George Michael

As we countdown to the wrap of “Sports Machine,” we’ve been working on setting up our show’s finale and going through our entire library of tape pinpointing key moments from our show to re-air.

Boy is that a tough job. What do we include? What do we delete? There is so much for us to review and we want to make it good so people will enjoy it. I’m proud though that we’ve been able to get so much footage as we’ve always been able to get athletes to give us what they were really feeling at the time, not just canned quotes.

One clip I want to put it was from when I spent a lot of time with NFL great Walter Payton. Another one that jumps out at me was an interview I did with NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt. That was just after John Elway had finally won his first Super Bowl and Dale wanted to look at the tape of Elway where he was running for a first down and the look on his face was clear “I don’t care if I get killed, I’m going to make this first down.”

After never winning Daytona, Dale said to me on camera, “I don’t care what happens, I’m winning this race.” He then went out there and did it. It was incredible!

Other interviews were looking at showing include baseball great George Brett just after he won the World Series, and Wayne Gretzky right after he first became a pro. I’m telling you, if you look at him today compared to when he was a kid, he hasn’t changed at all.

I’m telling you, now that I don’t have to work the NCAA tournament, I realized that now I’m actually going to have to lay money out to watch the games. Needless to say, I turned out the credit card and now for once I get to sit back and enjoy March Madness without having to thing about what we should be doing for the news or the show.

I’m going to like this.