REShow: Tom Pelissero - Hour 1 (1-3-2023)

This is the Rich Eisen Show. Well, hey everybody, wherever you are, we hope you are well and healthy and anywhere near loved ones, because that's the type of day that we are all experiencing right now here on the first Tuesday of 2023, and we welcome everybody who is taking in this program on the Roku channel or listening to it on terrestrial radio stations, Sirius XM, Odyssey across the country, we welcome you and we hope you are well.

Here in Los Angeles, California, Chris Brockman and Mike Del Tufo in their spots. Hey Rich, what's up, how are you? Good to see you gents today, and TJ Jefferson, good to see you in your spot, as always, surrounded by friends here on the Rich Eisen Show. When we left here yesterday, thought would come on the air today and celebrate a major big-time football game having played out in front of the whole country on Monday Night Football in a huge part of the season between two incredibly talented quarterbacks and two incredibly talented teams fighting for the same thing, which is the top spot in the National Football League's American Football Conference in a season that has just been remarkable in so many different ways. And of course, the real world came crashing in in a way that I still can't grasp and fathom. We shouldn't be sitting here in our sports world, in our football-loving world, coming on the air and talking about a 24-year-old in critical condition in a Cincinnati hospital because he took what appeared to be a blow to the chest that millions upon millions upon millions of times players get up from. And DeMar Hamlin actually did get up from this one and then fell down and collapsed. And when that happened and when I saw that last night, I immediately thought to myself, well, that's weird.

I didn't think, well, that's possibly fatal. And I don't think anybody else in the field did until you saw members of the Bengals staff out there motioning towards the sideline and the Bills staff, obviously, out there motioning towards the sideline. And what unfolded on the field in Cincinnati is the nightmare of anybody who loves football, who watches football, anybody who talks about it for a living, anybody who, yes, is in the business of football, anybody who adores this game that we always talk about, made in America, played in America, now internationally. The nightmare is that somebody is going to die on the field because it is a violent game. And we put those thoughts as fans in the very back recesses of our minds and our hearts and minds watching this game, where we do sometimes enjoy it for the hard hits, where the hard hits are celebrated. And sometimes we criticize the rules that are put in place to protect the players because they're imperfect. And we don't think about this stuff while we're watching the game. And last night, a mirror was held up to all of us with this ugly, terrible, frightening, scary moment that a 24-year-old, Damar Hamlin, was on the ground and needed CPR and needed to have his heart apparently shocked back into rhythm.

And thank God, thank God there were medical professionals and the equipment on hand to save this man's life, because that appears to be what was the case, or at least for the moment. Because we still don't know what's happening with Damar Hamlin in a Cincinnati hospital. We're used to having guys carted off, guys even taken off the field in an ambulance, but we always see the thumbs up. But we're hoping to see the thumbs up. And if we don't see the thumbs up, what is it, usually a half hour, hour later, we get the report from a sideline that everything's okay. We still haven't gotten that report. And it's well over 12 hours later. And I don't know how to quite take it all in and grasp it, to be very honest with you.

It's downright frightening and jarring. And all I think of right now, as I've just started the show telling you how I feel, and how I think NFL fans and football fans writ large feel, I cannot imagine what the mom of Damar Hamlin is feeling right now, because she was there last night. And the ambulance getting ready to take her son to the hospital apparently waited to make sure she was in there with him.

And I send nothing but my love and prayers from all of us here at this show and my family to them, to her and her entire family. I'm also thinking of T Higgins tonight and today. And he's the wide receiver who made contact with Hamlin, was trying to be tackled by Hamlin. It's not your fault.

It's not your fault. And that's the ultimate reminder as well, as we send our prayers up for Damar and to his family and in his direction of his hospital room right now, that this is a fresh reminder these are human beings playing this game. Not guys who are trying to win a fantasy championship for us or a world championship for us or for them, human beings. We sometimes do lose sight of that as we scream about a fumble or an interception or it really is just a jarring mirror image held up to us to just remind us just how violent this game can be. And that's when I realized last night that this was out of the ordinary. When I saw the players in tears taking knees and first time I saw Joe Burrow actually flappable on a field, to be honest with you, and seeing Josh Allen put his hands over his mouth and the entire Bills team taking a knee, both teams surrounding Hamlin, I honestly don't know what to make of it.

And I think that's okay, Rich. I mean, last night was unprecedented. We've never seen anything like it. It's not the type of hit that you think would cause something like this.

You think we've been bracing ourselves for something like this maybe for a long time and it's never happened, thankfully. And it's just a routine hit. He just made a tackle and he gets up and then like you said, whoa, what was that? In terms of never seeing it before, the name of Chuck Hughes I think got Googled quite a bit last night by a bunch of people. In 1971, he was a 28-year-old wide receiver who dropped dead on the field in old Tiger Stadium when it was the Bears and the Lions playing each other late in the game right in front of Dick Butkus. Chuck Hughes just hit the ground, convulsed, was taken off in an ambulance. They finished the game that day and he passed away in the hospital.

But I don't, that's where he was at least officially pronounced as if he had passed away and thank goodness last night. That's the only time that's happened, but that wasn't in the 21st century where the whole country was watching a hyped up game when the NFL is at the zenith of its popularity. There is no precedence for what we saw last night. I mean, I know a lot of folks are talking about college basketball as well and seeing players who have had cardiac arrests on basketball courts.

Hank Gathers is one that leaps to mind. Reggie Lewis happened with the Celtics 30 years ago. And so we're talking about that, but thank goodness this young man is still alive right now and it's to the testament of the first responders and the equipment that was actually available to them to administer life saving on the field first aid. And we hope his heartbeat or oxygen levels was restored fast enough that we will get a report today that we've all been waiting for, for all this time hoping to hear. And it's unfortunately, again, another reminder wildly enough on the same field, right around the same spot where Tua hit the turf earlier this year and his hands spasming in front of another nationally televised audience that was a Thursday night in Cincinnati. One reminder for all of us, just what we're watching, just kind of what we're putting away and what these human beings who play the game absolutely shelf to play this game. And that when they see this happen to their comrade, when they see this in person, any medical professional will tell you, and I was texting with a handful of them last night, CPR, when it's administrated and also when a heart is being shocked back into rhythm using electric pulses, it's way worse than what you see in the movies and on television. And these players saw it.

And I don't blame them one bit for not wanting to play another second. And we will figure out the rest of it at the appropriate time. And I don't know when there is an appropriate time while this young man is still hanging on for dear life. I just don't know.

Nobody does. And we're all just hoping to work through it together. So I send nothing but prayers and love and affection and celebrating the humanity of Damar Hamlin and seeing the reaction of the NFL fan base, the Bengals fan base, the Bills fan base, obviously. The charity that Damar Hamlin has been running since 2020 in support of his mother's daycare center in his hometown of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, had $10,000 in its GoFundMe bank prior to kickoff last night. It's nearing $4 million, as we're currently on the air right now. His goal was $2,500.

Yeah, it just went over $4 million, including recent donations people are pointing out from Andy Dalton, who the Bills fans donated to his charity because remember, the Bengals knocked out the Ravens and the Bills made the playoffs a few years ago. Well I look forward to the day that Damar Hamlin gets to walk into that daycare center and see all the new toys, literally and figuratively, and he gets to see it himself and hope that he emerges from that hospital bed very soon. Let's take our first break. We're going to have a bunch of guests on this show to talk about what we saw last night and try and make sense of it, best we can. Our first guest is Tom Pelosaro, my colleague from the NFL media group with the latest on what is happening with Damar. And also on this program, Eric Wood, former Buffalo Bill, who currently calls their games, who was at the game last night. And Chris Long, our weekly regular guest. We pushed back his Monday spot to today, figuring we can talk about the entire weekend and the big Monday night football result that we don't have. He'll be on in hour number three. Then there's you, 844204rich number to dial. It's days like these where, you know, talking out is a good thing. And so we're here if you'd like to do that here on this first Tuesday, a lot of people going back to work, a lot of people making their way back from vacation over the weekend. We're here for you and we'd love to chat with you 844204rich number to dial here on the program. We'll be back with Tom Pelosaro about what happened last night and what might possibly happen next.

Prayers for Damar Hamlin here on this Rich Eisen Show Tuesday. This is it. The putt to win the tournament.

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Call click Grainger.com or just stop by. We've got Eric Wood of the Bill's radio network, former Buffalo Bill offensive lineman in hour number two. He was of course there last night and I imagine flew back with the team because the team did leave Cincinnati. And in hour number three, Chris Long, two times Super Bowl champ who's got as big a heart as he does anything else. He'll be on an hour. Number three joining us right now, however, on the Mercedes Benz vans phone line is my colleague from the NFL media group and a man who sat in this chair just a couple of weeks ago while I was in Pittsburgh, PA to call the proceedings between the Raiders and the Steelers on Christmas Eve night.

Our friend Tom Pelsaro back here in the Rich Eyes and Show, Tom, good day to you. What can you tell me? What do you know at all about DeMar Hamlin as you and I are talking about 20 minutes after 12 Cincinnati time on Tuesday?

Well, I think, well, probably most of your audience was sleeping and I otherwise would have been. There were a statement from the bills as well as an NFL conference call around one or two a.m. Eastern time. First, you know, the bills put out the statement saying DeMar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest following that tackle last night.

Heartbeat was restored on the field and then got transferred to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center for further testing and treatment. Then the NFL also held a conference call talking through all of the things that played out because I think that a lot of times, Rich, in the absence of information, people fill in the gaps on their own and certainly I as a viewer and I imagine many other people were watching and just trying to, you know, whether it was lip read or read body language or figure out what exactly was taking place during those ongoing discussions on the field. So first off, when, you know, when DeMar Hamlin gets taken off the field in an ambulance, which we've we've all seen that before, and you wait for, you know, hours later or a day later and the word that, you know, it was precautionary movement, all the extremities going to be OK. We'll be going home soon. This was something different. And I got so many calls and texts from people who were either there in Cincinnati last night or agents who had talked to their players, and there were many different versions that I heard of what exactly players saw.

And I'm certainly not going to indulge in giving a bunch of different secondhand information. What I would tell you is the theme was players saw something last night with DeMar Hamlin that they had never seen before on a football field. They saw one of their teammates literally die on the field and be brought back by medical personnel who restarted his heart. There is a emergency action plan in every stadium around the NFL that is actually rehearsed on an annual basis, even though, you know, there are very few occasions that rise to this level, precisely a cardiac arrest on the field. There's an ambulance in every stadium. There's an airway management physician at every stadium. If a player stops breathing, which, again, not something that you ever see. But in this case, a player goes into cardiac arrest and they needed to get him on oxygen.

And then there's a level one trauma center in every city, which is where DeMar Hamlin was rushed to at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center to get him the best possible care. And that takes place and you could certainly see the looks on the faces of the players, of the coaches, of everyone involved. There was that conversation between the referee, Sean Smith, and both of the head coaches on the field. And what we were told on the conference call with the league last night was the NFL, the command center, was actually listening in through Sean Smith's microphone to the conversation. And at that point, the conversation was not, despite what was said on the broadcast, which is the normal protocol after an injury delay that there's a warm-up period, then you resume the game. The conversation, according to the NFL, and specifically the executive vice president of football operations, Troy Vincent, was about, you guys can head back to the locker room, take as much time as you need, make sure your players, make sure everyone is okay, and we're going to discuss what exactly to do here. Guys remember, Rich, the NFL didn't stop during a global pandemic. They had free agency three days later.

They didn't lose a single game during COVID. So even the possibility of a game being suspended for the night or not being finished, it doesn't happen, ever, within the league. So within about 30 minutes there, you saw both head coaches come back out of the locker rooms, get on the phone with Roger Goodell, and that decision was made collaboratively to suspend the game for the night. The NFL's not commenting on when the game could be resumed. There were no updates on anything else so far this morning from the league. The focus remains on the health of DeMar Hamlin, and in the coming hours and days, that's going to dictate the NFL's course of action here at a time that they're supposed to be gearing up for a big week 18 headed into the playoffs. Tom Pelsaro of NFL Network, NFL Media Group here on The Rich Eyes and show you just laid a lot out there.

Let's take it one at a time. So, you know, the general sense just watching it and seeing the faces of these players and how they were, you know, staring at what was happening and then many of them turning away from what was happening and reacting in such an emotional way, crying, like, sobbing is the only words for it. And based on what you were gathering from other agents talking about what their players or clients were reporting back, that DeMar Hamlin was dead on the field and his life was saved, at least for the time being, when we're hoping for good, saved his life. That happened last night on a football field, on Monday Night Football, Tom.

It did. As much as you see the emergency medical care in so many other situations, whether on that same field three months ago Tua Tungava'i Lola left in an ambulance with probably the most devastating concussion that many of us have ever seen, but you still, you know, by that night he's flying back with the team and he's okay. We become all too accustomed to this idea that players are invincible to a certain degree.

Even injuries that 20, 30 years ago, torn ACLs and patellar tendon injuries and things like that, that were career-ending, you're just now thinking, well, medicine and rehab have advanced to such a point that, you know, this guy will be back, boy, that sucks for the team that they just lost that player, but eight months from now he'll be back out there and he'll be good as new. And then you have something like last night, it's not an orthopedic injury, it's not even a concussion, which of course is a very serious injury as well, it's, I mean, in essence a heart attack on the field. And whatever it was that happened on that impact, that was another thing that I had a long-time executive for a team call me like midnight last night, 1 a.m., who was just saying that that just wasn't a big hit. It wasn't a violent type of collision.

You know, Derwin James hits Ashton Doolin the previous week. You looked at that play and you went, oh my goodness, like that was a bad, violent collision. This was, I mean, it's NFL football, it's unlike anything you or me are ever going to experience, Rich, but it was a hit like 20, 30, 40 other hits in every game.

It was, he absorbed the contact, he went down, he popped back up, briefly tried to either grab his mouthpiece or adjust his face mask, and then collapsed. So very quickly, again, I think even players, when you play in the NFL, you accept the reason or reality that you're putting your body on the line, and players often say putting your life on the line. There's been one example in NFL history of a player dying on the field, and it was in 19, early 1970s, and it was a player who suffered from an undiagnosed heart condition and collapsed on the field and was taken away. They finished that game in Chicago, and then he was pronounced dead that evening.

That was 50 years ago. No one has ever seen anything like this on the field, and so absolutely, and again, without getting into the details, there were certain signs present that this was something much worse. And when players looked at DeMar Hamlin on the field, they could tell, even before CPR was initiated, that the guy had a concussion or something else was taking place.

This was something really bad. And so I can only imagine you're watching one of your friends, and by all accounts a great guy in DeMar Hamlin, being resuscitated and having his heart restarted. That's why they have the, whatever you call them, I can't remember the acronym, but those shocking tools.

That's why you have those on hand. That's why you have trained people in the airway pathway position, and all those things is for this moment. You train on those things, but you don't train players for that. You don't have a period in training camp that's, okay, your teammate has a heart attack, here's what we're going to do. And I think that's the other takeaway for me from last night, that we can all sit in the comfort of our homes and say, why wasn't the game canceled immediately? What took so long? It was all within an hour, and this isn't me defending the NFL.

It's just saying the reality is, as much as you train for these worst case scenarios, you hope you never see them. And everyone involved last night saw something that they had never seen before, and that hopefully will never see again. Well, I mean, I'd imagine, Tom Palaciero here on The Rich Eisen Show, there's no protocol for when to restart play when somebody's been resuscitated on the field and taken off via ambulance. And so let's hit that part of the conversation, because that is definitely, despite Troy Vincent, the league executive who spoke via conference call last night, calling the notion that the league was insisting the players get back on the field within five minutes ridiculous. The broadcast of ESPN, our friend and colleague, Joe Buck, was mentioning multiple times that the league has said, there's a five minute warm up and we'll resume play. We saw Stefan Deggs gather the bills, and it did seem like he was delivering a speech to say, let's go out there, and you saw a burrow warming up. But after a while, it was obvious that the players weren't into that idea, and then they go back to the locker room. Based on your reporting and conversations with agents who never really turned down a chance to criticize a league when given an opportunity, based in my experience, did any of them tell you that the players told them that the league insisted they get back on the field within five minutes of that happening?

Did you hear anything like that, Tom? My understanding was more nuanced than that. You have, in general, protocols for a warm up period after an extended injury delay. And again, that's commonplace with even serious injuries. I mean, back in week two, I was in Buffalo for the Monday night game. That was the night that there was the double header, the bills versus the Titans and the Eagles versus the Vikings, so half the country may not have been watching. But Dane Jackson, another Bill's defensive back, actually two Bill's defensive backs in that game, suffered neck injuries. The second one, ambulance was on the field. There was an extended delay.

It was extraordinarily frightening. In fact, last night I saw, I stumbled across a quote from DeMar Hamlin about watching Dane Jackson and his brother being on the field and what that felt like. Yet 15 minutes later, 20 minutes later, whatever it was, the football continued and the fans were cheering and the players were going after it and doing touchdown celebrations and everything else. And you become hardened to this idea that no matter what, the game is going to go on. So last night, I'm not surprised that whether it is various people in the command center, remember there's always a communication to the TV broadcast too. That's why you got the guy with the orange gloves on the field. They're all communicating, okay, what's going to take place here?

What's being communicated in that moment? And again, I don't speak on behalf of the league here, Rich. This is just my understanding of how the situation would work.

Neither do I, we're just two guys who are talking about it. Exactly. You're proceeding as if this is going to go like every other injury, ever.

And you're becoming aware though that it's not. And at some point too, remember this, and I know that Troy Vincent referenced this on the call last night, that he said he's never seen anything like it and how do you resume play after you've seen such a traumatic event occur right in front of you in real time? And at some point, both mentally and physically, as well as emotionally, it does become dangerous to put players back on the field. We've had weather delays, we've had other things, and there's always that worry of guys just cramping up and things like that. But then on top of that, our players put at a greater injury risk because their heads are not in the game, because they just witnessed one of their brothers die and come back to life and leave in an ambulance in front of them.

All those things have to be taken into consideration. There are things in the policies and procedures within the NFL about making up games, continuing games. To my knowledge, there's no example of a game, this isn't baseball where you make it up the next time you play the last seven innings and then play the second game, you can't do that.

I'm not aware of any situation or any precedent for doing this. Then you put on top of that the fact that these are two teams that are certainly going to the playoffs, it impacts the number one seed in the AFC, they both have another game coming up now in five days. Football is clearly not the important thing and that's where the league has not made any statements whatsoever. I would certainly ascertain that they're having logistical conversations about, depending what happens with DeMar Hamlin, what do we do here. The later we get into the week, the harder it is to believe that there's some solution where you're going to jam in the rest of this game and then keep the rest of the schedule on track. Those are all conversations that will continue as we hopefully, I think we're all hoping and praying that we get positive updates on DeMar Hamlin here in the coming hours and days.

I'm going to narrow here on the Rich Eisen Show, a couple more minutes left with my NFL media group colleague, insider, and occasional fill-in host here on the Rich Eisen Show. And again, the whole idea of what happens to this game, clearly we're still in, we're not there yet. And clearly the question is, when will the bills be there yet? And I don't know who determines when that time needs to happen. But time is still a luxury that the league has, I think, because there's also a bye week that exists later on in the first week of February.

I understand there's the Pro Bowl and the reimagined Pro Bowl games, but if we need to have a championship weekend that weekend, because a week needs to be utilized now, that might be where we go. And the question is, how does the rest of the league feel about that? I can only imagine, as I'm looking up right now and I'm seeing Mike Tomlin talking, I don't have the sound up because obviously I'm talking to you. There's no doubt in my mind he is sitting here thinking about DeMar Hamlin as are the Steelers, as are all 32. And I can only imagine that this is a process that needs to be played out for a while. There's no question, I'm just laying that out for you just to have a conversation on this front.

Tom. Well, and I go back to, and again, I understand this is not a perfect comparison, but you remember amidst COVID, really in 2021 even more when Omicron hit, and there was that wave of hundreds of positive cases in December of 2021, and no one knew how they were going to proceed. And so there was discussion, as there had been the previous year too, about at least conceptually what would have been in 2020 week 18, what would have been last year week 19, and whether at some point the schedule became so stressed that you needed to move things around. Back in 2020, remember, they moved bi-weeks on teams, they changed games around, but they did not ever push the entire thing back. And that's always been a last resort for the league.

But again, we're in, just like it was with COVID, we're in uncharted territory here. I would think the league would like to make decisions on this by the end of the day if humanly possible, but you may not have the types of medical answers that you wanted to Mar Hamlin by the end of the day. It's also Tuesday, this would be the day that the four teams playing on Saturday would be having at least a walkthrough or some type of organized team activity leading into a game week. And then tomorrow, the other 28 teams, over a dozen of which have something on the line in week 18, they would be back on the practice field. It is an extraordinarily complicated situation. I think that just based on the outpouring of support on social media and elsewhere from fellow players and the conversations that I've had personally with a variety of people around the league, people are shaken by this.

They also are very cognizant of the fact that the NFL historically does not stop for anyone or anything. What they did last night for DeMar Hamlin and how it starts again and remains up in the air. Tom Pelosaro, thank you so much for your time, your knowledge, your compassion, and greatly appreciate it. We'll chat again soon. Thanks for having me, Rich. At Tom Pelosaro on Twitter, joining us here on The Rich Eisen Show. 844-204-Rich is the number to dial here on the show. We'll take your phone calls and get ready for Eric Wood of the Buffalo Bills, who calls the games, used to play for them. He's no doubt locked in on what the team is thinking and how the players are still reacting. And we send our best again to the Hamlin family.

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What are you going to say? I'm not one, but I'm just going to throw this scenario out there in the same way that it was totally unprecedented for us as fans and for the Bills and the Bengals as players to see what was happening to DeMar Hamlin. Is it possible that the officials on the field and the league officials watching from wherever they were had the same reaction and were spinning their wheels too? Is it possible that when Hamlin was taken off in the ambulance, that league officials were like, okay, kind of just like everything else, because they weren't on the field watching them resuscitate Hamlin thinking, okay, we're going to still play the game tonight. Just like anybody else who's been ambulanced off the field and that the league officials and the officials on the field were just, just like the players. If you saw, Burrow was warming up, did somebody go up to Joe Burrow and say, we're playing in five minutes, so you better warm up. We're playing in five minutes, Buffalo, so you better give a speech to your team, Staphon Diggs. Because it's being cast right now that somebody, whether it's the commissioner or somebody in the league office, was sitting in their smoky room through the blinds like it was a scene from The Natural saying, you're going to go out there on the field. We know that somebody just died, but too bad you're playing tonight, because that's the way it's being cast right now in many different parts of this world. And I just know too many people in the league office whose job it is to protect the players in health and safety, whether you think the NFL's ultimate heart is really in it or not, there are some people I've met and I know who wake up every day dreading what we saw on that field last night, dreading it. And I don't think anybody thought of let's, we have to have a return to play protocol for somebody who needs to get CPR in the field.

Well now I guess we will. I'm just saying, let's just let it all play out, because it sure looked like to me that eventually we got to the right place, which was, hey, players and coaches, you give us the roadmap tonight and we'll follow your road. But the initial thought was like, okay, let's just do what we've always done every single week for the last two of the hell knows how many years, you know, is it possible?

I'm just throwing that out there. Is that a possible scenario? I think that's probably likely that the human condition was just trying to realize what the hell was happening. And ultimately the players are like, yeah, I don't think it was like, we're not playing. You just looked around, you read the room and you saw guys in tears and McDermott was like, we're going back to the locker room. Great.

844-204-rich number to dial. Jeff in Detroit. You're here on the Rich Austin show. What's up, Jeff? Hey, young hate to start the new year off like this.

What's going on? All of us do. All of us do, but this is life. This is life, man. And hopefully the life that's being saved right now is Hamlin's.

So most definitely. First of all, the first responders, any first responder that has ever worked stadium events while I've worked tiger stadium, I've worked for a field and the thing is it's repetition. And we never think that we have to go into action. Usually we ended up watching a good game.

We go home. Those first responders last night, what you saw on that field was a superb collaboration between medical professionals at their best. In order to work on somebody and see the thing about it is, and I'm happy that ESPN didn't show it, what they didn't see, what people did not see is when you are administered with the defibrillator, they cut you straight open, get everything off of you in a hurry. All of these young men are standing around watching that they're absorbing that that's a brother that that's on the field. It's just like your boy being shot or something like that.

And there is no way that you could continue to do a game after that. There is no way that it would have been unsafe for everybody because number one, the only thing that you're thinking about is your homeboy. Number two is unsafe because your head isn't going to be in the game. And we all know the NFL, you got to have all your senses right then and there when you're playing this game. So it's, it's, I'm happy that the medical professionals did what they do. See this is how it was set up, you know, and I'm sure that Cincinnati's situation is kind of like Detroit's and everybody else's. It's usually two assigned EMS rigs that are out of service. They have a designated trauma center.

They have a designated pass that they go to. And from all accounts, it looks like everything hit last night in order to get that young man to where he needed to be. Thank God. Love you, Jeff.

Happy New Year. Thanks for chiming in like that. You know, the medical professional I was texting with last night said he was surprised that the shocking of the heart, the defibrillator was applied on the field. He says it's normally done in an ambulance because for the loved ones to see it, it's so jarring. He says, it's not like it's on television.

It's worse. So I cannot imagine what the players must have been thinking and seeing that because it's their worst nightmare too, that again, and we, as fans do it too, we suppress it when we watch football. We suppress it probably when we watch hockey, any contact sport, we suppress it. And so thank God again, the medical professionals were there and the equipment was there and that the protocols there were followed and that Hamlin left the field with a pulse. Words I never thought I would say into the microphone.

Not going to lie. 844-204-RICH is the number to dial here on the Rich Eisen Show. Eric Wood will join us next. He calls games on the radio for the Buffalo Bills. He was there and I imagine, because I know radio teams for the local radio teams usually travel with the team on the team plane.

I'm assuming he came back on the plane, but you know what assuming mean as well. He's about to join us. And we also have Chris Long coming up in hour number three, and then there's the phone lines for you.

844-204-RICH number to dial, hour number one here in the books. We're still here on Roku, however, for another minute and a half. And you know, I guess we'll use this to suss this out a little bit. I do want to talk a little college football with all you folks. Certainly since there's a story that my head coach is willing to take an NFL job if it's offered.

That was an athletic story written in part by Bruce Feldman. Needless to say, I have paged Bruce Feldman to the Rich Eisen Show studio and he will be here tomorrow. Rich I'm also willing to take an NFL coaching job if it's offered to me, so I just want that out there as well. I'm dressed for it today, so I'm ready.

Mike, I don't want you running the Michigan program, and you sir, I don't think your best interests are in mind for the Michigan program. I have a hat already. Sorry.

Got a hat over here. If I'm offered it, I'll take it. You will? Yeah. Oh, an NFL job. I got it.

Just like Jim. If I'm offered it, I'll take it. Yeah. I have some thoughts on it. I'm just putting that out there. I'm going to give some thoughts on it. Thanks, Brock. You know, every year there's six, seven openings, and so if I'm offered one of those... You'd take the Colts?

I'll see you guys later. You wouldn't take the Broncos one. That's right. You wouldn't take that.

That's right. You know, I had Russ in fantasy this year. How would you handle Russ in the locker room, Chris? Don't answer that question. Don't answer that question. This is a family audience. That's right.

You're on the Roku channel. I think I would take the Colts. I would take the Colts' job.

You would? Because you like the shrimp cocktail. I do love shrimp cocktail, and it's indoors. I won't get cold. St. Elmo's is on the house. By the way, work on your PowerPoint for the ursays. Thank you. I will.

St. Elmo's is there. Eric Wood when we come back. How wrestling really works and how you get the ratings. Eric Bischoff and Conrad Thompson explain on 83 weeks. You're either growing or you're dying. I think it would be hard to recreate the kind of growth that WCW experienced between 95 and 98. This audience should be growing. The characters should be coming more, and they're not. Everybody's gradually losing audience. People will say, well, but AEW is 15% ahead of where they were last year. But there's variables there. Let's see where we're at year from now. 83 weeks on YouTube or wherever you listen.