As many of you now, we now do weekly two-minute video commentaries for The Score. The videos air on TV Canada, and you can find them on thescore.com. Well, just in time for Black History Month, we decided to sorta kinda reprise “Super Bowl Shuffle.”
Yeah, kinda.

Delightful, don’t you agree?
I was thinking in the car today about how this came together, and I realized there’s something in this that some might wanna hear. Another one of those how-to-make-it-in-the-biz-if-there-were-such-a-thing-as-making-it post.
Saturday, I was chatting with Chip (more later) about what this week’s video for the Super Bowl could be. I just randomly thought of the Super Bowl Shuffle, and I wrote 16 bars for different people to spit. Threw em together, shot em by Chip, and he thought it would work. At first, it was gonna be sorta like a video about the new Shuffle. Instead, I decided to see if we could recreate it. So it’s Saturday afternoon, and we needed to record Sunday afternoon, so it was time to call in some favors.
Put the bat signal up, and all those guys responded. Plus, I called Petey Green because I needed a beat, and he turned one around in 48 hours, one that was almost too good.
Those cats on camera are my people, nothing more. All I told em was we were gonna clown on camera with a Super Bowl Shuffle — and they knew that meant distribution. They all showed. One cat left his sick wife. Another was doing the family day, so he brought them with him. All these cats came through in a major way, and I appreciate it greatly.
Now, who is everyone?
Got the track from Petey Green. You may remember him from a previous alias, Sneaky Pete. As many of you know, I met Sneaky Pete six years ago, when Aden and I coached his rec league basketball team, The Dutch Masters. Anyway, after graduation and all that, we stayed close. Pete’s one of the many little brothers I never had, though the only white one with locks down to his behind. Oh, and he has beats.
Aaron Rodgers was Chip Patterson, and John Kuhn was Hayes Permar. I met Hayes when I started doing fill-in work at the local sports talk station at the time, and we were always cool. He left that gig to go work in television production, and he moved back here to handle a situation. He’s been doing some other production work, and he had access to studio space, where he and Chip do their work. Together, we did the “Us vs. Him” video (and, later, “Enter The Jones”) which became the springboard for getting “Two Minutes” greenlighted. So, basically, just couple cats I met in my travels.
Joey Powell was Big Ben. Joey worked in sales at that same local radio station. Great peoples, and we were glad he could come through for us on the video.
Rashard Mendenhall was this one cat. He always looks hungry.
Mike Tomlin was Shannon Penn, and his pretty little girl was the one rejecting us at the end. Hard to encapsulate this one in a short space, but he and I are supposed to work together. It’s just one of those things. So one day, I go to do a fill-in spot, and Shannon’s working the board. Next thing you know, we’re coming out of a break with LL’s “I’m Bad,” jumping around the studio, letting the bump run for a full verse, barely able to breathe when it was done. One of the best friends I’ve got, an incredible mind and, again, someone I met in my travels.
James Harrison was the boy Pizzle. Met through a couple of friends. I’ll be the best man in his wedding. As stand-up a dude as I’ve ever met.
Mike McCarthey was Joey in Raleigh (not to be confused with Joe in Raleigh). Joey used to listen to the show. We’ve hung out every now and then. Go play golf and stuff like that. I called him Saturday and said that I was putting this together, and he said he’d do whatever he could. He was the first to show, and he actually did the damn Pee-Wee Herman on the screen. And I just met him because he happened to be doing a show I hosted.
Here’s the point I want to make: so often, I meet people that are looking for someone to show them the game. In reality, most of them want someone established to take a liking to them and put them down with gigs. That might happen for you, I guess.
But check that video. How such a video even came to be part of my job. How I could get a job that involved doing such videos. Add it all up there, and you know what? All just people I know from various places. But all just my people.
Moral of the story: if you’re looking to high places for people to get you where you wanna go, you’re missing the people around you that can really make it happen.