Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:11 What's up everyone? I'm Brian and you are listening to Snorkeling with Narwhals. That's right. I am back again. So this is technically the second time I've rebooted, snorkeling with Narwhals. Uh, the first time was last year, like September and October, and that was a reboot of the show that I ran in 2016 with my friends Eric and Ronnie. So it is still just me. And this is actually my second podcast going at the moment. I currently host the Hooligans with my brother and sister, but I started thinking about something else. I love The Ringer. It is a sports and pop culture website run by Bill Simmons. He used to work for espn and it is so good sports and pop culture. It is the perfect combination. And I was like, my pipe dream, the dream that probably that's gonna sound bad, probably would never come to fruition, but if it could, like that's what I would want to do is to work for The Ringer out in la.
Speaker 1 00:01:10 So I was like, well, what's the thing I'm best at? I'm not a great writer. Like I'm fine, but that's about it. But I love podcasting and I love working in radio. So I was like, well, bill Simmons has a podcast. Ryan Rocio has a podcast. Why don't I kind of model myself after them, not like do the exact same thing, but kind of like base myself off of what they do. And then I was like, well, what would I name it? And snorkeling with Narwals is the one I came back to. Cause I love that name. It's like my favorite name for a podcast. It may not be really relevant to sports and pop culture, but you know, I, I figured it's me, so we'll keep it. So what am I gonna talk about? I kind of mentioned that sports and pop culture, sports being mainly football because that's the sport I know the best, um, pop culture including movies and shows and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 00:02:00 But I really wanna have some of my friends on the show, and that sounds like, oh, Brian's just gonna have his friends on the show. I have friends that know a lot about football and I have friends that know a lot about pop culture, so why not incorporate them into the show as I can? And since they're my friends, we can just talk about life and, you know, what's been going on since I've last seen them, or you know, the good old days, stuff like that. So that's gonna be the main, like three things that I wanna focus on. Football, pop culture, and my friends. So let's not prolong this anymore. We're gonna go straight into the first topic. So I am a fan of the Los Angeles Rams. Most people who know me know that, and they know that I've been a fan for a long time, like 1998, like when I was four or five years old.
Speaker 1 00:02:46 It's ridiculous. I picked the team because I loved their logo. Uh, at the time it was just the, the Rams horn on the helmet. That's all they used. And I called them the swirls because it was like a swirl. So the first year after I started liking them, they won the Super Bowl that was with Kurt Warner, Marshall Falk, Tori Holt, all of them, the greatest show on Turf. And it was like, all right, the team that I like won the Super Bowl. That's amazing. And they were really good for the next, like four years after that. And they actually made it to another Super Bowl. They didn't win, but they were, they were a good team. And then it dropped off. So from like 2005 on until, uh, like 2017, they sucked. They were really bad. <laugh>. The best they ever got was eight and eight, and that was most of my life.
Speaker 1 00:03:37 So I always to joke, I went through all of middle school, all of high school and all of college without having a Rams winning season. I went through puberty without having a Rams winning season. What the heck? But then finally, uh, two years ago, 2017, the Rams hired a coach named Sean McVay, and he was amazing. He immediately like improved our offense. And he's also like eight years older than me, which makes me a little mad. But he immediately improved the offense. Uh, the defense was already good, so that didn't need too much fixing. And they won the division. They lost the first game in the playoffs, but they won the division. It's the first time in so long that had a Rams winning season, and I was pumped. So then last year, same thing. They actually did better than they did the year before.
Speaker 1 00:04:26 They went 13 and three, I believe, and they made the Super Bowl, which yes, there was a bad pass interference, no call that the Rams should have really lost the game. But if we're gonna go that far, then there was a blatant face mask missed by the refs on the previous drive that would've given the Rams a first in goal. So, hey, we're not gonna quibble about that. So the Rams lost the Super Bowl to the Patriots, and I was like, all right, fine. You know, I'm not glad they lost, but it's been a long time since I had a Rams team to be that proud of. And then we went into this year, and going into this year, I had some questions. Todd Gurley was kind of banged up. He, they didn't use him like at all in the playoffs, and he was the big issue to me.
Speaker 1 00:05:09 I won't lie, like I, I, I didn't really think too much of the offensive line or you know, I know Jared Goid struggled for near the end of the year, but I was like, yeah, it'll be fine. Girly is really the one I'm worried about. And so the Rams started three and oh, and I was excited but hesitant. Like I, I was nervous because I wasn't completely sold on them. And now they are six and five, they have kind of fallen off. Uh, the team is doing very poorly right now. It just lost 45 to six to the Ravens. And I'm like, oh no, this season has been my, oh no, what's happening moment, like all season? Because my fear is that the Rams are just going to go back to sucking and I'll probably like have to live the next 12 years or whatever without another winning season.
Speaker 1 00:05:58 And I cannot deal with that. That's not to say that I would leave being a Rams fan because I will never leave being a Rams fan. I will die before that happens. But it's not fun to watch 'em when they're bad. And they've been really bad lately. Like they, they've beaten bad teams. They're what Bill Simmons would call a good bad team. They can take out teams that are worse than them, but when they play a team that's better than them, it's bad. So why do I say all this? Well, one, because it's a good football topic, and two, because I need you all to understand what my life as a Rams fan has been like. And a lot of the people I know would, you know, they, they do understand. I, I work with some Browns fans. My brother is a Dolphins fan, my dad is a Raiders fan.
Speaker 1 00:06:39 These are teams that in the past, like 20 years have not been successful. And it just sucks because finally the Rams had something, something good to, to build on and to be, and now it looks like it might go away. Now I'm hoping that Sean McVay can kind of fix it, work on the offensive line. Jared Goff has not been good lately, and I, a lot of that is the offensive line, but it also could just be him. So like he needs to figure it out. Todd Gurley, if he's truly injured, I don't know what they need to do with him. Do you play him until he just like explodes? Do you shut him down? Do you try to load manage him? I don't know. Do you trade him? I don't know. But they need to figure something out. And the problem that I have is that they have no first round pick in the draft for the next two years.
Speaker 1 00:07:32 Because for some reason they decided that they needed to trade for Jaylen Ramsey and they didn't need him. Like Marcus Peters was our main cornerback, A keep tib, our other cornerback. And tib got injured and Peters wasn't playing great, but I'm like, oh my gosh, why? Why did you trade for Jalen Ramsey? Like, of all the things we needed, we didn't need a cornerback that bad. You could have tried to trade for an offensive lineman who was actually like, good Trent Williams comes to mind. I don't know if Washington would've traded him, but it would've been better than the line we have now. Because now the only really good offensive lineman we have is Andrew Whitworth, who is now old, sorry, Andrew, and will probably retire after the season. Meaning we have no left tackle, meaning our line is worse. So that's when you would draft someone in the draft.
Speaker 1 00:08:24 But we don't have any picks for the next two years, so that's great. So unless we can figure something out in free agency, I don't know what's gonna happen. We're probably gonna suck next year. That being said, I love my team and I say everything about this with love. But yeah, if you are a fan of a bad team, hit me up on facebook.com/snorkeling with Narwals or just search for the page snorkeling with Narwals. I can't think it would be that difficult to find. There probably aren't many others with the name similar to this, but I want to hear what it's like for you being a fan of a bad team. But that's gonna do it for today's first reboot episode of Snorkeling with Narwals. I am Brian and yeah, I'm gonna try to be back every week. We'll see how that goes. It might be a little difficult, but I hope you guys have a good one. See you later.
