Im tom mcdowell, president of concorso italiano. I have been a car guy since i was very young. My cousin brought a alfa romeo to my father and i had never heard of what alfa romeo. I knew ford, i knew chevy and i knew this thing called porsche, but alfa romeo, didnt know what it was. He showed it to me, got my dad infected and then all of a sudden, my older brothers infected. The contagion starts spreading through the family, to me, to my sister. The familys largely been involved in alfa romeos and fiats. Concorso italiano starts with the cars. Obviously its italian cars. Its really more of a celebration of italian style and that includes food and fashion and music. Were going to have strolling italian musicians around the grounds tomorrow, that should be a lot of fun. Its always very soothing music, a strolling mandolin. We even got a strolling accordion player. I dont know how you have strolling electronic accordion player, but were gonna have it. Were gonna achieve that goal tomorro
All american sports, and it seems to me, it may not be a good correlation, but a lot of questions they asked about gay athletes were essentially the same questions they used to ask about us. Absolutely. Black athletes. Absolutely. You know . [ applause ] isnt it a simple situation . We have laws in this country and we try to abide by laws. We have different denominations. We have different races. Gender. If youre a law abiding citizen and trying to do the right thing, then how can anyone else judge you . I mean, i think its that simple. You know, i dont cant get into the religious aspect of it to the sexual aspect of it. I look for the as you said earlier, the character of the person, and thats good enough for me, because ive got my own things ive got to deal with. Yeah. I dont have an answer for everything. We are getting pretty close to the end here, and typically at this time, you know, is when the moderator will ask how do you want to be remembered and one thing or another, but i i
Years ago, the average salary in the nba was 5,000. Thats not even meal money now. In the middle 60s, we struck the allstar game, the 20 top players in the league got together and struck an allstar game to form the union. The owners said, no way. We are not going to do that. So we said, okay. There will be no allstar game. Abc television said that if you want us to televise, you get your players on the floor. They said, lets talk to them. So they said, we dont want to lose face. What we will do is if you will play the allstar game, at the end of the year, we will recognize the union. So they vote 119 to play. And we played the allstar game. So at the end of the year we went in to talk to the commissioner. He said, i recognize the players association. But we do not have anything to talk about. Im not going to talk to you about anything. So our lawyer said, i will see you in september. Thats the beginning of the next season. The commissioner said, the playoffs start next week. Oh, no. We
Wichita linemen . Just as a guy who understands the entertainment part of this thing. Everybody else would have been, too, if he would have stood up there and sung the wichita lineman. I dont know how to answer that. I almost dont know what youre talking about. All right. Okay. Well, were down to the last 15 seconds. Okay. I want to say something, please. Lifetime best friends and a guy that ive known 50 years. I got a bid here. But i thought it was such an honor for me to be invited. Because all ive ever tried to do in my adult life is to make my father proud of me. And we were, my father died a few years ago, but he was 75. He says to me, you know, i love you. It was the first time he had ever said that. And he says and im proud of you. That was the first time he ever said that. He said im proud that youre my son. And im proud just as proud that im your father. And that was my hero. You know, tell you a quick story. We got zeros on the clock. Got to be quick. I got my first 100,000 c
Before we talk about white, black, whatever. Us and thate becomes important in y being a man, because if i have t charity in my soul or the wisdom to recognize goodness in people, then im a man, a man of god, ay man of trying to do the right thing. Therefore, nothing you can do or say to me will change my attitude about my manhood. Over the years, the biggest n problem that we have had in this country is whenever you stand ue for the right thing, even though its for the overall populous, c people take the attitude that s yout are a racist or they call t an opposite racist. So i wanted to make that point, because when you say where are we today, well the one guy that i depend on most, young man that juf just won the super bowl and who is a tremendous human being and has gotten through troubledthe times and understands what we f are doing is ray lewis. Ray, i think, can be the leadert of a lot of these young individuals who need that leadership, who want to learn t what to do and how to