[Julio Riddols]

Wow, fellas, let me tell you. Things ain't right up in Cleveland. I sat down with Haslam for 2 hours this morning and we talked about what scheme I like to run and what I thought of the current personnel.. I was pretty honest with him, told him what I thought without pulling any punches. He sat for a minute after I went on a little rant and then said "Let's go get lunch". So we're eating at this kinda seedy place called Tommy's Pizza and Chicken and he is just tearing through his medium veggie pan while I answer more questions at length.. Questions about my family, my experience, all that. He learns I have thought about coaching a successful pop warner team for a few years and that gets him to stop stuffing his face for a minute and he just straight up says "You want the job?" I spat my coke across the table, costing me hundreds of dollars worth of primo columbian snow. He snorted it off his coat, I said "Lets get this deal done then. I'm ready to take this team where it has never been, Jim."

That's when he flipped his shit. The rest of the flake that hadn't been scattered before exploded as everything on the table went flying in this slow motion flash of rage. As he stood up, he swept the table clean in one Bruce Lee motion and exploded with this scratchy, throat ripping scream that had somewhere in it "NEVER FUCKING CALL ME JIIIIIMMM!!!!" Between the spit flying from his mouth and the veins busting out of his neck and forehead I couldn't control myself and just started laughing hysterically, which made him rage even harder. He stumbled his way out from the booth and raised his fist to hit me as I leaned away, but his lawyer was with us and caught him, pushing him toward the door and waving off the employees that had come over to try and diffuse the situation. I must have laid there for a good 5 minutes laughing while they tried to ask me if I was okay before I got up, dusted my blazer and just left. I got a phone call from the guy.. Curiously, I never got his name, but a short time after, here he was asking me to keep the incident to myself and offering to pay for my troubles, but I just hung up and threw the phone away. It was one of the most surreal mornings of my life and I am still trying to figure out what I just experienced. I've had bad interviews, I have seen obviously confused vagrants babble incoherently to random people at a bus stop.. I have watched a guy jack off in the subway while staring intensely at this meek elderly lady who seemed strangely turned on the whole time.... I have NEVER seen anything as alien to my concept of rational behavior as what I saw in Jimmy's eyes. They were cartoon crazy, so absolutely hilarious.. My god. Maybe I was supposed to be scared, but my natural reaction was to just crack up so hard that I think I actually pulled something because my left side hurts like hell right now.

I'm about to get back on the plane to go back to Asheville.. But I think I'll be lost in the repetition of that image replaying in my head as I kick back a couple bottles of airplane wine. I'm light headed and feel like I am watching things from further inside my head than where my eyes are.