Transcript
LIVE From Lake Wissota: On Building Community (Hour 1)
The Todd Allbaugh Show · Fri May 23, 2025
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Good afternoon, everybody live from Lake Wissota and the quite little compound.
I'm Todd Albaugh, live on location along with Mr. Aaron Zommers, our producer and engineer back at the World Headquarters in downtown Madison, Wisconsin.
It is Friday, TGIF May 23rd, 2025.
It is a great day to be a Wisconsinite and Zommers.
I only wish you were here because those watching on the stream, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter.
Twix, whatever you want to call it in the like.
Look at the shop behind us.
We got Lake Wissota next to me, the host of, uh, almost in the wrong show.
Mornings with Pat Crite low now from six until nine.
Mr. Pat Crite low, who is so gracious to be our host and our Northwest Wisconsin news bureau chief, Pacific media, James Kelly live here in in person.
Gentlemen.
Good afternoon, Pat.
Thanks for having us.
my pleasure.
Welcome.
Welcome to Lake WSOTA.
Welcome to the town of Eagle Points.
Welcome to the Memorial Day weekend.
Right?
This is so great.
It's almost great.
It was, we were supposed to be down here on the pontoon.
Uh, there's a wind chill right now with this North breeze coming in right behind us, but it's not bad.
A little, little bit of blue sky over
there.
A flannel little hoody weather.
Do you
good?
It really is beautiful.
And Pat, you overlook Lake Wissota here.
You do your show here every morning.
Oh, no, no.
I do the show in there in the house.
There you can see the length of those January shows just would not cut it here, but I understand the sentiment.
It would
be nice.
Sometimes six o'clock in the morning.
No, not
not itself to an outdoors.
Not so much.
James Kelly, we talked a little bit yesterday down at WCFW downtown Chipwell Falls.
You made the short drive up here to Pat's place.
Glad to have you along.
How you been?
Oh, you know, I've been great since yesterday.
I feel like.
You know, Pat, you could sell tickets to this view out here, whole business waiting for you.
I know, right?
This is really
relaxing.
So you're saying I need to host more functions for CivicV.
I get it.
100%.
It'll set something up.
I've been saying this for the longest time, like, come on up, guy.
And then you finally bring the show here.
This is this is outstanding.
Well, it might do once or twice more.
We'll see.
This won't be the last time, I'm sure.
Now with a view like this, my gosh, and the hospitality, it's absolutely great.
Big show today, by the way.
Coming up in hour two, we have Peter.
Ray Pine, managing editor of Epom's World will be along with a humorous look of the wild and wacky of human behavior at around 3.30.
We also have another edition of What's Worse, Southern Accent.
I can't do a Chicago Accent.
or the late great now George w coming up an hour too.
Also calling us our part of me.
Brian here from Wisconsin Badge of course, that big event in the town of Dunn outside in Dane County.
That's just b a big brought and concession of that and also the big fl
3pm will tell you how you could also call in and bid or donate.
And Brian's going to talk to us about Wisconsin Badger Honor Flight in hour number two as well.
Coming up at the bottom of this hour, Brady Ewing, three-time Big Ten champion for the Wisconsin Badger football team, spent three years in the NFL.
He'll be here as well talking a little sports and life.
But right now, gentlemen, I want to get into a little cover.
It should be three dudes with a beer.
That's what we should have called
this.
I was thinking it's more like, I feel like this is more the Bartles and James commercial.
Remember the two old guys selling wine coolers and.
And then this is the, you know, the grandson has come to visit over here to learn about the family business, except nobody drinks bottles and James wine coolers anymore.
So there's your eighties reference for the day.
I love it.
Uh, at the hotel, I'm up here, by the way, I should shout out because she wasn't listening yesterday.
My favorite youngest niece, Isabel graduated last night from Eau Claire Memorial High School, home of the old Apes, by the way, or just the, or just the Apes.
But a beautiful ceremony last night.
Shout out to Mike Johnson, the superintendent of Eau Claire Public Schools and everybody else.
They did a great job.
So Isabelle is graduating and shout out to her and everybody else.
You know it's a big event because family friend Lisa and Sean Holly have come into town.
Lisa with her spreadsheet.
So it's going to be a three, almost like a Pope coronation for the graduation here.
We've held graduation parties for both our daughters back here and for
of them.
I mean we got the tent set up back and everything and nobody left the house.
It was a deluge all day long just the rain and I'm so glad that that didn't impact the graduation last night.
Yeah all kinds of graduations happening around the state of Wisconsin.
I know this weekend both high school and probably maybe some colleges as well but guys I wanted to get into
I want to forget about the headlines are important I know and Pat you always cover it so well in the morning on mornings of Pat Crite low But I wanted to talk about just having a conversation whether it's uh, oh zomers is sending us a message here.
Well, we'll see here Oh, I need to turn myself down people have told me that for years.
Yes Zomers, how is that?
Be quieter time.
Um, I want to have a little conversation by having a conversation because
My show is based in Madison.
We go all over the state.
We have many of our shows based in southeast Wisconsin.
Pat, you're the only network show that's based up here in northwest Wisconsin and having grown up in an out state, as they say, in a more rural part, I think that we don't spend enough time on just getting to know our friends and neighbors around the state of Wisconsin.
So I'm going to ask you guys about just having conversations, but I want to take a little bit of this.
This is from Katie Couric, former NBC CBS news person, and she now has a podcast
has called next question.
She had the Midas Touch Brothers on talking about this from a little bit more partisan perspective.
Let's just give it a quick listen here.
This is Katie Couric with the Midas Touch Brothers.
That's another minus touch brothers on the Katie Kirk's podcast.
Next question.
Pat Crite low.
How do we connect with people better?
Well, it's a very good question because I'm thinking more about the onslaught of that messaging that they were just talking about and, you know, a right wing media network that has almost unlimited funds to provide
You know, the aforementioned easy answers.
It's easy for us to say that this should all happen one conversation at a time.
And it should.
And James does this as a reporter.
One conversation at a time.
Tell me what's going on.
Tell me what I need to know.
And we should all be better listeners.
And I'm not taking any pressure off of that from people say on the left side of the spectrum.
I'm just simply noting that
you know, the scales of conversation are a little tilted these days because we have allowed people with literally billions of dollars to, you know, set the tone of the conversation.
It just makes it that much tougher for, let's say a state senator is knocking on your door and asking for your vote and asking what's going on.
This person's already been fed a steady diet of, you know, the stuff that gets shoveled over here across the field.
And so all we can really do Todd, the short answer to your question is continue to ask
questions of people and actually listen to the answer rather than necessarily pushing back or fighting back right away.
James Kelly, as Pat said, a lot of reporting up here.
You're going to a protest rally this afternoon.
You're also a sports guy, a group in Long Island.
We talked a little bit about that yesterday.
I read an article here.
I think it was on ESPN recently on Brewers' Christian Yellow saying he's really become kind of the leader of the clubhouse, and he learned that now from the late great Bob Uker when they first met.
You could have taught him and said, you know, don't don't ask about a guy's stats or his batting average.
Where'd you grow up at?
What do you do for fun?
Get to know someone.
What do you hear any reporting in Northwest Wisconsin?
When you go to a report, are people talking past each other?
What's on people's minds up here?
Yeah, I think before the 2024 election, we heard a lot about, you know, grocery prices, the overall inflation and those concerns still exist today.
And I think
what you've seen is kind of a shift in maybe where that blame is being placed, where before the election, people were struggling, they wanted an answer, they wanted things to get better.
So they went with the other party that wasn't currently in control.
And you saw that globally too, where a lot of countries that did have a more conservative leadership in their countries voted more liberal and kind of had that ideological shift because they're struggling.
And these are these are difficult conversations to have like
very much in depth and really explaining down to the brass tacks what's on each line of this bill, this bill, that bill.
Those are tough conversations to have and it can be easier to just say things are bad, let's go with the other guy.
And like you said, to demonize other people, in this case, the fight over Medicaid cuts and what I've seen all of our Republican members of Congress posting about is, well, we just need more of those able-bodied adults to get off the couch and work without them actually asking,
Why are those people not working?
Do they have a child at home?
Do they have a disability?
Can they not afford child care because the child care crisis has not been adequately addressed?
If you get the answers to those questions, then you can truly help people as opposed to, you know, demonizing one group to get the votes of the other.
Pat you go to you and your lovely wife Sherry go to fish fries up here and spend a lot of time James that your public your private life is your private life I don't know whatever you're out in the bottom you do I'm assuming you don't just sit in the newsroom all night
I
mean what what you guys here because why wasn't Hayward for the Birkenbeiner people were talking about the state girls hockey high school hockey tournament there they were the maybe it was the boys but the state hockey tournament they were talking about the NHL playoffs is also at that time.
What are people talking about?
day to day around the Chippewa Valley, James and Pat.
Well, definitely not the Bucks anymore.
There was a good bit of Bucks talk going on before that.
I think nowadays it really is one of the main conversations around here is revolving kind of around the unhoused population.
Even the Eau Claire Police Department just this week said we've gotten even more calls this past year than we did the year before.
It's getting worse and it's a visible problem.
So people are
seeing it every day as they're walking through downtown Eau Claire and that conversation carries over.
And then there's the usual stuff.
How are you doing?
You know, there's not exactly a local sports team around here to rally behind so strongly.
But I'm sure when the Packers come back, it'll be all Packers talk again.
And you know, around here, the again, the affordable housing crisis is something real when they talked about people not being able to afford a first home is a very real thing around here.
Previously, a lot of the conversation
when around the health care situation up here when two hospitals, including St.
Joe's just across the field over here abruptly closed.
There's just.
A lot of uncertainty, I guess, is the undertone of all of this, whether it's politics or the economy or, frankly, sports at times.
It's uncertainty.
People say, how do we get back to a more certain time?
How do we get back to something that's a bit more stable?
I don't have an easy answer to that, but I know that that's what I think that's really that lack of stability, security, consistency is what people think about a lot around
here.
I want to come back, have more conversations.
about having conversations.
But I want to talk a little bit about how do we turn down the tone so we can actually listen to one another without ignoring some really big and important things.
I think that's a big challenge right now.
And maybe a little fun along the way.
Stay tuned.
We are live on location from Lake Wissota and the Creightville compound is the all ball show across Wisconsin on the Civic Media.
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pursuing truth wherever it may lead and having fun doing it.
Welcome back to the Town Hall Ball Show and the Civic Media running that work has led us to Lake Wissota.
We are live on location at the beautiful shores of Lake Wissota here at the Pat Crightlose Studios.
The Lake Wissota studio actually exists and the pontoon is here but it's it's way down.
It's a very steep bank that we're on but
if I will live to your pattern man up and down those I'd be in much better shape.
Oh
yeah or dead.
are dead either.
Either one would
apply in this pack quite a little course of mornings that pack quite low every morning from six until nine.
James Kelly, our Northwest Bureau chief here for civic media news.
Before you go any further, his armors has reminded us time once again for free ticket Friday.
Let's go.
That's right.
It is time for a free ticket Friday.
Once again, your chance to win four club seat tickets to the Milwaukee Brewers.
Can I ask a question first though?
Yeah.
What's with the monkey's tune?
What was that about?
Well, if you were a true Brewer's fan, you would have known back in the late 80s early 90s.
They would
win the
game.
They would win the game.
They'd play that song.
That was in the late 80s and 90s,
right?
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Continue.
All right.
Well, I'm going I'm going to the demo for this show is Millennials.
song.
That's why you ask the questions.
even a twinkle of parents' eyes.
These are really nice.
The words were a twinkle in anybody's eye.
He had back then.
Anyway, the ticket.
All right, the lawyers tell us this is a statewide contest I'll get thrown in the lake with soda if I don't say it.
All right, here you go now
back.
It's just too much of a drain on
power.
But anyway, the word is score.
S. C. O. R. E. Score S. C. O. R. E. The word is score.
Text it right now to the Civic Media app and you'll be on your way to perhaps on the way if you are chosen on Tuesday, May 27th, as Omar said, that game against Boston at 640.
The word is score S. C. O. R. E.
talking to Pat and James a little bit more about having conversations with our friends and neighbors.
Pat, you, all of our shows, but you do a great job every morning talking about the headlines.
You're on the first thing in the morning and there is this fire hose of information.
How do you think that we don't play that down?
But also, I just think if we're pounding every day on that, people are going to get tired.
How do we have a conversation first before we get to the headlines?
I really come back to something that I used to say at the TV station as well.
And it's about having a balanced diet, not just of food, but of where you get your information, your information sources.
And by the way, as an aside, I made a lot of people feel really old yesterday when I told them it was the 20 year anniversary of my last day at the TV station.
W-E-A-U.
Yes.
But, you know, thanks to the
that gig and also, you know, as a legislator, people feel like they can stop you at a fish fry or at the grocery store and say, what's the deal with this?
And so you look for trusted people to have conversations with.
And you don't just take everything that you hear on face value.
This thing we talked about this morning where the Chicago Sun Times and some other newspapers ran a whole recommended books list for the year.
They had AI write it.
Wow.
And it, wow.
Most of the books didn't exist because nobody proofed it afterwards.
So it really is just about, look, we're glad people get it from my show and from your show, but look around a little bit, ask some questions.
Just don't unplug entirely and say, you know, it's all divisive.
I don't care.
To me, that's the one wrong answer.
But to balance out that diet of where you get all your information from.
James, you're a guy who follows sports.
I'm not sure I've ever asked you on the air.
Did you play sports in high school or growing up?
I did, yeah.
What'd
you play?
Yeah, I played baseball and basketball growing up and then ran track in high school and then a little bit in college before I just kind of decided, you know what, I don't think I like running a half marathon every Sunday morning at 8 AM, especially in
college.
So we're going to pick up on this a break after the bottom of the hour break, but just a person that's been time in the locker room and a teammate, how did you connect or how do you think is best to connect with people just if you want to build a team and ultimately our community should be a team?
Yeah, I think, you know.
Every team has its kind of cliques, the people who just, you know, they play the same position or they run the same races.
So they all kind of work out together.
And every team also kind of needs that one guy who is able to connect to those groups and just say, okay, I'm going to, you know, we used to go to like Chipotle before one of the meets that we had every year to which our coach would say, cool, you're all running the two mile now.
Just that one person who says, let's all just go together and we'll all sit together and like.
you get to really bond in those times when it's just downtime, there's nothing else to worry about.
But it's not someone you would probably typically hang out with.
And see, that's my point.
I think we need more.
I still, some people sound stupid.
I don't mail bonding person bonding, but just do something away from politics, do some just be real
people Pat.
Yes, and that's what you have to do.
Go to those fish fries.
Go to wherever and have those talks with people.
People sometimes they want to talk politics with me and I just quickly deflect because it's just there's a time and a place, you know, for every kind of subject and leaders themselves.
It's much like chemistry on the radio or TV.
You can't manufacture it.
That leaders just emerge.
Chemistry just emerges and it's usually from the people who either work the hardest or have the biggest heart.
you know, for one another.
They strike up the conversations and they can motivate each other, even if they don't have, say, the highest batting average on the team.
And, you know, then others, they have it all.
And we give them the afternoon show and let them travel all over the state.
And
no, that's not true at all.
Thank you for
being
our
big toe.
No, that's not true at all.
I'm just here.
I'm the water boy, the Civic.
I'm Pat Crite-Lo.
James Kelly, thank you very much.
James has to run.
I'm going to do some housework.
You should carry on.
I'll be back later.
Captain Stooping here, the Pat Crite-Lo compound.
Come on back, it's the Todd Hallball Show.
Live from Lake Wissota, there it is.
There's the hat.
Civic Media Radio Network.
Brady Ewing's next.
Don't go anywhere.
It's yacht rock time.
Welcome back to the Todd Hallball Show.
on the Civic Media Network across the state of Wisconsin.
It is, we'll call it 35 minutes past the hour of two o'clock on a TGI Friday here.
We are live on location at beautiful Lake Wissota.
Home of Pat Crichtlow, host of mornings with Pat Crichtlow every morning from six until nine.
We thank him for, uh, for letting us use this great space.
We are on his, uh, kind of a deck here.
We're the stairs that go right down to the boat dock and the pontoon is on the water.
Lake Wissota right behind us.
It's a beautiful day here in northern Wisconsin.
Joining us right now via stream yard back in the old hometown and equally beautiful part of the state in the driftless and Richland center.
three-time Big Ten champion with Wisconsin Badger football team also served as captain his senior year and spent three years in the league.
As they say, the NFL for Atlanta and Jacksonville respectively.
Mr. Brady Ewing for our bi-weekly conversation.
Brady, how the heck are you?
you.
Thank you.
We appreciate you and always fun to sit and chat a little bit.
Have you, you know,
Rachel, have you guys ever gotten up to northern Wisconsin yet to kind of explore things or are they campers?
I know they love the outdoors.
So I know they're watching today's show, so you're probably planting a seed, which is good, but they love.
They've tried to camp out on our land before.
That's a story for another day, but.
Love being outside, love, you know, harvesting things that you wouldn't think you could eat and figuring out if they can eat, eating crickets, grasshoppers.
I mean, they're, they're survivalists at their core.
So it's pretty, pretty cool.
They would love it up there.
No doubt.
Looks like I know this about your four boys.
And I really feel like you're not only are you begun your own starting four, at least for a potential basketball team.
Honest to goodness, I feel like your four boys could do very well on survivor because they do have those survivalist instincts.
I think they could give them 10 years.
And I think you've got a real shot, Brady.
I know they they I.
We have washed naked and afraid.
I will say that they love that.
They love that show.
So they like that show.
They read the survivalist books and, you know, thankfully they blurred out and the people end up putting, you know, coverings on, but they love that show.
They, they like all the outdoors stuff.
I think that's great.
Well, you know, it's a beautiful part of the state up here in, uh, in Lake Misota.
We're happy to be here.
Brady, I wanted to pick up on this conversation we were having before the break with Pat and James Kelly, our news director up here.
And just want to spend some time this week on this Friday because.
You know, the headlines could get overwhelming in the news, and it seems like there's always a crisis every day.
And, you know, in my opinion, some of them are.
But I think the first step in having conversations about building community is how we listen to each other.
Because I think too often we get in our own news or political silos and don't ever want to actually listen to somebody else.
All we want to do is try to convince someone that our way is the best.
And I think the first step is to get people to listen.
I read this great article recently interviewing Christian Yelich from Milwaukee Brewers.
And he made this point that Bob Euker taught him because when Yelich was traded from Miami to the Brewers to Milwaukee, they sent down a plane to get him in Miami to get Yelich.
And on the plane was Robin Yacht, Brewer legend, and Bob Euker.
And he said
that Euker just spent time on the way back just
saying, you know, well, so where are you, where are you from?
Where you have brother or sister is like, what do you do for fun?
And he really taught Yellowitch that if you want to build a clubhouse in sports, just
create a normal relationship.
Ask the same things you would of your teammates that you would your cousin or your neighbor.
In your time, you played four years for the Wisconsin Badgers.
I went to three Rose Bowls, three Big Ten championships, three years in the NFL.
Tell us a little bit about what you've learned in your time as a college and professional athlete about building community and relationships.
did a really good job forcing our hand on this a little bit during my you know some of my early time at Wisconsin where he would actually during fall camp encourage us to sit with different people at at dinner you know after practice then we would normally want to sit with our you know position groups or the people that are from the same part of the state you know he would he would try to you know force us to
have conversations to the point where he would actually give us, you know, questions to ask if we went to a hotel and make paradise up with somebody else.
It's like, and to your point, Todd, it wasn't anything earth shattering.
It was the basic questions to better understand people, to learn about their family, learn about their upbringing, what makes them them?
Because I think, you know, sport in the locker room has a way of bringing everybody together.
I talk about it all the time, like a broke record, but bringing everybody together.
to chase one goal so you're able to set some of those differences aside and find common ground in the in the fact that hey we're all here we all want to win we all aren't represent Wisconsin well when we were playing with the Badgers and to be able to set those differences aside and find the common ground the things that we all have in common those basic fundamental principles whether it's in a sports team whether it's in a community or a school wherever it may be
There's so much that we have in common.
And if you're just naturally curious to learn from other people, learn about them, learn what makes them tick, maybe you know that they have a different perspective or opinion than you do.
But why don't you try to find out why?
Ask questions to understand why they might hold that opinion.
And not asking the specific question in that way, but just learn about their upbringing, learn about their faith background, their familial situation.
And you start to have a genuine love for people that allows you to set differences aside and know that we're all here trying to do our best in a day-to-day situation in this thing we call life.
And to be naturally curious, seek to understand and just show love, you know?
Yeah.
Well, let me ask it this way.
And obviously without name and names, but what's like a big turnoff?
in a locker room or a team situation, what are things that put barriers up that make it really difficult to get to know someone or even work with them or trust them on a team?
Yeah, I think, you know, if they don't want to have a conversation with you, you know, I mean, you have certain guys that are in a certain part of the locker room.
I mean, we had assigned lockers, but
guys that wouldn't want to have conversations or when we went to have lunch, they'd sit off in the corner by themselves or, you know, they were very, very opinionated and it was their way or the highway.
I'd say it was kind of those two situations.
Either you were kind of an overshare on what your thought process was and your opinion was, or on the other end of the spectrum, you weren't willing to engage and have a conversation.
And so I think that's a good learning for life too.
It's like, okay, how can we...
I think it's okay to hold opinions and to challenge your opinions and learn about things so that you can continue to grow, but let's not be so quick to share those in the locker room or whatever we're doing.
It's just, hey, let's seek to understand first.
Let's be curious about other people for the genuine nature of just wanting to get to know them to have a better relationship.
We're talking with Brady Ewing, three time Big Ten champion with the Wisconsin Badger football team.
As in my opinion, one of the absolute best fullbacks of all time at Wisconsin and then spent three years in the NFL as well with the Atlanta Hawks or Hawks, the Atlanta Falcons.
The other birds, Falcons, yeah.
Yeah, I've got my birds.
I'm hot here in nature, Brady.
I'm getting my birds mixed up and with Jacksonville Jaguars as well.
Brady, you go around and talk to youth and if people want to get in contact with you, Brady.
He's on Twitter and on Instagram.
You can find him at BradyBRADIE, Ewing.
And what is it?
It's Ewing34, right?
On Twitter?
On Twitter?
yep.
B-Ewing34, all right, very good.
And on Insta, is it just your name or what is it?
Brady.Ewing, there you go.
Reach out to Brady because
I hope people get a taste, Brady, when you come on the show of just how inspiring and how fun you are to be around.
And this is the real deal, folks.
Like he's not, this is like exactly the way that we talk when we're not on the air.
And so I just find it a lot of fun.
I know you go out and you talk to groups, particularly athletic groups around the state.
How do you, when you're talking to, is it mainly high school kids, Brady, that you speak with?
So it's when you talk to that age group to you How do you change it or how do you make it more relatable to them in terms of just connecting with with?
their own peers
you know, setting your own mindset, right?
That this, we're not, we're not seeking a specific end destination.
Like this is a journey.
And I think the coolest thing about the journey is the challenges, the people that you do it with, the successes you have along that journey.
And, and so helping reframe the mindset of, okay, I'm not, there's really no light at the end of the tunnel.
And that shouldn't be, you know, depressing or concerning.
It's, hey,
It makes you focus on the moment, focus on the here and now, the people that you're alongside, whether that's your classmates, your teammates, and I think it reinforces the fact that really it comes down to relationships, whether that's your friends, your teammates, your family, the people that you do this journey of life with, enjoying the moment alongside them.
We have only a couple of minutes here.
We're gonna come back and talk more directly about sports.
Monte Ball, one of your former teammates at Wisconsin, he was going to be on the show.
He had to reschedule.
His flight got mixed up, but he said, come back on the show.
We're going to try to do it with you on a day.
Holy cow.
I went to this thing that he did in Madison here a couple of weeks ago, fireside chat with our friend, Kristen Brie, and the transparency, the honesty.
When he talked about watching the Super Bowl,
with the team he was drafted by the Broncos and he did it from a jail cell after he had struggled with alcoholism, the impact and now where he's at in recovery and and the ability to start reaching out to high school kids.
That that's the guy I want to be around with a teammate, Brady.
get my hands on, I wasn't able to attend or tune in yet.
But yeah, I mean, Monta's story, it's really encouraging the fact that he's using it for good, that he's in such a good spot now.
He's using it for good to then help inspire and empower others to hopefully choose a different path or seek to get help when they might be in those situations.
And so I think it's just awesome to see he's such a good teammate.
And what you just said there, Brady, and he spent a lot of time on this is the stigma, like when he was at Wisconsin running backs coach, he said, he tried to reach out, but there was a stigma.
If I'm really honest about what I'm struggling with, am I going to see less playing time?
Does it go all the way to the head coach?
I mean, these stigmas, when our friends or families, our teammates, when they're struggling, we have to make it okay to not be okay.
And I didn't necessarily have that in my own, in my own right.
from a mental health perspective or, you know, substance abuse or anything like that.
But you feel that way because you put so much pressure on yourself to perform and you don't want to seem like you have a chink in your armor.
Whether that be, for me, that was more injury related.
It's like, okay, I'm going to, you know, hide these small little injuries that, you know, they think I'm just chugging along doing my thing and other people and other other ways like Monta mentioned there.
So definitely a way to improve.
If folks need help, 988 is the number to call or text 988 to the Mental Health Awareness Head Hotline.
Come on back.
We'll talk to Brady Ewing.
Talk a little football.
What's the over under on Wisconsin wins?
Yikes.
We'll tell you after this.
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Welcome back to the Toddleball show on the Civic Media Running Network.
We are here beside beautiful Lake Wissota.
We are live on location at Lake Wissota in the beautiful Chippewa Valley just north of Chippewa Falls here at the beautiful home and compound.
It is a kind of a compound.
It's a beautiful, beautiful lot here.
Pat Crite low host of mornings and Pat Crite low every morning from six until.
nine.
Appreciate Pat.
He'll be back with us a little bit later in the show.
Right now we're joined as we are every other week by three time.
Big 10 champion, Mr Brady Ewing also spent time as captain of the team his senior year.
Three Rose balls and then spent three years in the NFL for Atlanta and Jacksonville.
All right, Brady, before we get back into some sports talk, we have to give the
The key word, the key word in our free ticket Friday.
Last, we got to do this again now.
If the boys are watching, I probably should have asked your dad first, your mom, but I'm just going to say it on the air.
We will coordinate and we will go down because I know one of the boys was deeply disappointed that we left in the eighth inning and did not stay for the ninth inning of the Brewer game.
Guys, we'll stay for the whole thing.
We'll go out a day where it's not so hot.
We'll stay for the whole thing.
So you've been in these seeds, Brady, that we're giving away.
They're pretty darn nice.
room.
All right, we will take the Brady boys or the union boys down to the game this summer.
Looking forward to that.
But here now, your chance, the home viewer and listener to win four club level seats to the Milwaukee Brewers game next Tuesday, May 27th against Boston.
The first pitch at 640 in the evening.
All you have to do to be eligible is text right now on the civic media app.
The word
SCORE.
S-C-O-R-E.
S-C-O-R-E.
The word is SCORE.
Text it right now to the Civic Media app to be eligible.
All right, Brady.
You're Alma Mater, the Wisconsin.
First of all, they announced this week that next year's next year's first game against Notre Dame will be at Lambeau Field.
And somebody tweeted out right after that and said, wow, that'll be a really good test for the new coach.
Were you
And the bachelor's of coach Chris pulled it out, beat the LSU up there.
I think LSE was number five in the country when they beat him up there.
All right.
So the over under on the Wisconsin Badger football team, according to Vegas right now, at least one of the booking online booking places, Badgers five and a half wins.
That is the over under Brady Ewing.
you, do you take the over or the under five and a half?
I.
So I knew that schedule was tough and I had seen it, but I pulled it up during break here.
And I'm, I'm just looking at it.
And, you know, you got some of the old, the games of old, where you felt like they were gimme games, right?
You know, not so much.
There's not as many, but you look at Illinois, you look at Minnesota.
I mean, even Indiana, those are all super competitive teams now.
And
I've
losses.
I think they're going to lose all three of those that you just said.
Yeah, I mean, they got the first two games, first two non-conference games, Miami of Ohio, middle Tennessee.
I mean, those should be winnable games.
But then Alabama, even Maryland now is playing better football, Michigan, Iowa, Ohio State, Oregon.
I mean, there's no off weeks.
You know, it's not like the Indiana of old when I was playing where.
And even Illinois, you know, you felt like you could go in and get a hand handy.
Oh, handy full win.
I don't even know if that's a word.
So whatever I was trying to say there, an easy one.
Oh, give me one.
That's leave it to the radio guy and easy.
I'm a
simple guy.
All right, I'm taking the
under.
I think it's going to be another five win season.
I'm not I'm not happy about that.
You understand?
I hope I'm desperate.
I hope they're and we we're not our things are not our final predictions.
We'll wait till we get closer to opening weekend.
But I just, when I saw that, I was just, the odds people, I just thought, wow, that says a lot about where the program is at in terms of perception at least.
Well, that's the big question, right?
I mean, is this buyout too expensive or, or do they say, no, they're going to give him one more.
I, I, and, and Monte ball when we asked.
And we talked to him a little bit after this event here in Madison a couple of weeks ago.
And I brought this up to him because it had just come out.
And he was like, oh, oh, I don't know.
It puts you in such a tough position because I feel like we have such a culture of winning when I was there in these past couple of years.
Everybody knows how that has played out.
And it's just.
It's a tough position to be in because you have this eternal optimism that the program is what it has historically been and we just need to re-establish that.
And I am taking more of a positive note, excited about what I'm seeing with Jeff Grimes, the offensive coordinator, his background as an offensive line coach, a run game coordinator, and just what I'm hearing from him as far as philosophy of establishing the run, doing it in the trenches first.
using a pullback again a little bit when needed.
Excited about that and I think that will be fun to see.
Hopefully reestablish that run first culture that Wisconsin has had for since the early 90s.
All right, Brady Ewing.
We thank you so very much.
Have a safe Memorial Day weekend.
The family up there might see you around the neighborhood.
We'll see, but thank you, Brady.
We always appreciate you.
Have a safe weekend.
Sounds great.
Thanks.
Thanks for having me.
Our pleasure.
Come on back.
We're talking about Wisconsin Badger honor flight on the other side of the break as well as what's worse.
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