Stories Inside the Man Cave
Ep 383: Austin As It Used to Be, A Journey Through Austin's Transformation with Dennis Ferris
What if you could witness the transformation of a city through the eyes of someone who lived it? In this episode, we sit down with Dennis Ferris, a former law enforcement officer and longtime Austin resident, who moved to the city back in 1977. Dennis shares captivating stories, from Austin's early days of development to its bustling present, giving us a unique perspective on iconic places like Sixth Street and local gems such as Dirty Martin's Place. Along the way, he also shares cherished memories of University of Texas football and the vibrant community spirit that has always been a part of Austin's identity.
Dennis takes us on a nostalgic journey through his teenage years in Round Rock, Texas, where he became a student athletic trainer at Round Rock High School. He recalls encounters with notable figures like astronaut Bob Crippen and legendary sniper Chris Kyle, providing a glimpse into the personal connections that have shaped his life. We also explore the highs and lows of Texas Longhorn football, the intense rivalries, and the political shifts that have impacted Austin, particularly the adoption of single-member districts and the rise of progressive activism within the City Council.
Reflecting on public safety challenges and the evolution of Austin's landscape, Dennis offers a candid look at the city's growth and the importance of maintaining a robust public safety infrastructure. From the legacy of Coach Fred Akers to the excitement of Texas's move to the SEC, this episode is packed with historical insights, personal anecdotes, and a deep appreciation for Austin's unique legacy. Join us for an engaging conversation that honors the past while looking ahead to the future of this beloved city.
Please like and follow each of Stories Inside the Man Cave Podcast social media links on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Tik Tok.
What if you could witness the transformation of a city through the eyes of someone who lived it? In this episode, we sit down with Dennis Ferris, a former law enforcement officer and longtime Austin resident, who moved to the city back in 1977. Dennis shares captivating stories, from Austin's early days of development to its bustling present, giving us a unique perspective on iconic places like Sixth Street and local gems such as Dirty Martin's Place. Along the way, he also shares cherished memories of University of Texas football and the vibrant community spirit that has always been a part of Austin's identity.
Dennis takes us on a nostalgic journey through his teenage years in Round Rock, Texas, where he became a student athletic trainer at Round Rock High School. He recalls encounters with notable figures like astronaut Bob Crippen and legendary sniper Chris Kyle, providing a glimpse into the personal connections that have shaped his life. We also explore the highs and lows of Texas Longhorn football, the intense rivalries, and the political shifts that have impacted Austin, particularly the adoption of single-member districts and the rise of progressive activism within the City Council.
Reflecting on public safety challenges and the evolution of Austin's landscape, Dennis offers a candid look at the city's growth and the importance of maintaining a robust public safety infrastructure. From the legacy of Coach Fred Akers to the excitement of Texas's move to the SEC, this episode is packed with historical insights, personal anecdotes, and a deep appreciation for Austin's unique legacy. Join us for an engaging conversation that honors the past while looking ahead to the future of this beloved city.
Please like and follow each of Stories Inside the Man Cave Podcast social media links on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Tik Tok.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Stories Inside the man Cave Podcast and, if you were not aware, this series Austin as it Used To Be all started early last year or in 2022. And it was an idea in which Daniel Young, the GM of Dirty Martin's Place, and I. We were thinking about what could we highlight about this great city of ours, austin, texas. You see, daniel grew up in Austin and I was born and raised here in Austin, texas, and left for a couple of decades. Austin was once truly weird. It was a phenomenal place and an oasis to many. So many stories are deeply rooted to this great city and it has changed a lot, changed so much, especially in the past decade, because so many people have moved here and it has become not only a major city, one of the top 10 to 15 cities in the country, it's international. Now, in episode 383 of Stories Inside the man Cave Podcast, you're about to watch an interview with a guy who is deeply rooted to Austin himself. He's not a native, but he might as well be Dennis Ferris, who spent over three decades in law enforcement, and he has great relationships in this city and has seen it all, but he has ties to round rock, which is just as much as part as austin as any other community.
Speaker 1:Episode 383, austin as it used to be, let's rock. And here we go, the relaunching. And that's our guy, dennis Ferris. Man, this should have happened 300 episodes ago and horns up for the Longhorn for life. That's right. We've got a lot of stories to unbundle, including his ties to UT football and to our sponsor, dirty Martins. First off, dennis, why do you think it took so long for this episode to happen? Because you are like a wealth of stories about Austin. You know, sean, I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's just one of those things where I guess the stars just didn't align right up until just recently. You and I got together and started talking about it and said hey, man, we need to do one of these things.
Speaker 2:And you know let's talk about old Austin. Right, let's talk about Austin. You know, I mean, I moved here in 1977, to give anybody an idea, I was 15 years old at the time, which will also tell you how old I am now. A lot skinnier, a lot younger, a lot better looking. No gray hair, no beard, couldn't even grow facial hair, probably back then. You know, when I moved here in 77, there were 300,000 people in Austin. The interstate was two lanes in each direction with a grassy median all the way through it. The tallest building I can remember is the tower on campus. There might have been one building at maybe 7th and Congress. That was taller, but none of the stuff that you see downtown now. None of that. In six street was a holy mess of hookers, and I mean it was not that it's much different now than it was but it was just not.
Speaker 2:It was really a seedy part of town at the time. So, you know, and we can, we can, we can hit on that a little bit too. We talk about why walking beat and why we have officers on sixth street and why that was created. We get into the law enforcement part of this. But you know it's, it's fun, it's fun to kind of talk about old Austin, it's fun to tell the war stories sometimes keeps you young. So you know nothing's off the table.
Speaker 1:No, I love that and I will say our conversations, whether it's on Twitter. I definitely want to bring your name up. A great follow at Ferris underscore, actual Great follow. And if you're new to Austin, follow him because his sphere of people, including myself you'll learn a lot, a lot about the city and where it once was and where it's going. Be sure to like us on all of our social media platforms. You name it, we're on there, Follow us and you can subscribe. I use the word subscribe lightly. It's free. Youtube, it's free. It's free.
Speaker 2:Nothing's free. It's like free Nothing's free. Somewhere there's going to be a fee. Dennis, Nothing's free.
Speaker 1:Nothing's free in this world anymore. In fact I got to show this. I went by to see the guys at Dirty's. There's the koozie, daniel, the 98 years You've been in there. That's a small portion on the right of their I say plural walls of fame, a lot of people anyone would recognize UT athletes, cops, presidents, senators, movie stars. We got to get Dennis Ferris on that wall somehow.
Speaker 2:Well, we'll see. Maybe next time you and I go over there I'll bring a nice picture, a nice action shot we can put up there. I got a few of them. You can see my I Love Me wall behind me here. I love it, maybe I'll take an extra picture of this, one with me and George W and stick it over there.
Speaker 1:That's a good one. That's a great one actually. We need to make that happen. The one thing that I had to ask do you remember what's your favorite item on the Dirty's menu?
Speaker 2:Oh, man, don't get me started. I actually like the milkshakes over there. Yes, you know they're, they're excellent. I actually like the milkshakes over there. Yes, you know, they're excellent, they're excellent. Old school milkshakes in the glass milkshake cup. You know, thing that you expect a milkshake, Not a cup right, Not a Dixie cup or whatever you know. It's in a cup that's designed for milkshakes, in fact, I had one when we were there back in April. So yeah, the milkshakes over there are what I like the best.
Speaker 1:I had one Friday. I hadn't been back in several months, so I had the comeback cheeseburger with jalapenos and an Oreo milkshake.
Speaker 2:Oh, I have a strawberry. I don't for some reason I have an affinity for strawberry shakes.
Speaker 1:Strawberries are phenomenal, Phenomenal. I got to pull up something as we continue to wind our way into this and tell your story. So yeah, you moved here in 77. This picture was of Austin in 73. I promise you that didn't change much in 10 years. What do you? What comes to mind when you see?
Speaker 2:that view.
Speaker 1:Uh, none of the buildings are downtown none of the tall buildings are downtown that this is what people think when they think of austin.
Speaker 2:This is the sleepy college town, right, this is the. You know, the little bustling 300,000, maybe. This probably, probably then was probably 250. I don't see any traffic, you know, you don't. Memorial Stadium is what it looked like right after they built the upper deck. You don't see the Four Seasons Hotel on the town, on the lake. You don't see, you know, the W is not there. So it, it is what we think of Austin when we talk about the Austin we love right.
Speaker 2:Right, and that sleepy college town and what attracted so many people to come here in the first place.
Speaker 1:That's what I see when I see that picture I do too, and you know the old warehouse district. There were truly businesses. There was, I think, a sausage company, then there were a lot of warehouses, and now there's just nothing but restaurants, bars and hospitality. But this is a cool view for everyone who hasn't seen it before, and that's what it's become. I think every city, though, has its stories. So Dennis Ferris moved here in the Austin area and went to Round Rock High School. You were class of 80.
Speaker 2:I'm a Round Rock.
Speaker 1:Dragon, go Dragons. So what did you remember about when you first off? Where did you move from and when you went through Austin and obviously Round Rock is well over a hundred thousand people now but what was it when you moved there?
Speaker 2:So we moved here from Huntsville, Alabama. My father was a engineer for IBM.
Speaker 2:So he'd worked on the space program and in the you know, the mid sixties to the mid seventies they were shutting down the plant, pretty much transferring most everybody out of Huntsville. We had several places we could go Boca, florida was one, charlotte, north Carolina, boulder, colorado came up. We weren't going to anywhere up in New York where IBM is situated. My mother didn't want to go anywhere where it was cold. My mother was a born-, born, bred New Yorker. My father was a backwoods guy from Alabama, so you can imagine the two of them together. So my dad's boss in Huntsville had moved to Austin a couple of years earlier, offered my dad a position here. My parents came down to take a look. Dad, a position here. My parents came down to take a look. Uh, liked it, looked around at the schools, decided they wanted my, my sister, my oldest, the sister that's right above me in age, uh, was about to start her junior year in high school. I was starting my sophomore year in high school. So my parents wanted us to go to a good school and uh, round rock isd, you know, was small at the time. The city of round rock only had about 6 000 people in it. When we moved there in 77 we moved into a new subdivision called round rock west. All the houses there were just being built. You know it was half a mile from the high school. I could walk to school, uh, if I needed to uh back then. So you, you know we moved. We moved here.
Speaker 2:I fell in love with Round Rock. You know, it's kind of interesting. You go to school from the time you're in kindergarten to the ninth grade with the same people and then all of a sudden you get thrown into a new school as a sophomore, as a 15 year old, and these people in the people at Round Rock high at the time had all gone to school with each other the same thing. I mean this is, you know, so you're an outsider right Coming in, got involved in the athletic program at Round Rock High.
Speaker 2:I was a student athletic trainer at Round Rock High and that kind of got me into the in crowd with, you know, with the with, with, with the folks that have been there. But you know I went to school with guys that you know were born in Round Rock in the early sixties you know, same time frame. I am obviously and, and you know it seemed Round Rock go from a little bitty town of a thousand people to what it you know what it was then, and good, good lord, you look at it now and it's uh, uh, it's.
Speaker 2:It's amazing to see what that little town has become. Uh, and it's really. You know they've done a good job of controlling their growth and how they've done it. But yeah, that's how I ended up there and, you know, graduated from round rock in 1980, uh, back when there was only one high school in the round rock school district. None of the other ones existed, um, so you know, I went to school with people that lived in Balcones out there near the Balcones Country Club and stuff, and you know I went to school with the son of the Mr Gaddy's franchisee in Austin, george Cash.
Speaker 2:His father ran all the Mr Gaddy's so I went to school with George and it was kind of cool. We can go to Mr Gaddy's. Went to school with George. It was cool. When you go to Mr Gaddy's the food sometimes didn't cost us anything.
Speaker 1:Did they have the number 459-2222 back then?
Speaker 2:I think it had just started not too long after that. You say that now and I'll have this earworm in my head for the rest of the night. Right, it's cool, you know I'll have that. You have that ear earworm, but uh, I think it started not not too long after that. So, and you know, their family still owns the franchise uh, the mr gaddy's franchises and ge George is running them now. George played basketball at Round Rock High back when Round Rock and Westlake were the two big powerhouses in basketball back then and baseball.
Speaker 2:There's some contentious games there between the two schools. Of course, we're this little podunk town outside of Austin and those are the rich kids from West Austin, and you know, it just got interesting, to say the least.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, as you know and as we both know, life moves fast and this is kind of a collage I put together of your life. We're going to dive into each. You know how it has. Each picture relates to your stage of life. We're going to dive into each. You know how it has. Each picture relates to your stage of life. We're just going to simply I know this is not overly creative, but the Ferris Clause you know I love this one. You went ahead to UT and student manager there. Help me out with who you're with in the middle and the top.
Speaker 2:That is Bob Crippen, astronaut Bob Crippen calling Mr Shuttle. He and John Young were the first two to take the shuttle into space. Bob Crippen was a UT grad and that's actually in the old equipment room at Texas. That's got to be. I don't know if it's the same year as the picture on the right. That may be 83. So the picture on the right is actually taken inside the Astrodome. Oh, wow, okay, in 1983.
Speaker 2:I carry the headset cords now. That's dating us too, because you know there's no such thing as headset cords. Everybody's got wireless headset cords, but back in the day they didn't have wireless headsets. So Robert Brewer, who was an outstanding quarterback for Texas, was a graduate assistant and he would be the one that signaled in the plays. So those are his headsets around my neck and I stood behind him during the game and made sure that the cords didn't get tangled up and made sure he didn't get where he wasn't supposed to be. So that's that picture. That's that picture on the right. I'm actually sitting on a table in the astrodome and in uh, guy from the statesman took that picture and sent it to me uh it's.
Speaker 2:I show that picture to people and they don't think it's me. I was about a buck 35 in that picture and I had a whole lot of hair. I'm also 21 years old. So, to give you an idea, that picture's 40, that picture's 41 years old.
Speaker 1:So is the one in the middle. You age. Well, my friend, there's no doubt. So what inspired you? And we're going to go into the law enforcement. You know what? Let's just move forward, because I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you. So the picture in the upper left with me and Earl yeah.
Speaker 2:I need to tell you a funny story about that picture. So if you'll look I mean you have to really zoom in and look Earl's holding my T-card right. So I lettered football at Texas. I've got a. I've got a letter, just like everybody else, anybody that played football down there. I've got the same, basically the same rights that they do right, no credit. No, I'm not going to be able to walk into places, like Vince Young can walk into places, but I have a T card. Excuse me, just like. Just like they do Well one day. Excuse me, just like just like they do Well one day, I don't know. So I used to work for chief and I made a comment one day. He was giving me a hard time about UT and I said, well, you know, I let her in football in Texas. He goes what? As a water boy.
Speaker 1:And I said, no, it was the equipment manager, Cause that's not really a real real letter.
Speaker 2:I said, chief, that it absolutely is. I said, said, and you know what, I have a t-card just like earl campbell's t-card and he makes this comment to me and he goes yeah, but his says earl campbell on it. I said, yeah, you're right, mine says dennis ferris. So I run into earl with the genie car wash on south lamar working acl fest and I knew earl from my days when I managed the ball. He kind of you know. He came around he recognized me. Hey, dennis Dennis, how you doing? I said Earl, I need a favor, excuse me, and he goes, what you?
Speaker 2:need.
Speaker 2:I said I need you to hold my T card up and you and I take the picture. And then I need you to do a video for me. And he goes, absolutely. So that's where the picture comes from. And in the video he basically tells Chief Acevedo to shove it. So I love Earl, I mean Earl's just good people.
Speaker 2:And then, obviously, the picture at the bottom is the Fourth of July parade. Yeah, and around Pillow, the North Shoal Creek neighborhood. Yeah, that's my hood, my old hood. Yeah, right around Pillow Elementary School, and this little kid this was probably 2008. And this little kid and his friend were doing donuts in the middle of the street during the parade, in his little John Deere battery-powered car, and I walked over to him. I thought I'm going to give this kid a ticket. And I walk over to him. I have my ticket book in my hand, and I walk over to him and I said, hey, I need to see your license and insurance. He goes, but I'm three years old and I'm like I don't care and I leave down and his mom snaps the picture. He's actually signing that left-handed in crayon. I've got the ticket somewhere. I saved it, I've got, I gave his mom a copy of it and I've got a copy of it somewhere, that's a great moment.
Speaker 2:And that one, and then obviously the picture to the right of that was taken about three months before Chris Kyle was killed, that's my buddy Wood, my best friend in the green flight suit.
Speaker 2:The guy next to him most people should recognize, that's Marcus Luttrell Right, the lone survivor. The guy in the middle is a guy named Pat Conner. He was a canine officer with APD. The guy next to him is chris kyle, the most prolific sniper in us history. And then obviously, uh, that's me. Um, they was a, they were doing a uh fundraiser for the boot campaign and tank called me and said hey, you need to come down here. I was just wanting to go home. It was late in the afternoon, it was a th Thursday, I think, and I was tired. It was my last day of work and I was just ready. He said you just need to come down here. I came down here, walked in and as soon as I walked in and I'm the only one in uniform besides, well, thanks in this flight suit, but I'm in my PD uniform there and Chris Kyle was talking to somebody and he stopped and made a beeline straight for me and goes you and I need to sit down and start talking.
Speaker 2:And I'm thinking to myself I'm looking around to wait. Probably I'm looking for Ashton Kutcher to jump out and punk me Right. Give me a few minutes to finish up, and then you and I, I want you and I sit down and talk. And I talked to Chris for about 45 minutes and he was fascinated with law enforcement. He really was outstanding human being, you know, made me feel like I was the most important person there and you know he said hey, I'm going to grab this picture. Marcus was there, managed to get a signed copy of both their books and then, obviously tragically, about three months after that picture was taken, chris was murdered.
Speaker 1:So that's one of my that's one of my.
Speaker 2:three months after that picture was taken, chris was murdered, so that's one of my.
Speaker 1:that's one of my prized possessions. That picture is right. No, that's a great photo I surely you have. I'm going to go ahead and guess you probably have that one framed.
Speaker 2:It's somewhere it's yeah, it's. I think it may be behind me on the wall or something it's you know, I've got.
Speaker 2:I've got some pictures that are you that are really of different stages in my life where pictures were taken. This one here I really appreciate this is President Bush. It was taken about 10 years ago. It's the one president that I wanted to get a picture with. I've actually had a picture with every president Carter, Clinton, Clinton, Obama, Bush. I've not had one with Trump, I don't have one with Biden and I don't have one. The other one I really wanted was one with George HW Bush, 41. Unfortunately he wasn't able to come to Austin during that time frame because that was when he really started getting going downhill so I didn't get the pictures.
Speaker 2:But I've got pictures, I've got. I've got one with all the rest of them they're, they're somewhere, but that one, uh, you know, uh, that one, that one holds a little more meaning to me, uh than than the other ones do 100.
Speaker 1:They do um, I would say with pictures, with any presidents. You know it's, it's you got to see how long.
Speaker 2:it's not the person you're taking the picture with, it's the office.
Speaker 1:You know you're hooking football time. You know Longhorn, uh, you came in. So for those who are not aware and not everyone's a sports fan, but if you're watching this podcast I would venture to say you are um, when Dennis was at uh UT, I mean, fred Akers succeeded Darrell Royal. They had some really, really good teams and he won a lot of games as the head coach. It was just following a legend where, in my opinion, had it's just following a legend, you have expectations which are ridiculous, but that's Texas football. Fast forward so 81, they had a great year in which they finished second in the country. Fast forward to 83, undefeated regular season Best defense in the country.
Speaker 1:I would venture to say almost every member of the starting on offense and defense was on an NFL training camp roster.
Speaker 2:Actually, every senior on that team was on an NFL training camp roster. Actually, every senior on that team was on an NFL training camp roster, either as a drafted player or signed a free agent contract.
Speaker 2:So, every player. So when they talked about last year's team right and Sark's team, they go back to that 83 senior class. I don't think there's ever been a senior class and now it probably won't happen because we don't have all those rounds in the draft anymore. Right, there's never going to be another senior class that had every one of their players taken either in the draft or free agency and was on a NFL roster opening day of training camp. That's was on a NFL roster opening day of training camp.
Speaker 1:That's I mean we're talking.
Speaker 2:Jerry Gray, Jeff Lighting, Mossy, Cade Craig Curry, I mean you know, Doug Dawson, yeah, you know. I mean it's pretty good football players.
Speaker 1:That's I did not know that. I just you know, I just because I knew that they were good. 82 is when I started watching really understanding the game. 83 was my first sports heartbreak, after the Dallas Cowboys lost to San Fran with the Dwight.
Speaker 2:Clark catch, yeah, the one that, oh, I'm just throwing the. I just threw the ball, I mean Montana talked about it. He just threw the ball out of the way. That was a scripted play, by the way.
Speaker 1:It wasn't just some miraculous catch.
Speaker 2:It was actually a scripted play.
Speaker 1:That one hurt.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Me and you both.
Speaker 1:I want to show you the video. Back then, the Southwest Conference had an automatic tie-in. The champion would go to the Cotton Bowl.
Speaker 2:Right, that was your goal. The goal was to go to the Cotton Bowl every year.
Speaker 1:Texas was number two all year to number one Nebraska. Nebraska was unreal back then. Then you had Howard Snellenberger in Miami rebuilding that program creeping up that night, on New Year's night, they beat upset Nebraska in the Orange Bowl and maybe, if this would not have happened, texas would have won its then third national championship. And this was the heartbreak. Texas was up 9 three late in the game and, dennis, you'll be able to tell us more about it, but this was when Texas. I don't remember what my emotion was, but I'm pretty sure I was upset as a young kid. When this happened, all Texas had to do was fill the punt and pretty much run the clock out.
Speaker 3:That guy's signal goes up and he is dropped and the scramble is on and Georgia's got the football at the 23-yard line. Georgia's got the football. Curry tried to field it, vance got the ball. Fourth turnover by Texas, georgia trailing by six points, as it first intended to play at the Texas 23-yard line with 432 to play Four turnovers.
Speaker 2:Actually, I think that last section there, when you see the guy walking around with the orange sweatshirt on, I think that last section there, when you see the guy walking around with the orange sweatshirt on, I think that's me, I'm going to go back.
Speaker 2:When you see walking away from the camera, I think that's me. You know, I think that's the first time I ever dropped an F-bomb in my life. When that happened, I mean I knew, man, I'm getting a national championship ring. Man, you know, I thought it. Man, I'm getting a national championship ring. Man, we're going. You know, I, I thought Miami would be Nebraska. Yeah, you know, and we we basically held Georgia to our yearly total on yards gained. The defense had been averaging about 212 yards a game, giving up 212 yards a game.
Speaker 2:We've had some low-scoring games. I mean, we beat U of H either 9-3 or 6-3. I don't remember. Unfortunately for us. We probably should have scored more, but Johnny Walker fumbled the ball a couple of times, going into the end zone and that was that game in the Astrodome where that picture's taken. So we win that.
Speaker 2:We actually have to come from behind to beat the Aggies in College Station. We're down 21-7, I think, and Fred Akers pulls Rob Morshell out of the game and throws Rick McIver into the game and McIver has the best game of his career and it's just dropping bombs. And we come back and beat the Aggies, kick our season. You know, that was the game that won the won the Southwest Conference Championship for us. You know our big rival really back then. Our biggest competition back then was SMU Days of the Pony Express. So you know we win that game.
Speaker 2:We realize we're going to the, going to the Cotton Bowl. We've been to the Cotton Bowl in 81, the 82 Cotton Bowl because SMU couldn't. They won the conference but they couldn't participate because they were on probation. For the first time they got caught cheating. We went and played Alabama and beat Bear Bryant. Last time Bear Bryant got beat in a bowl game. That was the game that Robert Brewer ran, that quarterback draw and he had come on the sidelines and told Coach Akers and Coach Tolman that the Alabama linebacker was dropping back. Every time he dropped back to pass the Alabama linebacker was dropping back into coverage and at one of these times he would be able to run the ball and run it and score it if we can get down on that end of the field. And we got down on the end of the field and, sure enough, robert dropped back, the linebacker dropped back into pass coverage and off Robert went and that's what won the game for us.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. So everyone talks about, I mean, the loudest I've heard DKR was probably 1990 against Houston after Texas was because, let's face it, 83 on Texas was in a down period, yeah, tremendous down period 84 to 89.
Speaker 2:Well, I tell you, I think that 83 loss to Georgia, the 84 Cotton Bowl, the 83 season, the 84, I think was was a. I think it broke. I think that broke Coach Akers' spirit a little bit. I will tell you, it's kind of like Alabama beating Texas in the Rose Bowl yes.
Speaker 2:In 2009,. That broke. I think that broke. Matt Brown right. Um, uh, yeah, there's coach. I love coach acres.
Speaker 2:Uh, a lot of people have their opinions about coach acres on the field. Uh, I couldn't give two hoots in a hell for him when he was on the field because he was so focused. He is the early version of nick saban to to be honest with you, how focused he was. Now I think about it. How focused he was very much so the early version of Nick Saban. Very smart guy, very, very smart football coach Off the field. Coach Eckers was the nicest guy in the world. Treated me like I was family. His family treated me like I was family, his wife, his kids. You know, and you know know. Later on in life, when he got sick, we had a big reunion out of his house and he came up to me and he saw me and I was one of the few people that he recognized. And Diane, his wife, told me because, dennis, he hasn't recognized a lot of people lately and he recognizes you and and that meant a lot that.
Speaker 2:That meant a lot then and still does mean a lot to me today. It's funny when I talk about him being on the field and being so serious he didn't know. So you have a whole bunch of managers, right? You have three, usually three in each class Back then. There's a lot more of them now, but when you get to be a senior, there's only two senior managers.
Speaker 2:It was myself and a guy named Brian Laswell, and I didn't know this until probably 15 years ago. Maybe if that long Akers didn't know anybody else's name but mine and he would. When he saw a manager he would just say Dennis, right, and he kept saying that to Brian because Brian carried his headset towards right and he kept saying that to Brian. He'd go Dennis and Brian go. I'm not Dennis, coach, I'm Brian. Okay, okay, okay. And then a little while later he'd go Dennis and Brian would tell him and I, like I said I never knew this he gets to, he does it like three or four times and and brian's getting frustrated and I get it and he looks at his coach I'm not dennis, I'm brian. And coach acres goes. Okay, not dennis, and that's what he called him from then on he called him, he called him.
Speaker 2:He called him not dennis from there, from then on never called brian by his first name always called him not Dennis.
Speaker 1:Not Dennis, come here so in your opinion, you were, you were there close up. You're very tight. I've heard so many stories, but it's, you know, life and football programs and coaching are very similar. They're cycles, everything's cyclical. What happened, you know, I know it hit, I hurt coach acre's spirit, um, but what is it that? And I know the southwest conference was on its onwards way down because there was. So what was going on is going on now, but it's, you can do it right. But what was going on? Why did the tex, texas program suffer so dearly for so long from that point on?
Speaker 2:You know, I don't know. Well, I do know I think losing that game to Georgia which, by the way, you know, craig Curry gets blamed for that loss it wasn't Craig's fault. We had a place kicker who missed a couple of field goals that would have won it by the name of Jeff Ward. We had an offensive game plan that wasn't executed. Very few people know this, but Rob Morshell was slated to start that game from the beginning, and after we held Georgia on the first series, coach Akers made the decision to put Rick McIver into the game when Rob was the one that was going to start, and that's completely two different types of quarterbacks, and it really threw the offense for a loop. I've never heard so much cussing in my life that I heard from Ron Tolman.
Speaker 2:Matter of fact, robert Brewer had to take the headsets off because it was so loud in his ears and I could hear Ron Tolman screaming. But there were a lot of things that contributed to us losing that game and ultimately Craig gets blamed for that with a punt Excuse me, but it's not the punt no more than Blake Gideon dropping that interception in the Texas Tech game. Colton Coy runs out of bounds, going down the field to score, when he should have stayed in bounds or kept the clock running. We got a couple of defensive backs that are really good football players let Crabtree get loose and score a touchdown, but they only remember, you know, blake dropping the interception that would have kept that touchdown from happening. It's a team wins together, team loses together.
Speaker 2:It's not about one person, and you know, unfortunately both of them get blamed for games that would have given them a national championship, but it wasn't their fault.
Speaker 1:When you look back at this and I know it was 84, 85, 86, so after that Coach Akers had three more years and he experienced, I think, the program's first losing season since 1957.
Speaker 2:And that yeah, I think it was the. That was the 86 season 86, correct, yeah, so.
Speaker 2:I will tell you. I think the other thing that really hurt us was we go to the Freedom Bowl in 1984 out in California, out in Anaheim, and we just get slaughtered by Chuck Long and they cry. We call that the Highway Patrol defense because we didn't let them get more than 55 points. Sean, that's the most miserable football game I've ever been at in my life. I was at the 82 Sun Bowl when it snowed on Christmas Day and we were freezing and we didn't have any warm weather gear. That game was miserable. It was rainy, the field was muddy, it was natural grass field and it was in San Diego, right, no, it was in Anaheim, it was in the Rams stadium in.
Speaker 2:Anaheim when the Rams played in Anaheim. Same baseball field the Angels play in now.
Speaker 1:But in the.
Speaker 2:NFL, when they put the name of the team in the end zone in the grass field, they cut the grass lower where the name is and all they did for that game was spray it white. So the word Rams was cut out in both end zones, right? Well, all I did was spray it with white paint. Well, the grass was small. I mean, it rained like five inches during that game and it became a mud pit down there and the end zones became a mud pit, and then you mix it with that white paint. It was like plaster of Paris. Everything I wore that game I threw away Before he took a shower to leave. I threw my shoes away, I threw my pants away.
Speaker 1:I kept my shirt but my socks. I just threw it away because it was ruined. I vaguely remember it because watching it was awful. It was like the team game.
Speaker 2:That really, to be quite honest with you, that was the beginning of the end. That was the beginning of the end for Akers and it really was a thing that turned Texas football into mediocrity for quite a few years.
Speaker 1:Because that was the year I mean there was the Edwin Simmons incident and the running back and then losing to A&M, what would turn into be a six-game losing streak to Jackie Sherrill and A&M. I remember that it was hard to watch.
Speaker 2:It was hard to live through it.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God. So God rest his soul. And to Fred Akers' family, great man. I love Fred Akers' family, great man. But you, I love Coach Akers, I really do. You know he was always nice to me. Of course I had no experiences compared to yours, but I was grateful to have met him.
Speaker 2:You know I saw him at that reunion we had, which you know that Lawrence Sampleton and them put together, when he was really he was towards the end of his life. But I'd seen him a couple of years earlier when he was inducted to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame up in Waco and that actually, when I think about it, that's the one where he recognized me and that's the one where Diane said he doesn't recognize very many people these days and he had just started having the symptoms of of dementia. He gave a speech. I will tell you, danny had his son, danny had died a few months earlier and I think that really took a lot out of me when Danny died and you know I don't think he ever fully recovered from that, but he gave that speech that night and he was dead on when he gave the speech. But again, you know, I think it was written for him, you know he was reading it.
Speaker 2:So you know, it's kind of kind of funny when you look at what's going on with the guy that sits in the White House right now. You know exactly that, right, but you know, excuse me, coach came up, gave me a big hug and said Dennis, it was really nice to see you and it seems, it seems you've fared well in life. And I said, yes, sir, I have, and I'm very lucky. But some of those comes from the lessons I learned, you know, at Texas, when I was managing football and the coach.
Speaker 1:So I owe Fred Akers some too, no, that's beautiful and this is a perfect segue because I honestly think anything we experience, especially in athletics, I really do think it sets you up for success. And what it did for you, I mean it helped you in three decades of law enforcement. I mean, when you look back at that experience with UT football and managing personalities, managing what you did because I got to give it to you guys and I don't think enough people mention this the equipment managers, athletic everybody, what you guys do on a game day and especially for road games, that's a science that takes a lot of logistics. Oh yeah, and actually that's that takes a lot of logistics.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and that's you know. Actually that's where I learned the art of logistics, right, right, I mean they would. When we would travel, they would let me pack the truck, they would I would be the guy up in the truck packing the truck, cause I could pack the truck, just right, right, I made sure everything got in there. You know, it really is a science, you know, and those guys today are actually paid employees at the university. Back then we didn't get paid, we we made. When I was a freshman, I made 20.
Speaker 2:I got a twenty five dollar a month check from the university. No, no scholarship, no books, nothing, nothing like that. Might have sold a few oklahoma tickets in the day, 100 bucks a piece, by the way, which was, you know. Think about a lot of money in 1980, 80, you know in the 80s 100 bucks we'd get.
Speaker 2:You know, might might have sold. The statute of limitations is over. Uh, you know, in all fairness, except for the 84 season I sold. I sold's how I paid for Christmas every year, smart, but yeah, just trying to end it. But I went to every game for the entire time I managed football in Texas. I went to every game, the games that we wouldn't necessarily take all the managers. We figured out a way ourselves to get there and we would all cram into one or two hotel rooms and get up that morning. I will tell you, the night before the OU game in Dallas, which was the first one I'd gone to, we were out drinking until about 2 o'clock in the morning. We closed down the sphere at the Hyatt in Dallas. I think between 14 of us we had like a $2,000 alcohol tab, food and alcohol tab.
Speaker 1:We signed it off.
Speaker 2:The university paid for it, by the way, we signed it off to the room and the university took care of it. I was still drunk when we kicked off that month. We had to get to the stadium because it was 11 o'clock kickoff. So we got to the stadium at 5 o'clock in the morning. Well, we stumbled in the hotel room at 2.30. I had barely enough time to shut my eyes for a couple hours, get up, take a shower and go to the football thing. So I was still pretty. I mean, all of us were drunk and probably by game time I was just still a little bit intoxicated.
Speaker 1:but really hung over.
Speaker 2:And I was running tees and I actually had to run out on the field after kickoffs to grab the tee and run it back. You sweated up.
Speaker 2:One of the times I ran back I went straight to the garbage can and you can imagine what happened. Oh yeah, it was bad. We drank a lot Back in those days. We drank a lot of alcohol and I did that. You know also and I don't know you and I discussed this. You know I used to. So when I get done managing football at Texas, I got offered a job by Billy, our friend, billy Shaw. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Billy. Billy was the equipment manager for the San Antonio gunslingers in the USFL. So I went down for a season as an assistant equipment manager for the San Antonio gunslingers in the old USFL the last year it was in existence and you know that the stories I could tell you from that were something else Getting stuck on the tarmac in Orlando because the check Clinton Mangus had written to Braniff Airlines bounced and they weren't going to let us on the plane after the game to fly back to San Antonio until he paid, gave him a cashier's check, getting in our cars and racing to the bank on payday to beat excuse me, to beat the players, because we wanted to get to the bank before the account ran out of money. Oh my God, I actually saw one time that Mangus' checking account was overdrafted $175,000 on a payday. You know, Rick.
Speaker 2:Neuheisel was our quarterback and he was making NFL money, so I had to make sure I got to the. I had to make sure I had to get to the bank before Rick did and Jeff Lighting was making pretty good money back then. But I had a Mustang Cobra and I could outrun everybody and get to the bank, we'd leave stuff out on practice field.
Speaker 2:Right, we'd leave the dummies, the footballs, everything sprint to the front office, which was a trailer at Alamo Stadium in San Antonio. Get our checks, haul it to the bank to cash it, so I could pay my rent, so I could get it taken out of my apartment.
Speaker 1:You go to the nearest Something that's a hot topic for you and me and a lot of people, and I think you get an opportunity to really see it from the inside out, that most people really nowadays what they see on social media isn't always factual, correct. So this city has always been at the epicenter of politics because of the state capital. But when you dial in closer to city politics, we're not even the same type of city. I don't think I feel like we've had some good leadership 20 years ago, 15, 20, 25, 30 years ago, 20, 25, 30 years ago but it's always been different, much different than any of the other big cities.
Speaker 2:Right From a law enforcement cop's perspective. How would you describe the ATX politics as it's evolved to the top 10 or 11th largest city in the country? Well, let me tell you what changed Austin, and what changed politics in Austin was the push to go to single-member districts. Where we have now 10 districts, the mayor's elected at large, but now what you have is you have 10 people who are elected by a small 80,000 to 90,000 geographic section of the city and they really don't have to answer to the other 900,000 people in the city. Right, they only have to answer to their, to their, you know, 90,000. And what happens is you end up with activists on the council. I mean, greg Kassar is a perfect example. We've got quite a few on the council now and you have people who don't get to vote for all their leaderships. You have you as a citizen of Austin. You get to vote for the mayor and one council member, but the other nine people that you don't get to vote for have 100% effect on you.
Speaker 2:Um, mayor leffingwell actually wanted and they put a second proposal out there. It came in seconds, so 10-1 got the most votes, 5-5-1 got the next votes and then leaving it as a seven at large, like we used to have, of seven council members. They were elected citywide. The idea behind going to 10-1 was because most of the uh of the seven council members they were elected citywide. The idea behind going to 10-1 was because most of the seven council members six of them lived west of Mopac and north of the river in West Austin, so it was trying to get geographic representation. The 5-5-1 would have been five at-large districts, five at-large five districts and the mayor, so you would get to vote for six people every time.
Speaker 2:You would get to vote for. Actually, you get to vote for seven. You'd get to vote for the council member in your district, the five at-large and the mayor. So you would get to vote for basically 70 percent of the leadership in Austin. Well, we don't have that now. So what? What it's boiled down to is the politics in Austin has gone hyper, hyper left, very progressive, they seem to want to. Socialism seems to have gotten a foothold in at City Hall. The activists who hate the cops have gotten a hold of City Hall has gotten got a foothold in City Hall in the eight years that Steve Adler was the mayor which, by by the way, he will go down as the worst mayor in the history of the city. Hands down, hands down.
Speaker 2:You know, kirk Watson, I think we'll do a once he's reelected. I think we'll do a once he's reelected, I think we'll see a different Kirk Watson. You know it was unfortunate for him the first time when he ran and only had a two year term. He basically had to go back into reelection mode. So I think there's some things that the Kirk Watson was is the moderate Kirk Watson, kind of like John Whitmire is in Houston. I think you'll see some more of that out of Kirk when out of Mayor Watson After the election. What's really scary to me is that some of the people that are running now for these open seats aren't even 30 years old yet and they have these crazy progressive ideas that you know we should be giving rent assistance to people.
Speaker 2:You know, guaranteed income, or we're just giving people a thousand bucks a month because we want to give it to them. They think that bicyclists should have more of the road than cars. We've got all these bike lanes now where we've taken vehicular lane traffic away. And you know, you see, you see streets that nobody rides bikes on, with bike lanes. Go down Springdale Road. You know Springdale Road there's two bike lanes bike lane I've never seen anybody on a bike on Springdale you have Avenue. There's bike lanes on both sides. The bicyclists are on the sidewalk or in the street. They're not in the bike lanes. You know, if we're going to do this and we're going to have these bike lanes, maybe we should. If bicycles don't ride in the bike lanes, maybe we should be giving them tickets. But the politics in Austin has gone really hyper left, very progressive, with the legislature being as conservative as it is.
Speaker 1:Even some of the what we would now call normal Democrats, right?
Speaker 2:Guys like Adam Lowe, my buddy, and I think you know Adam too, right, Our buddy, adam Lowe. I would consider Adam a normal Democrat. He's a center-left Democrat, which is where most normal Democrats are and should be. We've got some of those in the State House, and then you've got the center-right, very center-right Republicans, and you've got the far-left Democrats and you've got the far-left Republicans. Remember this If you have the far-left, no sorry, far, far right and far left and they meet and they agree on something at the bottom of the horseshoe. So here's the horseshoe right. The center left and center right folks are in the open area of the horseshoe, far left, far right. When they meet down at the bottom of the horseshoe and they agree on something, run like hell at the bottom of the horseshoe and they agree on something.
Speaker 2:run like hell. But I think what we're going to see in this next legislative session obviously the state legislature is going to go a little more to the right. We're going to see some more Austin bashing. Every time the city of Austin does something stupid, the state legislature, when they meet every two years, goes back and rewrites a law to fix it. There's always been Austin bashing, Even back when the.
Speaker 2:Democrats weren't in control of the state house and the Senate and the governor's office. In the 80s there was Austin bashing. We had the killer bees that left to keep from getting some legislation passed. They were all Democrats. People don't remember because the Republicans have been in charge in Texas for so long. They don't remember the days when the Democrats were in charge of the House but they did Austin bashing too, because Austin is a goofy town. I mean, they can't get out of their own way and sometimes the state's got to be the ones that got to be the adult in the room. Come in and be the adult that fixes the problems.
Speaker 1:We mentioned everything cyclical in the world of college athletics and in general life, but will this sackle out, politically speaking, in Austin? Will there be a turn for moderation or moderate?
Speaker 2:Sean, I don't know the answer to that question. I would hope yes, part of me hopes that's what happens. If it does, it's going to be It'll be eight years from now. I think Austin hasn't hit rock bottom as far as the, I think, the normal everyday citizens who just go about doing their daily lives. Crime doesn't really affect them, other than property crime. They just assume that that goes along with the territory. You know I I made a comment to somebody on the news the other day that for some reason now we've come to accept that 75 or 80 people murdered in this city is just the part of, is part of us being a big city now and growing up where we used to have 22 to 25.
Speaker 2:We shouldn't accept that we should not accept that as the norm.
Speaker 1:We shouldn't accept.
Speaker 2:We shouldn't accept a police department that's 500 officers understaffed as the norm. We shouldn't accept people protesting, um, in the anti-Semitic stuff that's coming out and it's come out on these college campuses. We shouldn't accept that. Uh, you know, we're supposed to be better than that, um, and I'm hoping that we get. We do get a, we get kind of a revival in the city and we get. You know, we get some people more, more center on the council. Look, you, look back at those councils. In the last council that was in under the seven member council, you had Kathy Tovo, cheryl Cole, mike Martinez, bill Spellman, cheryl Cole, mike Martinez, bill Spellman, chris Riley.
Speaker 1:Laura.
Speaker 2:Morrison and Lade Leffingwell. I would take those seven folks back in a heartbeat because they held the cops' feet to the fire like they should have, but they understood that their number one priority in this city was public safety and folks. I don't care what anybody else says. A city's number one priority is public safety, and that's fire and police and EMS. To an extent and I don't want to throw my EMS friends to get mad at me but you can outsource paramedics, right, you can't really outsource firefighting and you really can't outsource policing, but you can have private ambulance companies.
Speaker 2:We used to have private ambulance companies in Austin back in the late seventies and early eighties. Austin EMS was around, but we also had private ambulance companies that ran wrecks, and most of those private ambulance companies were owned by the funeral homes, which is really ironic. Yeah, so you know it was. But though that is the priority. It's not whether or not you can deliver power. Look, a private company can, can run the power. I live out. I live out in Williamson County. I see you don't have to have a city on utility. The city doesn't have to own its airport.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to own its airport. It doesn't have to run its airport it even doesn't even have to run its own water supply but it's got to run its own police force. It's got to run its own fire department and, to an extent, has to run its own medics it's paramedics yeah that's their number one priority and that's why, when we look at the budget, the general fund, public safety takes a good portion of it and look there's nothing. There's no other part of public safety other than those three components right.
Speaker 2:Mental health services is not part of public safety. That's part of health and human services. But when you have these people and they start talking about public safety and how we need to revamp public safety in Austin, they're trying to throw everything and their brother into the public safety basket and they just simply admit public safety is fire, police and EMS.
Speaker 1:That is mind blowing to me. So everyone will know he and I have had conversations, the same conversations he has had with some of the people he's mentioned. There's a growing concern and I know this is often as it used to be is there's no such thing as perfection, and I love what you said, and it's too we've had these conversations that people are saying well, we're a big city, that's part of no. I am so fatigued, mentally fatigued, from hearing that that's just a, that's an excuse. It's so easy to play that card. Yeah, exactly, because look, why can't we be better?
Speaker 2:19, 2019, we had 25 homicides in the city. Now, of course, the pandemic hit. We were still a city of 940, 950,000 people back then.
Speaker 2:It's still a big city Still the 11th largest and at the time was the 11th largest city, the 12th, 11th or 12th largest city in America. You know we were always at the top of all these lists right, best place to move into. People ask me what changed? I said the city council and how far left the city council went. When you have these far left policies, they don't work and their first mission was to destroy the Austin Police Department and they did a pretty damn good job of it. You know, four years ago when they cut the 150 positions, there were 150 vacant positions in the Austin Police Department and the council stood away with them.
Speaker 2:Apd had 1,809 cops at the time. Four years ago they shut the academy off. We warned them. If they shut, they turned out, the academy could have been. Whatever issues they have with the academy could have been done in progress. Right, fix it as it's going. We told them, if you shut that pipeline off, if you shut the drain and you shut the faucet off, it's going to take years for the police department to recover because you've got to now go back and revamp and start hiring people and meanwhile, while we were 18 months with no police Academy, we had 300 cops retire out the door. Either retire or resign, go to other departments or whatever, with nothing to refill the bucket. So we went from 2020 having 1,809 cops to, right now, about 1,525.
Speaker 2:That's if they had everybody healthy and everybody could put a uniform on and go out and work. When you take into people on leave for whatever extended injury leave, administrative leave, because we still have guys that can't be cops because they've been under indictment by this DA. You have officers when they're involved in a shooting, they immediately get put on administrative duty. And when you have multiple officers shoot, they all get put on administrative duty. And when you have multiple officers shoot, they all get put on administrative duty. If we had to roll out right now and put every cop in the city eligible to get into uniform, it would probably be a little less than 1,400. Wow, Wow, Sorry.
Speaker 2:It'd be a little less than 1,400 cops. That's insane,400. Wow, wow, sorry, it'd be a little less than 1,400 cops.
Speaker 1:That's insane man, and that's one point.
Speaker 2:Hey, that's 1.4 officers per 1,000 people, when we should have 2.2 per 1,000.
Speaker 2:That tells you we're realistically, we're 700 cops shy of where we should be. For a city our size we should have 2,200 cops. Look, we have almost the same population as Boston, massachusetts. We have 265 square miles of the city of Austin. Boston has 55 square miles and 2,250 cops. Austin five times bigger, land-wise, 700 cops less. That's scary.
Speaker 2:But again, sean, we said most people aren't affected by crime. Right, I mean not violent crime. Most people accept their car getting broken into or their house getting broken into or their wallet getting stolen or their phone getting stolen. It's just, you know it happens. You know, when the homeless situation got so far out of control in Austin and we saw tents everywhere, there was a visual right and people saw it and the visual that they saw was homeless or everywhere. Uh, matt mccoy and cleo patricic did that save austin. Now they got that ordinance passed. People voted for it because they got tired of seeing the trash, the garbage, the homeless people walking around naked, you know, using the bathroom, on the sidewalks, tents everywhere. I mean it looked like the whole country.
Speaker 2:When we tried to run a proposition not too long after that where we wanted to guarantee in city ordinance that it would be 2.0 officers per thousand, and there were some other things in there and it failed miserably. And it failed miserably, I think, for a couple of reasons. One we're still reeling from the George Floyd stuff and people didn't understand that concept at the time. We had had 75 murders and I think if we had taken 75 little caskets or 75 crosses and planted them in the grass in front of the city hall for a visual, people could see that. Because what people don't see is we're right, we're at 33 or 34 homicides right now, and it's july, the hottest part of the summer has been started. The crazies come out. We have more homicides when it's excuse me, obviously, we have more homicides when it gets hot.
Speaker 2:We don't think about those 33 people enough. We don't put names to statistics. It's a one-day story or maybe a two-day story and then it's forgotten. Look, the mass shooting happened up in Round Rock on Juneteenth. I mean it's, they're a little blurbs now they're, they're just not. And it used to be. You know, the states was pretty good at the end of the year they used to run a story and it would highlight every person that was murdered in Austin. And they don't do that anymore. I mean, may be that we've just become desensitized to it. I don't know. People have got to wake up and realize that the soul of this city is we're losing the soul of this city. If we don't do something to correct that, we will get lost. We will be Detroit, we will be San Francisco, we will be, you know, in businesses we'll pull out of here.
Speaker 1:They already are they already have.
Speaker 2:They're not in downtown.
Speaker 1:We've got a lot of downtown businesses that are pulling out of downtown.
Speaker 2:Look folks downtown is not a safe place, especially at night. It's just not a safe place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm glad you said that and it's not a scare tactic.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I'm not yelling fire in a crowd.
Speaker 1:I say that because I am and I'm going to pass this little knowledge and then we'll take you back to maybe your younger years of policing with a humorous picture. You're not instilling fear and I'm not trying to instill fear in what I'm about to say. I've had to go into defensive posture mode because of individuals in our downtown area and that's, I think, we can understand and visualize because of who is on the streets. But it's not all. It's just people need to be more aware and in what they're voting for. Right.
Speaker 1:And open your eyes. You can be a good humanitarian, but be aware of the political scene here in Austin.
Speaker 2:Right, look, we can give people a hand up and get them out of poverty, get them working and doing for themselves. Instead of a handout Right, it should be a hand up, not a handout.
Speaker 1:I love that that's. I should be able to think like you, but clearly I did not go that route and I wish I love that that's I don't. I should be able to think like you, but clearly I did not go that route and I wish I would have.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know, sometimes I I think maybe I should donate my brain. Trust me. People look at me sometimes. You know where do you come up with this stuff? I said I don't know oh that's brilliant.
Speaker 1:I've got this analytical brain of my father, so we're going to go back to the early 90s. This is old Austin, St Edwards University. Where were you when the Dallas Cowboys and Jimmy Johnson and a young Jerry Jones moved the Dallas Cowboys to St Edwards University? You know what year did?
Speaker 2:they do. That Was it 1991?
Speaker 1:1990 or 1991.
Speaker 2:Well, so if it was 1990, I was in the police academy at APD. Okay, so I was a cop in Austin the years that the training camp was at St. Ed's. You know, I remember that you know because Tom. Landry. The interesting thing is Tom Landry lived out in Lakeway, had a house in Lakeway on the golf course out of Lakeway in Austin. Also, A lot of people don't remember Tom Landry was a.
Speaker 1:Texas footballer? Yeah, he was.
Speaker 2:Lake football in Texas. So yeah, I mean I remember these days. I mean it was cool because our buddy, mike Barnes, would be out at practice every day and interviewing the players and stuff and the people of Austin just loved it. But you know Austin only had about 600,000 people around then.
Speaker 1:So you know it was different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember the Cowboys being here and that was the heydays of the Cowboys.
Speaker 1:How would you what would be a good caption, because it was not obviously late July and August. It is not cool. Here it is extremely hot. It will train any good football team to be and they won Super Bowls while they trained here. So what would you caption this? Because I was an intern at KXAN from 92 to 93 and we would go out there and it was a great exercise to lose weight.
Speaker 2:To go to Cowboys camp Looking at the picture on the left of the players they're probably going. Can we go back to Thousand Oaks? The one on the right looking at these folks on the right, they're probably going. Can we go back to Thousand Oaks? And the one on the right? Looking at these folks on the right, they're probably going. Man, those are the Cowboys. Really, the Cowboys are in Austin. You know it was a big deal, but I'm sure those players were wishing they were back in Thousand.
Speaker 1:Oaks. Oh yeah, there were up to 10,000 fans per practice. Oh yeah, you know, there were up to 10,000 fans per practice.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it was crazy. I mean, it was a good off-duty gig for the APD officers that were working too. Yeah, a few of them made some pretty good money.
Speaker 1:It was great, especially in parking. It was a good money-making venture for the neighborhood. Oh yeah. A tradition, because the second segment is very short. Man cave story. There have been some legendary man cave stories throughout the last three years. What's one you could share? That's as comical now as it was when it happened.
Speaker 2:Christmas 1988 or 89, maybe 89. So I'm still a cop at UT. No, it's had to be 88 because, um, um, uh, I hadn't applied at APD yet. So, um, christmas, uh, campus is dead.
Speaker 2:My partner and I, jimmy Stinson, had gone over to the union the student union with keys. The manager of the union told us how to turn the bowling alley on and told us look, you guys, come over and do whatever you want. Three, four o'clock in the morning, come bowl, have fun, but do me a favor, don't wear your black sold shoes on the bowling lanes because it'll leave marks. So okay, so we went behind the counter and grabbed a pair of bowling shoes and put our bowling shoes on Right, take our gun belts off. We set our gun belts down, we bowled in our vest. We had our vests on. We didn't take our vests off. We're bowling.
Speaker 2:So to give a little more context to this, six months prior to this, or beginning of the school year in September, three months prior to this, the students had taken over President Cunningham's office, trying to get UT to divest out of apartheid, out of South Africa, and they had actually taken the president's office over and had locked the doors. And, for the grace of God he wasn't there, because Dr Cunningham wasn't there, because he had a flat tire on the way or he would have been a hostage situation. My training officer at the time was on day shift and figured out a way to get into the office through the windows. There's a way to access it back. Then it's still maybe their day Got in there and broke it up, so anyway. So anytime there was an alarm in the president's office, you took it seriously.
Speaker 2:Right, right All right, fast forward, christmasmas it's actually christmas eve. We're in the union bowling. It's about 11 o'clock at night. We're down there bowling. There's nobody on campus, right? I mean, the main building was in my district so I had the beat keys and dispatcher came up and said we have an alarm in 700's office. And 700's office was dr cunningham, the president's office. So I looked at jimmy going okay, this is serious. So we grabbed our gun belts on, we threw our gun belts on. We are running across, you know, the. It's not far from the union.
Speaker 2:You come out the back door of the union it's not far to the main building, right, right, run by the ugl. Go into the main building, go into that side door. We go, we go in there and we get up. We come up off the floor and we come out looking and lo and behold, it's Dr Cunningham and he had set the alarm off in the office, but he was coming out, he was finished and he was coming out and we said okay, dr Cunningham, no problem, you know, we cleared it code, forwarded it, which is everything's all right, and we said have a good evening, he goes. Hey, do you mind? Do you guys mind sticking around for a minute and riding the elevator down with me and walking me in my car, and we're like, yeah, yeah, sure, it's not a problem. So he gets on the elevator with us and he's standing behind us and Jimmy and.
Speaker 2:I are standing there and we look down and realize we're wearing bowling shoes. Still, we still had our bowling shoes on, but we matched right, we matched and um, it was like, oh shoot, and we. I looked at he and we just kind of left it at that. We get off. We walked off to cutting in to his car and he gets in and he leaves and we look at each other and he goes man, if he doesn't call Don Cannon, the chief tomorrow and ask why we're wearing such ugly shoes with our uniform, we're going to be lucky. Nothing ever came out of it, but it's just one of those things you look back on in your life. Oh, my lord, you know, uh, it, it and the fact that we both had the same shoes on. I'm sure it never clicked to him that those were shoes, uh, but I, you know in my mind, yeah, I always wonder whether or not he noticed them and what is? You know what his thought process was when he did notice.
Speaker 1:He was probably grateful you guys were there. Yeah, he was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean there's, you know there's, there's all kinds of, you know, there's all kinds of silly things that happened. You know part of doing that job for so, um, uh, you know part of doing that job for so long as you have to have you have to have fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, um, and there were some antics at APD that uh, you know statute of limitations are gone, but uh, some antics at APD when it would be slow at night and uh, you know stuff that they would get severe, severe trouble for now.
Speaker 2:But it's just. You know, when I got to UT, when I got to APDS, I was 28. So I was still a kid. You know, even in your 30s you do stuff to have fun, especially when you get bored Driving a police car 151 miles an hour south on the interstate to try to, just while an FTO is distracting his rookie running radar and you bust past him and the radar goes off and it flashes 151 and he doesn't see the car because his.
Speaker 2:FTO distracted him and he jumps and throws it and drive and jumps out on the interstate you know to come get you and his FTO is going. What'd the car? Look like and he's like I don't know, I'm going to go find the one that's driving the fastest. You know stuff like that. So it's just little, little practical jokes and things like that that we did back in the day that I was.
Speaker 1:I love it now. That's funny, funny. Hey, times have changed but you guys made the most of it. But that's uh, that's the best part. You stuff like that happens.
Speaker 2:You can laugh at yourself yeah I mean, there's uh, you know, there's times, like when I managed football, I got locked in the tea room one year. Oh, we're doing three days and, uh, between practices the managers trainers would go up in the tea room the old tea room, yeah, and and she'd pool or lay down on the couches and rest or whatever. Well, I got up and went into the bathroom, I guess when they were all leaving and they thought I had walked out the door and they realized I was in the bathroom. I came out and the lights are all out and the doors are locked and they're double-keyed so you can't. There's no, you know, there was no way to get out of the room and I was locked in the room and, no, no way to get out of the room.
Speaker 2:And I was locked in the room and no one was going to be back in that room for 24 hours and no one knew where I was. And I beat on that door for two solid hours, oh my God. And finally Dana LeDuc, who was the strength coach at Texas at the time, heard me, came to let me out, and it was right. I was almost late for practice and I was going to get in trouble if I'd been late for practice. But Dana, dana had heard me, let me out and to this day I have issues if I get locked in a room, I mean if I get, if I can't get out, it just. But it was one of those things where it was just, it was silly, but in in my you know, in my 20, 21 year old mind, I wasn't getting out of this room.
Speaker 2:Oh, it was before I was going to starve to death and they were going to find a skeleton, which I would have been perfectly fine. Tv worked, there was air conditioning going, I had a couch I could have slept on. I'd have been perfectly fine. I'd have been hungry but I'd have been perfectly fine. But in my mind they were going to find a skeleton the next day, me dead, and a skeleton the next day, at least until the football season on the next game day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, great stories. Oh my God, those were some classics. But I want to get you to take a very quick break and then we'll come back. We've got a big transition going on in Austin. Namely, it involves the SEC, and I want to get your opinion on the SEC, austin becoming a SEC city and that's coming up on the other side of this break.
Speaker 1:97 years of good times, comfort food and familiar faces. Dirty Martin's Place is a true Austin original, just like yours truly. An ideal marriage with stories inside the man Cave Podcast. It's like taking a step back in time. Old Austin and the food so good. Those classic burgers the wings are severely underrated.
Speaker 1:Those delicious shakes and be sure to ask if they will ever bring back the Fruity Pebbles shake. Trust me on that. And those cold refreshing. Those delicious shakes, and be sure to ask if they will ever bring back the fruity pebble shake. Trust me on that. And those cold, refreshing adult beverages. You'll love it. Plus, you'll be entertained by these dirties legends. Tell daniel and the dirties crew you love stories inside the mankate podcast and you want to keep austin dirty. And be sure to sign the petition to say no to project connect dirty martins, where they've got the burger-flipping tricks since 1926. All right, it's official. They've been introduced on the ESPN family of networks, namely SEC Network. Now no more Longhorn Network, but Norman and Austin are now SEC cities. Austin's the biggest by far, oh yeah no question.
Speaker 1:Your thoughts, because I think Texas is going to have a great year in SEC for the first time. I think so also yeah.
Speaker 2:So you know, I grew up in the SEC, right, right, I grew up in Alabama. I lived there until I was 15, right. My father, after my mother passed away, moved back to Alabama, lived on Lake Tuscaloosa, had season tickets to Alabama football games, went and stayed in his RV not far from the stadium, went to all the football games. As a matter of fact, the last thing, one of the very last things my father got to do before he really got sick, was go to an Alabama-Auburn game. He probably shouldn't have gone. He got pneumonia after he went to it. It was one of the few times Auburn beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa. So, having grown up in the SEC and getting here, the big difference I think people are going to find out is that when you go to a city where one of these SEC schools is in that city is behind.
Speaker 2:The whole city is behind them. Go to Tuscaloosa. I use Tuscaloosa as an example. You know Tuscaloosa. There's no Auburn jerseys in the academies in Tuscaloosa. I use tuscaloosa as an example. You know, tuscaloosa, there's no auburn jerseys in the academies. And tuscaloosa, alabama, stuff, right. And and you, you don't see people walking around with auburn stuff on in tuscaloosa, austin, you, you could notre dame stuff.
Speaker 1:You got a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2:You know it, it it's. It's a different vibe in these small southern towns than it is in Austin. I don't really remember the Aggies in the late 70s. When I got here in the early 80s I don't really remember there were Aggie fans, but they didn't come out of the woodwork like they do now. Right, and they're frontrunners. As far as I'm concerned, most Aggie fans are front runners.
Speaker 1:People that were.
Speaker 2:Texas fans forever. All of a sudden their kids go to A&M and now they're wearing that A&M stuff and they're doing this stupid thumbs up. You know, I tell them. I said all you're supposed to do with that thumb is stick it in your mouth and suck on it. But I hate Aggies, by the way. I mean I hate A&M. That's longstanding Funny story about the last Texas if we get a chance here the last Texas A&M game in Kyle Field as an officer, only 11. As an officer, I was there. Ut brought us down there with them for extra protection and that's a really quick story, but it's a funny story.
Speaker 1:But anyway going back.
Speaker 2:I think we're getting ready to see what it's like to be in big-time college football, I mean this is the SEC.
Speaker 2:There's a reason Del Conte wanted us to go to the SEC. It will be interesting to see if the Aggies stick around. They definitely don't want to play second fiddle to us. Well, they't want to play second fiddle to us. Well, they are fit to be tightest. We sold their baseball coach and you know they spent so much money trying to be us. And then they go to the SEC and they spent so much money trying to be Alabama, to no avail. And now they're sitting around thinking the. You know they're sitting around thinking. Next thing they look up big brothers, back Right, and big brothers got the Ferraris, big brothers got the good coach, big brothers got the good players. And I don't think we're going to get as welcomed into the, into these SEC cities, as we think we are. It'll be interesting. You know we've got to go. They've got to go to Nashville to play Vanderbilt. I guess the next biggest city probably. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it's Nashville.
Speaker 2:It's Nashville, right, they go to Florida. No, florida comes here. I have to look at the schedule to figure out what SEC. I think we're going to one of the Mississippis, right? So Mississippi.
Speaker 1:State comes here Right. I can't remember if they play Ole Miss.
Speaker 2:Let me look. I have to look at the schedule. You know, if I can see the, if I can look at the schedule and see what SEC cities we're going to. I thought it was good that we got Georgia here the first time.
Speaker 1:And they're outside. They're in Athens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're still in a small. You know, it's still a small club. If you go to Tuscaloosa and again, I use Tuscaloosa because that's my point of reference- Right. The stadium in Tuscaloosa is right in the middle of campus and there's frat houses across the street. Right. Right, and there's a restaurant across the street. The heck is the name of that place.
Speaker 3:I can't think of it, but the stadium is right there.
Speaker 2:It's right in the middle of campus.
Speaker 1:So they're going to Fayetteville, arkansas, then College Station. I have been to Fayetteville many times, only once for a game. That was three years ago. That's the worst I've ever been treated in my life same thing here.
Speaker 2:We went to 81. When we went and played in Fayetteville in 81 we had to take the license plates off the vehicle and tape up the doors so it wouldn't have the seals from the state, from the university home. Because we went in through Oklahoma, because we got gas in Oklahoma. They wouldn't sell you gas in Arkansas. So the college station is going to be interesting and maybe you were talking about there and kind of segue into that story about the 2011 game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So they bring us down to College Station with them. We go down the night before, obviously, we stay in a hotel, we eat with them and stuff. So game time rolls around and you know they come to us and, look, we want one extra guy on Mack Brown, and then we want one of you on the offensive coordinator, one of you.
Speaker 2:On the defense coordinator. I don't remember who the offensive coordinator was. The defense coordinator was Manny Diaz, but the offensive coordinator I don't remember who it was. Maybe it was Brian Harsin, I don't remember. It was it was?
Speaker 1:It was Brian.
Speaker 2:Harsin, yeah, so then we were. You know, during the game we'd stand on the sideline, but before the game we were with the assistant and then when they went to the press box we went with them, got them into the press box, got them upstairs and then before half we'd go meet them at the bottom. We'd make sure we got them into the locker room. Same thing at the end of the game. So during the game we were just there on sidelines, extra security. Well, the Aggies at the time the students were sitting behind the visiting team. Now, that's a rule in the SEC, that you can't sit behind the visiting team, students can't sit behind the visiting team. That's how my tickets ended up.
Speaker 2:My season tickets to Texas ended up being in the North Bowl, to being on the 10-yard line on the east side, which I'm happy. On the front row I have nobody in front of me. I've got an unstructured view of the field. Thank you, sec, by the way. So anyway, you know the students are right on top of you and they're yelling at you and they're doing stuff, and their grounds crew and the people that work the stadium are over there trying to disrupt you.
Speaker 2:So Justin Tucker was trying to kick and practice kicking into the kicking net Right, and their guy would walk in front of him every so often and we finally told the guy look, get off our sidelines, go stand over there and don't come back. So, anyway, end of the game. End of the fourth quarter. Texas is driving, ralph Johnson and I, who played football at Texas and was an APD officer, so he and I are the two that were hanging with the two assistant coaches and we're standing on the A&M sidelines on the south end of the field where Texas is driving, and we're right there when Justin Tucker kicks the field goal that wins the game. Well.
Speaker 2:Ralph and I are standing there in uniform Dressed APD officer dressed in uniform. Ralph and I are standing there and this old man that was a field guy at college, at Kyle Field, starts talking trash to Ralph, and I'm telling Ralph, just ignore him, ralph. And he just keeps talking trash to Ralph, and Ralph talks trash back to him and you know, back and forth, back and forth, and Ralph finally said, sir, you know what, leave me alone.
Speaker 2:He goes what are you going to do? And he goes. What do you mean? He goes, you don't have any jurisdiction here, you can't do anything to me. And I walked over to that guy and again, statute of limitations are gone. I said, sir, I have as much jurisdiction in College Station as I have in Austin, and I'll kick your ass as bad here as I'll kick your ass. He looked at me and he goes. What did you just say to me? I said let me make sure you're very clear we will kick your ass as bad here as we would if you were doing the same thing in Austin. It doesn't matter whether we're in College Station. He looked at us and he goes. You can't say that to me. I said, well, maybe I can't, maybe I can. My sergeant's across the field, you want to go talk to him, go file a complaint, whatever. We just had enough of him, right? So game goes over, game's over. We run, we catch the coaches coming out of the press box, we run them onto the field.
Speaker 2:Of course we're also the team celebration is going on in the south end zone. We're standing there and one of the Texas defensive coaches and I'm not going to say his name because I don't want him getting any hate mail or anything. But he's standing there and he goes. I want a piece of the turf.
Speaker 2:I'm like what he goes. I want a piece of the grass from College Station. He says I want a piece of the grass from college station. He said last time we're going to play here. I looked around and I said okay. So I pulled my. I had my knife stuck in my vest right here. I pulled out my knife and I popped it open. I said hey, coach, your shoe's untied. And he reaches down, he takes my knife and he cuts out his shoe size of the grass from college state, from Kyle Field, south end zone of Kyle Field, grabs it up and he kind of puts it in his shirt and kind of holds it and runs into the locker room and we found a HEB bag and we put it in the HEB bag and threw some water. He kept it in his office. He kept that hunk of turf in his office. He would cut it with scissors, let it grow with sun and water and everything, as long as he was still in Texas. Now he's not at Texas anymore and this defensive coach played football at Texas.
Speaker 2:I'm still not going to outplay him. Oscar Giles oh, okay, it was Oscar. Yeah, he kept that grass and he and I used to get a kick out of that. I love it. When I'd see him, we'd get a kick. We'd get a kick, he'd dent us. I'd say, hey, coach, how's the grass doing? He goes, it's still growing, so we had this hunk of.
Speaker 2:Kyle Field in there with him. And you know, again, stats and limitations have run out. Yeah, was it the smartest thing I've ever said to anybody? When I said that to that guy? No, but it was just the frustration level was at the time, but it literally was. And we look, and let me make sure everybody's very clear, we would never have laid a hand on that guy. Right, we would. But it was just one of those things where I thought I just said I told him I'd had enough of him. I said, look, we'll kick your ass here, just like we'll kick your ass in austin.
Speaker 2:So we beat a and m like a drum for years and then we had a few years in there, the six. You know, like you were talking about the six years where Jackie Sherrill was there, where they beat us six years in a row, and then in the early 90s they went back and forth, back and forth, and even when Matt Brown first got there they went back and forth. But you know, texas holds a. I don't think there's any schools. They don't hold an advantage over in victories, which is really interesting because if you look back at the history of Texas football since they won the national championship in 69,. So we had 69 and 70 national championship games and then didn't want another national championship to 2005.
Speaker 2:If you go back and look at those seasons from then, royal had some really lean seasons in 74, 75 and 76,. Those seasons from then, royal had some really lean seasons in 74, 75, and 76, which is the reason he stepped aside. Akers had really good seasons in 77, which most of Royal's players. 78 was a so-so season. They went to the Sun Bowl and played. 79 was a little better, but that was a. I don't even know where they went and played in. 79. 80, we played the Blue Bonnet Bowl. We were 7-5 in 1980. 81 was a good year. 82 was a so-so year. 83 was an 11-1 season. 84, we were 7-5. Again 85, I think they were 8-4. 8-4. And then 86, they were 5-6.
Speaker 2:5-6, didn't make the bowl game. Mcwilliams takes over. David has a couple of decent years and his last couple of years were bad McEvick comes in. He had a couple of decent years and last couple of years were bad Makovic comes in. He had a couple of decent years and his years started lighting up. Texas hasn't been that strong from 1984 to 2000.
Speaker 2:That 16-year period, texas only had a couple of really good football seasons. That's when people think, well, texas is an elite program. Well, not, if you look at those years. But even you know Alabama went through the same thing, right? I mean, bear Bryant retires, ray Perkins takes over. He does things really well. Then you get DuBose comes in after Perkins. After DuBose leaves, you get Gene Stallings. Gene Stallings comes in and wins a national championship at Alabama, but they were trying to run Gene Stallings off from the day he got there. Stallings leaves. My guy from TCU that went back to A&M. That left him at A&M. What the heck's his name? Dennis Franchione.
Speaker 1:Oh, frans, coach, Frans Dennis.
Speaker 2:Frans goes from Southwest Texas to TCU, to Alabama and leaves Alabama to go to AML, which never made any sense to me. I think it was all about this Franchione had a couple of you know a few good years in there. Then Mike Price becomes the head coach at Alabama. Doesn't even last. A spring right Strip club in El Paso got him. And then they hire Mike Shula, who was their coach, and they have those the Shula years, right. And then they hire this guy, this flamboyant, you know young coach. I say young coach, he was in his fifties, had, wasn't very good in the NFL, had a couple of good years at LSU, and they hired Nick Saban, right. And then look what happened. I mean it was just the right fit. I think we're there now with the guy we've got. True.
Speaker 2:It's a long way.
Speaker 2:To get back to where I was coming with this whole thing was we have got the guy right and Chris Del Conte is brilliant. I don't think there's a better AD in the country. The only one that might be close to him is Greg Byrne at Alabama, because he went and got a guy that I think is going to be very good for them to replace Nick Saban, because you never want to be the guy that replaces the guy, but I think he's going to do well. I think the fact that Texas and Alabama aren't playing this year bodes well for both of them. I think Sark is that guy and he learned under two head coaching jobs. He failed in both of them. Basically, was it him got what? I think?
Speaker 2:Was it him or was it Kiffin that got left on the tarmac, got fired on the tarmac and didn't get on the plane home? I think it was Kiffin, but he was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but he got fired. You know Sark had an alcohol problem. He goes to the Nick Saban School of you know his coach under Pete Carroll. He goes to the nick savin school of you know, uh, his coach, under pete carroll. Then he goes to, you know, goes to alabama and he's a, uh, he's, I guess he took over for carol after carol went to it was in the same time yeah, he gets fired from that.
Speaker 2:So then he goes, you know, goes to to the nick savin school of misfit coaches, which a lot of coaches have gone through, and learns how to coach again.
Speaker 1:I think Sark was a great hire because his humility is unreal. I think kids watch that. But also Texas led the way in NIL on how to manage it and how to promote it. That's huge right now.
Speaker 2:But it's out of control. No, it is. I think it's out of control. I think they let opened up Pandora's box and the federal government's going to have to come in and do something.
Speaker 1:Because the NCAA is powerless.
Speaker 2:You've got guys calling players on the phone saying if you'll enter the portal and come to us, we'll give you $500,000. That's tampering.
Speaker 1:Well, you remember Jay Norvell. Yep.
Speaker 1:He's a friend of mine. He's now the head coach at Colorado State. He said that one of his players came to him at Mountain West Media Days. He said this in an interview Loved Jay. He said one of his players told him yeah, kansas State called him in the offseason and says hey, are you going to enter the portal? We'll pay you half a million. Now the kid said it. I wouldn't think a kid would lie, but he told his head coach that. But it's happening. It's happening across the country. Texas is where they are, partially because of their ability to intelligently handle the NIO world.
Speaker 2:And that goes back to Chris Del Conte putting the right people in place. It's funny. The other day I saw that the state of Alabama has one billionaire in it. It's the yellow guy. It's the guy that did the yellow. Remember the old yellow wood? Yeah, the yellow. Yeah, he's the only billionaire in the state of Alabama. Wow, we got like 15 living in Austin. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, I mean, the money's there, right, but even the money's in there, the money's there in Alabama and there's only two big colleges in Alabama. It is literally it's Alabama-Auburn.
Speaker 1:But and there's no NFL team in. There's no NFL team in.
Speaker 2:Alabama either. I mean, their closest NFL teams are Tennessee and the Falcons, but it's, you know, it's a lifestyle there. That's the other difference we're going to find out in the SEC is it's a lifestyle.
Speaker 1:Hey man, tell me something good. Dennis Ferris, my brother. What is something good? Maybe inspiring? We've had a lot of negativity. Former President Donald Trump was. I thought, an assassination attempt. Thank God it didn't happen. Uh, we don't want anyone to get ideas or anyone assassinated. We don't want anyone killed. We don't want anyone hurt ever. Well, what would you say to this world right now to inspire them? And maybe something positive someone, some words from you, from your experiences in leadership? Well, let me.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you it's, it's. I have to go back and I know I've said that he said this guy's name a lot in this podcast. In this podcast, you know, go look at Nick Saban's speech the other night, from when he got the icon icon award at the ESPYs and he goes, goes. People remember how you treated them and how you treat people and that is the most lasting impression you can have on somebody is how you treat them. Um, most people don't realize that, yeah, we have our differences, but what we have in common is far greater than what we have differences about, and we need to focus on that, the common ground and what we have in common and what we can do to pull and bring ourselves much more forward. Again, it's how you treat people, how you look at people, how you expect people. You know, would you treat your mother the way that way? Right, I mean, think about it.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, I see, uh, a country that is divided at the moment. Um, I think we are better than we have been. We can be better than we are. We should always strive to be better and always strive for that excellence. But even with all the issues we have in this country. We're still the greatest country that's ever been in this world. You know, we are very fortunate to be Americans. We're very fortunate to be Texans.
Speaker 2:It's interesting I tell people all the time when I travel overseas. When people ask me where I'm from, I don't tell them I'm from the United States. I tell them I'm from Texas. Texans tell people they're from Texas. Everybody else says they're from the United States, united States. So you know, I guess the word of wisdom that I would impart would be look, don't live in your own bubble, get outside your bubble, look around, and when you see somebody that needs something or needs help, help them. Right, a little bit of kindness goes a long way. Helpful, right, a little bit of kindness goes a long way. Uh, you know, you would be surprised, um, how a little act of kindness can change somebody's, can change somebody's day, and it, uh, and I think we should all strive for that- yeah, that's.
Speaker 1:I'm going to play off that and this is uh. It's not inspired by what happened this weekend, but it's the conversations that I've had with friends who have different political views than me Even had this conversation with my girlfriend. You know what I'm all about listening to find a solution, not listening to win. Dennis Ferris follow him on Twitter. If you don't know enough about Austin, you will. Once you follow him and he says what I want to say a lot.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I tell people. Now I'm in my 60s so I can say what I want and get away with it. You've earned that right. You've earned that right. I've earned the right. But I've also earned the right, having done the things I've done in my life, and earned the right to be able to speak up, and I'll speak up for what's right. Excuse me just a second. I'll speak up for what's right. If I see something's wrong, I'm going to call it out and I don't care who it is if I, I will tell you. If I see the cops do something wrong, I'll call it out in a heartbeat.
Speaker 3:But I'm going to call out the cops of good work too.
Speaker 2:If you're going to, if you're going to criticize, you got to praise at the same time and if we do, if we get something wrong, I'm going to tell you we got it it wrong. Something happened yesterday, something didn't get done right yesterday, and we've got to figure out what that is. Maybe not focus on punishing them you know who is at fault but how it happened and how we keep it from happening again.
Speaker 1:We're going to do this again and Austin, as it used to be, submit a DM on Twitter at StoriesManCave. If you have an idea or you'd like to connect with me for future episodes of an idea or an individual, Connect me. Also, having Kevin Dunn, he'll be involved. He's an Austin original. You may remember him from his Longhorn Network days and then the horn, and he's like me. He got out of the media and he's in the world of finance and I think he's doing pretty good. I think we all find success after the media, but it's a hard industry to get out of because you love it.
Speaker 2:Yep. Unfortunately, it seems like some of the good people like you, mike Barnes, stacey those folks have gotten out of the industry and what's coming up now doesn't hold a candle to you guys.
Speaker 1:Dennis man, I appreciate it. There's a few good young ones, but there's a lot of people leaving the industry, it seems like, and I hate it. Brother, I owe you lunch.
Speaker 2:We'll just do it again.
Speaker 1:Definitely. And the beauty of it which you may not be from here, but you're a true Austinite. Your stories are endless and, hey, in order for us to move forward, you got to embrace the past.
Speaker 2:And I may not have been born here, but I got here as fast as I could 100% and I respect that.
Speaker 1:Much love my brother. All right, man, we'll see you soon. All right, and we'll see you soon in Austin, as it used to be, welcome, thank you.