Kent Babb
@kentbabb
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Washington Post sports features. Human person, SC’s native son, author of “Across the River” & “Not A Game.” Been smooth since days of Underoos. 📚: @chad_luibl
SC ➡️ KC ➡️ DC
Joined April 2009
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Last Seen Profiles
Pinned Tweet
Gift link so everyone can read about how it looks, sounds and feels when Mike McDaniel needs a reboot, “the greatest energy reset known to man,” and the most revolutionary thing the
#finsup
coach does.
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There's a fire rising in women's college basketball. And while America has been soaking in this storybook moment, Kim Mulkey *is* the fire -- burning for 40 years, laying waste to everything (and everyone) in her path.
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In the Pats locker room, a camera guy has a mishap and yells, "Jesus Christ!" Tebow, in earshot, looks at the guy and says: "He loves you."
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Quick thread, but please indulge me. In Aug 2021, my book “Across the River,” about a New Orleans high school football program in a city besieged by gun violence, published. Big
@Todayshow
piece. Smokehouse Pictures got film rights.
@nypost
&
@latimes
named it a best book of '21.
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Harold Varner III joined
#LIVGolf
last year, and his reasons why have been strikingly honest. I recently spent a day with
@HV3_Golf
as he prepped for
#themasters
and wrote about the pursuit of Black generational wealth thru 4 generations of Harold Varners.
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New LSU coach Brian Kelly's huge contract is just the cost of competing. It's also a microcosm of the national wealth divide. My dispatch from a city of extremes, where a mostly Black district earns $24k a year & the White football coach makes $24k a day
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Greg Norman is taking Saudi money to start a rival golf tour, throwing the sport he once ruled into chaos. Why is he doing this, isolating himself and even calling Jack Nicklaus a “hypocrite”? What’s he really looking for? I think I found it.
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A little more than a year ago, I profiled Kobe Bryant, who was finding his way as a storyteller. We spent time together in LA and DC. We laughed and disagreed. Could’ve never imagined the next Kobe story I’d write for the
@washingtonpost
would be his obit.
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But a frustrating trend seems to have now reached me. Increasingly often, the work of journalists, investigative reporters and scholars is being repurposed, repackaged and reused without attribution, credit or acknowledgement. I’m a print-media dinosaur, but this feels wrong.
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Joe Burrow is perfect for Cincinnati: a competitive sniper who just doesn’t sweat it. I went to a town, region and state getting addicted to how he makes them feel. And watch out, Kansas City, because as
@zacciahsaltzman
learned,
@joeyb
WILL sweep the leg
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Jane Sandoval is an ER nurse who likes to unplug by watching the 49ers. But she can’t square how NFL teams can administer 43,000 covid tests a week while Jane has never been tested. On our nation’s priorities & sports’ disappearing ability to offer escape:
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Reporter: "What did you study at Clemson?" Clowney: "At CLEMSON?? Excuse you."
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Anyway, I just believe in honesty: as journalists, storytellers, people. “Ain’t no secrets,” Brice boomed at like 4 a.m. once in 2019. That stuck with me, as a principle of good coaching, but also in how we should deal with each other.
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I never met Mike Leach, but we fiercely debated the best western (he Rio Bravo, me Unforgiven) via text. He wanted to show me his favorite bar in his favorite town, but it wasn’t meant to be. When he died, I went there alone and drank a few beers anyway.
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I’ve been told repeatedly there’s nothing we can do. There’s nothing illegal about it. It’s not plagiarism. You can't claim a real person's real story, which...yeah. But as an industry, I think we have to call this stuff what it is: shady, immoral, and—for me—flat-out unnecessary
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Friends who attended last Saturday's premiere in New Orleans said there's no acknowledgement anywhere in the first episode that someone might’ve told this story before. Nothing in the credits, no sepia-toned photo of the book, nothing. So, yeah, this feels purposeful.
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Don’t take my word for it. Here’s one email from a producer, sent to a person not even affiliated with Karr, football, or Algiers. The only way they knew about this person was my book.
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Ethical considerations are being ignored, and it’s upsetting that, in a time when we need MORE transparency about how we tell stories and acquire information, this thirsty drive for
#content
(much of it in TV & film) is leading creators to deceive viewers...and would-be sources.
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DRIVEN TO THE END: Olympic cyclist Kelly Catlin became convinced, like so many high-achieving young Americans, that pedaling to the peak of one mountain means only a better view of the other, taller ones in the distance.
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When I wrote the book, I included 29 pages (!) of notes and citations. If you informed my thinking, enriched my reporting or offered me a plate of catfish, I named and acknowledged you. Because why wouldn’t I?
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In fall 2020, the director told me he got the idea from my
@washingtonpost
story. A year later, I learned filmmakers were leafing through my book, identifying sources I’d spent years getting to know & whose trust I’d earned, telling them their doc was “based on” Across the River.
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Over four months in 2018, Kobe and I met on both coasts. Even being interviewed was a form of competition, and the way to get him to open up was talking about a thing we had in common: being daddies of daughters. On fatherhood, Lilah, and of course Gigi.
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I should first say I don’t, and never did, own this material. From page 6: “This isn’t my story, after all. It’s theirs." These are real people, not “characters,” and I’m thrilled their story is getting a wider platform. The coaches, young people, and community deserve it.
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Terez made me smile so many times over the last 14 years. Quoting Goodfellas and Shawshank. Doing the Batman voice. Talking ball. I’m shocked and devastated like everyone else, and I can’t believe I’ll never hear that big laugh ever again.
It is with a heavy heart that we announce that our beloved friend, colleague and Yahoo Sports journalist Terez Paylor has passed away.
Statement from Ebony Reed, Terez's fiancée:
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But for me, the true honor was that the wonderful, inspiring humans at Karr trusted me to tell their story: one of Black strength and incredible resolve in the face of poverty, all-too-frequent death, and long odds.
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Storytelling, no matter the form, is a collaboration. We all rely on others to do this weird job, and it’s dishonest and insulting to pretend that’s untrue.
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The bar’s famous regulars have their names stamped on barstools. When Texas Tech fired Leach, the bar owner wanted to cheer him up. From behind the T-shirt counter came a stool with MIKE LEACH on it, and Leach nearly cried. On Tuesday, the stool was made into a shrine
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For two years I tried to talk w/ the director and come to a resolution, but he refused. Didn’t we want the same things? I *wanted* to shine a light on this community and get these people more attention. So why can’t we just be straight up, figure it out, and go drink a beer?
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Eric Berry's one of the kindest/smartest/toughest guys I have met in a football locker room. What a story he'll be when he returns from this
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He had been the soft-spoken roommate. The clean(ish) one. They tried to square it with what he had become. How had he kept it all secret, even from them?
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I’ve never thought more about compassion, humanity, and muting my own perspective and privilege. As the curator of an incredible story, I felt overwhelmed and transformed. When the book was done and a three-year journey was over, I cried in the back of Coach Brice Brown’s truck.
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I asked the filmmakers to stop, which they did. But this person wasn’t the only one who reached out to ask if this was my project. I’ve had to explain over and over, and now pre-emptively here, that I’m not involved. Still, I wonder who agreed thinking I was.
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Tommy Tuberville has always been a salesman, willing to transform into whatever his environment needs him to be. Now running for senate in Alabama, he has become a President Trump hyper-loyalist, and some of his former Auburn players are struggling with it
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Wait, so what about Greg Norman and LIV players saying over and over that they just want to grow the game?
“They’re full of shit; they’re growing their pockets,” Varner told me. “I tell them all the time, all of them: You didn’t come here to fucking grow the fucking game.”
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Have never, ever, ever, ever, ever covered anyone, at any level, who seems more out of touch than Bruce Allen. Ever.
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“I coach football,” Art Briles kept telling me, and each time he did, it reiterated that he still doesn’t understand that a head coach's job -- at Baylor or in tiny Mount Vernon, Texas -- extends beyond watching film and calling plays.
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Shawn Kemp is a 6-foot-10 monument to Seattle and the 90s, a truly peculiar decade. But time changes cities and opinions, and we begin with Kemp smoking a joint in a sculpture garden, talking weed, kids, and some of the people now calling him a traitor.
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Agents hate him, some players are confused by him, and Roger Goodell sometimes just shuts down on him. With NFL labor negotiations ongoing eight years after a lockout, DeMaurice Smith is who he is: a man preparing for war, even if war is unnecessary.
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Russell Wilson's passer rating is 12.8 today. Jon Ryan's is like a million.
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I've spent lots of time in Rock Hill, S.C., which once produced an NFL player for every 8,500 ppl. But it felt different after last month's mass shooting by an ex-NFL player. Here's our story on death, life, and perhaps a reckoning in a football-mad city.
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Royals just swept the best team in baseball, Butler stole a base, HRs everywhere. Sure this isn't all a dream?
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We literally couldn’t have imagined this. I’m proud to have been a Kansas Citian and written about your “worst” years
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That Kansas State-Xavier double-overtime game in 2010, with Gus on the call, was the perfect storm of crazy tournament excitement.
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I once got good enough on Madden 19 that I was ranked No. 54 out of 100,000 players and legit (also stupidly) thought I could coach football. I wrote about some colleges coaches, part of the “Madden Generation,” who’ve actually done it.
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I wrote a book. An actual book. Through this (three-year!) process, one of the absolute best days is when a big box of hardcovers arrives at the author’s door. Today is that day. ACROSS THE RIVER drops nationwide in 13 days.
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Iverson didn't just dislike school. He hated it. 1 year he argued w/his hoops coach over school absences. AI argued he "only" missed 69 days
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Just a couple
@UofSC
Posties at a
@nytimes
party, but Josh is the only this-week Pulitzer winner here, and I’m the only one with the *actual* credentials to drink the bar dry.
@UofSC_CIC
@ikhurshudyan
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A story I have wanted to write for years: Mike Krzyzewski has three daughters, who he calls his "best friends," and his entire existence is about manipulating the emotions of young men. So what's like to be Coach K's son-in-law?
#DontFearTheWeeper
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Which, ultimately, does Dabo Swinney think matters more -- football or black lives? With college football's most well-built program at a crossroads, we're about to find out.
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Manziel on the possibility of being drafted by the Cowboys: "I don't know if the world could've handled that, honestly."
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KC Star: Anxiety at Arrowhead: A behind-the-scenes look at the working environment inside the Chiefs' front office.
http://t.co/AbQjNmYE
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I love that Omar Infante didn't just run through the third-base coach's stop sign. He ran AROUND the damn third-base coach.
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Brown and Iverson argued b4 "Practice" rant, and AI disappeared for a few hours. Brown believes he went to a bar, returned very drunk.
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"A moving and evocative portrait of football and life in the tradition of Friday Night Lights." Oh my. Though it'll be released 10 weeks from today, I would love, love, love for you to preorder now.
Nonfiction Book Review: Across the River: Life, Death, and Football in an American City by
@kentbabb
@HarperOneBooks
, $27.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-295059-8 via
@publisherswkly
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Tony Franklin has spent a life in college football, designing offenses for the likes of Jared Goff. But even in a sport with a code of silence, he has never been able to shut up. “It’s fucking life and death,” he said on his latest, and last, war.
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Prediction: The Royals will never play a nine-inning game in the playoffs and also will never lose a game ever again. Unbelievable.
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It’s time. My new book, ACROSS THE RIVER, arrives today. It’s about football, yes. But it’s also about using a game to teach purpose, life skills, and—four years after Karr’s former QB was murdered—how to survive. This story changed me. I hope you’ll read.
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The last time Leach went to Captain Tony’s was in August. He sometimes drank grape vodka, other times Crown Apple, one time Brandy Alexanders. This time, he ordered something unexpected: water on the rocks. He had quit drinking and was trying to get healthier.
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Today my new book, Across the River, hit 50 five-star reviews on Amazon. Huzzuh! To get in front of the obvious joke: only one non-5-star review (Show yourself, 4-star reviewer!!) Starting today, if you send me proof of a review to my open DMs, I'll mail you a signed book plate.
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Yeah, Sam's sexuality really tore Mizzou apart in 2013, huh? Tigers surprised the entire SEC & won the East. Take note, archaic NFL thinking
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AI learned the crossover from walk-on GT player named Dean Berry. Only player could beat AI to the basket. AI was obsessed w/perfecting it
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I'm slightly biased, but I think it's pretty cool. Don't be bashful about preordering those maximum 30 copies, either
http://t.co/kwmZGzbmzX
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Mike Krzyzewski once recruited freshmen just so they'd become juniors and seniors. Before he recruited one-and-dones and ran the zone and started maintaining a secret IG account, the Duke coach had a choice to make: change entirely or admit defeat?
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Notice that a lot of pro-Goodell reporters are saying absolutely jack right now and NFL Net debating whether to start or sit Jamaal Charles.
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So
@KirkusReviews
some 10,000 books a year. Maaaybe 10 percent are awarded the prestigious Kirkus Star, or a book "of exceptional merit." I am amazed & honored that Across the River has been designated with a Kirkus Star, and I can't wait for its release 5 weeks (!!) from today.
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If Dennis Allen had been fired via Twitter instead of a phone call, it would've said: "Your fired."
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Not sure what gets Ernie, Cal and the other guy going, but they're calling one of best games I've seen like it's the damn corn dog derby.
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What’s happening with Alabama is an unprecedented moment in sports anthropology. When SHOULD you sit a player? Never? As his biggest opportunity and greatest controversy unfold simultaneously, Nate Oats seems to have his position
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Iverson was being recruited by Kentucky, Duke, most every hoops school. He was going to Maryland tho. Gary Wms backed away after conviction.
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My pilot father-in-law sent me this: Eagles plane recently had work done in Pittsburgh, whose workers left a mark.
http://t.co/iVebt0vo0v
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He finally got it. So happy for Andy, and for Kansas City.
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@AveryGWilks
Nobody can say Muschamp doesn’t have a great system. Scream a lot, get all sweaty, collect $25 million or so guaranteed dollars. Then lose and blame everybody else.
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The NFL has an FBI-like nationwide security force designed to protect the league from weeks like this. Our story:
http://t.co/sz3LNJUck5
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.
@DonteStallworth
is a retiree and a rookie, a former NFL player working to find his next chapter after football ends
http://t.co/QcZGtm9RhT
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Shanahan should've conducted that news conference holding an oversized $7 million check. "If it can happen to me, it can happen to you!!!"
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The NFL has one Black head coach, and since 1989, 141 White men have become HCs vs 19 Black coaches. Of those, only 9 have gotten a second shot. For a league with an open secret, Brian Flores just said the quiet part out loud. w/
@andrewcgolden
&
@MarkMaske
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Been telling
@mellinger
he sucks long b4 anybody paid me to tell him that. Didn't do it to be cool or to make a statement. I just liked it.
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Right before Florida fires Muschamp, they're going to make him sit & watch video on repeat of the Gators rushing the field after beating UK.
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I would be … thankful (tips hat) … if you bought my book. There’s actually a sweet Black Friday deal on it on Amazon as we tweet. Makes a great gift.
Just finished
@kentbabb
’s book Across the River
It’s a moving story about the
@EdnaKarrHS
football team and the struggles facing kids in another part of “real America.” Highly recommend.
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True fact: AI's cornrows started as a bet w/his Reebok liaison, Que Gaskins. Gaskins said: "You better NOT get cornrows." That's all it took
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Chad changed my life with an email (while I was at a brewery, natch). Without him, the book, film option, almost certainly the most important story/experience of my career, doesn’t happen. Get you an agent who’s as supportive, cool, and badass as him.
With the first 100+ reviews on Amazon averaging 5-stars, it’s not like I needed more proof that
@kentbabb
’s Across the River is a triumph… but I never get sick of seeing the reviews.
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AI was so loyal, if that's word, he supported 3 friends, paid his mom's 2 houses & household expenses for 2 uncles, an aunt, their families
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In stores and at your front door four weeks from today. Support your local booksellers!
Just received my hardcover copy of “Across the River,” the awesome new book by
@KentBabb
about
@KarrFootball
. I’m about six chapters into the galley copy and I can’t put it down. Powerful story-telling. A must-read for New Orleanians — and not just sports fans.
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On the streets of South Central, learning to coexist is essential. Here's our story on new Skins WR DeSean Jackson:
http://t.co/wCF5VOcyYM
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This is an incredible and alarming investigation by
@TheWillHobson
about the NFL saving itself hundreds of millions of $$$ by denying brain injury claims to ex-players … those entitled to payouts by a settlement years earlier. Just jaw-dropping stuff here
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Doc might not mention but AI's best friend just got murdered. He hit downward spiral. Friends don't see "Practice" as funny but very sad
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There's Tony Wyllie embarrassing himself and the franchise on national television by literally pulling McCoy away from an interview.
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A lot of those people wound up burning him. One of those friends sued him; another tried to extort him. That was AI's reward for being loyal
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I'm guessing Ryan Mallett was making some pretty good points there.
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