips with the fact that I was let go, that I was laid off because I thought I was beyond that. I thought my career was beyond that and had earned better than that ending. But what's been most gratifying, though, is the reaction I've gotten from people I don't even know, from people I do know, how much I've meant to them, how long they've been reading me. It has been like, I've passed away and I'm getting to listen to the eulogies and all, which is weird. It's just crazy, but it's been so gratifying and that helps a lot. The idea that this has hit people pretty hard and that maybe a lot of people are going to miss me, it does soften the blow, it does. What have the highlights been of that? Somebody, somebody texted that, when they think of me, they think of a particular column that I wrote, I'd completely forgotten about this, but there was an elderly lady who lived in Hollywood, a 104-year-old woman who wrote me by hand a letter about how much she appreciated me and how much of a fan she was and she bought the Finsett 50 book, one of a few people who did because it wasn't promoted. Well, whole different story. So I called up this woman and I went to her house and I brought her a copy of the Finsett 50 book that I'd signed. And she died like, less than a year later, but that made me feel really good. And somebody online, remembered that I had done that because I had meant, I don't think I ever wrote a column on it, but I had mentioned that in print or maybe on your error, this was before I saw my own podcast, I can't remember, but it was known that I did that and she mentioned that and I'd forgotten all about that. But that was really special. People remember the little moments like this. This always makes me feel real old when somebody that I think of as middle age, just saying, I've been reading you my whole life. But when you've been writing since 1972, it's crazy. I got somebody online mentioned that they've been reading me so long they remember when I wrote the Prepp Profit column, which was when I first started covering high schools around 1974. I wrote a prediction column called the Prepp Profit. Who the hell remembers that 50 years later? But I leave with a feeling that I had a real impact on people's lives, you know, people who grew up reading me and liking me and maybe not liking me, but reading me. And it's just it's it's meant a lot. I don't leave with any regret that, you know, that I underperformed, you know, I'm not a Hall of Fame guy, but I still had a good career that I'm proud of. And so it helps that I don't leave with any regrets at all. You mattered. And the connection is in a million different places. And I think you know how grateful I am to you in a million different ways. But one of them is that you made me want to write your column, or your I guess it was a feature piece at the time on Michael Irvin and the relationship with his father, his late father and the hat of his late father was one of the first things that I read where I was like, I want to do that. I want to be that I want to make people feel the way that you made them feel with the precision of the writing in that with the way that you told the story. It's one of the reasons that I say that you were such a strong influence and mentor to me. And then to be scared walking into the Miami Herald to be an intern and be in a room with what to me were imaginary giants like superheroes, Bob Rubin and Gary Long and Edwin Pope and to have you specifically welcomed me into that and allow me to be a part of that world. You are aware of the ways that you turn on the lights for me along the path, right? Yeah. You've been very kind to say some of this stuff. And I remember that day in the Harold cafeteria. I think it was the first time we ever met. I was scared and you put your arm around me. I was scared. I didn't think I belonged at that table having lunch with those people. And you just whispered in my ear no matter time nor place parents just don't understand. A popular Will Smith song at the time. I mean, but it's literally the first Harold memory I have of any kind. First of all, I couldn't believe they fed us, right? We had to pay for lunch, but I was in this gleaming building that might as well have been the top of heaven to me. Given what I wanted from my professional career, and I just couldn't believe I was in your company. That was the Taj Mahal, that building, overlooking the bay, and it was just, it was fantastic while it lasted. And I have not quoted Will Smith since, by the way, I saved that for you. When I say that you've been a mentor to me, you know this. I don't know that I've actually ever said it to you. I think I've written it in a place or two, but I don't think that I've said it to you. I think you mentioned once something to the effect you were a student at UM in the bleachers at a baseball game watching me up in the press box. And I didn't write a whole lot of columns from UM baseball, so that was. It was the top of the world to me, like all of it. The lights. You guys second floor up watching a baseball game. The idea that people would be paid to do that, that they could be that adjacent to the fun, to the joy, to the to the storytelling. Yeah, and I've heard that from other writers in the past several days. The first time I was in a press box and I saw me, I saw Greg Cody, I thought to myself, I've arrived, like, you know, so you have that kind of stuff in your liberties, so I knew you'd want to make me cry. All was a great nickname. Now that's good as when I'm late and you call me Levitardi. Levitardi, yes. This is the old time. I got to come up with a top 70, uh, Levitardi nickname. You never used to cry. You used to be, this is, that's came with a grandchild, right? You used to be incredibly repressed. I didn't see you cry. I'm going to say that before you arrived at 65 years old, I never saw you what you're, you're almost fundamentally incapable of shown human emotion, you won't, you've only gotten good at it in the last 10 years. You've softened up. What thought you? It's a granddaughter, isn't it? I'm a cyborg. I'm not really human. Uh, I tell you, the granddaughter was part of it. The granddaughter was part of it because I don't think I'd ever been more happy than holding my granddaughter for the first time. Uh, and she's great. I mean, to this day, it's like the best things that's happened. Yeah, I'm, I'm gotten more emotional later with aging because everything is part of mortality now at this age, you know, being laid off as part of mortality, you know, just one step closer, not to be macabre. But yeah, so I've gotten much more emotional and this week since the layoff has made me emotional mostly for good reasons, for the appreciation of reading what everybody's writing about me and how much I've meant to them and, and things like you've just said about me and, and, and your gratitude for me has, has been repaid by you tenfold because I've told you before, you know, my late career has been lifted to new heights by being on your show and, and, and that's a big reason why my podcast is, is as successful it is and all that stuff. So whatever I've meant to you, you've meant to me right back and, and I'm glad that, um, that we get to sort of end our careers together. I don't know how much longer you're going to go, but, uh, I'd love to be able to have you rewrite the ending here. However, it is that we can do it so that it feels more comfortable on your terms and feels written by you and chosen by you because I mean, I've been telling you for a while, not just asking you if you'd like to retire so that you can control the ending, but I've been telling you for a while. He has much as you want to be around here. I'd love to have you around here. So help me, you know, that I've been, you make it better all the time around here. I tell you this more than ever now. Yeah, no, and I appreciate that, but I'm not retired. You know, I'm still going to do my podcast and your show and whether on Substack or somewhere else, I'm still going to write, you know, my week three NFL picks are going to appear in the Miami Herald. And then it's audio everybody. And then my week four NFL picks are going to appear on Substack or whatever. So I'm not going to discontinue writing. I consider myself a writer and I'm someone who writes, but the freedom of not working full time for the Herald is really what's uplifting to me right now. When I say a wait is lifted means I don't automatically have to produce a column Monday, whether I want to, whether I have anything to write or not, I have to produce a column Monday. No more. I don't have to go to the Marlins opener if I don't want to. I don't have to make a token appearance at a dolphin's practice in July just to be seen. And so that's a freedom and that's a freedom that I think in 54 years of earned. I think in the long run, it's just made for me a decision that was inevitable anyway and coming up fairly soon anyway. So I'm going to take the high road. Blessing in disguise, I guess, but when you think that it's not, can you sort of explain to me what you're talking about when you say the feeling of being invisible or I'm going to keep writing because I need to write because I'm a writer when you don't have to keep writing. But it's an exercise. I think it's an exercise in mental gymnastics in a way, you know, I think it keeps me sharp. It keeps me engaged. It keeps me current. Yeah, I mean, when you've been identified for this long as a Miami Herald sports writer and for the last 30 years, a Miami Herald sports columnist, it's tough to all of a sudden abruptly put that in the past tense. It just is, you know, because that's part of your identity. I don't know if all occupations feel this, but I bet like doctors feel it. Can you imagine being a doctor for 40 years and then all of a sudden you're not a doctor, you're a former doctor? That's got to be pretty rough getting past. Oh, I've talked to doctors and athletes about this and how it is that they fall to the depths of their narcissism when they grieve who they used to be because of how much identity people get from their work. Yeah. Right. An unhealthy amount of identity. It's total. And that's why when I said earlier, the only real hurt of felt is to my ego and vanity. They're substantive, though. Yeah. Okay. I mean, you're not of small ego and I find you to be in some places pretty damn vain. Okay. But I also recognize that ego and vanity or things that have their place and should be put in their place. A columnist for 50 years, I'm going to say that most newspaper columnists who have been doing column writing for close to 50 years, I have some ego in, "Hey, my opinion matters and here's why you need to hear it." Yeah. Right. And I've also taken great pride in my skill as a writer like, you know, I've never been a great reporter, that's why they kick me upstairs to a column writing. That's not why. But part of it's why. But I honestly think I'm a really good writer. And so. You are? I think that continues. You know, I don't think you necessarily age out of that. I think in whatever I end up doing on Substacker, wherever it is, I still think it's going to be engaging and I think that all of the love letters I've gotten over the past week, I think that people who aren't tired of me yet, people who will miss me in the herald, are still going to have a chance to read what I write. And that's sort of a very important transition for me. You know, the idea that I'm not just, it's not cold turkey. I'm never going to write anything again. I'm never going to write a letter. I can't do that. You know, I just still like to write too much, but I like to write on my terms. Not when I have to write on Monday morning to make a noon online deadline. Oh, but that's what I don't want. Greg, so for those who do not know in terms of what's happened to the industry and the totality of the collapse, okay? You are a part of one of the great sports sections in a golden age of journalism, one of the great national sports sections, and by the end, the staff was so small that you were writing your own headlines on stories because you had to do an assortment of different things that there were no longer people around to do. You saw the almost complete collapse of the industry on our watch in a way that's final at the end where this is the death of the Miami Herald. There is no remaining Miami Herald after this in any meaningful way. No, it absolutely breaks my heart that the Miami Herald, keep in mind, I was hired by the Broward sports senator, Jim Martz, the late great. The Miami Herald is no longer even covering Broward County. I don't know if they're going to make the pretense of still covering high schools after Andre Fernandez, but that's going to end. When I look at the staff, I think the Herald is going to cover the dolphins, Hurricanes Football and the Heat, and that's about it. So if you care about anything else, it's going to be very tough. You came to the Herald when like early 90s, right? I was sort of working there in '88 when I was still at the University of Miami. Okay, so you were still in the heyday for newspaper, which I think of '80s through mid-90s. I was awed by the staff that worked at the Miami Herald. And you should have been. It was when I looked back at that, I mean, Peter Rich, not all at the same time, but Peter Richman and SL Scott Price and Larry Gorman. The best writing in sports there was anywhere in America. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And back then, you were honored to be a member of the Miami Herald sports staff. You know, I think we had 35, 37 writers at one time. We would send a half a dozen people to a Super Bowl. I mean, we were a major staff that was just flourishing, percolating, producing great stuff, great writing, winning prizes. I mean, it was just, it was really the heyday for sports journalism in a newspaper was the Miami Herald. There were very few better. Boston Globe, maybe LA Times, arguably, but-- Consistently a top five sports section in Miami and in a vibrant Miami, right? Yeah. Because you got the University of Miami football team. In Miami, that's blossoming as a sports town and being covered with the finest of writers with the finest of details. Yes. And to think now, what it's become, I think the layoffs of myself, Michelle Kaupman and Andre Fernandez, I think it leaves the Herald sports staff at four or five, maybe, and the Sun Sentinel is probably that or one or two fewer. The Palm Beach Post, I think, is down to two or three. Like, it's really, it's rock bottom for whatever is left of newspaper journalism. And it's that way, all over the country, you know? Nobody's singling out the Miami Herald. We're not an isolated tragedy of sorts when it comes to journalism and the newspaper. It's just rampant. And even the best papers now are struggling. It's not like the Miami Herald is any kind of exception or worse than most. This is the status quo right now is what's happening to the Miami Herald. If you had to choose one, if I made you choose one, what were you more surprised by? Being laid off or the outpouring? You know, the layoff was a matter of time. You know, if I was a subordinate, as my wife always says I am, I might never have retired. You weren't going to Crayon. Right. I mean, I mean, I might have been, I know Edwin Pope wrote at least occasionally until his very late 70s. I might have done the same thing. You weren't going to retire? No. I don't think I was either. Dave Hyden, I used to always joke that, you know, what's going to last longer? Our careers or the newspaper itself, the industry itself. And it was a close call. I don't know how much longer the Miami Herald is going to make a print edition. I don't know. It's just so tenuous. And so the layoff did not surprise me. The outpouring has. It's really made me feel that, you know, that I mattered in a lot of people's lives, just as somebody who was a const, you know, you grew up reading me. You grew up a sports fan down here. You were reading me or you'd heard of me or you knew of me or you saw me somewhere or, you know, I was a part of people's lives. And that's gratifying, it really is. And I carry that with me, you know. You can't make me not realize how much I've been appreciated. read over the years. And what a lineage. I mean, Edwin Polk to you, to me, the impact I had, it was enough. And I'm feeling that this week. And I'm appreciative. How did you not know, though? How is it surprising to you that people love you? I don't know. I think because I always had a realization that Edwin Polk was the legend, you know, and certainly he was a mentor to me. And Edwin Polk, I think, is singular atop the Mount Rushmore of Harold Sports all time. You know, but you came along and sort of redefined everything. And you were an excellent writer, still are when you want to be. But then you also taught everybody that you could do more than right, right? And you taught me that. You know, like there's a whole second life to leaning into a microphone. And podcasting was starting. Or in your case, leaning away from a microphone. Leaning away from a microphone. And when I asked you and you graciously agreed to do the intro to my podcast in your voice, I remember the alternate intro you did with something to the effect. And now the oldest man that ever started a podcast, Greg Cody, because I think I was like 66 or 67 when we started. Anyway, memories. No, but, you know, I just, I've been overwhelmed by the gratitude that I'm feeling from readers and others. But how surprised? Like, why are you surprised? How could you? You have been a part of people's lives for 50 years. For 50 years, you've been walking through publics and somebody stops you. Like, I don't understand what's surprising to you about the fact that you were, for half a century, diligently showing a part of yourself all over the Miami through your writing, through your expression of your art and your identity, you were connecting with tentacles all over South Florida. How could you not have known that as the lead columnist at the Miami hair? Yeah. I think because, because I wasn't Edwin Pope, and I wasn't Dan Levitard, I probably had a little bit, believe me, like you said earlier, I have an ego. I don't have an inferiority complex by any means. I don't have an imposter syndrome when it comes to the job of done the last 30 plus years in terms of column writing. But I also recognize that I'm not Edwin Pope, and I'm not you. And part of it is my most famous column is Trade Moreno, which people either made fun of or hate it. So maybe a lot of people probably still resent me or never really liked me because of that. I don't know, all those things go through my mind. And so when I'm laid off, and I'm on this laid off tour now, and feeling the love, it's just wonderful to feel. You know, it's wonderful to know it was there all along, and to now hear it and feel it because people are touched by the end of an era. And when I say the end of an era, me being laid off from the herald, I think, to a lot of people is the end of the herald. Just the symbolically, symbolically. It's like, because I've had a lot of responses like, you're the only reason I continue to buy the herald and stuff like that. Newspapers are dying. And I think to a lot of people, me being let go after 54 years is a death knell. I've told this story before, and you know this story, but it has uncommon grace in it. And even though throughout the entirety of our life, you have joked that you're a bad friend because you're not much of calling me. I have to hunt you down in search of friendship. No, that's not true. And I'm going to tell two stories of how and why that's not true because beyond where you're vanity and eagle lie and beyond me knowing you to be a sensitive creature who can somehow figure out if you're not sent with the dolphins to Buffalo, you complain about that. And if you are sent with the dolphins to Buffalo, you complain about that. You can find the ways to feel slighted or feel bothered by something in an insecure business that's filled with vanity. When I came up through the Miami herald, you never being threatened by me and you with great grace. When a whole lot of people were mad or jealous or not wanting the young guy to come through and get more, you were always an unbelievable strength and support next to me who never showed me anything but love at every single turn. I never felt anything from you that wasn't loving. That's example number one example number two, which I've also said before when I started metal art and I was deeply scared and I didn't understand the number of checks that I had to write all over the place for a million different things that I didn't understand how it is I was hemorrhaging you who I've made fun of all my life for being cheap and for trying to save money. You held on to a check for $10,000. I still keep it in my wallet. You held on to that check and you gave it back to me because I was embarrassed that my company wasn't paying you yet. I didn't understand in the finances and in the money and I gave off the money to someone else. I was embarrassed that no one had paid you correctly. And so I wrote you a check, a personal check for $10,000 that you gave back to me uncashed. You cannot say that those two examples are when it mattered are a bad friend. Yeah. Every time you refer to me as the cheapest person, you know, I should bring up that check. It hurt you to have given it back to me. In fact, you want me to go get my wallet now. You want me to go get my wallet now and give it back to you as part of the, you know what? It's probably expired. Just write me a new one for the same amount plus interest. Make it about $10,000. One of the blessings in all of this is that you know what early in my wife does for a living and how much more money she makes than me and people used to ask me, "Are you okay with your wife making that much, much more money than you?" And I'm like, "No, make more." The more you make the less hard I have to work. She's a partner in a law firm. Yeah. And so that's why I'm not being facetious when I say, "If the herald had come to me and said, "We'll let you work through football. Can you give us, you know, will you work for $10?" I probably would have said F you. There was a conversation to be had there. This is what I'm talking though about human, just human decency when it comes to the coldness of corporations. They could have got what they wanted and you would have gotten what you wanted and nobody would have been the wiser. Yeah, right. Yeah, you're right. And the fact that, you know, just before finding out, I'm advertising that, "Hey, my 36th season of NFL picks in the Miami Herald has begun. 36 seasons." Like, I'm thinking that's a pretty big deal. That's something that the Miami Heralds should be proud of. You know, institutional knowledge, generalist, both. And then two weeks later, I get the call and it's, I didn't say this, but I'm thinking like, you realize that 36 season in week two and all of a sudden I'm doing three weeks in the herald and then I'm not an herald anymore. It's the first day of the football season or the second day, right? It was the first day of the NFL season. Yeah. The Thursday. Yeah. There was a Wednesday game, the first one in 14 years. They certainly could have handled it better. That's the understatement of the year. But I also don't take it personally because everybody got that same treatment. Everybody got the phone call from the same guy. You know what? I would say you've had it better than most because you've gotten the outpouring and the severance package for 54 years and all of a sudden, I actually think this ends up working out better for you because you get an assortment of applause that you wouldn't have gotten if you had simply not been wrong at the end. A hundred percent. And actually, Eileen, the lawyer in my family was the one who first reminded me of that. Like, had you retired on your terms 0 severance package, but the fact that they laid you off big severance package and it's not about the money, but it allows me to get like a little bit of a unnecessary that middle finger that you're a little bit of a hand gesture, a little bit of a last laugh kind of thing. I almost feel guilty for feeling almost nothing but gratitude. Why guilty? Because I think a lot of people expected me to be and think I should be just flame throwing angry at the system. And I'm not. If I thought it was the Miami Herald itself laying me off, I would be hurt more than angry. But the fact that it's the corporation and the hedge fund. Oh, wait a minute, though. I think you'd be a little more hurt and angry if you didn't also know that you have a nice cushy soft landing place for whatever it is you want to do the rest of the way because I would not allow anything to happen to any of the codeys as long as I'm making money from media. Like if all of a sudden you didn't have a podcast, a voice, a place to put your opinion, we kid Cornheiser Cornheiser has been an old man for as long as I've known him and has complained about being an old man for as long as I've known him and he's never going to retire and we make the joke around him that if his stuff were to be taken away, he'd get up every morning and just walk to the nearest plant and give it his opinion. until the plant died, like you have places to put your ego in your vanity. If you did not, my guess is you would be a hell of a lot of angerier and less grateful than you are. 100%. You're absolutely right. I don't have the burden of having to worry about, you know, making a rent payment. I don't have-- I'm not even talking about the money. Your career wouldn't-- No, you're right. I can actually make the argument that you're inspired, excited, free, liberated, some things that don't come out on average to the 72-year-old who's been treated cold by the corporation. 100%. And, you know what? I feel great for my age and people like Tony Cornheiser inspire me, the idea that heck, I might still be able to be doing this in 10 years, God willing, you know? Oh, God, no. I mean, Cornheiser, he starts with an eight, right? Not yet. I don't think so. I think he'd be insulted by the-- Oh, sorry, Tony. I don't think he's 80 years old. Okay. Former great coach. My dad's 83 now, and I can't put him near microphones. No. I can't tell you. 10 years. Okay. The next 10 years have, in my experience, some deterioration. Oh, okay. All right. You could be right. You could be right. But I'm hopeful. I'll say that. I'm hopeful that, you know, I have not-- that's a misconception. I want to get out the way, for sure, is that, you know, the Miami-Herald may be laying me off. But I am not retiring. I'm still energetic, and like I say, writing to me is cathartic. It's healthy for me to write, keeps me sharp in a way, or as sharp as I can be at this age. So it's all good with me. I will end on this note here, because you've mentioned mortality, and I will tell you, ending around and before the death of my brother, your coughing on our air, has been almost an alarm, a siren on, you know, time can be short. I've been worried about you for a number of different reasons over the years, and when I talk to you, and when, ironically, the laughter is the thing that triggers the coughing. That's not good. Well, but it's just a bit of a reminder at all terms to be grateful for the time that you have. Let's see if you can explain this. I'm going to take people in on an intimate moment the other day. I got off the phone the other day with you, and I don't know how much of this that you want to share, but you were emotional, and you moved the phone away from you so that I wouldn't see you that kind of emotional. And when I hung up with you, I was also crying, and my wife asked me, because she came into the room, what happened there? And I said, I had a really lovely conversation with someone I love that I'm heartbroken for, as he deserved, better than what he got. And just don't know what you'd want to share about that conversation before we get out of here. I'm very so conscious about crying openly, and I am a little bit repressed when it comes to that. So, I cried in that conversation as well, and afterward, and I cried once on my podcast. I had eight minutes of me alone. My face alone on the podcast doing nothing but talking for eight minutes, long-ass time. And I only cried once, and that was good for me, because, no, you and I go way back now. It's hard to believe, but you and I go back, what, thirty, four? It's more than that, but it's forty years, like it's, I've been going, I've been driving to your house since I was like eighteen years old. Yeah, that's crazy. And so, we go way back, and, you know, it's, I'm not going to say it's gratifying to hear you get emotional talking to me about something like this, but, you know, it's, I mean, you see me aging. I'm almost, what am I, um, fifteen, sixteen years older than you, whatever it is. I could almost be your father, except I wasn't having sex that young, so, uh, we'll call it an older brother, but, um, I mean, I think of you as somewhere between the older brother that I never had, and because my father, uh, was more repressed on the emotions. I've put you, I've, when I've written some of the things for your books, I've put you in a place where it's a, uh, it's a bit of a paternal thing as well. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. You still hit me with a hard network out when I was talking about my, uh, tumor, um, but, but, you know, that, that's all fun. By the way, the doctors always associate the size of tumors with fruits. Have you ever noticed that? Like my doctor described my tumor in my chest as the size of a large lemon. I'll never forget. Just a great deflection by you on me. I'm sitting here blubbering. I'm falling apart. I'm asking, all right. I'm done with this. I love you, Dan. I love you. Yes. Yes. We hit you with a hard network down when you were telling us about the tumor and a large lemon. A grapefruit is the better fruit, I don't think of like things that they find in you. I know, but a grapefruit is like that. Gee, you're trying to kill me. A large lemon though, not just a lemon. I love you, buddy. Love you too.