I had a chance to chat this week with NBC horse racing analyst Randy Moss, who lives in Prior Lake and is not to be confused with the other Randy Moss you might know.

A Q&A focused mostly on horse racing and Justify's pursuit of the Triple Crown this weekend at Belmont will be published online and in Thursday's print section, but Moss was so good talking about his famous namesake that I had to make a separate post.

I asked Moss, 59, when he first became aware of the football-playing Moss, who is 41.

"When I was much younger and had a head of hair, a friend sent me a newspaper clipping from West Virginia of a photo of a young Randy Moss, high school phenom," Moss said. "That was the first exposure I had to any other Randy Moss, and obviously it's grown exponentially since then. It gets a little annoying sometimes, but on the positive side at least he's a really successful guy."

When he was on assignment for NFL Network in 2010, Moss was assigned to the Vikings locker room during Moss' brief second stint with the purple. And that's when worlds collided.

"After I had talked to the people in the locker room, my main goal was just to meet him. I knew that he knew of me through mutual friends. I hung around the locker room and walked up to him," Moss said. "He saw I was with the media and immediately headed back to the training room. I said, 'wait, wait, wait. I don't want a quote. I just want to introduce myself.' He looked at me puzzled. I walked up and said, 'I'm Randy Moss, nice to meet you.' And he smiled and said, 'Dog! Nice to meet you.'"

A few years back, both men were at the Kentucky Derby and ESPN's Kenny Mayne orchestrated what would have been the all-time greatest bit in TV history. But …

"I was going to get up off the set during a break and (the other Moss) was going to take my place talking about only horse racing. We were just going to keep the same name up and not explain anything, and then the next commercial break he was going to be gone," Moss said. "It was all lined up ready to go and one of the coordinating producers got cold feet and shut it down."