Pointless Exercise - A Desipio Podcast

The Bears and Steelers square off on Monday Night and since there's no Manning Brothers Jamboree on ESPN2, you might as well just play this podcast while you watch the game with the sound down. Andy and Mike D. look back at the long history of the Steelers (a lot of it is surprisingly bad) and some key matchups between the two teams. They look back at the only Bears win of the 1969 season and how...

The Bears played without Matt Nagy on Sunday, something we'd all like to get used to. Justin Fields looked really good, something we'd also like to get used to. And yet, the Bears suffered a pretty dispiriting loss with a terrible defensive effort, and even progress for their offense leaves them at the bottom of the NFL. Andy and Mike P. ponder the job statuses of Matt Nagy and Ryan Pace again, ma...

The biggest stars of Substack join forces as internationally renowned NBA scribe Kelly Dwyer joins Andy to talk about all of the really important stuff you want to hear them discuss. They talk 80s baseball, Andy's trip to St. Louis as a small boy, Premier League Darts, the Mandrell sisters, the most egregious snubs from the NBA's top 76* list, Continental Basketball Association legend Mauro Panagg...

It's time for some fresh crap so Andy and Mike D. take a tour through the surprisingly long history of Bears-49ers matchups. They spend most of their time in the Super Bowl era and look at three pretty awful playoff games, the demise of "Bear Weather", the birth of The Refrigerator, Mike Ditka driving while gloating, Mike Brown's walk-off, great QB duos in the matchup's history, the Bears and Terr...

Just when you thought things couldn't get any more surreal for the Bears, the head visor, Matt Nagy has tested positive for COVID-19. Will he miss Sunday's game against the Niners? Would anybody notice if he did? Andy and Mike P. hold their noses and look back at the demolition the Bears endured at the hands of Tom Brady and the Buccaneers. They ponder how losing Elijah Wilkinson could possibly ha...

We harken back to one of the best Bears editions of Remember this Crap with clips from last year's Tampa Bay Buccaneers podcast. If this episode were just us reading old John McKay quotes it would be worth your time, but wait, there's more, including Vinny Testaverde's color blindness, great matchups in the (mostly lopsided) history of this rivalry, and enough Donald Igwebuike references to keep y...

Andy and Mike P. look back at a perfunctory Packers win over the Bears and they ponder the horrifying idea that maybe it's not just Aaron Rodgers that makes them better than the Bears. They appreciate that Matt Nagy is still finding new ways to waste timeouts. They wonder if Allen Robinson is really that good, if Eddie Jackson has any understanding of how good Lance Briggs was, and how much better...

It's time to remember Remember This Crap, Bears-Packers. We remind everyone that the Bears used to beat the Packers repeatedly, compare the Packers rivalry to the Cubs and Cardinals, explain Jay Cutler's biggest mistake in the NFC Championship game, we come up with the incredible observations about how few times the Bears and Packers have made the playoffs in the same year. (Though they did do it...

The Bears went to Las Vegas and came back with a hangover, a lighter wallet, some sort of social disease and a win over the Raiders. The guys break down the Bears continued commitment to the run, Andy Dalton only wearing half his uniform on the bench, the NFL's decommitment to concussion protocols, whether or not the Bears are building a foundation to build on offense on or just playing the only c...

The 16th meeting of the Bears and Raiders is coming up Sunday so it's time to Remember This Crap about the history between the teams. From the early days of Bob Thomas missing important extra points, to a big game from Vince Evans, to Jim McMahon's lacerated kidney and Marc Wilson's broken thumb to lots of Richard Dent sacks, to the Jeff Jaeger revenge game, Rex off the bench, John Fox's first Bea...

Justin Fields was impressive on Sunday against the Lions. So impressive that Matt Nagy can't wait to not play him anymore. Andy and Mike P. harken back to the Bears second win of the season, wonder why Nagy won't let anybody else take credit for what they clearly did, and they wonder how the Bears are supposed to beat anybody in the upcoming string of games against good teams without a healthy run...

It's the always exciting Bears-Lions matchup, and we look back at some of our favorite segments including, the time Andy asked for Walter Payton to be decorated onto his birthday cake, the first Bears QB the guys remember as kids, their first Bears jersey they ever owned (this one's a classic) and then we revisit one of the weird things the Bears and Lions have in common (hint: it's distressing fo...

Bears fans have hardly ever been as excited as they were for a game as we were on Sunday and within minutes we knew it was going bad and that nobody had a clue what they were doing. Andy and Mike P.similarly don't waste any time trying to figure out how Matt Nagy still has a job, whether he sabotaged the game plan on purpose or if he's just that stupid and inept (you can probably guess what the an...

The Bears head to the Factory of Sadness this week to continue their infrequent and somewhat memorable rivalry with an AFC team that they have waaaaaay too much in common with. We look back at the two greatest running backs in NFL history, an assortment of lousy quarterbacks, a few memorable games and again we are envious of a franchise that knows how to fire a coaching during the season. It's tim...

The Bears won and Justin Fields is taking over and everything's great! Well, many things are great. Some things are still being Nagyed and Paced. Mike P. and Andy break down the win over the Bengals, look ahead to the game with the Browns and especially the dawn of the Justin Fields era. Like most things with the Bears, there are concerns over how they're handling this, but that's what we're here...

A fresh opponent for the Bears this week means a fresh crap! Andy and Mike D. harken back to classic Bears-Bengals games of yore, and what they find is a rivalry so tightly contested you can hardly believe it. The Bears on Sunday will be trying to set the longest winning streak in the history of this rivalry. So that's...something. They try to figure out why Ken Anderson didn't play more against t...

The Bears weren't good on Sunday, and it didn't just look that way on TV as Mike P. was there to see it live, in person, in the Rams' new $5 billion stadium. He joins Andy to talk about what the Bears offensive game plan could possibly have been, and what has happened to the defense. How did Eddie Jackson get this bad this fast? Does Matt Nagy have any idea what a "package" actually is? Why is And...

It's time to return to the Bears for Remember This Crap, but what to do when they open with a team we did last year? Let's revisit one of the finest Remember This Craps. A crummy re-run? No, there's nothing crummy about this one. This featured one of the greatest stories in 1985 Bears history (seriously) featuring Mike Singletary and Eric Dickerson. We unearthed a long lost Bears' Danish kicker (h...

A new season means another year of the award-winning Bears Podcast with Andy and Mike P. They look ahead to the Bears 2021 and try to figure out what Matt Nagy and Ryan Pace would have to do to get canned, why Andy Dalton is starting, when Justin Fields will start, and they go game by game through the season so you know exactly what's going to happen all year long. They also take a look at over un...

The wheel of crap finally landed on one of the most infamous seasons in Cubs history. It's time for Andy and Mike D. to remember the 2003 Cubs. It was a season that was incredible until it wasn't. Hindsight (and an actual World Series title) have made it easier to look back and enjoy the truly great parts of a season that crushed us all in the end. It's time to remember Hee Seop's concussion, the...

The Cubs unveiled a haphazard afterthought of a Hall of Fame, using mostly work done by other people that nobody even knew had been done, and that seemed right up our alley. So Andy and Mike D. decided to break down the 56 inductees, and surely we put more effort into this process than any of them did. From King Kelly to Lee Smith and everybody in between, join us for a look at former Cubs' great,...

He was the face of the Cubs during the most successful run in more than a century, and even if it makes some business sense to move on from him it doesn't make it any easier for the fans. Kyle and Andy discuss the Cubs trade of Anthony Rizzo to the Yankees, whether it's in effect a third of a season loan or if he's really gone, how bad it is that one of the prospects in the deal from the Yankees i...

How can you poke holes in one of the greatest movies ever made? Well, you don't, mostly. Andy and Mike P. revisit the 1990 Martin Scorcese classic, "GoodFellas" and marvel at what a great, well made, incredibly paced movie it is, while taking issue with just a couple of the plot points. They draw Sopranos parallels, play your favorite clips, give some casting choice info and all the times Joe Pesc...

The Olympics are here whether anybody's ready or not and Drew Lawrence of The Guardian (and several other publications) stops by to talk about them. Why are they happening? Why are they playing softball on a toxic waste site? The guys try to come up with a better way to pick the men's basketball team, wonder what Mary Carrillo is going to get to make fun of, and a couple of athletes and events you...

A year after the Cubs' inexplicable playoff run and Sammy Sosa 66 homer season, the Cubs were without Kerry Wood (because of Tommy John Disease), but decided the keys to returning to the playoffs were bringing back 40-year old Gary Gaetti and signing Benito Santiago and Scott Sanders. Fool proof. Just one game out of first in June the Cubs plummeted hard and fast, and we're here to relive most of...