Paul Feinbaum

Phyllis could have put out her own Christmas CD. And I say CD for a reason because Phyllis is of the era of the 8-track tape and the CD. She was amazing.

Legend. My favorite three words during the football season on a Monday after a loss by Alabama, that's his team. Legend is next.

We don't have a lot of New York Times reading, NPR listening, Pablo Torre podcast aficionados.

After that aforementioned Vanderbilt game, he unloaded on the coaching staff.

The call went viral.

Wish you would. Go right ahead.

You burned it.

That sounds like a beatdown, Tim.

But we have tapped into something, Pablo. We've tapped into the culture of America.

I can make it really simple. Legend is the president of the sidewalk alumni. And your colleague, Joe Scarborough, is the president of the upper crust elite Alabama alumni. I love Joe, but I gravitate more toward the sidewalk. That's what I do. You know, some of them have been to Tuscaloosa. Some of them have actually even been to an Alabama game.

But that doesn't matter to me because those folks have always needed representation. I think you can bring a political scientist in here, and this is really where the country is. And I think we have heard in elections that they're not being paid attention to. And I really believe that we give them a voice.

And it may make the athletic directors and the chancellors and the bowtied crowd in the ivory towers uncomfortable, but I really don't care.

I frankly think we found this audience before Donald Trump did.

Tony Kornheiser said this to me once, and I'll clean it up for this family podcast. He said, how come you talk to those effing people And, of course, he did it with the Long Island accent. And you can't explain it. I mean, Tony, you don't have to talk to them. You pontificate. You used to have a show in Washington where you got James Carville and all these muckety-mucks around the table.

And then you used to sit around with Wilbon and O'Pine for 30 minutes and— And don't laugh. I saw you co-hosting that show yesterday. Guilty.

I love it. And I feel like whenever they take me away, I hear the barbarians at the gate right this moment. That will be my legacy. It won't be yelling at Stephen A. Smith or Greenberg or anyone else.

I... I thought that was the line of the year, and I was not surprised at all that the next morning on ESPN, they edited that out, knowing that Whoopi was probably watching, and I think she's employed by the family too.

I think the view should have both of us on after this is published, and let the group hear that call.

Well, I knew there was a story behind Legend. Legend was part of a group called Sons of Sabin. Sounds like one of those groups in New York that go around and keep the law.

So we had lunch, and I said, Legend, what's the deal? I know you've alluded to your past. And he looked at me, he said, there's nothing to run away from. He said, I've been to prison. I said, okay. Couldn't really counter that by saying, well, so have I. I said, what were you in for? He said, murder.

I understand what's going on in this country because we deal with it every day. And these are hardworking people who love college football and love to express themselves on it.

That day at lunch, when he was telling me the story, I said, so what exactly do you do, legend? He said, I'm an electrician. He said, and by the way, if you or your wife ever need any, and I started thinking, maybe I got to get to know this guy a little bit better. But today, I would give him the keys to my house.

Not only that, Pablo, I mean, he's... He's a genuinely good person. He helps a lot of people. And I think a lot of people hear him on the show. Plenty of people have had problems, as you well know. And they go, I can, I'll try to say this with a straight face. I can be legend. I mean, he is. He's a personification of what our show is all about.

A guy that probably should be dead, but now he's a famous Feinbaum caller.

Oh, he gave an impassioned speech that day on our program, Pablo.

Somebody called in off the air and said that they were thinking about killing someone that day. It was a guy, I think it was in Philadelphia, that he'd had some run-in with a guy down the street, and he'd gone back to get his gun, and somehow he thought of what legend had said.

Yeah, well, I mean, let's forget saving mankind. Let's get to the important things right now. Kalen DeBoer, I'll have to keep reminding the audience, is the man who replaced Nick Saban.

To me, it's the part of the job that probably is the most interesting and challenging. And by the way, I mean, we just went through 17 years with Nick Saban. And a week ago, I don't know if you saw, he was on the McAfee Show and he was defending DeBoer. And he talked about how he never paid attention to the media. And he proceeded to identify me.

I always like it when a guy mentions your name in terms of, I never listened to him. But the point was, of course he listened. But we never really had, we may have had six Mondays in 17 years where there was real, I mean, we would criticize Saban for losing the national championship. That's how difficult it was to find something to say about it.

DeBoer took care of it by the first weekend in October.

Yeah, if you're an Alabama fan, it's Scrooge City. I mean, there's nothing to be happy about. Alabama is going to the ReliaQuest Bowl.

If you go back to 2009, I mean, Alabama has practically either played for the national championship or been in the playoffs all but two or three years. And this year, it feels very empty.

Something tells me that you will not be there on New Year's Eve.

I tell you what, I just thought of this, and I don't know, I think legend is currently... unattached. I can't do any better than legend in my career, which is starting to creep toward... It's late autumn, okay? It's wintertime.

There was almost a sitcom done on this program. I was in DC about seven or eight years ago. I was on Kornheiser's show. Some guy heard it who used to be the final EP for Cheers. We went to Hollywood with this concept 25, 30 years ago, me starting as a talk show host from New York in Alabama. My family's all from New York. Yeah, yeah. And all four networks passed on it.

The leaves are still rustling. I just had this, I've never thought, I have this idea that Legend gets married again. I don't care if he gets married or not. Has a child and produces the next generation's Legend. Can you imagine 20 years from now, some guy sitting where I'm sitting, 25 years from now, 30 years from now, I'm going, Legend Jr. is next.

Thank you. It's been a great pleasure, Pablo.

We fired the guy who came up with the idea, went back to Hollywood the next year in 2019, ABC bought the sitcom. Jason Biggs, who did the American Pie trilogy, signed on to play me, and it was in the early stages of development. I had already signed a contract to be one of three executive producers. COVID happened.

I'll spare you the long explanation of how I got here. I was a sports writer, much like you, except at a much lower level, I might add. And it eventually led into talk radio at a time when talk radio was blossoming.

The first time the show really started resonating, we followed Rush Limbaugh on a news talk station in Birmingham. So Rush got the audience ready for us, and then we took them and fed them even more red meat. We weren't feeding them red meat about Bill Clinton and Congress or Barack Obama. We were feeding them red meat about Alabama and Auburn football primarily.

Have you ever thought that this is just not going to be your year? Everything you wanted to happen hasn't happened.

I know this is ancient history, but you have to go back 42 years when Bear Bryant died. He was the most famous coach in college football in the modern era, and I say the modern era, but the previous most famous was Newt Rockne at Notre Dame, and then Bryant took it over.

He won six national championships, and I got there, I covered his last two years, and that was a badge that I wore, that I covered the bear, because those next 25 years were a disaster. Alabama had coaches by the name of Mike Shua, not Don Shua, but Mike Shua, and Mike Price, and Mike Dubose. It was a wasteland until Nick Saban showed up.

So you go from 1982 to 2007, where nothing good happened, and then Saban shows up and only wins six national championships.

Let me take you back to September 28th.

Alabama beat Georgia. It was a major upset, even though the game was in Tuscaloosa. It was just one of the wildest games. Alabama got off to something like a 28-0 lead. Georgia came back. Alabama won by one touchdown.

I sat on the show with you and Joe Scarborough, who's an Alabama graduate, and I was joking, but I said it anyway. I said, would it be blasphemous for me to say here on Morning Joe that it looks like Kaitlin DeBoer is doing a better job coaching than Nick Saban did even a year ago?

Oh, come on.

What happened on that Saturday, Pablo?

It was the first time in 40 years Alabama lost to Vanderbilt, and I swear, I don't think I'll be reporting when the world comes to an end, but I was alive that night, and it felt like that had happened.

Alabama led 24 to nothing. Here comes Cam Newton. Leads them back.

And in the aftermath of it, a couple weeks later, we got a call from Al from Dadeville.

Al is in Dadeville, Alabama. Hey, Al.

Auburn rolls what's called Tumor's Corners after a win. Toilet paper on the trees. They're iconic oak trees, national landmark. Famous. He starts off on this Bear Bryant thing. The night that Bear Bryant died, Auburn fans rolled Tumor's Corner. I said, no, they didn't. I've looked into that urban legend.

Stop, stop, stop, stop. I just have the most difficult time ever believing that Auburn students rolled Toomer's Corner when the news broke that Coach Bryant died. Does anyone else remember that? I don't. Do you want me to send you a copy? I still have the newspaper clipping.

And he just kept arguing with me. He's a former state trooper in Texas. And he finally just blurted out, I'll tell you what I did.

He said, do you think I care?

A week later, we got a call from somebody asking if we could hand over the tape, which we did. Two weeks later, I get a call from a friend of mine, Pat Smith, my producer actually, got the call from a guy on the Senate Homeland Security Committee in Washington saying that they were investigating this for terrorism to the water system of Lee County.

Next day, they arrested this guy whose name was not Al, but Harvey Updike.

I got to know him afterwards. I said, why did you do it? He said, I had to do it for Nick Saban. I couldn't let Scam Newton beat Nick Saban. And he finally admitted, he said, I guess I just had too much Alabama in me. Anyway, he later spent time in the Lee County Penitentiary.

Well, I mean... You've been in radio studios often, and you have the name of the person and what they want to talk about. And I kept looking down, and it said Smokey in the ER. And I just didn't quite register what that meant. Finally, after about 30 minutes, I hit Smokey, and I said, Smokey, what's going on? And he said, Paul, I just want to tell you how much I love you.

So, Smokey, are you telling me that you're listening to the show while you're having a heart attack?

I said, so what's wrong? He said, I'm dying. I'm in the ER. I said, is it serious? I mean, not a smart question, by the way. He said, yes.

And at that point, I remember Howard Stern having a bit like this once, and he asked for confirmation. I said, Smokey, is it possible you could put a nurse on? I mean, I just wanted to confirm this guy wasn't just some quack.

Okay, I'm speaking to a nurse right now at Trinity Hospital, right? Okay. She said, oh, yeah, I'm Jeannie Jones. I'm an LPN in the ER. I said, is he really having a heart attack? She said, yes. You know, he's had six heart attacks on his chart. And I'm like going, has the Hippocratic Oath not made it to the state of Alabama yet?

He survived. He did not die. And I wasn't really sure if I was happy or sad about that because it would have been a great final phone call.

He's still around. And I'm still milking that story on any podcast I can find.