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This is, is off track.
Hello and welcome to Off Track with Hinch and Rossi.
Um, there's a song, Alex, that I've liked since I was a kid.
I can't remember exactly what year.
Um, I heard it for the first time. Mm-hmm.
It's by band called The Presidency of the United States of America.
Hmm. Have you ever heard of them?
Mm-hmm . Do you know what one
of their most famous songs is called?
What is it James? It's called Peaches.
Hmm. . And, um,
it's, it's, it's an, it's a, it's a banger.
It's, um, I, I don't know why I ever heard about it or learned about it.
Mm-hmm. I think it was my brother maybe
that heard about this song.
Mm-hmm . And it goes, you know,
the, it goes something like this.
It's move into the country.
I'm going to eat a lot of peaches.
I'm moving to the country. I'm going
to eat me a lot of peaches.
I'm moving to the country. I'm
going to eat a lot of peaches.
I'm moving to the country. I'm going
to eat me a lot of peaches.
First one, peaches come from a can.
They were put there by a man in a factory downtown.
If I had it my little way, ID peaches every day sun soaking bulges in the shade.
Now it's better when they sing it, but for whatever reason, it just stuck with me.
And it's, it's been sitting in the back of my head for years how much I missed hearing this song.
Uh, and something recently made me think about it and made me really appreciate Peaches again, not just the song, but the fruit and evidently the bowl.
This question, um, when was the last time you had a peach?
Um, I would, it's within the last 12 months, like within the la not the last calendar year. 'cause obviously know you guys
Went to the Peach Bowl and didn't have a Peach.
Do you know what I'm surprised about?
Surprisingly few peaches there.
That's what I was gonna say. You go to the Peach Bowl
and there is a surplus of Chick-fil-A, but zero peaches, but not A, not a single bowl of peaches.
No. A single bowl of peaches.
And here's the other thing that I found out about the Peach Bowl.
Um, surplus of Chick-fil-A. Mm-hmm . Not any peaches.
Mm-hmm . And apparently not enough beer. .
Well, I, I do blame you for that .
Wow. Was this just a,
A factor of they didn't realize what Indiana fans' consumption was?
I think that's exactly, I think that's exactly what they didn't realize.
Becausecause, it looked like an IU Heavy fan base There.
'cause 90% of the people that were there, um, were IU fans.
But before we get into the experience, 'cause we need to go back.
Yes. We need to backtrack a lot.
Last week we mentioned, um, very briefly that the kind folks at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl reached out to this show that luckily I saw.
'cause Tim doesn't do anything, uh, of his Correct.
Still upset about that. Yeah.
And they invited James Knight down and that was, why would I Check it if they're not Inviting me?
That was part one. Didn't
Know Of the puzzle.
Part two of the puzzle is because Indiana is on this historic run, and Atlanta is not that far from Indianapolis.
Uh, as the bird flies.
And also as a car drives and a plane flies.
Um, there was not many flights available, so limited on flights.
Um, that United, not United Delta, American and Southwest between them, added nine flights specifically to get more people Hilarious.
From Indianapolis to Atlanta.
And despite their being nine additional flights, there was still no seats for James and I.
So James and I were in quite a little bit of a travel conundrum.
We had a D of a pickle And we were still gonna go.
We, we were thinking about doing connections and, and figuring it out.
Um, at one point I even looked at, there was direct flights out of Cincinnati and we were just gonna drive anyways.
We were gonna get there because Too cool.
Of an opportunity to pass up.
Fortunately, our good buddy, uh, Ryan Hasbrook, uh, has some hours on the plane and was able to offer us a couple seats to get down, which just added to the experience.
Um, I have done one other day trip dj, trip trip, DJ trip.
I've done one other day trip, um, with Ryan and his comrades, um, down to Charlotte actually, uh, to watch Connor when he did, uh, the Daytona RO race.
And Charlotte. And Charlotte, Val, sorry.
And, um, that was quite a day.
And lemme tell you, we had another day.
Dude. It adds to the whole thing. Yeah.
Like you say, I mean, there's almost three parts to the day now.
Mm. Right. There's the flight down,
which is it's whole own thing.
Mm-hmm . There is the game mm-hmm .
And then there's the flight home after a right rushing victory for the home squad.
Mm-hmm . And, and honestly, that wasn't even,
that wasn't even the whole day for some people because, you know, we didn't leave till the early afternoon.
Some of them started in the morning. Mm-hmm.
And, and when we landed, some of us went home, others went out and kept going For some, it was a five part night.
You're right, you're right James.
Uh, five parts, um, for some broad ripple being in included in that.
But also, let's not forget, there was actually like five and a half parts because there was a tailgate that occurred. Oh,
That's right.
Post plane landing. Mm-hmm .
Um, and going into the stadium. Yes.
It was late game seven 30 game Friday night.
Um, and at the tailgate there was a special guest appearance, um, by one Mark Cuban, which, yeah, I just gotta say is pretty, is pretty cool because Mark Cuban, obviously is IU alum.
He's had, um, a big influence on why IU is a viable football team.
Now. He's not the only influence.
Don't, don't take what I'm saying for, for being the whole story.
All I'm saying is his money has helped IU get to where they are.
And, uh, a mutual friend of ours who also has a podcast, I don't know the name of it, I'm sorry.
But, uh, Trisha Whitaker has a podcast and she reached out to Mark Cuban and was able to get Mark Cuban to show up at the tailgate for five minutes to talk about IU Hoosiers and his love of Indiana and all that sort of thing.
So that was pretty cool, um, to again, be a part of that as well.
Our buddies were in the background holding .
I didn't even know this existed, but a keg of Fireball.
Mm-hmm . Um, just, you know, really a keg of Fireball.
A keg of Fireball really representing Like a baby keg, but a fireball. And, uh,
Well, you don't need a full sized cake.
Nobody even needs a mini cake of fireball.
Yeah. Just so we, just so we can properly shout it,
sideline stories Yes.
Is Trisha Whitaker's podcast and Trisha Whitaker and Sidney Parrish do sideline stories.
Yeah. But the, I mean, you said it Alex,
but I love the, I love how it came about.
She literally just like DMed them and he actually responded and came, like, that's how big of an IU fan he is.
Like, he was ready to do anything indie related, anything local for the home squad.
And that was super cool.
So yeah, he rocks up to this tent that's posted up, you know, is easy up in the, uh, in the parking lot at the tailgate, does his interview, and then carries on to the game more about that later.
Um, so then tailgate ends and it's time to head in.
And we have to kind of separate from our buddies because of, of the group that went down, uh, with us or that we went down with, uh, on the plane.
There were like two or three different areas that people were sitting.
Uh, so everybody kind of broke up, went their own way.
Alex and I had to connect with, uh, our new contacts at the Peach Poll.
So Lee and Matt welcomed us, uh, with Open Arms fans of the show, which is still absolutely mind boggling to everyone involved.
And walked us first, um, to show us where the field level suite was that we were sitting in, which was right behind one of the end zones.
Never been in that part of a, of a football stadium.
Never had that view of a football game before. Super cool.
Uh, but on our passes, they were also two little letters that stood out.
And I needed my friend Alex, who's a bigger football person to tell me what Ffl No, FFAI think it was Fa Fa which stood for Field Access. James.
So this is the, the, to put it into IndyCar, uh, parlance, this is the, um, grid access sticker that you look for when you're at an IndyCar race. No,
No.
This is, this is the grid access sticker at a Formula One race.
Because at the 500, quite frankly, One most race, we call 'em, we call 'em race modes in IndyCar or grid access. Let's
Go race, let's go, let's go race mode at the 500.
Fine. Right. It's not a race mode at mid
Ohio, I can promise you that.
Fair, fair. Um, so, so you guys,
Like, could you just be on the field, the whole Thing?
Or was it just like pregame? We did not postgame.
We could be on the field, um, five minutes before kickoff.
We could be on the field during halftime, and we could be on the field up To five minutes before kickoff Up, up to five minutes before kickoff, during halftime.
And as soon as, uh, basically five minutes after the end, which unfortunately we weren't there for, because it was such a curb stomping that we all decided as a group to get home early , because we didn't need to watch the end because it was very clear what was gonna happen.
Um, but, but let me just say how awesome it was to, like, we, we literally stood at one end of the field during like the team introductions, right.
And, and you're just getting to, to see that firsthand up close.
But also as you look around and do a 360 of the stadium, the realization of how much IU support was there was just like crazy to see from down there.
It, it, I, I'm not, I there No, no exaggeration.
When I say it was 90 to 95% red, um, which some of that is due to the, uh, the traveling required from Oregon, you know, it's Oregon to Atlanta is not a, not a close journey.
But also the, a lot of it is to do with IU has always been a basketball school.
Right. They, they've never even been considered,
they've been considered one of the worst football programs in the country.
Yeah. And in the past three years,
they have gone from being a team that's like, oh, they, they might be pretty good to, oh my gosh, they have potential to holy, this is the best team that we have seen in a hundred years, potentially if they go and win next Monday.
Only one other team has done that.
And that was Yale like in the forties. Yeah.
And that's to be undefeated.
They are currently to be undefeated.
They're now what, 15 and Oh after 15 and Oh yes.
So they've got just the final left. I mean, yeah.
It's, it's quite literally a historic run.
And it's from a program that's not historically known for this particular sport and success in it, The atmosphere on the field, pregame was nothing short of electric.
To your point, Alex, like, it was, you know, 95% IU fans.
So it, it felt like a home game.
Something that we both kind of noted was the noise of a hundred thousand people.
I dunno how many people are in that stadium. It's a lot.
And they're basically all cheering for one team.
The noise that comes out of that many people that's in a closed environment all facing into, towards each other when you're in the center of it, it's pretty cool, man.
And it's one of the few things that we miss out on in motorsports, right?
Mm-hmm. Because in Motorsports, fans are spread all
around in different places.
There's a lot of noise by nature. They're
Not in a dome.
Not in a dome. You have, you know, ear pieces in,
you don't really get that feeling as, as one of the participants, as one of the athletes.
But even just sitting there except at Indie at certain moments, but it's, um, So much.
But like, I think the point you're making is at Indie, it's open, right?
They're making the noise and it's going up. It's going out.
When you're a dome with so 75,000 people Yeah.
They're a mile apart. They're five eighths
of a mile apart, end to end.
Right. So even though it's a lot of people, there's a lot
of space and it's open.
Yeah. And there's cars making noise and stuff.
But, um, but no, it was a very, very cool atmosphere.
The intros were super cool.
We got to stand like literally beside the tunnel.
Our, our eyebrows got singed from the pyro, which was neat.
Uh, met the mascot.
Alex got into a, a brief tussle with one of the Chick-fil-A cows.
Um, which, you know, it's all just part and parcel.
I mean, you were the one that said you were gonna go eat a lot of cows.
Yeah, I was actually deflecting there.
It was me that got into the tussle with the guy.
Yeah. I just figured it was like a cracker
barrel beef kind of thing.
Yeah. It was like a Oh,
True, true. Yeah. No,
I'm sure I got into a tussle with someone, but I don't think it was .
I, yeah, I think it was fish off later in the night that I just wish, uh, sign Netti was like a little less happy-go-lucky on the sidelines, you know?
Mm-hmm. I just wish he would treat it
with the gravitas it calls for Sure.
He's just, uh, smiling and joking around.
So anyway, we get down to five minutes to go, we get booted off the field and we go start watching from our field level suite, which was amazing.
And again, all the, the people there were awesome.
There was this, uh, host there, uh, Patty, who apparently has been working for the Peach Bowl, like since it started or something.
Sweetest woman we've ever met took such good care of us in the suite.
And yeah, we enjoyed some Chick-fil-A and a couple beverages of different selections.
And it was like the first play of the game.
Just set the tone for what was an absolute steamrolling performance by iu.
It was pretty neat. It, yeah,
It, it was cool because I think that, um, ever, every game really sends the, uh, big 10 championship game or including the Big 10 championship game.
It's like, all right, IU is finally gonna, they're finally gonna be exposed, right?
Because despite their record and despite the coach that they have, and despite having the Heisman winner, right?
They don't have the, the pedigree in like the five star recruits.
Four star recruits, like it's a bunch of granted three star and very good players, right?
But they don't have the super high profile skill players, but they are this group that is a bunch of very talented individuals that are coached to such a high level that that's where the execution comes from.
And it's really where you realize even more so than I think, well, it's, it's not unfair comparison.
I was gonna say, you know, NFL teams are so focused on certain individuals, right?
That play for, for, for an NFL team, whether it's a quarterback or a wide receiver or a linebacker or, or tight end, a defensive lineman or a tight end or whatever, right?
It's, it's, there's like these four or five guys on each team.
And I guess the reason why it's different is because all of them are pro ball players, right?
Whereas not every single individual on IU is going to be a pro ball player.
But I, I guess what I wanna say is it, it truly embodies the team effort mentality.
Like every single player at IU just seems to be coached to do their job, to execute and to, to perform at their highest level for the task that they're asked to do.
And no one is, is is doing necessarily anything flashy or anything crazy, but they just execute and other teams can't, can't compete with it.
And so it'll, it'll be very interesting because I do think playing against Miami in Miami, even though I use a better team, and I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of turnout from my youth still, this is gonna be, this is gonna be quite a challenge because it's not, uh, it's not very often that the team hosting the, the, uh, CFP championship is also a team in it.
So it'll be, it'll be fun to watch. Yeah.
It's definitely gonna be more even split than what we saw in the Beach Bowl, just given the proximity.
But look, it's, it's, it's almost easy for a team that has gone 15 to, oh, that's had that kind of run to get complacent, even in the championship game, right?
Because I think a lot of people looked at Oregon as maybe a slightly stronger team in Miami.
And so the winner of that was sort of predicted to be the favorite going into the final.
But that doesn't mean anything when, when the game starts, uh, on Monday.
So very cool.
We got to go back down onto the field during halftime.
So we watched the first half from there, went back on the field during halftime, which was even almost cooler because there was way fewer people, like way fewer excess people and ciliary people.
It was really just the teams.
And Alex and I kind of wandering around feeling like we shouldn't be there, but somehow nobody was kicking us off the field, which was pretty cool.
Then we watched, uh, the third quarter from, uh, a different suite.
We found some of our friends watched up there with them, and that's when it was sort of the collective decision after that to, uh, make an early exit and try to avoid some of the chaos getting outta there.
But, um, flight home was a nice, fun celebration.
Um, some live music was, was enjoyed, uh, which is always fun in a, in a small intimate space.
People love a small, intimate concert.
Um, and dude, I don't know if you got this Speaking, speaking of Clayton was on ESPN for a little bit.
There was a, got a little, Uh, Clayton Clayton, Clayton Anderson, uh, good, good buddy of ours.
Um, someone we should probably have on the show actually, um, has a song that came out, uh, I wanna say two years ago, 18 months ago, called Indiana.
It has nothing necessarily to do with IU or the Hoosiers, however, uh, Indiana is in a lot more people's vocabulary these days, especially sports fans.
And so there was a big push from a lot of individuals to get his song somehow incorporated into the Peach Bowl.
And apparently ESPN played it five different times, which is incredible for Clayton.
Um, you know, he's, he's someone who it much like racing, right, has the talent, has the, the background, has the songwriting ability, the live show ability, the instrument playing ability, but it's a competitive market. It's a triple
Threat.
And, and it just hasn't, pieces all haven't lined up yet. Got
A pretty good bar downtown.
Um, and so for him, knowing how many eyeballs were on that game, um, you know, it's gonna be nothing but, but a huge benefit for him and hopefully leads to opportunities for him in the future.
So cool to, uh, to see that as, as a friend of his, I really hope that his, like iTunes sales or his Spotify downloads or however it works, it Works for iTunes, doesn't exist anymore, Bro.
I know, but I still think of it that way.
Uh, you are man, whatever the, whatever the measurable metric Yes.
Is for artists. Uh, it was, it was pinging
after, uh, after that game.
And I, hopefully he gets a little love in the, uh, in the final too.
Um, I don't know about you, but in the aftermath of that, with some of the posting that we did on social and things like that, the number of people that reached out to me, like, how the <inaudible> did you guys get that, you know, get in there and get field access and all this stuff that even led to then people calling me and saying like, Hey man, like, do you have an in, I'd love to go to the final.
Or, you know, I'm an IU alum and it's, you know, uh, my, my husband went there and it's our 26th wedding anniversary.
Is there any way? And I feel so bad
'cause we don't have any connection to the final, we don't have any connection to the Hoosiers.
We just have a connection to the Beach Bowl, which has come and gone.
So, uh, sadly, no, uh, we have no connection there.
We will not be going to Miami.
Even though I'm gonna be in Florida because of Daytona.
I'm gonna be just down the road.
And I am now officially, look, I'm now a Hoosier fan.
I've been here long enough. We've talked about it.
I've, I've struggled to get into college sports.
It's not been my, it's not been an easy thing for me to kind of gravitate to.
'cause it's just not a thing back home.
But, um, I have, you know, 90% of my friends here in town are IU alum or just huge fans.
And so I've now got to experience it up close.
I'm in, I'm on the wagon, I'm gonna stay, even if they, they falter from here on, I'm not gonna just jump on and off.
Um, but unfortunately it will not make it to Miami because it's like $4,500 for general admission.
I was, I was just gonna, I was just gonna close on that.
Um, oh my God.
Potentially the most expensive ticket prices for a non L playoffs slash superb bowl game I've Ever seen. Yeah.
Incredible. Like
Insane.
I dunno if I've ever seen, you could Super Bowl tickets. Oh,
I Star at that For sure.
But like, you could get World Series game six tickets for half of that, which is just mind boggling to me.
This is a college football championship game that are going for 4,500 and parking is like $800.
Like, it's, it's outta control.
Well, I'll tell you what I do like though.
I don't know exactly how it works, but you know, I know a fair number of people going and I'm like, dude, how are you?
How are you junk? I get, it's a big deal, but like, damn.
And they're like, no, no. Through the school,
there's some system right where you can get on some list and they'll go through and they offer you tickets based on certain metrics or parameters or whatever mm-hmm .
And they're not cheap, but they're not like, you know, these secondary markets scalper prices.
So how, how it works is it goes in order of like games.
Well, first it goes like season ticket holders.
Well, no, it goes Donors, Donors, field, sponsors of sorts, season ticket holders by like number of years.
Then season ticket holders by number of tickets.
And then it's like games attended over the past X amount of years, months, whatever it is.
So a buddy of mine who, um, actually went to Purdue but has lived in Bloomington for work for the past three years.
Well, when they went down there, they loved sports and everything and they're not gonna be able to get home to go to the Colts Games or whatever.
So they bought season tickets for the Hoosiers and for basketball and, and, um, and football.
'cause it's like, well, it's something to do every week.
And, and why not support the, the team that we're at now?
And because of that, it just so happens that they've done it for three years.
They had four tickets and so they were offered six, um, for kind of this whole Rose Bowl, peach Bowl and now championship game at, at a price.
But still, um, they're, they're able to go down.
They're able to take friends and family and, and it's a pretty cool way that they, that they do it because it's, it's rewarding the people that have been with you for a long period of time and not James and Alex who have jumped on the bandwagon in the past three months.
Three weeks. Yes. A hundred percent. A hundred percent.
Yeah. So, yeah. So it's very cool.
I love, I love the system. I love the way it works.
I love that those fans are getting to kind of live it out.
Um, and we'll leave you with this mentioned early in the show, uh, earlier in the show, that there'd be more on Mark Cuban.
Um, guys, I'm gonna make a, I'm gonna make a bit of an assumption here.
Um, I'm gonna use deductive reasoning. Mm-hmm .
I think is probably the, the best way to put this.
But while we were on the field during halftime, or was it pre-game?
Pre-game, Pre-game, doesn't matter.
Well, we were standing kind of near one of the end zones, just soaking it all in.
We weren't even really talking.
Alex was explaining something about the field that I had not known about.
I was learning about football. Hmm.
And these couple, couple guys start walking out in a line.
It was like a couple dudes, looks like maybe security guards in hindsight.
Mark Cuban, a couple more people behind Mark Cuban.
And we're standing, there's a bunch of people to our left, bunch of people to our right.
And he comes over and he's, he's walking by and he, he clocks Rossi and he, we walks off path and he walks up to Alex and puts out his hand.
He goes, Hey man, great to see you. He looks over me.
He goes, Hey, great to see you.
Shakes our hands, gets back in line and keeps walking past everyone else on either side of us.
And we just look at each James And I's response was this ?
Wait, what guys? Mark Cuban recognized.
Alex came over, shook both our hands and then kept walking. There's
Only one thing to deduce from this.
He's an off track listener, huge fan Of track, Amazing race.
Ross . . He's an amazing race in Dancing
with the Stars, diehard fan Mark. He's you're
On tv. That is possible.
That's true. We are Love You an amazing race. Yeah,
We are Fellow reality TV stars of all three of that's the main connection.
Mm-hmm . No. So it makes me think that somewhere deep down,
he's, he's an IndyCar fan and, uh, he knows what's up.
Mark, if you're listening, uh, come on off track.
I'll pitch you my business venture.
'cause Shark Tank will not return my calls.
Uh, well, we've learned, if we've learned anything from this episode, Tim, it's that you need to, those dms a shot.
I'll slide in his dms and say, Hey Alex and James would love to have you on the show.
I mean, you guys got the check mark and more than 8,000 followers on Instagram, maybe you guys reach out to him. It's not
A terrible idea.
Well, yeah. So we'll leave you with that.
We'll leave you with it seems that Mark Cuban's IndyCar fan.
So if you weren't a fan of his before, you should be now. Um,
He might just be a fan of me.
You know, I did stand up for a while, like 15 years ago.
That didn't cross anyone's Mind, I don't think that's it.
If I'm, I don't think that's it.
So how funny would it be if that was it?
So that's the Peach Bowl. Can't wait to go back next year.
Hopefully the Hoosiers are in it.
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