Latest / The Chaney Pod / Why The Chaney Pod — Our Origin Story and What’s Ahead
Transcript
- 0:00[music]
- 0:09SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone, I'm Michael Einbinder-Schatz, here with my co-host John DiCarlo.
- 0:15SPEAKER_00: John, how are you today?
- 0:17SPEAKER_01: Doing great.
- 0:18SPEAKER_01: It's wonderful to see your face and happy to be talking to you as always.
- 0:24SPEAKER_00: This is kind of exciting because we decided to do a little intro for a teaser.
- 0:30SPEAKER_00: So what the hell does that mean?
- 0:32SPEAKER_00: Well, for those of you out there in podcast land,
- 0:37SPEAKER_00: John and I have been working on a podcast called The Chaney Pod.
- 0:40SPEAKER_00: You've clicked on this, you probably know this already, for over two years at this point.
- 0:46SPEAKER_00: And 11 months ago, we recorded what I'm going to call our teaser, our origin story.
- 0:55SPEAKER_00: And we decided to come back to you today,
- 0:58SPEAKER_00: and we're recording this in September of 2026,
- 1:01SPEAKER_00: because we're getting close to release.
- 1:04SPEAKER_00: And we thought the one thing that was missing...
- 1:07SPEAKER_00: From this origin story,
- 1:09SPEAKER_00: and by the way,
- 1:10SPEAKER_00: the origin story is our connection to Temple University Basketball,
- 1:15SPEAKER_00: our connection to John Chaney, why this is such a passion project for us.
- 1:21SPEAKER_00: But since then, we've had a number of interviews.
- 1:25SPEAKER_00: We're super excited about it and just thought that this would be a good opportunity
- 1:30SPEAKER_00: to give you an idea of what's in store.
- 1:34SPEAKER_00: So John, why don't you kick off telling us a little about who we have coming on the show?
- 1:40SPEAKER_01: Well, as you know,
- 1:42SPEAKER_01: and we want to relay this to everybody who's listening,
- 1:44SPEAKER_01: we did not want to do this without the blessing of John Chaney's family.
- 1:49SPEAKER_01: And that meant going to his daughter-in-law, Maria Chaney, and his son, John Chaney Jr.
- 1:54SPEAKER_01: If you've ever met them, you know that they are incredible, incredible people.
- 1:58SPEAKER_01: And if you've met John Jr., I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this to him.
- 2:02SPEAKER_01: It is like having a conversation with John Chaney himself.
- 2:06SPEAKER_01: I mean, his voice,
- 2:08SPEAKER_01: the way he carries himself,
- 2:09SPEAKER_01: it is really, it's enough to make you kind of emotional thinking about it, you know?
- 2:14SPEAKER_01: And they have been so kind.
- 2:17SPEAKER_01: And we told them that the first interview would be with them.
- 2:19SPEAKER_01: And they were just incredible, incredible.
- 2:31SPEAKER_01: Incredible guests and told us so much about Coach Chaney on the court,
- 2:35SPEAKER_01: off the court, stories that we had not heard before.
- 2:39SPEAKER_01: And our time spent with them is something that we really, really cherish.
- 2:42SPEAKER_01: And we continue to stay in touch with them about this project and created
- 2:47SPEAKER_01: an advisory board of people who we bounced ideas off of,
- 2:50SPEAKER_01: several of whom we're going to be interviewing.
- 2:53SPEAKER_01: So that's the first episode, the first full episode that you're going to hear.
- 2:56SPEAKER_01: And like I said, our time with them is something that I know you and I both really treasured.
- 3:01SPEAKER_00: It was fantastic having them on, John.
- 3:03SPEAKER_00: And of course, I look forward to having them on more times in the future.
- 3:08SPEAKER_00: They're just wonderful people, great storytellers.
- 3:11SPEAKER_00: And if you're going to be talking about John Chaney and building this oral history biography...
- 3:18SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure that it starts with the players, but the players have to be a major focus.
- 3:23SPEAKER_00: And I love that John Chaney's history is a rich tapestry that touches in so many areas.
- 3:30SPEAKER_00: But hitting on the players, we've already had conversations with several.
- 3:37SPEAKER_00: Mike Frieswick,
- 3:38SPEAKER_00: Nate Blackwell,
- 3:39SPEAKER_00: John Chaney's first recruit at Temple,
- 3:42SPEAKER_00: Leonard Stewart, and of course, John Baum, who didn't play for Chaney.
- 3:48SPEAKER_00: But got to know him, you know, deeply in their time working together at Temple.
- 3:54SPEAKER_00: John, of course,
- 3:54SPEAKER_00: himself a Temple legend and captain and should have been MVP of
- 4:01SPEAKER_00: the 1969 NIT championship team.
- 4:05SPEAKER_00: But that's another story.
- 4:08SPEAKER_00: These are great voices.
- 4:09SPEAKER_00: These are people who have amazing stories to share.
- 4:12SPEAKER_00: You'll be hearing them soon on The Chaney Pod.
- 4:15SPEAKER_00: And of course...
- 4:18SPEAKER_00: What stories about John Chaney would be complete if we didn't also go to the media?
- 4:23SPEAKER_00: And John,
- 4:24SPEAKER_00: I'm going to get your perspective on the people we've had on because you are
- 4:28SPEAKER_00: a member of the media, of course.
- 4:30SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's been a privilege to talk to so many members of the media
- 4:34SPEAKER_01: who covered John Chaney,
- 4:35SPEAKER_01: got to know John Chaney, starting with someone like Larry Rosen.
- 4:39SPEAKER_01: If you grew up in the Philadelphia area
- 4:41SPEAKER_01: and you remember watching those big five games on PRISM,
- 4:45SPEAKER_01: You remember seeing Larry Rose in courtside, hearing his voice.
- 4:49SPEAKER_01: We talked to Mike Felici, who produced so many of those radio broadcasts.
- 4:53SPEAKER_01: The stories that they've shared with us have been great, are going to continue to be great.
- 4:58SPEAKER_01: Mike Kern at the Daily News and Mike Jensen, the Philadelphia Inquirer.
- 5:02SPEAKER_01: Mike Jensen has a book coming out in December,
- 5:06SPEAKER_01: so you're going to hear that episode a little bit later on in the season here.
- 5:10SPEAKER_01: I mean, Mike Kern and Mike Jensen covered John Chaney.
- 5:14SPEAKER_01: As well as any two reporters I know,
- 5:16SPEAKER_01: you're going to hear from Dave Jones,
- 5:18SPEAKER_01: who used to cover John Chaney during his time at the Harrisburg Patriot News.
- 5:21SPEAKER_01: So many people think of Dave from his time covering Penn State in college football,
- 5:25SPEAKER_01: which he did wonderfully.
- 5:26SPEAKER_01: So he got to know John Chaney very well.
- 5:29SPEAKER_01: And so we're really looking forward to talking to him as well.
- 5:31SPEAKER_01: And we already recorded a conversation with Kevin Nagandhi, my friend, who's up at ESPN.
- 5:34SPEAKER_01: Kevin and I were student journalists studying at Temple at the same time,
- 5:39SPEAKER_01: and Kevin was kind enough to share his time there.
- 5:42SPEAKER_01: So it sounds cliche,
- 5:44SPEAKER_01: but sometimes reporters talk about being able to empty the notebook,
- 5:47SPEAKER_01: and this is kind of one of those occurrences where you just think of stuff
- 5:51SPEAKER_01: that they never wrote about,
- 5:52SPEAKER_01: or maybe they wrote about it years ago, but Covering John Chaney was such a treat.
- 5:57SPEAKER_01: If you had half a brain and half a heart, you learned so much from him just beyond basketball.
- 6:02SPEAKER_01: I know that sounds very trite and cliche,
- 6:04SPEAKER_01: but hearing from members of the media who covered him has been a treat for us
- 6:08SPEAKER_01: as well, just to get their perspective on the podcast as well.
- 6:11SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
- 6:11SPEAKER_00: And members of the media also include folks like Alan Rubin, who,
- 6:14SPEAKER_00: while he never covered Temple,
- 6:17SPEAKER_00: was formative in covering Philadelphia area high school sports.
- 6:20SPEAKER_00: For Hoop Scoop.
- 6:22SPEAKER_00: For Hoop Scoop for years and years.
- 6:24SPEAKER_00: Years ago when I was doing Philly Hoops newsletter,
- 6:28SPEAKER_00: I mean, there was never a game I went to where I didn't see Alan.
- 6:31SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 6:33SPEAKER_00: All the coaches in the Philadelphia area and beyond depended on his reports
- 6:39SPEAKER_00: to provide good scouting information on players that they should be recruiting.
- 6:43SPEAKER_00: Of course,
- 6:44SPEAKER_00: these are the days before,
- 6:47SPEAKER_00: you know, videos and everything was available on the Internet.
- 6:50SPEAKER_00: So hearing his voice and the star rankings, right.
- 6:53SPEAKER_00: And he, of course, Allen is a Temple grad as well.
- 6:57SPEAKER_00: So he's got that great perspective.
- 7:00SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, how about the coaches?
- 7:01SPEAKER_00: I mean, at this point, we've already talked to Frank Dunphy for the first time.
- 7:05SPEAKER_00: I'm sure we'll be talking with him again.
- 7:07SPEAKER_00: We will be speaking with many, many other coaches.
- 7:11SPEAKER_00: You can rest assured.
- 7:12SPEAKER_00: So, all in all, John, I mean,
- 7:14SPEAKER_00: it's been fun so far,
- 7:16SPEAKER_00: but as we really kick it into gear here,
- 7:19SPEAKER_00: it's going to be an exciting year ahead for The Chaney Pod.
- 7:22SPEAKER_00: And I think people are going to be really...
- 7:26SPEAKER_00: Yeah, as you said, Michael, this is just the start of it.
- 7:43SPEAKER_01: You touched on something that makes me think about the whole spirit of this too.
- 7:46SPEAKER_01: You may have heard some of these stories before.
- 7:48SPEAKER_01: You may not be surprised by what you hear,
- 7:50SPEAKER_01: but you're going to hear some stories you have not heard before.
- 7:53SPEAKER_01: And we always just as,
- 7:56SPEAKER_01: not just as podcasters and content creators,
- 7:58SPEAKER_01: but just as human beings,
- 7:59SPEAKER_01: sometimes when we've heard some of our guests say,
- 8:01SPEAKER_01: you know,
- 8:02SPEAKER_01: haven't told this story in a while,
- 8:04SPEAKER_01: or I kind of reflected back on it and I'm realizing now what it really meant to me.
- 8:08SPEAKER_01: Whether it's hearing a story for the first time or hearing some of the stories
- 8:11SPEAKER_01: that you've heard before,
- 8:12SPEAKER_01: hearing them through the people's eyes and ears that were around John Chaney and
- 8:17SPEAKER_01: in his orbit.
- 8:18SPEAKER_01: That's a lot of what we want to bring to you with the podcast here.
- 8:21SPEAKER_01: So this is just the start of it.
- 8:23SPEAKER_01: Again, we're incredibly, incredibly grateful to the people who have spent so much time with us.
- 8:28SPEAKER_01: But this is just the beginning,
- 8:30SPEAKER_01: and we're really, really happy to have you all listening and tuning in for this.
- 8:35SPEAKER_01: And we have a lot more to come for all of you.
- 8:37SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and first episode with John Chaney Jr. and Maria Chaney will drop in two weeks.
- 8:43SPEAKER_00: So keep your eye open, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
- 8:48SPEAKER_00: And without further ado, here's our origin story episode.
- 8:55[music]
- 9:05SPEAKER_00: Hi, everyone.
- 9:06SPEAKER_01: Michael Einbinder-Schatz here.
- 9:08SPEAKER_00: And I'm here to introduce you to something special today.
- 9:11SPEAKER_00: You might have noticed this coming up on your Life Lessons Collective feed.
- 9:18SPEAKER_00: So you're thinking, hey, we're going to get another lesson.
- 9:20SPEAKER_00: We're going to have a fascinating guest.
- 9:23SPEAKER_00: But that's not what this is.
- 9:26SPEAKER_00: What I'm here to introduce you to is a project that I've been working on,
- 9:31SPEAKER_00: along with my partner here, John DiCarlo, for the past almost two years.
- 9:37SPEAKER_00: And it's a new podcast.
- 9:39SPEAKER_00: And this is what would be typically called, I guess, a teaser episode.
- 9:44SPEAKER_00: In the parlance of the industry.
- 10:02SPEAKER_00: John Chaney.
- 10:04SPEAKER_00: Now, John and I,
- 10:05SPEAKER_00: John DiCarlo and I will talk about why Chaney,
- 10:07SPEAKER_00: why Temple basketball is important to each of us, both separately and together.
- 10:12SPEAKER_00: And I'll talk a little bit about the oral history format and why I think it is
- 10:16SPEAKER_00: the perfect vehicle.
- 10:18SPEAKER_00: For this.
- 10:19SPEAKER_00: But as this evolved,
- 10:21SPEAKER_00: the initial thought being a biography,
- 10:23SPEAKER_00: an actual book,
- 10:25SPEAKER_00: you know,
- 10:25SPEAKER_00: old school,
- 10:25SPEAKER_00: something you could hold in your hand or swipe on on your Kindle,
- 10:30SPEAKER_00: your tablet device,
- 10:33SPEAKER_00: I got clear that really the perfect vehicle for doing the research would be
- 10:39SPEAKER_00: a podcast.
- 10:40SPEAKER_00: Because John Chaney, the man, the stories about him,
- 10:46SPEAKER_00: With him, by him, they're legendary.
- 10:51SPEAKER_00: And he was a complex individual.
- 10:53SPEAKER_00: And one that, while I knew him, I did not know him well.
- 10:55SPEAKER_00: John knew him a lot better.
- 10:58SPEAKER_00: But going to Temple,
- 11:00SPEAKER_00: when I went to Temple,
- 11:02SPEAKER_00: seeing the impact he was having,
- 11:03SPEAKER_00: not just on the university and the sports team,
- 11:06SPEAKER_00: great to root for a winner,
- 11:09SPEAKER_00: but also the impact that he was having In the national consciousness of sport
- 11:16SPEAKER_00: and academics and opportunity and trying to raise up people and make a difference,
- 11:24SPEAKER_00: creating true opportunity for those
- 11:27SPEAKER_00: who are often underserved made me feel like I was on the right team at a time
- 11:33SPEAKER_00: in my life where that was something that was pretty important.
- 11:38SPEAKER_00: So we're going to be bringing you stories on this.
- 11:41SPEAKER_00: We'll talk a little bit more, but this is a teaser.
- 11:43SPEAKER_00: This is just to let you know that this is something that's been coming.
- 11:47SPEAKER_00: It's not something that we've been working on lately.
- 11:49SPEAKER_00: John DiCarlo here and I have been working on this for almost two years.
- 11:54SPEAKER_00: And I want to take a minute and introduce John.
- 11:57SPEAKER_00: And John, I want to kind of kick this off by asking you, why Temple?
- 12:01SPEAKER_00: How did John Chaney enter your consciousness?
- 12:04SPEAKER_00: What appealed to you about the idea of this project?
- 12:08SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, thank you for asking me to do it.
- 12:11SPEAKER_01: I'm honored and appreciate all the work that you've put into it,
- 12:15SPEAKER_01: your perspective, your thoughtfulness.
- 12:17SPEAKER_01: It's been wonderful.
- 12:19SPEAKER_01: And we're really excited for what's ahead today.
- 12:23SPEAKER_01: It is fun to reflect on it.
- 12:25SPEAKER_01: I think you did a beautiful job of summing up John Chaney,
- 12:29SPEAKER_01: a guy that's not easily summed up in a couple minutes.
- 12:33SPEAKER_01: Like you said, he's complex.
- 12:34SPEAKER_01: He's all these different things and you absorb a lot from him and having been around him.
- 12:40SPEAKER_01: And I remember like my intersection with John Chaney was, yeah,
- 12:46SPEAKER_01: I grew up from the time I was 10 out in Downingtown,
- 12:48SPEAKER_01: out in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
- 12:50SPEAKER_01: And, uh,
- 12:51SPEAKER_01: I transferred to Temple as a sophomore and I watched Philadelphia College basketball
- 12:59SPEAKER_01: and admired the hell out of him and had wanted to be a sports writer for
- 13:04SPEAKER_01: a long time.
- 13:05SPEAKER_01: And I thought, okay, when I get to Temple, I want to work for the Temple News.
- 13:10SPEAKER_01: And it's a trip because now I work at Temple full time.
- 13:13SPEAKER_01: I'm the managing director of student media there.
- 13:15SPEAKER_01: I advise the paper.
- 13:16SPEAKER_01: Never thought I'd get into Working in higher ed.
- 13:19SPEAKER_01: And so I do that and still cover Temple football and basketball separate
- 13:22SPEAKER_01: from my full-time job for Al Scoop.
- 13:24SPEAKER_01: But looking back at the mid to late 90s,
- 13:29SPEAKER_01: I thought I'm hopefully going to be covering this man and his career.
- 13:33SPEAKER_01: And I wonder what it's going to be like.
- 13:34SPEAKER_01: Am I going to be intimidated by him?
- 13:36SPEAKER_01: Am I going to be nervous?
- 13:37SPEAKER_01: And you're always nervous when you're younger.
- 13:41SPEAKER_01: And I transferred into Temple my sophomore year and kind of got,
- 13:45SPEAKER_01: just got my feet wet, wanted to make sure my grades were good.
- 13:47SPEAKER_01: My friend Kevin DeGandhi assigned me my first story at the Temple News.
- 13:51SPEAKER_01: And then it was my junior year when I started covering the team.
- 13:56SPEAKER_01: And you kind of ease yourself into it and slowly but surely you realize, yeah,
- 14:01SPEAKER_01: I'm still kind of in a healthy way,
- 14:04SPEAKER_01: not like in a fam way,
- 14:06SPEAKER_01: but you're in awe of this guy because every interview, I don't know.
- 14:12SPEAKER_01: There were no wasted words.
- 14:13SPEAKER_01: It was fun whether they beat George Washington by 25 or whether they lost
- 14:20SPEAKER_01: a close game to another team by two points.
- 14:23SPEAKER_01: Every press conference meant something.
- 14:25SPEAKER_01: Any snapshot of practice that you could see was pretty special.
- 14:32SPEAKER_01: You really came to realize that this guy had a ton of depth, a ton of warmth.
- 14:36SPEAKER_01: He gave me,
- 14:38SPEAKER_01: from the time I was working at the Temple News,
- 14:39SPEAKER_01: just as much time as somebody from the New York Times or Sports Illustrated.
- 14:44SPEAKER_01: And even if there were a couple of times where I thought,
- 14:48SPEAKER_01: I'm going to ask this question, he might bite my head off for it.
- 14:51SPEAKER_01: Sometimes he'd play with you and then he'd smile and wink and say,
- 14:54SPEAKER_01: no, and he would answer the question.
- 14:56SPEAKER_01: And He was just one of the coolest, warmest, most complex, like you said, human beings.
- 15:02SPEAKER_01: But you learned very early on what he was about.
- 15:06SPEAKER_01: Yes, it was about winning basketball games.
- 15:09SPEAKER_01: He wanted to win.
- 15:10SPEAKER_01: He was competitive.
- 15:10SPEAKER_01: But when you start,
- 15:12SPEAKER_01: you know,
- 15:13SPEAKER_01: Rashid Brokenborough was one of the first basketball players that I covered
- 15:16SPEAKER_01: at Temple.
- 15:17SPEAKER_01: And I was a hoops junkie.
- 15:18SPEAKER_01: Again, having transferred to Temple,
- 15:19SPEAKER_01: couldn't wait to be part of that college basketball culture.
- 15:22SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 15:24SPEAKER_01: I knew that Rasheed was a Prop 48 player,
- 15:27SPEAKER_01: but I didn't really know the depths of how much John Chaney was going to help him.
- 15:32SPEAKER_01: And when you hear about a guy who grew up in West Philadelphia and was raised
- 15:37SPEAKER_01: by his grandmother and John Chaney and said,
- 15:40SPEAKER_01: well, I'm going to take a chance on him.
- 15:41SPEAKER_01: And you saw the transformation from freshman year Rasheed Brokenboro,
- 15:45SPEAKER_01: who had to sit out as a Prop 48 player.
- 15:47SPEAKER_01: To sophomore year,
- 15:49SPEAKER_01: Rashid Brockenbrough,
- 15:50SPEAKER_01: who was so shy, painfully shy, that he could barely make eye contact with reporters.
- 15:56SPEAKER_01: And he graduated in four years,
- 15:57SPEAKER_01: and by the time he graduated as a senior, he sounded like a CEO of a company.
- 16:02SPEAKER_01: And yes,
- 16:03SPEAKER_01: it was wonderful that he was also a terrific basketball player
- 16:06SPEAKER_01: and helped them win games.
- 16:07SPEAKER_01: I'm not trying to lose sight of that,
- 16:09SPEAKER_01: but the intersection of purpose and basketball success,
- 16:15SPEAKER_01: I was very lucky,
- 16:16SPEAKER_01: and I'm sure just about everyone else that you would talk to for this.
- 16:19SPEAKER_01: You plug in a Mike Jensen, a Mike Kern, a Kevin Nagandi, a John Feinstein.
- 16:25SPEAKER_01: We were lucky to be around him because his energy,
- 16:30SPEAKER_01: his approach to how he coached basketball,
- 16:31SPEAKER_01: how he worked with players, all the things that he talked about.
- 16:37SPEAKER_01: I might butcher this again as I did when we were talking to John and Maria Chaney.
- 16:42SPEAKER_01: That expression he had of when you reach for the ceiling,
- 16:45SPEAKER_01: you want to make sure that you bring the floor up with you and create opportunities.
- 16:51SPEAKER_01: Before you knew it,
- 16:52SPEAKER_01: you were just around him and you're like,
- 16:54SPEAKER_01: wow, I'm learning a lot about him, about life.
- 16:57SPEAKER_01: You just looked forward to every interview and every conversation.
- 17:00SPEAKER_01: That has to be genuine because some coaches are used car salesmen
- 17:03SPEAKER_01: and you figure out very early on that He was not like that.
- 17:08SPEAKER_01: He was amazing to cover,
- 17:10SPEAKER_01: amazing to stay in touch with,
- 17:12SPEAKER_01: amazing to write about his retirement story,
- 17:16SPEAKER_01: and now just amazing to be able to do this and reflect on his life.
- 17:20SPEAKER_01: We've talked about how hopefully one conversation and one interview is going
- 17:25SPEAKER_01: to lead us to the next, and hopefully this will continue to grow.
- 17:29SPEAKER_01: I love what you said about the podcast being the reporting tool for this,
- 17:34SPEAKER_01: for an oral history podcast.
- 17:36SPEAKER_01: You know, because it's the common thread is stories.
- 17:39SPEAKER_01: Everybody has a story about him,
- 17:40SPEAKER_01: but they're not just like these throwaway stories that you find yourself laughing,
- 17:44SPEAKER_01: you find yourself crying, but he just was truly, truly one of a kind.
- 17:49SPEAKER_01: And so to be able to just do something like this and reflect on his legacy and
- 17:54SPEAKER_01: then hear about it through other people has been amazing so far.
- 17:58SPEAKER_00: You mentioned it's sort of perfect in a teaser episode that you mentioned
- 18:01SPEAKER_00: that we've had a conversation with John and Maria Chaney,
- 18:06SPEAKER_00: John Jr., who are both actually on our advisory board.
- 18:10SPEAKER_00: You also mentioned Kevin Agandhi, Mike Kern, Mike Jensen are members of our advisory board.
- 18:16SPEAKER_00: I mean, these are people who are who.
- 18:19SPEAKER_00: Gave us immediate yeses, and how can we help?
- 18:23SPEAKER_00: Which, I mean, John,
- 18:25SPEAKER_00: you're much more well-known to these people than I am, but they didn't do it for us.
- 18:30SPEAKER_00: I mean, they might like us,
- 18:31SPEAKER_00: but they did it for the legacy of Coach Chaney,
- 18:36SPEAKER_00: what he meant to them, and their belief in the project.
- 18:40SPEAKER_00: I think for me what's interesting is we did an interview with John Maria Chaney.
- 18:46SPEAKER_00: That will be our first episode other than this episode of us yammering here.
- 18:51SPEAKER_00: But one of the fun things was that we've compiled a list of probably a couple
- 18:58SPEAKER_00: of hundred people that we want to talk to and will be talking.
- 19:02SPEAKER_00: I can't think of too many reasons why most people who Didn't have some association
- 19:08SPEAKER_00: with Temple Basketball and John Chaney in general.
- 19:11SPEAKER_00: Won't want to sit down and have a conversation and share their stories, their experiences.
- 19:17SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the things that's most exciting to me is the unknown.
- 19:27SPEAKER_00: When we talk to...
- 19:29SPEAKER_00: Somebody, who will they mention that we haven't thought about?
- 19:32SPEAKER_00: What story will they bring up that we know we have to now go talk to somebody else?
- 19:37SPEAKER_00: And being able to slowly scratch the surface of things and slowly let
- 19:41SPEAKER_00: the stories evolve over time.
- 19:44SPEAKER_00: And will we talk to people that have so many stories that we have to talk
- 19:47SPEAKER_00: to them multiple times?
- 19:49SPEAKER_00: Well, of course we will.
- 19:52SPEAKER_00: And that to me is going to be an exciting process because again,
- 19:57SPEAKER_00: Coach Chaney was an authentic individual, complex.
- 20:05SPEAKER_00: I think you nailed it.
- 20:07SPEAKER_00: You know, he was, for me,
- 20:10SPEAKER_00: in my interactions with him,
- 20:11SPEAKER_00: which were far fewer than you had, but a number of them over the years.
- 20:15SPEAKER_00: And I'll just give a moment of background here.
- 20:17SPEAKER_00: I...
- 20:19SPEAKER_00: Besides being a Temple student and I arrived at Temple in 81, Don Casey's last year.
- 20:24SPEAKER_00: And surprisingly,
- 20:25SPEAKER_00: despite the fact that I was a huge basketball fan coming in,
- 20:29SPEAKER_00: I struggled in my freshman year.
- 20:31SPEAKER_00: I came from a high school in Brooklyn that had 36 kids in And I mean, I was doing fine.
- 20:36SPEAKER_00: I was a city kid.
- 20:50SPEAKER_00: There was nothing about Philly that freaked me out,
- 20:52SPEAKER_00: but the university environment,
- 20:54SPEAKER_00: getting involved in the university social life and the sports life was something
- 20:58SPEAKER_00: that I think I sort of hit out a little bit that first year.
- 21:04SPEAKER_00: And in fact,
- 21:05SPEAKER_00: the only Temple basketball game I went to my freshman year was at Alumni Hall at St.
- 21:09SPEAKER_00: John's during like winter break.
- 21:12SPEAKER_00: And I'm shouting from the,
- 21:14SPEAKER_00: I'm shouting from the upper reaches of Alumni Hall,
- 21:16SPEAKER_00: watch out for, watch out for I think it was 24 because it was Chris Mullen.
- 21:22SPEAKER_00: I knew about Chris Mullen because I'd known about him since eighth grade in Brooklyn.
- 21:27SPEAKER_00: Everyone knew about Mullen.
- 21:30SPEAKER_00: And they beat Temple that day.
- 21:32SPEAKER_00: But I wasn't a big fan.
- 21:34SPEAKER_00: Next year, I started going to games, and that was Chaney's first year.
- 21:37SPEAKER_00: And they were 7-14 at one point,
- 21:39SPEAKER_00: but then Granger Hall had gotten injured in the fifth game,
- 21:45SPEAKER_00: and they were really struggling, and they railed off seven wins in a row.
- 21:50SPEAKER_00: And came within,
- 21:52SPEAKER_00: you know,
- 21:52SPEAKER_00: one win of making the NCAA tournament with a team that was really struggling
- 21:56SPEAKER_00: to find their identity.
- 21:58SPEAKER_00: And I was a fan of that 14 and 15 team.
- 22:02SPEAKER_00: And then the next year, boom, they just went on a run.
- 22:05SPEAKER_00: That was,
- 22:06SPEAKER_00: what was it,
- 22:07SPEAKER_00: 17 NCAA tournaments in 18 years and ultimately being a number one team in
- 22:12SPEAKER_00: the country, five Elite Eights, all of that stuff.
- 22:15SPEAKER_00: But my interactions with Chaney himself,
- 22:19SPEAKER_00: the person really started when,
- 22:20SPEAKER_00: And my friend Don Russell and I started publishing a newsletter called Philly Hoops
- 22:25SPEAKER_00: in 19, I want to say 1990, or I think it was 90 or 91.
- 22:30SPEAKER_00: And we only published for two seasons.
- 22:33SPEAKER_00: It was great.
- 22:34SPEAKER_00: And Don was a writer for the
- 22:38SPEAKER_00: We had a lot of fun doing that and had a lot of opportunities.
- 22:44SPEAKER_00: We were covering basketball citywide, high school, college.
- 22:48SPEAKER_00: It was way too big a project, but it was a fun project.
- 22:53SPEAKER_00: I got to sit down with Coach Chaney a number of times.
- 22:59SPEAKER_00: He was as real as they came.
- 23:01SPEAKER_00: Of anyone that I interviewed,
- 23:03SPEAKER_00: my sense of him was you just walked in the room,
- 23:07SPEAKER_00: like if I was talking to another coach,
- 23:10SPEAKER_00: there might be a point where you could see they let their guard down, right?
- 23:14SPEAKER_00: That you got through to that coach, whoever that coach might be.
- 23:19SPEAKER_00: Like, what does this person want from me?
- 23:23SPEAKER_00: With Chaney, the guard was never there.
- 23:26SPEAKER_00: The important
- 23:26SPEAKER_00: thing was I walked into the room and he was just him.
- 23:30SPEAKER_00: There was no pretense.
- 23:32SPEAKER_00: There was nothing he had to put down.
- 23:33SPEAKER_00: There was no bullshit.
- 23:34SPEAKER_00: He was just going to tell you.
- 23:36SPEAKER_00: You asked a question, he was going to tell you what he thought.
- 23:39SPEAKER_00: I remember one conversation when I said he had been recruiting kids and he had
- 23:45SPEAKER_00: a morning of being on the phone with them.
- 23:46SPEAKER_00: And I said, you know, what do you think with it?
- 23:48SPEAKER_00: And he goes, oh, I hate this shit.
- 23:51SPEAKER_00: I hate it.
- 23:51SPEAKER_00: You got to kiss their asses.
- 23:53SPEAKER_00: You got to do this.
- 23:54SPEAKER_00: You got to say all this stuff.
- 23:55SPEAKER_00: Tell them they're the most important person in the world.
- 23:57SPEAKER_00: And again, this was the first question I was asking him on this day.
- 24:01SPEAKER_00: He wasn't looking for that right response.
- 24:05SPEAKER_00: He was just being.
- 24:07SPEAKER_00: And man, I just appreciated that so much.
- 24:11SPEAKER_00: It just made it so much more fun.
- 24:13SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 24:15SPEAKER_01: You would go into interviews and Sure.
- 24:17SPEAKER_01: Sure.
- 24:40SPEAKER_01: A lot of reporting is relationship building and building trust.
- 24:45SPEAKER_01: And there were high school coaches that I covered in my time working in New Jersey
- 24:52SPEAKER_01: that it took time to build trust because I was a guy that didn't grow up
- 24:56SPEAKER_01: in South Jersey.
- 24:56SPEAKER_01: And with John Chaney,
- 24:59SPEAKER_01: I really felt like he treated me the same way as somebody who,
- 25:03SPEAKER_01: again, would have been a nationally or internationally known reporter.
- 25:06SPEAKER_01: It was just, hey, what do you need?
- 25:09SPEAKER_01: I can't ever remember him saying to me, we're going off the record here.
- 25:14SPEAKER_01: And sometimes he'd crack you up and say, hey,
- 25:17SPEAKER_00: print that.
- 25:21SPEAKER_01: Even if I was like, are you sure you want me to?
- 25:24SPEAKER_01: So it was, again, I don't know.
- 25:28SPEAKER_01: We'll never.
- 25:28SPEAKER_01: Mike Curran says this a lot.
- 25:30SPEAKER_01: He will say, John Chaney's not walking through that door.
- 25:33SPEAKER_01: Mike Jensen says that all these people who – To your point earlier,
- 25:38SPEAKER_01: we really appreciate it because I think that people are saying yes to talking to us,
- 25:42SPEAKER_01: not because we're anything special,
- 25:43SPEAKER_01: just because the story of John Chaney's legacy is special.
- 25:46SPEAKER_01: And so many people say, John Chaney's not walking through that door again.
- 25:49SPEAKER_01: And they're right.
- 25:50SPEAKER_01: And I realized with revenue share and the portal,
- 25:55SPEAKER_01: college basketball is completely different and
- 25:57SPEAKER_01: the world surrounding it is different,
- 25:58SPEAKER_01: but we'll never see the likes of him again in terms of How he carried himself.
- 26:04SPEAKER_01: And so I so many times I go into an interview and I would say I'd look down
- 26:09SPEAKER_01: at my notebook and say,
- 26:10SPEAKER_01: I didn't get to the last six or seven questions I wanted to ask him.
- 26:13SPEAKER_01: But then you come to the realization that those questions weren't nearly
- 26:17SPEAKER_01: as important as I thought because he gave me something else to to think about.
- 26:22SPEAKER_01: And so he was he was just absolutely amazing in that way.
- 26:27SPEAKER_01: And as a young reporter, to be able to see that and think he's not just this scary guy.
- 26:33SPEAKER_01: On the sidelines,
- 26:34SPEAKER_01: he was a big,
- 26:35SPEAKER_01: you know,
- 26:35SPEAKER_01: to tease again to our,
- 26:36SPEAKER_01: you know,
- 26:37SPEAKER_01: our interview with John Jr.
- 26:40SPEAKER_01: and Maria Chaney,
- 26:42SPEAKER_01: Maria told us like he was a teddy bear and he used to say to her, don't,
- 26:46SPEAKER_01: don't let them know, don't let them know that they're on a soft side, but he did.
- 26:49SPEAKER_01: And he, he,
- 26:50SPEAKER_01: you would see it in his words,
- 26:51SPEAKER_01: his deeds, his actions to, to borrow his, you know, some of his phrasing, but.
- 26:57SPEAKER_01: It was really, really special to be around him.
- 26:59SPEAKER_01: And so many people in the reporting community had that same story.
- 27:02SPEAKER_01: And yeah,
- 27:03SPEAKER_01: if he got upset with anything that you wrote or if you asked something,
- 27:10SPEAKER_01: Just like a friend or a family member, he'd let you know.
- 27:12SPEAKER_01: He wasn't passive-aggressive,
- 27:14SPEAKER_01: and then you talked about it, and you hashed it out, and then you moved on.
- 27:17SPEAKER_01: He didn't carry it with him for weeks or months or two seasons later,
- 27:21SPEAKER_01: say, I'm not going to talk to you because two years ago you wrote this or said this.
- 27:24SPEAKER_01: He was just absolutely amazing in that way.
- 27:28SPEAKER_01: So I'm really looking forward to hearing some of those common threads with people
- 27:33SPEAKER_01: and, like you said, one story that will – That will lead to the next.
- 27:37SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it's just truly special in that way.
- 27:40SPEAKER_00: It's going to be a lot of fun.
- 27:41SPEAKER_00: I want to piggyback on something I said before that you sort of followed up on.
- 27:47SPEAKER_00: And this is about the lack of pretense,
- 27:50SPEAKER_00: the lack,
- 27:51SPEAKER_00: you know, that you got the real John Chaney from the moment you sat down with him.
- 27:56SPEAKER_00: And...
- 27:58SPEAKER_00: The point you were making about used car salesmen,
- 28:01SPEAKER_00: and I just think that's not very kind, John, to used car salesmen out there.
- 28:07SPEAKER_00: They have to pay the bills too.
- 28:09SPEAKER_00: I drive a used car.
- 28:10SPEAKER_01: I'm going to get into it after we record this episode.
- 28:13SPEAKER_01: I'm getting into a used car.
- 28:14SPEAKER_01: I respect the used car salesman community.
- 28:17SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.
- 28:17SPEAKER_00: The damage is done, John.
- 28:19SPEAKER_00: But all kidding aside,
- 28:22SPEAKER_00: there are a lot of And John Chaney was not unique in that.
- 28:26SPEAKER_00: I don't want to build him up too much.
- 28:29SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people who give you who they really are.
- 28:31SPEAKER_00: But there is an interesting thing that he combined with it,
- 28:34SPEAKER_00: which was a basic decency, respect, and kindness piece where he...
- 28:40SPEAKER_00: I never got to say,
- 28:41SPEAKER_00: he didn't look down on, I mean,
- 28:43SPEAKER_00: let's just take it as an example and maybe I'll take some shit from this
- 28:47SPEAKER_00: from some quarters,
- 28:48SPEAKER_00: but you know,
- 28:49SPEAKER_00: another person who you got the real person seemingly right away was Bob Knight,
- 28:55SPEAKER_00: right?
- 28:56SPEAKER_00: He didn't hold back,
- 28:57SPEAKER_00: but He always or often seemed like he was looking down upon whoever was like,
- 29:04SPEAKER_00: who are you to ask me that question?
- 29:06SPEAKER_00: And I think there was a lack of kindness and decency there.
- 29:12SPEAKER_01: Jim Boeheim was that way.
- 29:15SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a little bit of the
- 29:16SPEAKER_00: snark, a little bit of the snark.
- 29:18SPEAKER_00: And again,
- 29:18SPEAKER_00: these are brilliant people,
- 29:19SPEAKER_00: great coaches,
- 29:21SPEAKER_00: maybe great,
- 29:22SPEAKER_00: you know, in personal interactions with people they respected, let's say.
- 29:26SPEAKER_00: But again, my experience, your experience.
- 29:29SPEAKER_00: And the other thing that I had experienced with Chaney was that there was no pretense.
- 29:34SPEAKER_00: What you saw was what you got.
- 29:36SPEAKER_00: He let you know where you stood.
- 29:38SPEAKER_00: There was just something very real, and I know it's an overused word, but authentic about that.
- 29:46SPEAKER_00: And just to get back also to why an oral history for me,
- 29:51SPEAKER_00: I want to just take a minute and just share a little bit
- 29:54SPEAKER_00: about why basketball is important to me.
- 29:55SPEAKER_00: And I've been thinking about this a lot.
- 29:57SPEAKER_00: I went to a funeral in Brooklyn the other day for the mother of a couple
- 30:01SPEAKER_00: of my dear friends from middle and high school.
- 30:04SPEAKER_00: And as I'm walking in,
- 30:06SPEAKER_00: the guy who's walking in right in front of me is our former basketball coach,
- 30:10SPEAKER_00: Dennis McDermott,
- 30:11SPEAKER_00: who was like the star at St.
- 30:13SPEAKER_00: Francis College in Brooklyn, right across the street from my high school.
- 30:18SPEAKER_00: Graduated, I want to say, in like 72.
- 30:21SPEAKER_00: He loved to tell stories about Marvin.
- 30:36SPEAKER_00: Kevin Barnes kicked his ass when they played Providence in one game.
- 30:39SPEAKER_00: But Dennis was the real deal,
- 30:41SPEAKER_00: and he was a yeller and screamer,
- 30:43SPEAKER_00: which probably is the reason I chose not to play basketball in high school.
- 30:47SPEAKER_00: I was probably good enough to have been sixth or seventh man by my senior year.
- 30:51SPEAKER_00: I was a senior year for a little private school, but basketball was important.
- 30:55SPEAKER_00: I was the manager.
- 30:57SPEAKER_00: My friends were on the team, again, a tiny,
- 30:59SPEAKER_00: tiny school,
- 31:00SPEAKER_00: and there were seminal moments when I was in high school going Going up
- 31:06SPEAKER_00: and watching Iona coached by Jim Valvano with Jeff Ruland and Glenn Vickers beat St.
- 31:13SPEAKER_00: Francis,
- 31:14SPEAKER_00: and then going and watching that same Iona team blow out Louisville
- 31:19SPEAKER_00: in Madison Square Garden, one of,
- 31:21SPEAKER_00: I believe,
- 31:22SPEAKER_00: two losses Louisville suffered that year when they won the national championship
- 31:26SPEAKER_00: in 1980.
- 31:28SPEAKER_00: Many, many other events.
- 31:29SPEAKER_00: Seeing Albert King play in high school because they play a game at St.
- 31:32SPEAKER_00: Francis,
- 31:33SPEAKER_00: you know,
- 31:33SPEAKER_00: when Albert King was the best player in the country,
- 31:36SPEAKER_00: this stuff just seared into my head.
- 31:37SPEAKER_00: Watching the best team in New York City,
- 31:40SPEAKER_00: Mater Christi with Red Bruin who went to Syracuse and Vern Fleming who went
- 31:45SPEAKER_00: to Georgia and played in the NBA.
- 31:47SPEAKER_00: Watching them beat the McCray brothers and the best team in New York State,
- 31:51SPEAKER_00: Mount Vernon,
- 31:52SPEAKER_00: 39-game winning streak with plays at the end of the game
- 31:55SPEAKER_00: that I still remember like they happened yesterday
- 31:57SPEAKER_00: because it was unbelievable basketball.
- 32:01SPEAKER_00: And then I come down and I go to Temple.
- 32:04SPEAKER_00: And so basketball is just rooted in who I am.
- 32:07SPEAKER_00: And I still don't understand, other than what I explained, why I didn't
- 32:14SPEAKER_00: Really jump into it my freshman year.
- 32:17SPEAKER_00: But then having Chaney there and having this whole Watching these teams evolve
- 32:24SPEAKER_00: and go to the NCAA tournament and being the number one team in the country in 87,
- 32:28SPEAKER_00: 88,
- 32:29SPEAKER_00: and then watching Chaney be this warrior
- 32:34SPEAKER_00: for what would now be called social justice, right?
- 32:37SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that term existed back then,
- 32:39SPEAKER_00: but we saw the problems inherent with Prop 48 and so many schools not giving people
- 32:46SPEAKER_00: an opportunity because they didn't have the numbers on the SAT test
- 32:50SPEAKER_00: and Chaney insisting, hey,
- 32:53SPEAKER_00: we're going to bring these kids to Temple because it also fit
- 32:56SPEAKER_00: with Russell Conwell's vision of acres of diamonds and all of this.
- 33:01SPEAKER_00: So it was like, yeah, our coach was the good guy.
- 33:04SPEAKER_00: And yes, we were winning.
- 33:07SPEAKER_00: But we were also a program.
- 33:08SPEAKER_00: We played a fierce zone defense.
- 33:11SPEAKER_00: Nobody wanted to play Temple in March.
- 33:13SPEAKER_00: And that was our guy.
- 33:14SPEAKER_00: That was our program.
- 33:16SPEAKER_00: And over the years,
- 33:18SPEAKER_00: as I read more and more about him and then got to know him when I was doing
- 33:21SPEAKER_00: the newsletter and then afterwards with other interactions,
- 33:23SPEAKER_00: it was like the stories were incredible about him, told by him, told by others.
- 33:33SPEAKER_00: And some of them are uncomfortable.
- 33:35SPEAKER_00: But I just thought when I started thinking about this,
- 33:39SPEAKER_00: it was because I was influenced by two books about basketball,
- 33:44SPEAKER_00: both by Terry Pluto, one called Loose Balls and one called Tall Tales.
- 33:50SPEAKER_00: And Loose Balls is about the ABA team.
- 33:53SPEAKER_00: The history of the NBA and Tall Tales is about the earlier days of the NBA.
- 33:58SPEAKER_00: And both of those books are oral histories.
- 34:00SPEAKER_00: It's a format that I love.
- 34:02SPEAKER_00: I love hearing multiple voices tell a single story.
- 34:07SPEAKER_00: I know I've rambled on a little bit about that,
- 34:09SPEAKER_00: but those were the influences for me that made it clear that,
- 34:12SPEAKER_00: hey, I know there have been a couple of books about Chaney.
- 34:34SPEAKER_00: They took a different approach.
- 34:35SPEAKER_00: Nothing wrong with that.
- 34:37SPEAKER_00: I'm glad they're out there.
- 34:38SPEAKER_00: But I have felt for a long time that an oral history biography
- 34:43SPEAKER_00: of Coach Chaney would be something that could make a difference.
- 34:50SPEAKER_00: What the heck?
- 34:52SPEAKER_00: While gathering that research, why not put those stories out there?
- 34:56SPEAKER_00: Because I think people are going to want to hear the voices,
- 34:58SPEAKER_00: John, of people who can speak to why Coach Chaney mattered.
- 35:04SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 35:04SPEAKER_01: I think back to when John Chaney retired in 2006,
- 35:11SPEAKER_01: Temple Magazine,
- 35:13SPEAKER_01: that was the alumni magazine,
- 35:14SPEAKER_01: and that's what it was called at the time,
- 35:17SPEAKER_01: And they reached out to me and asked if I would write his retirement story.
- 35:22SPEAKER_01: And I said, yes, sure.
- 35:24SPEAKER_01: And then I remember like a little bit of a brief feeling of panic setting in
- 35:28SPEAKER_01: and thinking, oh boy, how am I going to do this?
- 35:33SPEAKER_01: Because when a university communications office asks you to do something like this,
- 35:39SPEAKER_01: there are,
- 35:39SPEAKER_01: and I don't even mean this in a bad way,
- 35:40SPEAKER_01: there are just a lot of cooks in the kitchen.
- 35:42SPEAKER_01: And I remember I might've shared this story with you And they sent me a list
- 35:47SPEAKER_01: of everybody who they wanted me to reach out to and get into the story.
- 35:50SPEAKER_01: And it numbered close to 20 people.
- 35:52SPEAKER_01: Unless you're writing like a 6,000-word rager of a story for like The Atlantic
- 35:57SPEAKER_01: or Esquire, you normally don't have that many voices in a story ever.
- 36:01SPEAKER_01: And like Bill Clinton was on that list.
- 36:03SPEAKER_01: I thought, I don't know if I have dealt my Rolodex, but I'll try.
- 36:06SPEAKER_01: And his press people politely denied my request.
- 36:12SPEAKER_01: But I remember thinking – I want to get this right.
- 36:15SPEAKER_01: I want to get this right.
- 36:17SPEAKER_01: I could have flubbed the story and John Chaney would go on living his life,
- 36:20SPEAKER_01: but you think of like what voices do I blend into it and how do I get this right?
- 36:25SPEAKER_01: Who do I talk to?
- 36:27SPEAKER_01: And from my little corner of the world in writing this,
- 36:31SPEAKER_01: he made it so incredibly easy because I tried to capture who he was and it That time
- 36:40SPEAKER_01: in his life.
- 36:40SPEAKER_01: And there were just so many anecdotes within that time period.
- 36:43SPEAKER_01: His retirement speech, he's quoting Sinatra.
- 36:45SPEAKER_01: I'm a sucker for that.
- 36:46SPEAKER_01: I love Frank Sinatra.
- 36:48SPEAKER_01: That ties me to my father.
- 36:50SPEAKER_01: And my dad loved John Chaney.
- 36:53SPEAKER_01: And I just wanted to get that right.
- 36:55SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't sure how the story was going to go.
- 36:58SPEAKER_01: And I want to give a nod to my friend, John Longacre.
- 37:01SPEAKER_01: I'm the editor of Al Scoop.
- 37:02SPEAKER_01: John owns the site and has always given us whatever we've needed.
- 37:07SPEAKER_01: And John can be He loved John Chaney,
- 37:12SPEAKER_01: and John's an opinionated guy and an opinionated fan,
- 37:15SPEAKER_01: but he read the story and he loved it,
- 37:17SPEAKER_01: and we were just talking about it,
- 37:19SPEAKER_01: and that meant a lot to me to hear his feedback on it because I remember saying
- 37:26SPEAKER_01: to him, I hope I get this story right.
- 37:28SPEAKER_01: I hope I don't flub it,
- 37:29SPEAKER_01: and I wasn't trying to overestimate my place in the world in writing a story,
- 37:33SPEAKER_01: but you put a healthy amount of pressure on yourself,
- 37:36SPEAKER_01: but I remember – The imagery and trying to capture that.
- 37:40SPEAKER_01: But I remember thinking at the time, oh, I could have talked to this person.
- 37:44SPEAKER_01: I could have talked to that person.
- 37:45SPEAKER_01: You know it's impossible.
- 37:46SPEAKER_01: You're not going to get everybody.
- 37:49SPEAKER_01: And so now, what I think of now is being able to do this and being able to do this oral history.
- 37:56SPEAKER_01: It's a treat.
- 37:58SPEAKER_01: It's so much fun to be able to do it with you because – There are countless numbers
- 38:03SPEAKER_01: of people that we could talk to,
- 38:05SPEAKER_01: and as we said before, one person will lead us to the next.
- 38:08SPEAKER_01: And to get the blessings of people,
- 38:11SPEAKER_01: like Mike Jensen has an incredible,
- 38:13SPEAKER_01: incredible book that's going to be coming out soon within the next year.
- 38:17SPEAKER_01: Mike Kern.
- 38:20SPEAKER_01: I think I said this to you a couple of times that we've met with John and Maria
- 38:24SPEAKER_01: to get their blessing on it.
- 38:25SPEAKER_01: And over the summer, to get our first advisory board meeting together.
- 38:29SPEAKER_01: And it's you and I sitting on the back deck or back patio,
- 38:35SPEAKER_01: PubWeb, just a couple blocks off Temple's campus.
- 38:37SPEAKER_01: And it's the two of us, Mike Kern, Mike Jensen, Mark Zumoff, John and Maria Chaney.
- 38:44SPEAKER_01: And We had an agenda for the meeting,
- 38:47SPEAKER_01: and it just kind of, in a healthy way, got into some stories.
- 38:50SPEAKER_01: I think I remember saying to you, how lucky were we?
- 38:53SPEAKER_01: This is going to sound really cheesy, but perfect summer night.
- 38:57SPEAKER_01: The breeze is hitting us.
- 38:58SPEAKER_01: We're eating some good food,
- 39:00SPEAKER_01: and we're talking about one of the most influential people in college sports,
- 39:05SPEAKER_01: period, and you're hearing it through.
- 39:07SPEAKER_01: I'm really looking forward to people hearing from Maria.
- 39:12SPEAKER_01: A woman who – I mean called her father-in-law dad.
- 39:16SPEAKER_01: I mean it was like he was so instrumental in her life.
- 39:20SPEAKER_01: And when you hear John Chaney Jr.'s voice,
- 39:22SPEAKER_01: my goodness, his mannerisms, his voice, it's like you're talking to Coach Chaney.
- 39:27SPEAKER_01: And to be able to just sit there – and I said to you, like,
- 39:30SPEAKER_01: how lucky were we to just like sit there for a couple hours and hear stories
- 39:33SPEAKER_01: from them and – Things can be a lot worse.
- 39:35SPEAKER_01: It's the middle of the summer and we're eating good food and hanging out
- 39:38SPEAKER_01: with these great people and gaining more ideas.
- 39:41SPEAKER_01: And so I think back to trying to cram everything I could into that story for
- 39:46SPEAKER_01: the alumni magazine and now to be able to reach out to and hear from people
- 39:51SPEAKER_01: and see people that I didn't get a chance to talk to before.
- 39:53SPEAKER_01: It's just kind of an ongoing thing.
- 39:55SPEAKER_01: And I think you and I,
- 39:57SPEAKER_01: hopefully I'm not speaking on your behalf when I say this or getting it right.
- 40:01SPEAKER_01: I think we want to do a good job of just taking care of it.
- 40:04SPEAKER_01: And, but it's,
- 40:06SPEAKER_01: it's so much fun because again,
- 40:07SPEAKER_01: you just listen and listen and listen, and we can prepare for these interviews.
- 40:12SPEAKER_01: But like you said, one guest begets the next guest.
- 40:14SPEAKER_01: And so the oral history piece of that,
- 40:17SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad you approached it from that way,
- 40:20SPEAKER_01: from that perspective,
- 40:21SPEAKER_01: because there are a bunch of different ways that you could do it,
- 40:23SPEAKER_01: but everybody has stories and to,
- 40:26SPEAKER_01: to be able to just hear them and have one lead to the next is,
- 40:30SPEAKER_01: it's a lot of fun and it's, it's really meaningful.
- 40:33SPEAKER_00: It is.
- 40:33SPEAKER_00: I want to close this with an ask for people who are listening now.
- 40:41SPEAKER_00: First of all, we're going to be, we have our first slate of guests lined up.
- 40:46SPEAKER_00: We're going to be releasing episodes.
- 40:48SPEAKER_00: We do not have a strict timeframe at this point.
- 40:53SPEAKER_00: It is a labor of love.
- 40:54SPEAKER_00: We, both of us have other things that we're doing to busy lives,
- 41:00SPEAKER_00: but we are absolutely committed to this.
- 41:04SPEAKER_00: And the ask is, is pretty simple.
- 41:08SPEAKER_00: If you know Somebody that we should be speaking to in the Chaney universe.
- 41:15SPEAKER_00: Don't assume that we know who that person is.
- 41:19SPEAKER_00: And this could be anybody.
- 41:20SPEAKER_00: I mean, look,
- 41:21SPEAKER_00: if you're going to come back and say,
- 41:23SPEAKER_00: you got to talk to Mark Makin, go ahead and say it.
- 41:25SPEAKER_00: It's fine.
- 41:26SPEAKER_00: But we know Mark Makin's on the list.
- 41:30SPEAKER_00: But perhaps it's the
- 41:35SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it's the person at the produce stand at the Italian market
- 41:39SPEAKER_00: who always was there when Chaney was picking through all the tomatoes for
- 41:43SPEAKER_00: a long time, looking for the perfect one.
- 41:46SPEAKER_00: Maybe you know that guy who has his stories about interacting with
- 41:50SPEAKER_00: the famous John Chaney from Temple University.
- 41:54SPEAKER_00: Boy, we'd love to have that conversation too.
- 41:56SPEAKER_00: So just reach out to us,
- 41:59SPEAKER_00: let us know,
- 42:03SPEAKER_00: and we will do what we can to endeavor to bring those stories to light
- 42:06SPEAKER_00: because we want the whole picture.
- 42:08SPEAKER_00: I also just want to take a moment and thank all the members of our advisory board.
- 42:15SPEAKER_00: I felt early on,
- 42:16SPEAKER_00: unlike the Life Lessons Collective, which is an effort I undertook, Pretty solo.
- 42:21SPEAKER_00: I mean, I had some people in my corner, some mentors and whatnot.
- 42:25SPEAKER_00: When John and I were talking about doing this podcast,
- 42:27SPEAKER_00: I felt right away, it's going to be important to have an advisory board.
- 42:31SPEAKER_00: People who, in particular, mostly had their tentacles in different areas of media.
- 42:38SPEAKER_00: Why?
- 42:38SPEAKER_00: Because we want
- 42:41SPEAKER_00: to reach the widest Number of people possible in the podcasting space.
- 42:46SPEAKER_00: We want to know about publishing.
- 42:49SPEAKER_00: John obviously know a lot more about that than I do,
- 42:52SPEAKER_00: but we want people who understand this world and have a connection to Coach Chaney.
- 42:57SPEAKER_00: And so with that in mind,
- 42:58SPEAKER_00: I want to thank the members of our advisory board,
- 43:02SPEAKER_00: Andrew Goldstein,
- 43:04SPEAKER_00: John Chaney Jr.,
- 43:05SPEAKER_00: Kenny Holtzman,
- 43:07SPEAKER_00: Kevin Nagandi,
- 43:08SPEAKER_00: Larry Rosen,
- 43:09SPEAKER_00: Mark Zumhoff, Mary Ellen Driscoll, Mike Jensen, Mike Kern, and Maria Chaney.
- 43:16SPEAKER_00: We thank you all.
- 43:17SPEAKER_00: We could not be here today without you.
- 43:20SPEAKER_00: And your help, your guidance, your support means the world to us.
- 43:27SPEAKER_00: Anything I've missed there, John?
- 43:29SPEAKER_00: Anything you want to add?
- 43:30SPEAKER_01: No, I think you did a beautiful job of summing everything up.
- 43:36SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
- 43:37SPEAKER_00: So listen for us individually.
- 43:39SPEAKER_00: My podcast is the Life Lessons Collective.
- 43:42SPEAKER_00: John's podcast is The Scoop with alscoop.com.
- 43:46SPEAKER_00: And by the way, really, if you're into temple sports, that is the place to go.
- 43:53SPEAKER_00: To hear what's going on,
- 43:55SPEAKER_00: get great perspectives,
- 43:57SPEAKER_00: and hear from a lot of up-and-coming journalists who are involved in
- 44:00SPEAKER_00: the Temple program.
- 44:01SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's really,
- 44:03SPEAKER_00: you've got a lot of people who have graduated from working on The Scoop who are all
- 44:08SPEAKER_00: over the place now, right?
- 44:10SPEAKER_01: Yes, and Mike, if you check your Venmo, you will see the deposit
- 44:14SPEAKER_00: that I sent you.
- 44:14SPEAKER_00: Five bucks, right?
- 44:15SPEAKER_00: Five dollars?
- 44:16SPEAKER_01: No, it's a little bit more.
- 44:17SPEAKER_01: I bumped it up to seven dollars.
- 44:21SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that.
- 44:22SPEAKER_01: And I also want to tell people,
- 44:23SPEAKER_01: if you're listening to Michael's podcast,
- 44:27SPEAKER_01: if you're a Temple Sports fan,
- 44:29SPEAKER_01: which we're assuming you are,
- 44:30SPEAKER_01: if you're listening to us now, his Leonard Stewart episode was fantastic.
- 44:36SPEAKER_00: That's great.
- 44:36SPEAKER_00: And, of course, I'm sending that memo right back to you.
- 44:39SPEAKER_00: So, John, thank you.
- 44:41SPEAKER_00: Stay tuned.
- 44:42SPEAKER_00: We will be letting you know when this is coming out and blasting it on all the platforms.
- 44:47SPEAKER_00: And thanks for taking the time to listen.
- 44:49SPEAKER_00: Be welcome.
- 44:50[music]