When the announcement was made Friday as to the hiring of Anthony Weaver as the team's new defensive line coach, I'll admit, I was a little more excited than usual. I can't wait to meet Sean Ryan, the team's new receivers coach, and Larry Izzo, the former Patriots captain turned special teams coordinator, as I've never met either one. But, Weaver and I, well, we go back a ways.
In the fall of 2008, my radio station, all of one year old at the time, wanted to capitalize on the upcoming U.S. Presidential election. As ideas were bandied about, Raheel Ramzanali, one of the most creative people at any station I've ever met, came up with an idea. Raheel was in the Texans locker room every day and sought out Texans players, daily, to do some of the most outlandish things ever. In so doing, he cultivated relationships with a number of different players at the time, as he was the same age of many players in the locker room.
So he geniously suggested...
"What about if we had a Texans Presidential election? Offense versus Defense? We can have a huge debate out at a remote."
As an independent, nothing to lose radio station, we turned nearly every hair-brained idea into some sort of radio. But, this, THIS, was really good.
The next trick was getting four players to agree to spending a Monday afternoon, in a faux-debate with myself and my co-host Sean Pendergast, now the host of the Texans post-game show and a co-host on the Triple Threat afternoon show on Sports Radio 610. Luckily, that wasn't as difficult as it appeared as former Texans David Anderson (President) and Joel Dreesen (Vice President) stepped up to represent the offense.
The defense?
Well, former defensive lineman Tim Bulman was the perfect Presidential candidate. I mean, you talk about the consummate Bostonian, Bulman was that guy. His running mate as Vice President?
Anthony Weaver.
Weave, as we knew him, had been a guest on our show on Monday's after games during the fall. He'd meet us for food out at a local restaurant and then have Sean and I fire questions at him for an hour or more. He was our first player guest ever on our show so we were thrilled each week he came on the show. Not to mention, he was a Domer, like Sean, so the most recent Notre Dame result was discussed thoroughly, win or lose.
On that Monday, the four players showed up on site and our remote was packed. No one had ever done anything like this and even we weren't sure how the day was going to go. Suffice to say, our anxiety was truly unnecessary because it was two of the most exhilarating hours of radio I'd ever been a part of. Weaver and the guys really got into it and had a lot of fun with it. They readily debated the major topics of locker room decorum and man card ethics throughout a day that none of us ever forgot.
After it was over, we opened the polls and the clear winners were Bulman and Weaver. The D-Line reigned supreme on that day!
I'm not ultimately sure who will fill Weaver's vice president spot but it is an election year. I'm just glad our VEEP is back in the building.
