NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Press room moods can’t help but be affected by the performance of the team being covered.

With the Titans’ miserable season, those of us who gather almost daily to chronicle them and delve into why things are and are not happening are dealing with some unhappy people and some unhappy stories.

Sam Phalen
Sam Phalen, center, of Survivor and AtoZ Sports with me and John Glennon

But this year we’ve had a 14-week season inside the 18-week season, another story to follow with a main character in our midst and great intrigue.

Sam Phalen of AtoZ Sports made it to the last episode of Survivor, filmed in Fiji in May and June, and finished second in Wednesday night's finale, just short of the $1 million prize.

We’ve all been watching. We grilled him for tidbits in advance of each show and then questioned him thoroughly about the strategies we watched play out weekly, critiquing his performance and offering (sometimes unwanted) reviews of his castmates.

Beyond finding out his rationale for making the moves he did, we pressed him to learn the rationale of his competitors and learned about their personalities, sharing our strong feelings about them (Andy was not popular, especially with me) and finding out about show edits and production operations.

As he made it further and further it became the default conversation.

And it was great fun, a huge supplement to the football. I'm looking forward to his return from LA so we can cover the finale. When we've squeezed everything out of that, I'll be bummed and I'll miss it.

I told him he’s going to be a real bore next season, back to talking about his pitching days and his White Sox.

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