A Dianna Russini-Mike Vrabel interview that's been scrubbed from the internet

Hello everybody!

It’s David at FOIAball. A lot of you are new here! Welcome. I promise, it’s a lot of fun. Usually, we talk about college sports. But yesterday, a tweet of mine blew up. 

And when it did, I broke one of my tenets of journalism. 

Back when I was an editor, I would always demand reporters turn their viral social media posts into stories. They’d share a small scoop on Twitter, something interesting that got a ton of traction. I would Slack them their own tweet and say, “This is a story.” 

Naturally, they would disagree because writers are lazy. Which is what happened to me yesterday. I didn’t listen to my inner editor. So I’m writing it up today. But if you already saw it, don’t worry. I’m not just recirculating content. That’s not how we work here.

As you can tell from the headline, I have something new for everyone: an interview between Mike Vrabel and Dianna Russini that’s been completely scrubbed from the internet. 

Except for one place. 

As a reminder, our Wednesday columns are for paid subscribers. So if you hit a paywall, it’s because I need money to live. 

I really didn’t focus on the Dianna Russini-Mike Vrabel story because FOIAball is a college sports publication. Other people were covering it plenty. And for as much as I love snooping around and publishing dirt, I do have a conscience. I feel bad about this stuff sometimes. 

But I’m a journalist before I’m a human, so if there’s a story I can break, I’ll still do it. If you aren’t interested in any of this, I promise I’ll be back to college football tomorrow.   

Okay, enough preamble. On Monday night, I started digging into Russini’s social presence. I assumed, late as I was to the story, everything would be scrubbed. 

But I found a Spotify account in her name. It hosted a half-dozen innocuous playlists. A joint one with a friend, one for songs she Shazammed, and one that was just two Chance the Rapper tracks. Then there was a mix, titled “TURNIN’ THE PAGE,” that she shared with a Spotify user named “Mike.” 

One thing you should know about me is that I am very stupid. I thought, “That’s nice, she has a playlist with her husband.” I clicked away and moved on to something else, until it struck me that I didn’t know her husband’s name. It is not Mike, I learned. Which is when it clicked (I genuinely wish I were kidding).

I went over to Mike’s account, which had two playlists. The first song on the first one was a Morgan Wallen track. Having spent the past seven months studying head football coaches' predilections, I needed no further confirmation. 

But what was TURNIN’ THE PAGE for? I only had one clue to go on: All its tracks were added on Monday, Dec. 19, 2022. 

I pulled up the Titans’ schedule. The day before, Vrabel’s team endured its fourth straight loss, squandering a promising 7-3 start.

It was a pick-me-up playlist. As I’m wont to do, instead of holding it for a scoop on my site, I fired off a tweet that exploded. My post was on the top of TMZ lol. Every NFL meme page has already stolen it. Which is what I get for not writing it up.

But it gets funnier. After I shared it, Russini’s playlists were wiped. Then, the “Mike” account changed its name to “Tycar.” I went to Vrabel’s Wikipedia page, where I promptly learned Tycar is a portmanteau of his two sons' names. 

About the playlist. Lots and lots of people have weighed in on it, calling it truly terrible. Having awful taste in music myself, I chose not to judge. You’re welcome to form your own opinions.

I had a different column for today, but it felt weird to abandon my own scoop. An important part of journalism is following up. So I went back to digging, assuming that now, for certain, there wouldn’t be anything else out there. 

And yet.

As the news of Russini and Vrabel’s alleged affair blew up, old clips of Russini resurfaced: Where she sat down with Vrabel and asked about his wife, where she talked about her husband. But I found an old Vrabel-Russini interview that no one is talking about. Which exists in only one place on the internet. 

The timing of it is very suggestive. And, it’s, let’s just say, not about football.