Buck’s Review of His First Big-Time College Football Game

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CLAY: We encourage you to go subscribe to the podcast. I haven’t seen the final, final numbers, but I believe we set an all-time record for this show in September. For those of you out there downloading and subscribing to the podcast, we appreciate you greatly, as we do everybody who is listening live, including many people that we met face-to-face in both Birmingham, Alabama, and then in Tuscaloosa for the Ole Miss-Alabama game.

It was Buck Sexton’s first-ever college football game. We had some tremendous opportunities. We got to go down to field, posted some of those photos and videos. Given the fact that Instagram and Facebook are down, if you want to see those, see how we experienced the day, you can go to ClayAndBuck.com and check them out.

Ali did a phenomenal job sort of giving you a behind-the-scenes look at our day. ClayandBuck.com for those videos and for footage of Buck and I, Ole Miss and Alabama. What did you think? Okay, now that you’ve been to a major college football game, what did you expect, and what was the reality, what was your overall experience?

BUCK: Having been to a fair number of Jets and Giants games over the years, you kind of think, “Okay, well, big football game.” The scale of the whole endeavor that day in Tuscaloosa and just the energy — not even only in the stadium, which was amazing with over 100,000 fans. I think they said it was 102,000 the day we were there.

That was what someone told me the total number in attendance was. But then just to see that’s how ’cause we got there early. We were doing your Fox show and we got there in the morning and the streets were pretty quiet. And then you saw the whole town of Tuscaloosa come alive with tens of thousands of people walking around, the tailgating, everything that was happening. A lot of fun for us, obviously, because everybody from grandparents waving Ole Miss or Alabama gear down to the frat bros down on fraternity row.

CLAY: Many of whom love the show, by the way.

BUCK: I was gonna say, they’re like, “Clay and Buck, what’s up?” They were all excited about it. It was a lot of fun to see those kids, man, and everyone’s having a good time. Look, I get it. There’s a lot of tradition, a lot of energy that goes into this stuff, and it was pretty amazing, really cool.

I will say, though, everyone that I talked to was like, “You’re spoiled now. You’re spoiled.” So, if you go to some other college football game, it won’t be quite at this level. I did get some messages, though, from people who were asking — it’s funny — why Alabama? Why didn’t you see Auburn play the first time?

CLAY: Welcome to my life.

BUCK: We just picked a game. I don’t know. It seemed like a good game to go to.

CLAY: People are so committed to their team that if you do anything other than say it’s the greatest — and I had to learn this. As a sports guy, sometimes you just can’t go to every game, right? I would love to go to every game. And I’m fortunate that I’ve been to so many big games over the years. But you also kept saying — and I think it’s instructive and it’s helpful for me.

It’s like a form of healing to be out on the road for me. But there’s so much fighting every day. We’re in a fight, whether people believe it or not. You and I we’re in a fight, a battle of ideas every single day and we’re throwing punches and people are throwing punches at us. But a lot of times you don’t see the people that you’re fighting for. I love, Buck, being out at these games, because — and you kept saying and it’s true — these are our people.

BUCK: Yes.

CLAY: The people that we are fighting for. I feel so fortunate to be able to see them every weekend during this fall out and about. And I know for you it’s a particular challenge because you’re in New York and so a lot of the people that you see are throwing punches did you all day long, right?

BUCK: Oh, yeah.

CLAY: You’re surrounded by negativity, and I know it had to feel good for you to be like, “Oh! (sigh) It’s so good to see my people.”

BUCK: It’s funny, because in the same way that we had a whole bunch of folks from law enforcement, and they were so nice to us in Tuscaloosa, and a lot of them listen to the show, love the show. We appreciate them coming up and shaking hands and giving high fives. In New York, a lot of the cops listen. If I’m gonna have somebody come up to me and say, “We love the Clay and Buck show on 710 WOR,” for example, our big New York affiliate?

There’s a very good chance it’s a law enforcement officer ,either current or former retired who comes up here in New York City. And the way it works here, Clay was saying, that when we’re in Tuscaloosa, we’re walking around, people down there into conservative politics, they kind of know the show, and they support what we do.

CLAY: The full stadium, basically.

BUCK: Yeah, and so we’re able to walk around and just have really nice chat with everybody and really enjoy our time down there. I will also say that producer Ali and I had fantastic food in Birmingham.

CLAY: Oh, yeah.

BUCK: Absolutely excellent food in Birmingham. The only funny thing that happened was, we had borrowed a car from our WERC affiliate, and they were very kind. They lent us a vehicle down there in Birmingham —

CLAY: Yeah, they were great.

BUCK: — when we did the show from Birmingham. So, we had that car for the weekend to get to the game, everything else. But we had to give it back and we had a very early flight on Sunday. So, they told us this happen, that we have to either call a cab or get some kind of a ride share service like an Uber. Nothing at 5 a.m. in Birmingham. We were totally out of luck. So I had to go, and we found a Birminghamian, I guess —

CLAY: I think that’s right. Yeah.

BUCK: — a person who worked for security, who is actually a security guard that I found. He wears a security guard uniform, and I had to offer him cash to take us at 5 a.m., a stranger to the airport because it’s not a metropolis of eight million people where you can order Thai food at 3 a.m. and it arrives 20 minutes later. So, that was the only logistics challenge, Clay, we had to deal with. By the way, the fellow was very nice. He took us in his pickup truck, took us to the airport.

CLAY: And you made it.

BUCK: Yes, we made it.

CLAY: I’ll be, by the way, down in Texas. Fresh off of Buck having an incredible time, Jesse Kelly — who has obviously taken over your spot — wants to be there for the Texas A&M-Alabama game. So, we’re just gonna continue to take people to big games.

BUCK: Wait. So, you’re taking Jesse to Texas A&M?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Oh, you guys are gonna have a great time.

CLAY: Yeah, he’s gonna come up, so it should be a phenomenal time. I’m gonna be down in Aggie land this weekend for another big game.

BUCK: The good thing is you won’t lose Jesse Kelly because he’s about nine feet tall.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: So no matter how big the crowd is he’ll be the guy who is towering over everyone. He’s bigger than the football players on the line. He’s bigger than all of them. So, easy to find in a crowd.

CLAY: It’s an outstanding show. We appreciate all of you hanging out with us on this Monday, and thanks to everybody that we met. It was an awesome time.

BUCK: Yeah. Honestly, every single person who came up to us were just friendly to us down in Alabama. Everyone was as nice, as warm, friendly, and great as advertised and expected. So, big thanks. And also thanks, of course, to our Birmingham affiliate, WERC, for hosting us and treating us so well we were down there. Clay, we gotta make some more affiliate visits now. We gotta make this a thing now. Gotta go see some of our peeps.

CLAY: I love to be on the road. There’s a lot of cities that I want to hit. We’re talking about D.C. for a week. I need to be up in New York again. We’ll have a good time for sure.