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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
Good morning.
Welcome back.
It is 8.06.
It's a Friday morning.
It's October 24th, 2025.
Dr. Kristen Lyall standing by.
And then later in this hour, we'll talk to Mike Clemens.
He'll be heading to Pittsburgh.
for the Packers Steelers game.
And he'll also have quite the story to tell about a viral post of his that allegedly showed Aaron Rodgers being pulled in a fishing boat behind a pickup truck, I think drinking a beer or something like that.
And Mike Clemens finally got to ask him more about the post and whether that was him.
And you're going to want to hear what Aaron Rodgers had to say to Mike Clemens coming up later this hour.
But he'll be heading to Pittsburgh.
Meanwhile, there's some Packer fans that are already there for various reasons.
Yeah, Kristen Lyrely is definitely one of them and joins us from Pittsburgh where she had her priorities straight.
She didn't bring her laptop, but she brought her bike.
So it
was an accident.
You don't accidentally bring a bike to Pittsburgh.
I didn't bring a bike.
I'm going to rent a bike.
Oh,
OK, OK, OK,
gotcha.
You're there for some conferences that coincidentally coincide with the Packer game that's going to be there, which you will be attending Sunday night.
Yeah, it's crazy how these things turn out, isn't it?
I'm here to present at the Society of Family Planning Meeting, which is here all weekend.
And just all of these people who are very involved in reproductive health and justice.
And these are my people.
But also, we had a meeting of the Committee to Protect Healthcare last night, which is a huge organization.
I chair the board.
It's over 40,000 doctors all across the country, all different specialties working to do patient-facing advocacy.
Medicaid reimbursement and reproductive rights, all the stuff that affects you.
It's your doctor standing up for you.
So I love
that.
Well, we're going to talk more about that in just a sec, Bob.
First, where are my banners before I forget?
Good morning, says Robin Tigerton.
It's clear in 29, one of the coldest mornings since mid-April last night.
He had a meatball sub sandwich at Blazers Bar and Grill in Split Rock, a suburb of Tigerton.
I always like that.
He wants to warn everyone there will be a lot of road work on 29 from 2026 through
2030, apparently, as he attends these meetings to get more information downloaded into his Highway 29 scrapbooks, he's a bit of a Highway 29 historian, and also says there was a recent farm accident in the Tigerton area.
Please be careful around those power takeoffs,
which
is, you know, I mean, that that is an evergreen thing to say across rural Wisconsin is be careful, especially during harvest season.
And, and Rob, for how many times has he mentioned Rachel's roadside?
uh bar and grill in in wittenberg well it's great they they made uh today's newsletter as ellie bordo asked people to send in their nominations for best local burger and sure enough rachel's roadside bar and grill and wittenberg was wanting including for the witten burger a half pound burger with sauteed mushrooms onions barbecue sauce and melted cheese curds
Oh, Rachel.
Yes.
Got to go get the Wittenberger and several other local burger joints of note.
So again, head over to UpNorthNewsWI.com, click subscribe in the top banner and learn more about all of that.
All right.
So we've talked about local burgers and newsletters.
We've said hi to Robin Tigerton.
Let's get back to the business at hand here.
You chairing this national board and talking about some very important issues in healthcare.
Yeah.
Well, if ever there was a time for doctors and healthcare professionals to step up and use our voices, I think this is that time.
We've got to push back on all of this misinformation.
When President Trump gives a press conference about acetaminophen and he can't pronounce acetaminophen, you should be concerned.
When Robert F. Kennedy is telling you things about
vaccines that you know are not true, you should be concerned.
So what we need are scientists and doctors telling you the actual truth and how it affects you.
And that's what this organization does.
It helps to put doctors in the places where they need to be with the messages that will resonate with people.
Now you mentioned Medicaid reimbursement and
here's the odd thing for years and years, we've talked about the Medicaid reimbursement rate, you know, to doctors and other providers and whether it was adequate, spoiler alert, it was not.
And there was
always room to improve on that.
And now, of course, we're going in the complete opposite direction of slashing nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid.
You have people like Congressman Derek Van Orden who insists that anybody who deserves their benefits will not see their benefits cut a nickel as if $1 trillion of Medicaid care was going to undocumented immigrants.
Nobody believes that except the most partisan Trump lovers out there.
But the fact of the matter is
you and all of your other colleagues have to live with the ramifications of these.
First, they were low reimbursements.
Now there's outright cuts, more hoops to jump through for people to get it.
It is going to, I would imagine a lot of your discussion is about how much more uncompensated charity care you and your colleagues can afford to provide.
Well, I mean, I have an OBGYN doctor in Wisconsin.
we get paid so little for the work that we do with our patients.
And 40% of our obstetrical patients have Medicaid.
So we have been really struggling with this issue for a very long time, but now we're starting to look at everybody having a hard time.
I mean, premiums are going up by 18% on average, not Medicaid across the board for all of us.
So what we're going to be seeing over the next couple of weeks to months,
every single one of us is the cost of health care going up.
And that means more people won't be able to afford it.
More people will need assistance.
More people will go without health care.
More people will not get that health care.
And the consequences will be sickness and, frankly, death.
We're going to see really terrible outcomes as a result of this.
So that's why we have to stand up.
We have to stand up for each other.
And as patients, if you have stories, there are opportunities to tell your stories.
politicians like Tammy Baldwin want to hear it so that they can help to amplify the things that you're going through so people can understand.
A lot of folks don't get the health care crises that many of us face and the way to get through and to make sure that we're making really important political decisions because it's all connected is by telling these stories and helping people understand.
It
is still though just a
startlingly depressing number of comments that show up on stories like these about Medicaid or like my new story on the website about SNAP benefits and, you know, 700,000 people in Wisconsin rely on SNAP benefits to put food on the table.
And we've talked about how many people are on Medicaid in Wisconsin.
And the comment that comes in as well, these are a bunch of, you know, lazy bums who need to go get a job.
know the real question is how did we end up with an economy where people can't afford their health insurance and where people can't afford to put food on the table and yet we have more billionaires than ever before.
So I mean it is it's an entire economic system that's out of whack blaming the poor for being poor has really never been shown as a good solution for solving poverty.
I'm really worried about this.
I'm worried about the SNAP benefits.
I'm worried about the impact on food pantries.
There was just an article in the Green Bay press gives up this morning that food pantries are gearing up because we know that SNAP benefits are going to be delayed due to Trump's Republican government shutdown.
People need food.
When I was a kid, we were on SNAP because we needed a hand up.
And if we hadn't had that, I don't know what my family would have done.
So most people are struggling right now.
Now, there's a part of the population that's actually doing really well.
That's why we see the stock market doing well.
But most of us are having a hard time right now.
I need for our politicians to see that.
I need for our politicians to understand what's going on so that they actually start making decisions for the people who elected them instead of for themselves.
Dr. Kristen Lyrely is with us and joined us on Wednesday to talk about one particular health issue because Actors Halle Berry was testifying to the Wisconsin legislature on the subject of menopause.
And that takes me to this week's edition of the Dr. Kristen Lyrely show that you can hear Saturdays at noon across the Civic Media radio network.
What do we got this weekend?
We're talking about menopause.
I talk with a doctor, Anita Biblik-Anderson.
She just opened a clinic called PAWS Medicine in Wausau of all places.
So Northern Wisconsin, do not despair.
There is a place you can go.
Someone will listen to you.
They will talk to you about your symptoms.
Metapause is not just hot flashes.
It is a variety of different things and people experience it in very different ways.
And we don't talk about it because it's taboo, but now we're talking about it.
Oh, we yes somebody somebody is encouraging that and
that's right
Yeah, so now you're you're in Pittsburgh.
You're you're attending these meetings You happen to be going to the to the ballgame as well So I mean will next week's duck Kristen Lierley show feature any packer interviews or
Are you not?
We didn't arrange your press pass for you.
I
could have gotten your press pass.
What the heck?
Maybe.
I mean, Jimmy Kosko, Civic Media Sports Director, but maybe there's still time.
Jimmy, if you're listening.
Yep.
Jimmy, are you listening?
Jimmy?
Jimmy, make this happen.
Let's get Dr. Lirely on the field.
She's done video reports for us before.
She would do video reports from down on the field for
us.
responsible.
I can control myself on the field.
You have done
video
reports from the governor's inauguration.
You have done video reports on punchy day from, you know, from a place.
Yeah.
So you know how to do this.
Yeah, it is kind of funny to be like in the doctor's base and also the reporter space like when this menopause story came through and I got the update like as a reporter.
That was funny.
Uh,
yes.
I mean, you get, you get to cross all of these different lines here.
So.
Yes.
Well, you know, we're also in this streak of, I mean, there have not been a lot of games at Lambeau Field this year.
They're, they're, we're at that part of the schedule where if you want to see the packers, you actually have to, you have to go to them.
And so you're going to do that.
Uh, you will, however, not overdo it.
with the knee.
We haven't picked on you this week yet about your recovery from knee
replacement and
I expect Jim from Brookfield to be texting in shortly here to also say as a fellow knee replacement person to take it easy out there and yet you're talking about biking along all three rivers in Pittsburgh but by the time this is all said and done.
Yeah, I am definitely going for a line bike ride.
Bike rides feel good on my knee.
My knee is doing well.
Thank you for asking.
I'm eight weeks out.
It is still not normal, but it takes time.
And
I
have to be patient.
And we have to be patient as we are recovering.
It really gives me a very good perspective on what people live with in their lives, because we all have something, right?
So just taking the time to take care of yourself and offer a little grace to others who might be dealing with some issues that maybe you can't see.
So yeah, it's been a humbling experience, but overall, I think I'm all right.
Okay,
I think I think you're doing okay.
Yep.
Let's see we we heard in our last hour that the inflation report was out and showed that inflation is creeping back up again.
Surprise, surprise.
But the the one
If you want to call it a positive aspect of it is that it does have an impact on social security benefits and this just in from the AP Social Security recipients will get a cost of living boost next year of 2.8% that will be an average boost of $56 per month.
And it's funny, Kristen, how people hear about Medicaid and SNAP, and it's like, oh, it's welfare, blah, blah, blah.
But Social Security and Medicare are in this totally different category of people going, yeah, heck yeah, it needs to be at least 2.8% to keep up with costs.
And I don't know why we're not looking at that across the board as saying, look, we all pay our taxes, we're all working.
And this is, you know, what we have to do to be healthy in our working and in our retirement years.
But again,
this is politics, isn't it?
Like these are the issues they pull on the stuff and they know what the issues are that resonate with people.
And those are the issues that they feed.
And then the issues that make people uncomfortable are the issues that they use to really twist the screws.
It's sad.
Dr. Kristallair Lee is with us with Mike Clemens talking about sports just 15 minutes away as we roll through a Friday live from Pittsburgh and here on Lake Wissota.
I'm Pat Krightlow from Up North News.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
There are still some teams in Wisconsin.
I don't mean the youths.
I mean the temperature.
It's 19 in many parts of northwest Wisconsin right now.
Let's see, Hayward's at 19, Solensprings, Siren is as well.
It's 39 over in Sturgeon Bay.
It is 28 in the Madison area, 27 here in the Chippewa Valley.
I didn't have time to look up the temperature for Pittsburgh, but Dr. Lyle is out there.
Probably not 19 degrees there.
I love how he said, I don't mean the youths.
Not the youths.
Yeah, it's about the same.
Pittsburgh is a lot the same.
Like I'm getting a very Green Bay vibe here.
Oh, blue collar city.
Absolutely.
Totally.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think I'm totally going to get that vibe on Sunday night.
Just gut feeling.
I think it's going to be very strong.
Yes.
Yes.
Let's see from Robin Tigerton.
I will be a candidate for knee surgery.
I spent a lot of years milking cows.
And then of course, there's Jim and Brookfield on the text line.
Good morning, Pat and Dr. Lirely.
Glad to hear you are biking eight weeks out from surgery.
I'm five out and can stationary bike, but not solo on a bicycle.
Also, I'm told I'm six degrees from straightening the leg out and need to stretch the hamstring.
I don't want the doctor to do it.
So I'm working hard.
Good
for
you.
Because when the doctor does it, it doesn't feel good.
No, no,
no, no.
And it's fine.
I've been told that I'm six degrees off, but it has
Nothing to do with it.
It's just all personality driven here.
Not your knees.
No, not at all.
There is a new story out warning of potential scams that are happening out there that we wanted to share with people.
Tamiya Falks writes about it in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says there is a federal relief check scam that is targeting consumers, the Better Business Bureau counts at least 800 consumers around the country have reported
receiving scam messages about federal relief funds.
The scheme involves attempts to collect personal and financial information in order to get an unclaimed relief payment.
Thousands of dollars are waiting for them and if they don't respond quickly, the money will be returned to the government.
And that's one of many scams that are going on out there.
And I know Shari recently talked about one of her friends or colleagues as a parent who fell for the gift card one and was instructed to go buy all these gift cards, you know, and then send them instead of sending
you know, money into something.
And I mean, I can only imagine, Kristen, you two have had patients come in and explain things and you've had to set them straight and go, no, no, no, no, don't do that.
Don't fall for that.
You're not just a trusted advisor in health care issues.
Sometimes it's about life.
Yeah, it's not just patients.
It's like people in our lives.
And the scams are so tricky.
Like, there are times when I look at them and think, is this real or not?
I don't get it.
How do you do that?
How do you take advantage of people like that?
I'm just not tuned like that.
I got no answer for that either.
But I do this every day when I'm doing the history lesson.
We put mostly happy shiny things in there.
But there are other things in there where it's like...
Oh, how do people do this stuff to each other?
You know, all through human history, we have not always been sending our best to conduct business on behalf of all of us.
Look at
us now.
Look at us now.
Electing a criminal as president who's tearing down the White House.
Did not see that one coming.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Did you see the Steve Bannon interview where he very overtly says that Trump will be seeking a third term.
There's a plan.
He's very confident about it.
Oh,
yeah.
I mean, I've never doubted that.
And so when you have other Trump supporters who would love to say, oh, you have Trump derangement syndrome and you need to get over it, it's like, no, you're, you're fooling yourself if you think this guy's going out willingly at the end of this term.
Robin Tigerton on YouTube, whatever happened to kindness helping one another?
That's
right.
Well, here's the thing.
that Sherry reminds me all the time and I think it's a coping mechanism that having a husband who's in both journalism and politics is that reminder that there are so many, many, many people who are kind and giving and they don't make it into the newscast.
They
necessarily run for office.
They're just out there very quietly doing their thing.
And you don't always have to agree with them on everything, say politically, but they're out there doing good things.
And I need that reset in my life now and then.
I know other people who could use that reset.
And they're the ones who, like, they don't vote.
They don't watch the news at all because they find it all so depressing.
But that's not the right way to go, Kristen.
You can't completely unplug.
That's not healthy.
Well, right now would be a really good time for kind people to step up and run for office.
I mean, at any level.
And I know that these jobs are tough
and
that society is complicated and that we have kind of been recently taught to not be nice to each other.
But the only way to bring it back is to be courageous and kind and to step up.
And we can do that.
I mean, that's what you do every day, Pat, with your show when you elevate these good, kind voices.
So that's the plan.
That's my
plan.
Well, that is.
And that that is exactly why we do the things here that we do.
And and then he says, half jokingly, you know, why, why there's a bottle of bourbon around the corner sometimes in the evening.
No, no, no, we all have our own.
different coping mechanisms.
Mine
mine is to go visit friends, you know, at the same watering hole every Thursday, except I think the wildlife around me because a deer almost took me out last night.
Oh, on the way up.
Yeah, just right there in front of me on on the road on the way up to Jim Falls.
And it was just that reminder is that time of the year.
Keep your hands attended to on the wheel.
And you know, you got to really be watching those sides of the road.
because
you
just never know when some critter says, Oh, this is my time.
Hello.
You know, the spotlight is on me until you're under my Jeep tires.
So
if you see one, there's probably another one.
So watch out
without it out.
So everybody be careful about that.
Hey, you have a fun time at the game.
I know you've got a busy day or two ahead of you, but then enjoy it all.
And, and then we'll all be tuckered out, uh, six 30 Monday morning.
Well, seven 30 Eastern time when you check in with us again, I hope.
Yeah, let's talk about that press pass,
huh?
Parker is typing out the note to Jimmy as we speak.
you.
No,
I
don't think Mike's going to go for that.
No, no, no.
I have a mic.
Mike Clemens is going to join us and not give up this press pass.
Right after this, I'm Pat Crickwell from Up North News.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You know, Civic Media has a new daily newsletter that is all filled with show highlights and other important links.
Sign up for it at CivicMediaToday.substack.com.
Again, CivicMediaToday.substack.com.
whole lot of sports going on starting tonight with some high school playoff football on some of the stations of the Civic Media Radio Network.
There's also some exhibition basketball by the Badger Men's basketball team.
And then there's college and professional football.
You've got the World Series starting today.
You got NBA get in their season underway.
And somebody's got to keep track of all this.
And thankfully, Mike Lemons is willing to do just that for us.
Mike, good morning.
How are you?
Good morning from Green Bay, Pat.
How are you?
Nice good good and nice to have you here.
You'll be taking off for Pittsburgh I imagine before too much longer to cover You know the the Packers and the Steelers and we'll get to that in just a little bit but you know as I mentioned you got the NBA season getting underway and I know right now the timing isn't really good with this great big Bombshell scandal coming out about you know some NBA players and coaches being caught up in in gambling next
and other activities that I think we're going to hear about for a long, long time to come.
It's not great timing for the NBA, but the season is getting underway.
The Bucks are 1-0 now, and they're already north of the border to take on the Toronto Raptors tonight.
Yeah, the Bucks coming off a win of the season opener.
They had it at home.
And Doc Rivers announced a few days before he went to the video crew, the scoreboard crew, at Five Surf Formants and said, look, we've got to have a tribute to Chris Middleton, who we traded away in the spring.
And now he's with the Wizards.
That's the team that's coming in here on Wednesday night.
And they did.
As a matter of fact, the Bucks had like Bango, the team mascot and some cheerleaders there to greet Chris at the airport.
Welcome home.
To make him as feel as welcome as possible.
course is a friend of yonah's and we do things to make sure that yonah's is happy yes yes but but you know he deserved it and you know stock rivers that hey this guy he helped us win a championship four years ago he's always going to be a buck so they gave him a very nice warm welcome uh... bucks uh... took an early lead in that game wizards fought back got to within nine but the bucks went on to win was a one thirty three to one twenty
uh... but they lost their starting guard is kevin porter jr at the end of the first quarter steps on his teammates foot bobby portis and had to have an n r i the next day sprained left ankle he's not making in the trip tonight so the bucks are in canada tonight they're taking on the raptors in toronto and it's an early tip-off time five thirty tonight
uh... yeah and uh... again that you know you've got a long enough season to
hopefully overcome this injury or that injury, but you definitely don't want to be starting right out of the gate on game one.
Are the wizards, I used the term, I frequently use the term, the lowly Washington wizards.
They have just been such a tough luck team for so many years.
Are they basically still in the bottom range here or have they started making their way back up at all?
Looking at them last spring, they clearly look like they need to be a rebuilding team.
They can continue to be kind of a strange ownership in terms of some of the management decisions.
And they always seem to keep on making moves like, well, let's get 34-year-old Chris Miller in here.
That'll help sell tickets as opposed to seriously rebuilding a good basketball team.
Yeah, it just it it never has felt like, you know, anything other than a perpetual rebuilding job, which doesn't do anybody any favors if you're a fan of that franchise.
Thankfully, we don't have that problem here with the bucks.
And again, they're playing at Toronto.
530 is the tip off this evening.
Let's flip over to baseball now because the World Series is getting underway again, keeping with Toronto.
But this time, it's the Toronto Blue Jays.
And they are taking on the LA Dodgers.
And that one there, Mike, is we've been so impressed with Otani.
We were so frankly impressed.
We were obviously sad about the brewers getting swept, but you kind of had to tip your cap that we kind of have to reset things here, Mike.
And Parker was quick to remind me, the blue jays are no slouches.
Would you say top five payrolls as well?
So
there is the potential, despite the sweep of the brewers, for this to be a competitive world series.
No, and Colin Cowherd, national talk show host about four weeks ago, said, I think this is going to be a Mariners versus Brewers World Series and Brewers in six.
And he was
close.
I missed
it by that much.
Yeah, Blue Jays came back to win was at game seven, four to three.
So they're in there and they got Vlad there.
They've got some bats.
But the Dodgers have got the pitching as we found out the hard way last week.
So they get game one tonight in LA against the Blue Jays.
I mean, all bets that the Dodgers are going to be the first team in over 25 years to repeat as World Series champions.
Well, and again, they have the talent.
They have the names.
But again, Parker, I got to give you credit.
You made me feel better that I can.
I'd had a tough time rooting for the Dodgers previously, but Manny Machado is no longer a part of the team.
I know.
They're as likable as the Dodgers can be at this point, thankfully.
The free game one is tonight at 7 o'clock out in LA.
That's right.
Berth, meanwhile, they've got to do the final housekeeping on their season.
And they did so with a press conference and a rather nice announcement for one of the executives.
Yeah, Matt Arnold the general manager of the team the guy who's coming up with these incredible young players to replace injured players or solve problems like you know Caleb Durbin or Isaac Collins or the Miz Jacob Mizorowski the pitcher He's been promoted he goes from general manager to the president of baseball operations for the Milwaukee reverse Doesn't really change his job.
He's just got a bigger title and gets a you know promotion with it
But he also had to ask some tough questions like, OK, Brandon Woodruff, what are you going to do there?
The guy that you waited for two years to come back from surgery on his shoulder, and then he comes back and is doing great.
And then just as you get to the postseason, he has another injury and can't participate.
And he said, yeah, that's going to be a tough offseason decision.
Looks like they're going to have to move on from Woody.
And you know, Pat Murphy made it clear often throughout the season.
I mean, I remember that one game that they lost in Chicago to the Cubs, to Matthew Boyd, a pitcher who they shelled earlier in the season.
He, you know, he pitched a great game and Murphy said, yeah, how much is he making?
What was that?
29 million?
Oh, okay.
He throws that out there because you look at the Brewers payroll and Freddie Peralta at 8 million.
It's like the manager kept on saying, how am I supposed to compete with that?
Oh, it makes total sense.
And again, for a small market team, you need, if you can't, if you don't have the big pile of money, then you need some really smart decision making, whether it's your general manager or president of baseball operations, whatever the case may be, you know, Matt Arnold getting that promotion at least adds that degree of security that somebody making some smart and sometimes tough decisions is going to be around for a while.
I mean,
So basically you're saying, if you were a betting man, Brandon Woodruff, he might be one of the players that we have seen for a last time in a brewery uniform.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, they're talking about changing baseball, but that could lead to a walkout next year, which we'll
deal with
later.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well.
more drama for us to follow here.
Let's turn to college football next.
You've got the Wisconsin Badgers.
We'll be taking on the Ducks out in Oregon.
Coverage begins at four o'clock on several civic media stations and then a six p.m.
kickoff.
So what can you tell us about the game and any new developments on the future of head coach Luke Vickle?
Now the Badgers are playing number sixth ranked Oregon Ducks.
Badgers are trying to snap a five game losing streak.
They got shut out again last week against the number one team of Ohio State Buckeyes.
You've got Camp Randall Stadium half full.
You've got the kids that are there booing and chanting fire fickle.
And so on Monday, Chris McIntosh, the athletic director at Wisconsin, put out a note, particularly to the season ticket holders that said, we're not going to fire fickle.
We're going to move on.
and then holding a press conference and talking about that you know that listen if you want we need more depth to these teams and that's going to take more money so if you'd like to donate more money so you know that they will be talking about this for months but basically they're going to keep fickle they're they're they're in a crisis mode in terms of recruitment because the program is in such shambles right now with the injuries uh... and they're worried about you know players wanna
get out of the transfer portal.
They're worrying about the ones that they've got recruiting that are going to change their minds.
They've got to sort of do this before signing day deadline, November 30th.
A lot of challenges in Madison right now for football.
All right.
And then finally, of course, you've got the Packers playing the Steelers in Pittsburgh.
Coverage begins at 5 p.m.
Sunday.
And we've been setting up throughout the morning.
You had a viral post once upon a time that you finally got to talk to Aaron Rodgers about.
Tell us more about that
story.
on wednesday erin rogers did a press conference with the stealers as they said so you
play the
packers is this a revenge game goes now let's not revenge game no i mean the packers mean everything to me they drafted me i grew up there you know from the time i was twenty one to thirty eight or so uh... you know i've still got friends back there uh... you know we want to win but uh... not a revenge game so then and it was nice enough to let uh... to do a zoom call with us those of us that covered
all those years in green bay and so the other guys were asking him questions about well you know what do you want to do with the future and and his season and everything and so he knows that we always had to try to have some fun together we were laughing joke about this stuff on fridays at his locker and so i said you know i never got to ask you this one day there was a lady was driving her car on mccarthy way all across the street from uh... lambo field and she took a picture of a red pickup truck and there's a dude
with a winter cap on holding up a case of beer, and it was you, the MVP of the league.
And so we asked him this yesterday on the Zoom call.
All
right,
let's hear what he
said.
Mike Clemens from Wisconsin Radio Network.
Good, I'm muted, Mike.
I was listening to your comments yesterday and the good times you had in Green Bay.
And all I could think of was that, here you are, the MVP.
It's like 21.
and you're in the back of a red pickup truck with your teammates crossing Oneida, holding up a case of beer.
And I retweeted that.
It got over a million hits of all the things you've accomplished.
Well, congrats for
I mean, what was happening that day and talk about some of those times that maybe weren't so
public?
Yeah, I mean, I don't remember exactly whose vehicle that was, but there was like a bunch of cases of beer in the back.
So, you know, you guys would always take that walk back and whether I was riding in the back of a truck or riding on that silly golf cart that the D-Bot gave me, we're always messing around, having a good time.
Those are some of the most fun.
I mean, going way back, we had a crazy crew.
I mean, some of the shenanigans and pranks that me and Brett Goode pulled on some of the rookies over at St.
Norbert's, the constant battle between Flynn and Graham and T.J.
Lang and Josh Sitton, what they would do on the road.
It got so crazy.
Some of the pranks they were pulling that Mike,
point said, you know, cut that out.
No more that stuff because they were doing some wild stuff.
It's that stuff that I remember the plane flights.
You know, there's a time back back then we used to play on the plane at eight first pass seats.
And that was like, you know,
Ted, Bob Harlan into Mark and the brass and a couple of coaches and all of us were in the three by three seats in the back.
And we had this thing for a while where people just start throwing pillows and blankets at each other.
Like when the plane was landed, guys that were sleeping, you know, if you were sleeping, Larry McCarrick can probably attest to this because he was always sitting like in a row in front of me.
And every guy's like flinging, just flinging.
the wrapped up blankets and rolling them up in the pillows of people and waking, you know, there's always like, you know, some of the media was in front of us and, you know, PR and community relations, they'd all be on the same plane and they get, they were catching strays on the plane sometime.
So, you know, those things are great.
It's like, you know, it was such a tight knit group for so long there.
You know, I had lasted most of them, but it's fun.
You know, that's why I feel so, you know, feel so good about my time there because damn, everything great in my life is because of, you know, my football career and my football career starts and we're in.
one day with with Greenbase.
We got a lot of love for all those memories and a lot of great friends still carry with me to this
day.
Leave it to Mike to get that story out.
Mike, thank you so much.
Enjoy the game.
We'll talk to you later.
Thank you back.
You bet.
We'll wrap things up here from Lake La Soda.
After this, I'm Pat Crichtmo from Up North News on the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
So it's not just the Packers in Pittsburgh that you can hear for football across the Civic Media Radio Network this weekend, but of course you can on Sunday, starting at 5 p.m.
for the pregame.
But on Saturday, you've got the Badgers taking on Oregon, coverage begins tomorrow at 4 p.m.
And then you've got some high school playoff football on some Civic Media radio stations, head to civicmedia.us to learn more.
Then tonight, the Badger Men's basketball team in some preseason action against Oklahoma in Milwaukee, coverage begins at 6 p.m.
Let's see what else we've got.
Badger Women's Hockey.
They host Minnesota State Mankato at home tomorrow afternoon and Sunday afternoon at two o'clock.
The Badger Women's Volleyball team is out in Washington.
She got a little West Coast Sports Action nine o'clock tonight for the Badger Women's Volleyball team versus Washington on the Big Ten Network.
Again, Bucks at Toronto 530 is the tip-off and World Series Game 1, Toronto versus the Dodgers starting Friday.
Parker Olson, esteemed producer and sports fan, is what most people would want to hear for the sports that are going on.
But we're going to end the show as it began.
And talking about the the big news of the sports betting scandal, the gambling scandal that's out there with players who appear to be
They're taking themselves out of games to influence prop bets others were involved in illegal poker games with with crazy stuff like x-ray tables Where they could see the cards of the people they were scamming isn't that not coming into this I know and this this all happened right after the end of the show yesterday and I just recall on my DVR I had to I'm watching them have this discussion and I had to roll it back like 20 minutes to go wait wait wait wait what
and play all this back.
And look, as I said earlier in the show with Kiavakeel, I feel like, you know, almost kind of psychic because our question of the week this week was about sports betting and whether it should be made, you know, more legal in Wisconsin.
Then he had somebody like Kiavakeel going, I've been screaming from the rafters from day one, don't do this, you're going to have something like this happen.
So Parker, the question now is whether whether this is
going to eventually be a blip on the sports betting radar?
Or is this a watershed moment like the the quiz show scandals of the 1950s on TV and the Paola scandals of radio in the 1960s?
Is this going to is this really going to put a crimp in legalized gambling in this country or not?
It's hard to figure out if this is going to be a regular thing.
I would think that this will
I sort of think the FBI is making an example of this and is trying to fend off any more examples of this.
I don't really know enough quite about it to say too much, but I don't, I don't think it's going away, Pat.
I think the gambling, I don't think gambling is going, I don't, I 100% think that it'll get legalized in a bunch of places because Pat, as we say, follow the money.
Yes, and that's the thing these sports leagues, you know, they saw that there was all kinds of money here to form these sponsorship deals with some of these big national sites.
And that's really what I'm getting at.
It's not like gambling is going to go away.
But in terms of these league partnerships, I mean, if you're the commissioner of the NBA right now, do you do you feel like the only way to save your image?
is to step up to a microphone in the near future here and say, we're done.
We tried this.
It didn't work.
People will still be betting, but we're not going to put the integrity of our league on the line.
And so we're going to end these partnerships.
Is there a chance that that happens?
That would be the FanDuel Sports
about, well, the thing is though, the network is not owned by FanDuel.
They basically bought the naming rights.
And so you actually come back to the owners of that network whose name escapes.
I don't know if it's Diamond Sports Group or what it is.
I think so.
But do they too go, wow, it was great having all this money for naming rights, but we can't have this.
We have to go find a new naming sponsor.
call it something else.
And it's your position that that's just not going to happen.
There's just nobody else that's got money the way that gambling does.
Yeah.
And then there's the whole notion of how the gambling scam scandal is different now compared to, say, you know, the black socks of what was that, 1917.
Well, there you had players that were like, getting paid near poverty wages.
And so they would engage in, you know, these kinds of gambling aspects, basically put food on the table.
But these players and coaches who've been arrested, one of the players, he's made over $100 million in the course of his career.
through big contracts.
So he wasn't doing it solely for the money.
It wasn't his way to make a living, but the money, the extra money he could make was just too enticing.
but
So specific like this player is going to lose the fifth game of the second set like that's a bet that a lot of people make It's it's very easy to work with players on that Especially in sports like you were just talking about that don't perhaps make quite as much money
So this is something that's going to take months, if not years to work its way through the court system.
So this is going to be coming up a lot.
So the NBA, and frankly, sports in general, have many opportunities to look bad as this comes up.
And will anybody step forward to say, no, we're not going to be as tight with betting?
Clearly, you see where we stand.
There's just too much other money there.
All right.
Well, enjoy the weekend.
Are you doing anything fun?
I
to
good
That might have been the most predictable thing we've said in the past three hours.
to Whitewater and watch some football.
Exactly.
All right.
Well, you enjoy that.
We'll see you on Monday.
Remember that next week, we will be hearing from Lucy Rip from a better Wisconsin together.
We'll talk to a guest from Friends of the Apostle Islands.
We will talk about finding a new Medicare Advantage plan.
And so much more.
Thanks for joining us.
Have a great weekend.
I'm Pat Rightlow.
We'll see you back here bright and early 6 AM here up north.
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