Rico Dynamite

Season 3. Episode 2: Rico Dynamite. With very special guest Dave Dameshek! And here’s the story we wanted to figure out for history: Twenty years after his high school prime, we got the briefest of glimpses of a broken dreamer who claims he could have single-handedly won state and who could still throw a football over a mountain. If we could get into that time machine with Uncle Rico and head back to 1982, what would we see? Would he have gone pro? Would he have outplayed Bubby Brister? And, perhaps most pressing, would he have kept the toupee on under his helmet?

He's been likened to Big Foot. To Roy Hobbs. To Len Bias. To Ryan Leaf. Was Rico Dynamite the greatest "what if" story in the history of sports? Matty & Kevin review the admittedly scant tape to determine if Uncle Rico could have been a generational, multi-arm angle, quick muscle twitch, elusive, possibly ambidextrous quarterback. Or, whether he was a charming sociopath who would have been cancelled before he took a snap in the pros. Or if it was all a conspiracy and that Uncle Rico was not even Napoleon and Kip's uncle at all.

To start, Matty, Kevin and Josh agree that "Napoleon Dynamite" is, contrary to popular opinion, a football movie. Then, they go through a detailed draft profile of Uncle Rico -- from arm strength and speed to, of course, concerns about personality defects and the impact in the locker room. Collectively they plot Rico somewhere between Jeff Garcia and Kyler Murray, but acknowledge that the downside is below Ryan Leaf. A rookie season with sixty interceptions and weekday house arrest is clearly within the bounds of plausible.

Next, very special guest, Dave Dameshek ("The Willie Stargell of Podcasts"), joins to review the co-hosts work. Dave agrees that if Dynamite can get back to 1982 through his time machine that he could easily enter the 1986 draft, get picked in the second round (ahead of Jack Trudeau) and become the first NFL quarterback to wear a toupee under his helmet. Shek reminds us that, in 1998, both Brett Favre and Terrell Davis wore braces in the Super Bowl. Compared to that, the panel agrees that Rico's rug is no more than a footnote.

Special thanks to Dave Dameshek and to Quincy, Gabe, Matt and the Blue Duck Media team for their work on this episode.