Today we link you to what I found to be two supremely interesting recordings of Sports People talking.

I was thinking how the concept of the podcast and the videocast (is that the word?) are still fairly recent, in the larger scheme. Podcasts really gained traction only about a decade ago, and video of people sitting around discussing things — on a newspaper’s website — even a shorter time frame.

Here are two I found the other day, and I think any sports fan will like one, and any sports fan from the Inland Empire will be fascinated by the other.

Let’s start with the general-interest one.

Bill Simmons of espn.com has been doing podcasts for years now, and some of them are wretched … but several others are as good (aurally) as his columns (visually).

The one he did with longtime elite broadcaster Al Michaels is particularly interesting. Simmons has to ask only a few questions, and then Michaels is off and running … minute after minute of detailed, specific information about major events he has covered, and the background to those. He clearly has an amazing memory for what he has seen, and he has seen a lot. I’m impressed, because I have been to so many events that I can go back and look at what I wrote, two years later,and it’s like I’m reading about a game someone else saw.

To find the podcast, go to this page … and look for the archived podcast (on the left side of the page) entitled “Do you believe in miracles?”

Simmons suggests that Michaels was in the booth for the single greatest moment in U.S. sports history, the single most dramatic and the single most astonishing “gambling” moment in sports history. And he has Michaels guess at what they are … and his misses are riveting.

The other link is to a homier site and topic.

Matt Caulkins of the Riverside Press-Enterprise got two coaching legends from San Bernardino County into a studio for a 25-minute videotaped interview.

Find it by going to this page … and scrolling down on the video square in the middle of the page until you find “HSGT: Coaching legends Dick Bruich and Don Markham.”

These guys won more than 600 games and five CIF titles between them, and Markham would still like to coach.

For those of you who know the two former coaches at all (and I must have interviewed each of them 500 times), you will find it fascinating that even as they have aged and not quite mellowed, it’s my opinion that they continue to have a little bit of trouble complimenting the other. And they both won a lot of games, but they got to that end by such radically different means.

Markham is about as gracious as he can possibly be. Normally, he is so painfully honest that he seems rude. And anyone who knows Bruich can see/hear his little evasions when he doesn’t quite want to say exactly what he means. And, I promise you, the fact that Bruich dominated their head-to-head matchup (I think he led 10-2) is something he recalls with pleasure.

Anyway, it suddenly made me miss prep football — when a day before it hadn’t even dawned on me that the 2010 season has begun.

Go check this out. The Michaels thing is more than an hour, but it’s all good. The video is 25 minutes.