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Jim Gray is now in his fourth season hosting the Let’s Go! show on SiriusXM. What started out at Westwood One many years ago with the likes of Don Shula and Mike Ditka during Monday Night Football radio broadcasts, turned into a full show in 2021 with Gray alongside Tom Brady and Larry Fitzgerald. Over the years the show has adapted a bit, and the 2024 version now features Gray along with Bill Belichick, Maxx Crosby and Peter King while Brady still makes appearances from time to time. The show debuts weekly on Monday’s at 6 p.m. ET on Mad Dog Sports Radio.
“It’s been fantastic,” Gray said about doing the show and the conversations he has. “I mean with Don Shula, Tom Brady, and now Bill Belichick…Tom doing a show every week for all those years, it was like being able to talk to Muhammad Ali or Michael Jordan and being able to hear their thoughts every week on their games and what was going on professionally and the insights and the strategies and the fun and the ups and the downs, the Super Bowls, the wins and all of it. Being able to be a part of asking those questions and chronicling it and having great partners like Tom and Don and now Bill…we’re talking about historic figures. So, for a guy in my position, a sportscaster, it’s a dream come true every week.”
With Bill Belichick, Gray has yet another person to work with who is considered one of the best his profession has ever seen. Gray is enjoying the opportunity to get to know Belichick better and to hear his many stories about the game and the way his mind works when it comes to coaching, leadership and football.
“The wisdom and the knowledge are unsurpassed, and the achievement, nobody’s won eight Super Bowls, six as a head coach, two as a coordinator with the Giants,” Gray said. “We had a professional relationship while he was coaching but now getting to talk to him every week, he’s been fantastic. He’s really great at this. He’s got the best stories, and he’s got this total instantaneous recall of circumstances and things that have happened and how he went about it. It’s tremendous insight into, one of the most not only accomplished, but expert minds in the history of sports. He’s educating all of us. He’s teaching all of us.”
Not only does Belichick have insight, but he also has a great rolodex and is a heck of a referral when one is calling to book guests. On the most recent episode of ‘Let’s Go!’ Gray and Belichick, along with producer Dave Hagen, somehow managed to get a roundtable discussion together with coaching royalty. The episode featured former MLB player and manager Joe Torre, college football coaching legend Nick Saban and college basketball coaching great Mike Krzyzewski.
Gray said about the episode, “That was an amazing, amazing thing. And that was just an honor to be a part of that. There was 4,168 victories and 24 championships participating in that, 209 years of experience in professional or collegiate sports, 128 years of running teams. So, it was just a great round table.”
One of the more interesting topics was about how losing sticks with all of them more than some of the winning. And, more specifically, they feel bad for the players and coaches of those teams who may not have gotten other chances at championships.
Joe Torre said, “…I had the same situation when we had that 3-0 lead on the Red Sox, and then we lost four straight. And the thing that hurt me more than anything, I had Don Mattingly on my coaching staff and Tony Clark on my team, and these guys had never gotten to the World Series. And if there was anything I was sorry about and couldn’t get it done, was to have these guys get the taste of winning.”
Belichick said, “What Mike [Krzyzewski] said really hit home with me. Two of the greatest players I’ve had, both in the Hall of Fame, Junior Seau and Randy Moss, didn’t win with us…Those guys were such great players, and we came close. It’s heartbreaking for me that I couldn’t deliver for them.”
Gray has done these types of legendary roundtables before and recalled one with John Wooden, Joe Paterno and Don Shula, another with the greatest living Olympians, and one other where it was Bird and Magic with LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony who were rookies in the NBA at the time. While those were great, they most likely didn’t end like this one did. As Gray thanked all of the men for being on the show, you hear Joe Torre say, “this was fun guys” followed by Coach K saying, “can we keep doing this?”
Gray said you know it was a great experience for the guests when they want to keep talking. “These guys have done everything humanly possible in media, they have had documentaries done on them…but when it hits them, and you hear that it’s a great feeling.”
Gray added Tom Brady had said something to him years ago about what he wanted the show to be. “He said let’s try and lift the folks and give them something that they don’t know and something they can use for good. And so, that’s what the attempt is.”
Dave Greene is the Chief Media Officer for Barrett Media. His background includes over 25 years in media and content creation. A former sports talk host and play-by-play broadcaster, Dave transitioned to station and sales management, co-founded and created a monthly sports publication and led an ownership group as the operating partner. He has managed stations and sales teams for Townsquare Media, Cumulus Media and Audacy. Upon leaving broadcast media he co-founded Podcast Heat, a sports and entertainment podcasting network specializing in pro wrestling nostalgia. To interact, find him on Twitter @mr_podcasting. You can also reach him by email at Dave@BarrettMedia.com.
