Dan Le Batard sensed it was coming and pleaded with his ensemble cast behind the glass not to go where he thought the discussion was going. But ultimately there was little Dan could do to keep The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz on Tuesday from devolving into a sports talk pitfall.
Le Batard was leading a discussion on the Miami Dolphins and their playoff chances as the team stares down a division-deciding game against Buffalo on Sunday night. But Billy Gil and Greg Cote on the back row quickly shifted the course of the discussion into what a win or loss would mean for Miami’s playoff seeding.
“Please, please let’s not do the show where we’re going through all of the playoff permutations, and everyone gets confused and you guys don’t know. Like let’s please not do that!”
Gil, Cote and executive producer Mike Ryan Ruiz then started running with the bit as Le Batard knew it was flying off the rails and couldn’t stop it.
“I am about to throw all of you in the penalty box together, OK?” Le Batard joked.
Dan Le Batard pointed out that considering this was their first show after two weeks and everything else happening in the world of football, the last thing he wanted was to devote a chunk of time to talking hypotheticals.
“I don’t want to do this,” Le Batard said. “I vowed, resolute, after New Year’s to have more patience and more joy in my life, OK, and you guys are really, really testing it. Because I believe there is no worse thing that we could do as content today in sports than give me playoff permutations.”
Stugotz threw some gas on the fire by jokingly asking Le Batard for another tired sports talk discussion.
“If you don’t like that game, how about which Super Bowl matchup would you most want to see? I mean there are some doozies out there. How about Tampa and Cleveland? Bakers versus the Browns!”
As the bit continued even after a commercial break, Dan just tried to squeeze in that the topics on the rundown for the show haven’t really been touched on like he wanted.
“God Bless Football didn’t have a place to exist yesterday,” Le Batard said of the Meadowlark football podcast hosted by Gil and Stugotz. “I don’t know why that was, I was hoping that Stugotz and Billy would get to the microphones and break down all of the football permutations there. You could have done that there for an hour and 30 minutes nonstop.”
“But this is not a welcome place for it,” he continued. “Because there are other things to talk about that are better things to talk about, and we’ve had 10 days off and there’s a lot to be said that isn’t the Colts permutations.”
After Dan Le Batard pointed out further that playoff hypotheticals could be better left to hosts like Pat McAfee, Ruiz couldn’t help himself.
“I think McAfee’s talking about college football,” he joked. “Let’s zag.”
