Jeff Pearlman talks with Sean Salisbury about his firing from ESPN, the current state of football and more

Welcome to The Quazcast, a weekly podcast that brings listeners in on a frank conversation between myself and a random person from the world of sports.

These interviews are about digging deep and avoiding the cliché questions and answers that too often plague sports conversations. My guest could be anyone. I might speak with a 90-year-old NFL kicker one week, the manager of a Major League Baseball team the next, and a bull fighter the week after that.

This week’s guest is former professional quarterback Sean Salisbury. After a ten-year career with five NFL teams, as well as the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League - where he won the Grey Cup - Salisbury worked as an analyst for ESPN for several years before being let go in 2008. 

Rumors over the cause of his dismissal soon circulated, with Deadspin reporting that a motivating factor was Salisbury revealing an inappropriate photo to co-workers at an ESPN party. A lawsuit - later dropped by Salisbury - ensued, and the matter became fodder for online snark for months.

After finally admitting that the incident occurred, Salisbury jumped around from several jobs in sports media, eventually landing with Yahoo! Sports Radio as the co-host of “The War Room” with John Harris.

Below is an excerpt of our conversation and a recording of the complete interview. As always, to get future podcasts downloaded straight to your listening device, you can subscribe to The Quazcast on iTunes.

Jeff Pearlman: It seems we’re very likely to not only pounce on other people’s mistakes but then to not let them forget it for a very, very, very long time and I don’t know why this is. Do you, having gone through it a little bit, do you get it at all?

Sean Salisbury: I don’t get it but I understand the - put it this way - when you’re as opinionated as I am, there are people are out there that look forward to the opportunity to bury you when you make a mistake. And I  get that. I think, at times, when you go through it for the first time, like when I did with a stupid cell phone picture in my phone over a mistake and a sophomoric error, then, I didn’t handle it well because I didn’t know how to handle it. Then you fight back, and you say something stupid and you get into a battle, and then your stupid quotes are in the paper, and before you know it, you’ve done something wrong.

Because I’d never been in a  situation like that in all my years in the media and playing football. But you know, you screwed up, and it’s okay. Good gracious, I’ve done  far worse than a stupid picture in my phone. But after seven years, enough’s enough. Good gracious, there’s another train wreck that’s going on in somebody else. And I think I’ve learned to handle it better. When people ask me now, “Hey, what about that picture?” I say, “Well, yeah, if you had one that looked like that, you’d stuff it right in your front door.” Or you just kind of joke about it. 

When you play along, people kind of laugh it off and say, “The dude’s human!” Hey, bigger things happen. Bad things happen, good things happen. I don’t know why we’re so enamored with it. But we love to build ‘em up, we love to tear ‘em down, then we love building ‘em back up again. But I learned a valuable lesson. Hey, I lost all near-everything, Jeff, I did. 

A lot of it is how I handled it. I did it wrong. Had I had jumped out in front of it and made it - I don’t mean made a joke that it was stupid. But I was the only one that got hurt from it. I didn’t hurt anybody and I didn’t harm anybody. I harmed myself. But had I jumped out and said, “Yeah, I had a stupid picture on my cell phone. Some third-party saw it and I took my slap on the hand, big deal.” There’s a million people who do that, and laugh about it, and it’s just common place now. But when I went out it was the start of when an internet site wants to jump on it. 

And I don’t blame them. Heck, when somebody does something like that in the public, even on my radio show, we go after them. Guy gets a girl pregnant? “Oohh, you’re married?  You got a girl pregnant?” We kind of joke and it’s fodder for late night Saturday Night Live stuff. And I was part of that as, I guess as a celebrity, I guess. I don’t look at myself like that. But a guy who's in a high-profile job, who should have been a better example, who made a mistake that turned into a big-time problem. 

I mean it cost me a job a couple years later. But I’m back at it now and people got to look at me and say, “He served his time." And I look at it now, and I’m more proud of the comeback and not quitting, than I am more disappointed in my mistake, if that makes sense.

I’d go right back to ESPN in a second. They treated me like gold for 12 years. It was a mistake. Everybody makes them. Mine got thrown out in public. But, you know, after seven years when you’re fighting back and fighting back, I got a greater appreciation, not only for this career, but for celebrities and what they go through and mistakes you make. 

So I learned that I can’t take the locker-room to a silly bar and have a shot of tequila and then have a cell-phone picture. You just can’t do it. But it doesn’t make me a bad guy, it doesn’t sure as heck change what kind of dad I am, it sure as hell doesn’t change how much talent I have on the air, and it sure as heck doesn’t mean I’m not going to get back up and off the mat. And it’s something that I probably needed to go through and I’m actually grateful for the adversity. I sure as hell wasn’t a couple years ago. But its been a long hard road back, but I’m so grateful and blessed. I’m happy to be doing what I’m doing.

JP: Do you feel feel like the - you called it the quote ‘pussification of the game’ which is a great terminology for it. Is it more accurate to say that if you took a Marino or a Dan Fautz and put him in 2014, that they would be throwing for 60 touchdown passes, or, if you took a Peyton Manning or a Tom Brady and put them in 1984, that they would struggle compared to how they play today?

SS: No, I think that if you take the special ones, they'll be good anywhere. It’s like when people say, "Could Michael Jordan have played when Oscar Robertson did?” Of course he could have. Could Oscar have made it in this league? Yeah. Of course he can. The great ones can. It’s the tweeners.

When I say 'pussfication of the game,' I’m not talking about the players. As a matter of fact, if you go talk to Troy AIkman, you talk to the current players now, most of those quarterbacks will tell you that they don’t like the rules either. Most of them will tell you. 

Now I'm all about safety, staying away from head injuries, but we’re going to have more knees being blown out, ankles being blown out than we’ve ever - there are more injuries now than we’ve ever had. Now I understand we’re trying to guard against concussions, but head injuries are still going to happen. It’s just the nature of a guy getting twisted sideways, and another guy falling, and another guy ducks his head to catch a ball. They’re still going to happen. 

But we are on the verge now - I mean, we are close to losing the integrity of the game on Sundays. Referees are involved in every call. We’re talking more about officials than we are about the quarterbacks. I mean, simple plays that you should not miss, we’re missing at times.  And it’s a tough job. But then a guy will hit a quarterback just clean - and because it was a vicious hit but legal - I don’t mind illegal hits being penalized and fined - a vicious hit that is legal is now getting kicked out of games or penalized on a Sunday, or on a Wednesday, getting a 40, to 50 000 dollar fine. 

It’s a vicious game. We can’t take away the legal vicious hits. I mean when they say target, what do you mean target? Every defensive back ‘targets’ a receiver. His job is to knock the shit out of him when he catches the football and separate him from the football. Thats his job. And if he does it with a vicious shot to the torso, with his shoulder pad, you can't penalize him for it. I mean you just can’t. It’s a legal hit. But we do. 

So the 'pussification' part of the game doesn’t come from players who can’t handle it, it comes from we’re getting so protective now. It’s like, “Wait a minute now. Are we going to get to the point where we play 11 on 11 but that one guy in the pocket, we put a red jersey on him so we don’t let him get hit?” 

So yes, I believe Marino could throw 55, 50 touchdowns, and I believe Peyton could have thrown 48 touchdowns when Dan did it in ‘84. So it’s that. It’s a great equalizer. The defense has no shot most of the time. 

Think about it. Every rule we have is set up for the offence to succeed- every rule. So I’m not going to say it’s easier because these guys are bigger and faster. But I could tell you this: When you're standing back there, knowing that they’re going to protect you, you can deliver the ball a little bit different, so I never take the credit away from guys who are making money or who are getting paid. 

We’ve got to protect players from illegal hits but we cannot take away the integrity of the game and flag legal, vicious hits because that’s not fair to the defensive players. And what they’re going to eventually do, is say, “Oh, you’re going to flag me anyway and fine me on Wednesday of the next week? Then I’m going to make sure that I get my money’s worth so that quarterback doesn’t beat me three weeks from now when we play him our second time of the year in the division, and his knee is going to be out of the back of his hamstring, and I’ll make sure that they’re playing the backup." Believe me, I know how some of these guys think, and if they’re going to rob Peter, you are going to pay Paul - I assure you.

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To hear the entire interview –  including more on guaranteed contracts in the NFL, the differences between a Hall-of-Famer and a journeyman quarterback and former players becoming analysts – you can download the podcast here or listen below.

Jeff Pearlman is a former senior writer for Sports Illustrated. He is the author of six books including Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton, The Bad Guys Won (a biography of the 1986 New York Mets) and Boys Will Be Boys (an account of the Dallas Cowboys dynasty from the 1990s). His newest book – Showtime (due to be released on March 4, 2014) - explores another famous sports dynasty: the Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s.