Brandy.

 We were incredibly excited to talk to the voice of the Michigan Wolverines - how Witucki landed this interview, I have no fucking idea. But Jim Brandstatter was willing to talk to us and we couldn’t wait to do this thing.

I don’t remember being real nervous for this one, but I think Andy was. 

I think he was more concerned with the technology aspect of the interview because he wanted to record video of the Zoom interview itself. That ended up being the least of our concerns.

Two hours before our interview with Mr. Brandstatter, shit hit the fan.   

The NCAA announced the cancellation of college sports for the 2020 season. Now what were we going to talk to him about? 

This threw us quite the curve-ball, but we managed to roll with it and eek out an hour-long discussion with the Michigan Broadcaster's Association Hall of Famer.

The man could not have been any nicer or more accommodating. He was so pleasant in fact, that I probably got too comfortable with him. I started out respectfully calling him Mr. Brandstatter… then it moved to Jim…. eventually, a little too loose, I started addressing him simply as Brandy. He never corrected me or changed face - like the pro that he is, he went with it and acted as if we were old college buddies. 

We addressed the elephant in the room and apprehensively brought up the cancellation of the season. More importantly - the possible motives behind it. 

One such theory we had was that the idea of a player’s union. We wondered if this movement towards unionizing college players was motivation for the NCAA to call the season in an effort to shut down any further conversations about the matter. 

Another idea I wanted to bring up was the fact that the MAC conference called their season about a week before the rest of the NCAA and what a statement that made to the rest of the sports world. I was rather proud of that considering my alma mater is MAC school - and Mr. Brandstatter would’ve had every right to scoff at the notion that this little college conference was leading the way in safety precautions. But he didn’t. Instead, he humored me and complemented my point. 

Now I could bore you with a transcript of exactly what was said, but then what would be the point of the podcast or getting you to listen to it? 

Another thing Witucki and myself intended to do with this run where we started booking celebrity guests was to not just have someone on the show for the sake of having them on the show… but to also put them on the spot a little bit and ask them poignant, meaningful questions.

Since unionizing college athletes was such a relevant topic, it was important to bring it up in conversation and hope he engaged with the question. It would be our loss if he decided to play diplomat or skirt around the subject entirely - but again, he didn’t. He was not only a gentleman about it, and gave us his honest opinion, he brought up ideas neither of us had even thought of! Like taxes… okay, you want to get paid to play college ball? Fine. Good luck with the taxes. I’d rather have the free education and college experience. 

This was probably the best interview we were going to have and we were cool with that. As things were rapidly falling apart around us, and the world quickly changing into something we no longer recognized, Witucki and I were still trying to figure out what we even had. Maybe I’m being dramatic. 

Whatever the case, it was a tough beginning and we were lucky anyone was gracious enough to give us the time of day when we didn’t even have an identity yet.

    

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