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Appearances
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
In my professional opinion, you can either go old school, you know, with a Old school hacksaw. Now, what I would recommend is that you actually have a sharp hacksaw. This one is like a butter knife and it takes a little long to cut. But if you really want to get through the upright, you really need a reciprocating saw.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
A grinder would work. I've also heard people say that a cutting torch would be ideal. Almost like a blowtorch that burns through. Yeah, like a welding torch.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
No, no, you wouldn't want to do that. Chainsaw is not sharp enough. You need a real fine-tooth blade. And what about a battery-powered circular saw? Again, the blades, now if you had a blade that was specifically for cutting metal, that would probably work well, but most of them are meant for lumber, and the teeth are too big.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
So we wind up making it down the strip. I've got my hand on a four-foot section of the goalpost with four other middle-aged guys, and we're looking for a hacksaw.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
At the time, they had service stations on the strip, and so we eventually found a service station that would loan us their hacksaw, and so we cut up a piece of it for each of us, and I head back to the car not knowing how mad my dad's going to be. This is almost three hours later. So I get to the car. It's the only car in the lot at that point.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
I have my piece of the goalpost, and I think he was just relieved, honestly, and pleased that I had this piece of the goalpost. That's really how it got started.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
Our other son was at the game with a friend. And so we're watching the game like everyone else and then, you know, have the miraculous comeback and the field goal. And we're jumping up and down in the house. And my wife says, you know, the boys need to see what this is like. So I grabbed a Tennessee bag, you know, bright orange bag, so it would blend in with everything.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
And I stuck a hacksaw into the bag and off we go.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
And so we're walking up the strip, and sure enough, about halfway up the strip, here come two uprights. So at that point, I join in the fray, and I'm walking along beside all the drunk college kids, trying to convince them to put the goalposts down and let's cut it up. And they were just dead set. Individually, they all thought it was a great idea.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
But together, every time I'd get one of them convinced of it, somebody from behind them would yell, to the river! So we followed them all the way to the river. And sure enough, they tossed the first upright into the river. And then here comes the second one. They toss it in the river.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
Well, about that time, some fraternity boys decided that it would be awfully nice to have a piece of that goalpost. So several of them jumped in the river. You know, it's about 1030 at night, October, it's freezing outside. And there they are in the river. They fish it out and they bring it back and they start marching it back toward fraternity row.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
And my wife stands in front of them and just, you know, puts her hands up and says, you know, Hall, we have a saw. And so I'm a few hundred yards away with some other people at the time. And all of a sudden I start hearing them chant, saw man, saw man. And so here I come. So my plan is to cut a piece off of it, take it, and then donate the saw to the cause.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
Because it's a lot of work to cut one of these up with a hacksaw. So I get started on it. They're chanting saw, man. About halfway through it, I put too much pressure on the blade and broke it. And all of a sudden, I start getting booed by all the college students. They lift it up, and off they go. And there had to have been 150 people out there.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
And all of a sudden, it's just the four of us standing there alone and just bummed out because we've missed our chance at getting a piece of the goalpost.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
And so off we go. And we're running down the riverbank. And sure enough, there's one of the whole uprights is in the river. And there's some poor college student clinging to it. But it's too big for him to wrangle back to the dock. So my now 16-year-old, he was 14 at the time, turns to me and says, can I go in after it? And, you know, being the great parent I am, I say, yeah, sure, go.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
You know, he strips down to his T-shirt and off he goes. And so the two of them get it up on the bank and then we help them pull it up the rest of the way. But we don't have a saw. It's my four family members, a young life counselor from UT and a 35-year-old drunk guy with one shoe. And so I start looking around. I tell the drunk guy, okay, you're coming with me. We're going to my house.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
So he follows me. We go back to my house. We get a reciprocating saw this time. We come back down and got another hacksaw. Work our way down to where they are. They had hidden the goalpost in the brush because there were people all around looking. And we pull it out, cut it into five, six foot sections. And we head back.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
So the Young Life counselor, his apartment was actually located right beside Peyton Manning's bar, Saloon 16. And that night, in celebration of the win, Morgan Wallen was doing an impromptu concert at this little 2,000-square-foot bar.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
You know, so you can imagine what that was like. It was a zoo. So we pull in next to this guy's apartment and it was like, okay, three, two, one, go. He runs around. We open the lift gate. He pulls his section off and he just takes off running. So he made it out of there alive.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
Every Monday morning, we have a manager's meeting where we get together at our production facility.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
I walk into the meeting and everyone's seated at the table and I hear someone telling the story of this middle-aged guy called Saw Man. And so I walk in and I'm a very conservative person. They would never expect that I would be the person. So I sit down and I said, yeah, I'm Saw Man. And their chins just hit the table.