"I'm Gonna Die On The Air" - Colin Cowherd During One Of The Funniest Anti-Retirement Rants Ever, Inspired By Sean McVay
Ever since starting The Volume, Colin Cowherd is letting profanities fly, bringing on Joe Burrow for weekly interviews and doing cool shit like this where he lets you into the mindset that drives him to be one of the most singular voices in sports commentary.
So yeah for obvious reasons (read: Joe Brr) I've taken a little more of an interest in Colin, and WOW, did this rant about his refusal to ever go quietly into retirement catch me off guard. Zero chill, sir! Colin is coming AFTER senior citizens at the mall who aimlessly wander around with nothing better to do!
"You know who looks miserable? Old guys walking around with their wives in a mall at 74 years old. They don't wanna be doing that. They've got nothing to do. Go to any mall in America at 10 in the morning. See guys with those tennis shoes on [...] you know the kind that you velcro? And they're sitting over there, wearing their Dockers, walking around and they're fucking miserable. Absolutely miserable. They can't wait to be able to have their first gin and tonic at 12:15 in the afternoon. They wanna be sauced by the time Matlock comes on."
SAVAGE. Colin is sure to distinguish between hard, physical, manual labor jobs and his own occupation, but what he's actually responding to here is the rumor that Sean McVay is circling an early retirement from coaching, which yours truly blogged about the other day. Hence why I'm tackling this thang here.
One of the points I could've included about the "complication" of the Rams' organizational paradigm is how McVay could just say, "You know what? Fuck it. I'm gonna keep coaching." But then it could turn into this annual "will he or won't he?" waffling situation where no one really knows where his head is at.
Anyway, back to Cowherd. He says, "How about a new rule: If you don't lift stuff, work as long as you can."
Colin's argument is that McVay will never find anything that makes him as happy — again, important to clarify that he's not talking about the obvious win of wife and kids — as coaching football professionally. The best part, though, is Colin's declaration that he's gonna go down swinging, giving bold if hit-or-miss sports takes until he takes his final breath:
[…] This race to retire? Come on man. Folks, many of you hate me. Here's the bad news: I'm gonna die on the air. I'm gonna be 88 years old giving sports takes. My teeth are gonna fall out of my mouth on the air…'AND THEN THE DODGERS WIN THE WORLD SERIES!' *Ka-klunk! My teeth will fall out, my dentures."
To get super literal about this for a second just so no one is offended (!!!!!!), I hope Colin doesn't die on the air, because that'd be a pretty disturbing thing for anyone to witness.
OK that's enough.
Overall, I tend to agree with Colin here (we're on a first-name basis, don't worry — and it feels weird to keep typing "Cowherd" again and again). McVay may wind up walking away from coaching before he's even 40 years old. That's a lot of time to spend on other things that don't make you feel nearly as alive as being an elite NFL head coach, or so I'd imagine.
Yeah, you work crazy, ungodly hours and all that, but McVay is a brainiac who vaulted up the coaching ranks at an almost unprecedented rate and actually delivered on the hype! With the chance to be a true coaching legend, I'd be shocked if McVay followed through on his retirement flirtation and left that on the table.
What do y'all think about retirement? And I mean the traditional kind, not like a pro athlete who can pivot to a media career or something. I can get behind the "if you don't lift stuff" rule Colin throws out there. I've been more or less at peace with the fact that I'll never retire for a while. Never sounded super appealing to me or like a goal to strive for. It's probably just a lot of sitting around, dwelling on negative thoughts and bad memories, numbing sorrows with excessive controlled substance intake, and a general existential crisis on how to spend one's time each day. Open to be proven wrong about that, though!
Twitter @MattFitz_gerald/TikTok