Michael Irvin Takes Pardon My Take Behind the Scenes of His 1-on-1 Basketball Game With Adam Sandler in 'The Longest Yard'

On today's Pardon My Take, Mr. Cat and Mr. Commenter welcomed on Hall of Famer Michael Irvin. The former Miami Hurricane joined the show to talk about his football career, what the deal is with the Cowboys, his Twitter game, and much more. Mr. Commenter also asked Irvin, a con in "The Longest Yard," what it was like to play basketball against future "Boner Dogs" star Adam Sandler. Irvin gave us a fun story regarding that scene:

Mr. Commenter: So, Michael, you're obviously a very competitive guy. you're talking about playing basketball with Larry Allen earlier, and just like, you know being physical all the time. What was up with your bullshit, soft foul calls in "The Longest Yard?"

Michael Irvin: (Laughing)

Mr. Commenter: It has irritated a lot of us watching that movie.

Mr. Cat: Yup.

Mr. Commenter: You're calling Adam Sandler, who's like 5-8, you're calling him for his elbows being too sharp.

Michael Irvin: And you know what's so great, too? I love the movie. And they play it all the time, it's always on because they send me those 79 cent checks, that they call residual. And doing the movie, what's so great about it, when they first called me to do that, my favorite movie, one of my favorite movies was "The Longest Yard," with Burt Reynolds, the original. So I was like, man, I don't know if we should touch this. I don't know if we should touch it. But, Adam, I thought they diid a great job with it. 

Michael Irvin: One of the things he did, he let me, I said, "Adam, I was reading the script, this doesn't really sound like me." He said, "I'll tell you what, Michael, you rewrite it. Make sure if it's within a joke, like baby back bitch." I have to keep that in there because there's a big robot baby back bitch. So, I had to keep that part in there. But he said, "You write what you need to write, but keeping it around the same area." He said, "If it sounds good, we'll use it. If it doesn't make sure you know what we wrote." And then he said to me, "And understand this. You're not getting any writing credit if you use your own stuff, and you're not getting any more money if you use your home stuff." 

Michael Irvin: So he did let me write and use my own stuff. And even in that basketball scene that you're talking about, I kept saying, "How hard do you want me to go? How real?" He said, "Go hard. I want to make it as real as possible." So, I was like, "Okay, so I can hit you and beat you up a little bit?" He said, "Yeah, beat me up." I said, "Check's still gonna clear?" He said, "It'll still clear!" I said, "OK then, let's do this." And so, we did have fun shooting that scene.

That was a nice, little backstory on an awesome scene from an awesome movie. Chris Berman's cameo as the play-by-play guy with an inmate as his broadcast partner will always be funny. RIP Caretaker.