After Hours with Amy Lawrence Hour 2

A peanut butter M&M's production. In a world where Super Bowl winners get the world's admiration and a fancy ring, but the runners-up get nothing, one retired cop returns. That's one retired quarterback. Read the script.

Oh, sorry. One retired quarterback returns to claim what's his. Um, that's claim a ring with diamonds made from M&M's peanut butter, but you're on a roll. The Ring of Comfort coming soon to a Super Bowl new you.

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2024 Santa Fe available early 2024. She's just a girl and she's on fire and she's not backing down. You're listening to After Hours with Amy Lawrence. If it doesn't suck, if it doesn't hurt, if there isn't a sting, we're probably not super committed to it. It's supposed to rip your heart out. When you're in love with a team, when you are a fanatic, which is the full word of fan, it's not supposed to feel good.

It's supposed to be painful, but you know those awful, devastating, brutal losses, the ones that feel like gut punches, make the victory so much sweeter. This girl is on fire. This girl is on fire. Here's Amy Lawrence.

This girl is on fire. Monday in the rearview mirror and it featured a Daytona 500. Actually, the Thunderbirds did the flyover, so they go from the Super Bowl to Daytona and it's one of the classic elements. Daytona had everything, even though it was a Monday start and maybe losing some of its buzz because it was pushed to a Monday by all the rain, but we had the big one.

We had a win for one of the iconic teams and names in NASCAR, but we had an atypical champion, which is really cool. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence here on CBS Sports Radio. You can find me on Twitter, A-LOL Radio, and then on our Facebook page. Also, our YouTube channel named after the show and then our phone number is 855-212-4227. That's 855-212-4. CBS always toll free. We're pleased to welcome from Daytona, actually from the Speedway still, longtime Fox Sports insider Bob Pockrass, who's still in the midst of wrapping up.

Well Bob, let's start there. What was this Monday like for you? It's been a long Monday. You know, rarely does NASCAR have double headers. They've never had double header with the Daytona 500 because they know that even if the extended series race gets postponed, it's postponed to Monday because the Daytona 500 is such a spectacle. With two straight days of rain, NASCAR had two races today, 800 miles. They were going to go the Xfinity race and then the Daytona 500, but rain this morning resulted in them doing the Daytona 500 and then another 300 miles with the Xfinity series race.

So, long day, but they got through it. Let me tell you, I think it actually turned out better for them because fans got to spend a couple hours on the track during the pre-race that they maybe wouldn't have had if it was the second race of the day and they just had a great atmosphere even for a Monday race. How many fans were able to be there once the 500 was pushed to Monday? I would say it was probably three quarters full.

I'd say it was 70 to 75,000 fans. The place seats over 100,000, you know, so they had a really solid crowd for a Monday race. It was certainly a dramatic finish as always, right? This is typical of the Daytona 500, but with nine laps to go, there was an 18-car pile-up, a wreck that takes out 18 cars, and there were some big-time names in there like Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano. What was the reaction to that moment with just eight laps left? Well, I think people are used to wrecks near the end of the Daytona 500. Everybody's pushing, trying to get an edge, and when one car goes around, you have a split second to try to react, and once the other cars start going around, it's just bedlam, and that's what happened. The drivers, they get out of the care center and they just kind of hold up their hands and say that's what they sign up for when they come to Daytona.

They know that there's going to be times where they get caught up in an 18-car pile-up, and there's not much that they can do. For whom was this the most disappointing to not be able to finish? Oh, I'd say as Brack Hislowski, you know, 0 for 14 in this race. He's come so close. He was running about third or fourth at the time. He could kind of see that he had another shot to win. He's been close here before, but as he says about this race, this is a race that chooses you to win. You don't necessarily win it yourself, and as he said afterwards, it's another year where it wasn't his day to be chosen. When you win it, your career is never the same, and that was the case for someone new on Monday.

It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence here on CBS Sports Radio and Bob Pokras, who is our favorite NASCAR reporter for Fox Sports and is still at the track after the Xfinity race. So William Byron ends up taking the checkered flag, and he used to run cars on video games, and that's how he got into it? Yeah, that's kind of the new age NASCAR driver in some ways, and there's some that followed in his footsteps, but he pretty much learned the basics of his craft racing online. Very sophisticated online games, but still, they're so close as far as just developing hand-eye coordination and knowing when to break that driver that people can learn. Now, obviously, you can't get hurt playing a video game, so when you crash, you can be a little more fearless racing a video game than you can in real life. He realized that this is his passion, and we asked him all the time, did your parents ever say, hey, get off those video games?

And he just said, yeah, maybe a little bit, but I think they saw something that he enjoyed doing. Eventually, they realized that he had a skill at it, and so when he was maybe 12 or so, he starts racing actual race cars, and by the time he's 19, he's in the cup series, and by the time he's 26, he's a Daytona 500 champion. I mean, he's a bit of a wonder, Ken, when you think about how he got his start. He didn't come from one of the established racing families, and as you point out at 26 years old, he's not just a winner, but he's a driver for Hendrick Motorsports.

I mean, that's the tradition in NASCAR. People saw that he had a lot of talent early on. He drove for Dale Jr. on some of the short tracks here, and I think people saw that he had a lot of potential.

He handled himself very well. He was able to land some sponsorship and move quickly through the ranks, and it didn't come easy for him the first few years, but it doesn't for a lot of drivers, and he has continued to improve and improve and improve. They matched him with crew chief Rudy Pugel, who was his crew chief when driving for Kyle Busch in the trucks, and so the last three, four years, they've been really strong. He won a series best six races last year, but people finished third for the championship, and maybe people still kind of overlook William Byron, and obviously that's a mistake. Already seven seasons at the cup level, and he drives for Hendrick, which immediately means you have the best of the technology and the personnel, and this comes on a memorable day for Hendrick Motorsports. 40 years exactly since his first cup win, and I was trying to think about what he means to the sport overall, but you're the expert, Bob. What does Rick Hendrick mean to NASCAR? A lot of people call Hendrick Motorsports the New York Yankees, so I mean I guess he's kind of George Steinbrenner, but maybe without some of the drama. What he means to the sport is, I mean the thing is that Rick Hendrick grew up in Virginia down the road from Martinsville Speedway, and he has always loved race cars, and he started out in power boat racing, and he's always loved to race, and he's a successful businessman with a bunch of car dealerships, but he just he loves to race, and he obviously loves to win. Yeah, when you talk about the person who brought Jeff Gordon four cup titles, Jimmy Johnson seven cup titles, several other titles with with other drivers, including Terry Le Boning and Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott, it's really hard to measure his impact on the sport.

Saw him there at the track. I don't know how often he is there on hand, but how involved is he still at his age? He's still involved enough to know what's going on with the team, and he's hired Jeff Gordon to really kind of oversee much of the business side and the day-to-day operations. You know, Jeff Gordon's an equity owner in Hendrick Motorsports, but Rick is still involved, and if he feels like he needs to get a point across to somebody, he can do it. He doesn't need to ask Jeff to do it.

He can do it, and people love to work for him because he supports his people, and people feel like he treats them right, and people I said are very, very loyal to him and continue to just love working there. Not to mention continue to be successful considering his track record over 40 years. Bob Pockrass is still at Daytona, has a flight to catch in a few hours, but is with us here after hours on CBS Sports Radio. There's been so much transition among drivers in the past few seasons, and of course a bunch of retirements. Who would you say is the most popular, most recognizable, maybe the most high-profile driver that's still remaining at the cup level?

That's a great question. I would say, well, you know, Jimmy Johnson was in this race, but he's only part-time, so I would say he's probably still the most recognizable of anybody who raced today, but among the full-time drivers, I would probably go with Kyle Busch. He's just because he was the M&M's guy for so long, so all the kids would love to watch Kyle Busch. They root for Kyle Busch because he was the candy man. Now he's no longer the candy man, but he still has, I would say he's still probably the most recognizable face in NASCAR.

There are still a couple of grizzled veterans, if you will, right? So you have a Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin. You mentioned Busch.

He's been around for a long time. Joey as well. The younger generation of NASCAR is really rising up. Who, in addition to William Byron, are the budding superstars? Well, I mean, you look at Ryan Blaney, who won the championship last year. Chase Elliott, I still consider him budding, even though he's one most popular driver about six times now, ever since Dale Jr. retired, and then I think you look at Ross Chastain.

It's still trying to figure out where that line is between being aggressive versus over-aggressive, but you know, when you have when you have Tipple as your co-owner, you know, people are going to watch, and he's really come on the scene to kind of upset, you know, the status quo the last couple of years. Launching forward now into the full season, what are some of the other top storylines for this year in NASCAR, Bob? I think the top storylines are going to be the challenges NASCAR's faced on the short tracks and road courses. They haven't gotten the car to race as well as they would like. They're making some rule changes, and if those rule changes work, it really could set the tone for, you know, incredible racing week in and week out. And then the other one that I think everybody is looking at is, you know, will this be the year that Denny Hamlin wins a title, right? We start off, we start every year, I think, the last five or six years with that as the storyline, because one of the most winningest drivers around, I want to say it's 50 wins or so, 51 wins on the cup level, but no title, and you just wonder, is this going to be the year he gets it done? Kyle Larson is making headlines even now in February because he wants to be the next guy to try to run both the Indy 500 and the Coca-Cola 600, which is obviously 1100 miles on the same day.

It comes up in May. What type of challenges does that pose for him in terms of training and testing and just the logistics of it all? I don't know. I asked him if he had started any fitness regimen the other day, and he looked at me and said, Bob, I'm Rick.

I'm fine. But actually, he had just tested an Indy car at Phoenix, and it did strain his neck a little bit just because he's just not used to those types of G-forces in an open wheel car like that. So those are the types of things that he'll learn is just what types of muscles that he doesn't use necessarily on the stock car side that he'll use on the Indy car side.

But he's a guy who just kind of goes with the flow. He'll be ready. The biggest challenge will be logistics and going back and forth during qualifying weekend to the all-star race in North Wilkesboro, then obviously race day on the Sunday Memorial Day weekend when he starts out in Indianapolis and then has to get to Charlotte for another 600 miles.

Guys, it's been a while, right? Tony Stewart did it, but has it been over a decade since anyone's tried it? Yeah, Kurt Busch did it in 2014, so he's the last one who did it.

The thing is that you want to do it with a good team and not necessarily those rides aren't always available. And the thing that Kyle Larson has is he has Hendrick, his team behind it. They're kind of partnered with McLaren, so they know they're going to have a good car. He has his sponsor from NASCAR and Rick Hendrick's automotive side, so there's going to be no angst between the stock car side and the Indy car side, and that's really what you need to be able to do this well. Last year was that first Chicago road race, the street race in downtown, and it ended up with a ton of rain. Was that a marquee event enough for NASCAR to try to attract even greater attention, more people this year if the weather holds out?

I think absolutely. There's a lot of questions going in, and a lot of questions about whether NASCAR could pull it off. They had never done a street course race in their history, and the first practice day, the images were unbelievable, and then after the rains ended on that Sunday, they were able to squeeze the race in before it got too dark, and the drivers put on a heck of a show, and I think if it's sunny and you've got the concerts go on as scheduled, it just can be a great festival. And you really got the feeling while you were there that while people seem to maybe be annoyed at the start of the week, by the time they saw the cars on the track and saw them go around and just kind of the wildness and craziness and the challenge of it to the drivers and just seeing, you know, everybody wishes they could drive through Chicago at, you know, 100 miles per hour, right? And then to see if people actually do it and race, it was just thrilling, and the thing that made it so cool for NASCAR is that they had done it before and don't do it on street courses. It's just not something that they've done, so to see them do something different in one of the most iconic cities in the U.S. was really neat to see, and really looking forward to that event. I just think it should be a marquee event if the weather stays okay. NASCAR expanding beyond what traditional fans have known of it, and one more example before I let you go, Bob, we know that most drivers have a podcast, their own digital space to communicate with fans, but there's also a Netflix series now that's called NASCAR Full Speed.

Is there a buzz about that? Do you think NASCAR drivers and fans are into this new series? Oh, I think NASCAR drivers and fans are certainly into the new series. I think the question remains is how many new fans will be attracted to NASCAR by the series? How many people who maybe watch it with friends who maybe never been to a race will say, hey, now, hey, can I go to a race with you? Or certain drivers seeing more fans, you know, either purchasing their gear and that kind of thing, so I think NASCAR's still kind of waiting to see the impact of having a Netflix series.

It certainly can't hurt. It certainly has energized the fan base that's here already, and now the question is just how much can it grow the fan base? More of these top storylines for the NASCAR season with Bob Pockrass of Fox Sports. He's got a link on his Twitter because he's on top of it, and you can follow him at bobpockrass.com. Follow him at bobpockrass, and we're always excited to have him not always on a Monday after a postponed race at Daytona when he's still at the track and has hours to go before he catches a flight. You are a trooper. You are certainly one of those guys that works tirelessly, especially this weekend, so we always appreciate a couple of minutes. Bob, thank you so much.

Thank you, Amy. Bob Pockrass is going to be awake for more than 24 hours, poor guy, and yet bringing it, bringing the information and the good setup to this NASCAR season, and it feels like it's been a few years that NASCAR is still in transition, kind of sweeping, almost rebuilding if you will. Think about it when older players retire from your favorite sports team or they move on to other franchises and you see a bit of a mass exodus over a course of a few years, or maybe even look at the NFL overall as we think about some of the elder statesmen at quarterback who have retired. Well, it brings in a new influx of talent, but there's also this void where you need superstars to step into it to attract casual fans, and NASCAR has been going through that for a few years with an exodus of some of its more renowned, popular drivers that transcended the sport, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. being the biggest one, but now this influx of new talent and my goodness, a self-taught racer in William Byron who learned his craft primarily from playing video games on high-tech screens and incredible technology that mirrors what the tracks are like. I've heard Dale Jr. talk about it when he raced.

He also prepared for each track every week by playing the video game version of the track because that's how realistic it is. So different in NASCAR and yet there is a new avenue to get into the sport. The Netflix thing interests me.

Now, I don't have Netflix, but I know most cool people do. My niece has fallen in love with F1 racing just based on the Netflix series, Drive to Survive. If you've not ever seen it, it's called Formula One Drive to Survive.

It's got six or seven seasons old now. She knew nothing at all about F1 racing. Wouldn't have ever watched a race before she started binging this series. Now, she will watch the races on her phone. Sometimes because they're international, they'll be at these early, early morning hours.

Remember last year she was at my house. It was, gosh, seven o'clock in the morning on a Sunday, and she is watching the race on her phone from wherever it was across the pond. And so she's gotten into it simply because of the Netflix series. I hope that will energize not just NASCAR because they're getting different publicity, but also will rope in some new fans that become interested simply with this dramatic Netflix series. And I guess it's pretty dramatic for the F1 racers. I mean, they go in the garages, they do interviews with the drivers, and you know how tempers run hot and really the attitudes come forward when there are crashes and guys feel like they've been taken out by a competitor in NASCAR.

So driving's intense. It'd be really cool for them to increase their fan base because they've entered the Netflix space. It's very 2024. On Twitter, ALawRadio, also on our Facebook page, After Hours with Amy Lawrence. While we're talking about history, it's UConn women's basketball.

You'd think they'd already garnered most of the records and awards they possibly could, and yet another milestone for head coach Gino Ariema in year number 39. Thanks so much for hanging out with us on this Monday night as we usher in a Tuesday morning. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence, CBS Sports Radio.

You are listening to the After Hours podcast. Thanks so much for hanging out with us. Hope you enjoyed your holiday weekend, if you had one or if you were still working. I hope you enjoyed your Monday or survived your Monday.

It's just another manic Monday. It's After Hours here on CBS Sports Radio. Love when we get a reaction from our NASCAR coverage. We don't do it every weekend. We definitely don't do it much in the fall at all because it's competing with baseball playoffs in October and then every weekend with the NFL, and you know, any sport that competes with the NFL comes away with an L, but it is fun to talk about Daytona and look at the storylines.

If you missed that conversation with Bob Pockrass, looking at some of the biggest question marks for the 2024 NASCAR season, if you want to get into it or check out the Netflix series, or maybe you too would like to become a professional driver after you learn playing video games. Well, the podcast features all of our guests in their own separate link as well as the show in its entirety minus many of the commercial breaks. So you can actually listen in a condensed form to the podcast and it's available every weekday morning either on the Odyssey app, that's our home page, our parent company. You can go to cbssportsradio.com. I always post the link or Jay posts the link on our Facebook page as well as Twitter, ALaw Radio, or you know what?

Google it. After Hours, Amy Lawrence podcast, I promise you it'll pop up from Omni, from Odyssey, from Apple, from Spotify. There are a bunch of different avenues where you can grab the podcast. It's super easy and I know many of you, thousands of you do listen every day on the podcast because we get tweets and Facebook messages. Hour number two is missing. Why can't I hear hour number one? Where's the interview?

So you all keep us on our toes. Thank you for that. Hey, the Defensive Player of the Week is sponsored by the Navy Federal Credit Union who proudly serves the armed forces DOD, veterans, and their families.

Their members are the mission so learn more at navyfederal.org. In a top 10 NCAA men's basketball showdown, second-rank Houston championship aspirations and all, the Houston Cougars were led by guard Emanuel Sharp. 20 points, just as big, four steals. So flashing the offense and the defense in a 73-65 victory over number six Iowa State. So Houston now sits 10-3 in conference play and one game up of Iowa State in the Big 12. We're getting closer and closer to March Madness. We talked a little bit about that Purdue-Ohio State clash that happened on Sunday.

It's an early taste of what's to come, not even a month from now, believe it or not. Selection Sunday, it's on the horizon and we had asked you last week about your next big thing in sports and many of you did point to March Madness, both the men's and the women's side. Selection Sunday is March 17th. March 17th, which is not only my three-month anniversary, but it's also Saint Patrick's Day, but a little odd.

I wasn't planning on that when I thought about anniversary, but yeah. Sunday, March 17th and we'll do a show which features coaches, a lot of times players, as we get you set to fill out your brackets. You know, bracketology is such a big thing. Our friend Jerry Palm of CBS Sports, he always joins us in advance of the bracket show so that we can get some tips from him early on.

But yeah, it's inside of a month now until March Madness officially tips off and to that end, another major storyline in college basketball. Now, Mike Krzyzewski retired a couple years ago. We've seen older coaches leave the sport or just coaches that don't want to deal with some of these new rules, the NIL complications, the transfer portal that gives coaches a headache. You spend all this time recruiting and then, and I'm not saying that players shouldn't have the right to go where they want, but the transfer portal, I think it offers fool's gold, if you will. I've actually spoken to athletes who have put their names in the transfer portal just to see what happens and it's not what you think. It's not as though coaches are there shopping and they can come across your name and they can get a full bio on you.

No, in fact, if you don't have any name recognition and you go into the transfer portal, really what's in there is your name and your contact information. And so I've talked to some high profile softball players and again, they thought they would try it just to see how it was and what happened. And you really don't have a space to put videos, to put a bio, to let coaches know what you're all about. So the transfer portal is more about the few as opposed to the masses, even though a lot of them try. But coaches can't possibly know or do their research on every athlete that's in there. So what coaches do, they may have a particular need and they find out that players go into the transfer portal and so they're looking only at a few specific names, a few specific athletes.

Or here's what else happens, and this is underhanded, but it's within the rules. Coaches are recruiting or at least putting out feelers with athletes from other schools and other programs and they'll tell those athletes, you enter the transfer portal, we'll come get you. Or they'll find a way to get the word out to that athlete while not doing it directly. Again, it's a kind of a backdoor way of recruiting or making promises. And so those athletes will enter the portal and recognize that, well, they hope that a coach follows through on what he's saying, where he'll come after that player or he'll go and he'll find that player because he already knows he'll be in the portal.

So yeah, like anything else, it's really tough to police. And so it's changing college sports a lot. And we've seen Roy Williams, Mike Shushen, Mike Shushefsky, Jay Wright, now Nick Saban, who has pointed to what is an exhaustive process and the changes in college football that he just doesn't feel like he's equipped to navigate, and I would say probably doesn't want to navigate as well either since his philosophy in building a team was so different. But when it comes to women's basketball, not that you don't have NIL athletes, you certainly do. I've heard that Kaitlyn Clark is making a ton of money as this incredible superstar in college hoops. UConn's different though.

It's a bit of a throwback. For those of you who don't know anything about UConn women's basketball, Gino Ariemma has been there nearly 40 years. He really is one of the grandfathers of the sport. And he, along with Tara Van Der Veer at Stanford, certainly Pat Summitt when she was still alive at Tennessee, C. Vivian Stringer, she started at Iowa. She went to Rutgers. These are some of your college basketball coaches on the women's side that turned it into a sport that was worth watching and kind of raised the profile. Kim Mulkey.

She used to be Kim Mulkey Robertson. She was at Baylor. Now she's at LSU and has already turned that program into the one of the best in the country. Dawn Staley now at South Carolina. Perdue and Duke and some others. But Gino and Pat Summitt and probably Tara in there as well, they're really the coaches who forced the rest of the sport to step up its game or be left behind. And for years, Gino and his staff have had the pick of the litter when it comes to the top recruits and the best high school college basketball players. But he's a throwback and he's not for everyone. You all may know the name Elena Della Dawn.

She's an incredible WNBA player now. She originally went to UConn and then realized that it wasn't for her because he doesn't allow headphones, right? He doesn't allow music on trips, at least part. I'm not sure if it's when they travel as well, but he's very strict about when the players can use headphones. You can't wear headphones in the locker room. You have to be engaged.

You have to be all in. So when you're with the team, you are not allowed to be listening to your own music. They have to adhere to very strict dress codes as well as the study times. He really focuses in on academics. When they travel, they don't wear sweatpants, right?

And they also have particular rules about how they groom and how they take care of themselves. And so he runs a tight ship there and he's got a staff that's extremely loyal. A bunch of former players are on his staff, but it's kind of crazy as we talk about the wins mounting for him. And he's now at 1,203 career wins, all of them at UConn. So he passes Coach K into second place in Division 1.

This is both men and women's, right? So Division 1 coaches, Division 1 wins, all of us have come with the Huskies. Even though he turned 70 in March, he's won 11 championships.

He still has a fire and really enjoys it. And every single one of his wins has come with Chris Dailey as an assistant coach. So she is kind of the right-hand woman, if you will. She actually runs the day-to-day operations of the program now where Geno is not quite as involved in day-to-day and he's more focused on not just the coaching on game days, but the recruiting.

He's a closer. And then the fundraising too, which is crazy. You wouldn't think it matters, but it does at that level when you could have a Nick Saban or a Coach K or a Geno Ariemma out front and speaking to donors and speaking to those people who might be able to pour money into your program. And so Geno is probably the most well-known figure in Connecticut, more so than the governor, more so than any of his players who've come through there because of how long he's been there. And now here he is with 1,203 wins after UConn logged another one on Monday. You really aren't thinking, yeah, we have over 1,000 wins. We have 1,200 wins.

And it never enters your mind because you're just so fixated on the things you have to fix, the things you have to correct. And I'm sure there'll be a time this summer or next summer, whenever it is, when you think back and it'll really have a huge impact on you. For a long time, I worked with Jennifer Rizzotti, who was a point guard for him going back to the 90s. And then she started her own coaching career and she was a Connecticut native.

Her family was from there. And so she coached at Hartford. And when I first joined her, she was a few years into her coaching tenure there at Hartford.

When I first joined her as the play-by-play announcer for her team, and I would travel with the team as well, we did both home and away, which is relatively rare to have a professional crew as opposed to students who would do it. But she was committed to media because she had learned under Geno. The talk every year was, oh, do you want to take over for Geno when he retires? And she would always say, he's not retiring. I mean, that would be the goal, of course, is to be able to coach UConn.

But here it is now. I mean, she moved on, gosh, seven, eight years ago to George Washington and he's still coaching. Now, he turned 70 in March and obviously the retirement talk around him is getting louder and louder, but he's shown no real indication or really no tendency that he's tired or that he doesn't want to do it. Again, he's taken a step back in some of the day-to-day, but Chris Daley is like an extension of him. And so he's racking up the wins and Paige Beckers, who, for those of you who don't know the name, she's one of the top guards in the country. Last year, UConn, it had its streak of final four appearances snapped because she, well, in large part, because she had torn her ACL, I think playing pickup ball in the spring. So she was out for the entire year and they got her back this season. And so now they're making some noise again. Paige is already committed to playing again next season. So not only is he a fixture there in Connecticut, but he inspires a different kind of loyalty and connection with his players.

It's not for everyone. Again, even as the UConn men's team is national champs and they're brash and bold and they've got their own kind of signature style. Huskies on the women's side, I mean, they're pretty buttoned up and they're all about the team and they don't make a lot of noise. You don't, other than on the basketball court, you don't hear them just seeking attention, I guess, because he keeps the program pretty closed up.

And yet they love to win. And he inspires great loyalty with not just his players, but also the people who work for him. 39 years in and he's still racking up wins and still remaining relevant. 11 national titles, by the way, just to be incredible if he could put them back into the Final Four and have them compete for yet another. But women's college basketball is much deeper now, so there's also that.

On Twitter, ALawRadio, also on our Facebook page. After hours with Amy Lawrence, I know everyone loves it when I start to talk about the Houston Astros. They're also going through a potential new, well, they are in a new look phase, but also going through potential kind of reloading. Can they keep guys around like Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman, who are so critical? Bregman going back to when they first became national champions, trash cans and all, in 2017.

So the latest on those two, even as many of you are, well, maybe flashing a finger or so at the radio because I know how beloved they are. Listen up, I won't sugarcoat it. This is the longest cold flu analogy season we've ever seen, but we're not alone. We've got Instacart. Sure, you may be a coughing snot faucet who just wants mommy, but you're not giving up. Not when cold medicine, fragrant herbal teas and honey shaped like bears can be delivered through Instacart in as fast as 30 minutes. Now let's go win the sick playoffs. Daddy, I just want my soup. Oh, sorry. Sport app says it'll be here in a few minutes.

Instacart for the win. A peanut butter M&M's production. In a world where Super Bowl winners get the world's admiration and a fancy ring, but the runners up get nothing. One retired cop returns. That's one retired quarterback. Read the script.

Oh, sorry. One retired quarterback returns to claim what's his. Um, that's claim a ring with diamonds made from M&M's peanut butter, but you're on a roll.

The Ring of Comfort, coming soon to a Super Bowl new you. Okay, picture this. It's Friday afternoon when a thought hits you. I can spend another weekend doing the same old whatever, or I can hop into my all new Hyundai Santa Fe and hit the road with available H track all wheel drive and three row seating.

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2024 Santa Fe available early 2024. You are listening to the After Hours podcast. Heading up toward the top of the hour, which is the midway point of the show, and we will also dive into the NFL Films edition of miked up for the Super Bowl, which I finally had the chance to watch in its entirety.

I had seen bits and pieces, but I was wondering which major moments we would get the soundtrack for and which ones we would not. And I've got a major beef with NFL Films. I know it's not the league who runs it. It's obviously a subsidiary of the NFL. I don't know whether or not the league has veto power, if you will.

Probably, I would think someone has to go over it with the league and make sure it gets approved. But NFL Films does a phenomenal job and I love what I saw. I just was kind of surprised by a couple of the things that were missing. And Ryan has pulled some clips, so we will get into that. There were some really funny moments, as in laugh out loud funny, but also some poignant, even powerful moments from the broadcast of Super Bowl 58, which was on CBS.

It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence here on CBS Sports Radio. I know you all want to, some of you, throw items at the radio or turn the channel, which is even worse when we talk about the Houston Astros, but because of their tenure and their longevity. And you can yell and scream about it all you want. I know that they were cheating when they won their World Series going back to 2017. Major League Baseball essentially gave them immunity for their testimony, the players.

A lot of those guys are gone. Not all of them, but a lot of the guys are gone, plus the GM and the manager, and they're still relevant. Under Dusty Baker, they continued that tradition. It's what, seven American League Championship Series in a row.

It's pretty incredible, the staying power. And a lot of that is due to a couple of the guys who are veterans, again, love them or hate them, like Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman, who are originals from that team back in 2017, but also new talent like Jordon Alvarez and then Kyle Tucker, who's been great for them. Already a two-time All-Star.

He's 27 years old, but he had 29 home runs, a career best, 112 runs batted in last season, plus 30 stolen bases. And he, at this point, is playing on a one-year deal. He can be a free agent after the 2025 season, so he does have a little time in there, but you know how it is.

You get asked questions about your future when you still have two years left or a year left on your deal. Maybe a little talk, but not like, you know, like a hard offer or anything like that. But I mean, like I've always said, just, you know, we're always open to have those conversations, whether it happens now or a little later, whatever it may be. But I mean, we're, I mean, I'm always around here.

So, you know, I'm always open to having those conversations and just talk it through. He says he'd rather not drag it out and prolong it forever. Meanwhile, Alex Bregman is in a different situation where he's got one year left on this huge deal. It's a hundred million dollar contract that he signed over five years. So he's making quite the change in 2024, 28 and a half million.

But what about his future? We're listening to everything that the team has to say. And yeah, just letting Scott and the Astros do that together and and handle that for me so that way I could be fully focused on baseball, my teammates winning and the things that I love to do, playing ball for this great city. I've absolutely loved every single second here.

Being able to put on this jersey has been an absolute honor, a dream come true for me as a kid. I mean, they'll definitely be a contender yet again in the American League. The general manager is Dana Brown, and he's vague when he answers questions about having the conversations. But you hear Alex Bregman mention Scott. That would be Scott Boris, who always wants his clients to test free agency.

Why? Because he wants bidding wars. He wants to drive up the prices. And so it's a little different when you're a Scott Boris client, because very often he doesn't want his guys to accept extensions. He wants them to test the open market.

It's after hours on CBS Sports Radio. We've seen a lot of change in the past 20 years, but two decades later, Mountain Dew Baja Blast is still a fan favorite, bringing you the cold tropical lime flavor that folks can't get enough of. It takes you back to a sunny day at the beach with every delicious sip.

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