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Matt Jones on newsradio840whas now here's Matt Jones. It is episode 16, interrupted by Matt Jones, presented by Cornbread Hemp. This is the good life. There are very few people in sports that are more interesting to talk to than the next guy. Pablo Torre. He has, he's used to be on espn. He works for. What's the name of Lebatard's media company?
- [01:16]
A
Metal Arc Media. Metal Arc Media, the sweatiest, most principled startup in the sports media.
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B
Yes. And does a podcast. Pablo Torre finds out. Pablo, thank you very much for taking the time to chat. We've known each other from afar for years, but I appreciate it.
- [01:33]
A
I mean, so long. I feel like our DMs are full of. Would be. I wasn't always. PTFO is only almost two years old. If it had existed, our DMs would have been a real, I would say, episode generator.
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B
That's true.
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A
I was happy to do this well.
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B
So I actually thought you have an interesting story, but I want to do the personal stuff at the end. But I actually thought part of the way to do this is in Pablo Torre finds out. When I heard what you were going to do, I thought to myself, I'm going to be honest with you, there's no way that's not going to. That's going to work. You can't do journalism in podcast form. That's just not going to work. And it has. And I thought in order to sort of get people to understand what you do, I thought we would go through some of the stories you've done and just have you talk about them and get people to understand. But first, when you decided I'm going to do long form sports journalism in a podcast world, why did you think that would work?
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A
It was a race that no one else wanted to run. And it's the one that is actually what I'm Passionate about. I am authentically, obsessively curious. I am a journalist by trade and I'm a journalist hopefully in the way that people soon realize is not mutually exclusive with fun. True. Like to me it's being smart, but also very stupid. It is being highbrow, but also quite low brow. It is the idea of like, if I'm gonna serve you vegetables, I'm melting a ton of cheese on it. Right. Like it's going to be hopefully delicious, but also to sound like an after school ad for a second here. Nutritious. Right. I want to be both of these things. And so for me, you use that.
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B
Exact, those exact words on Bill Simmons or something. Right.
- [03:11]
A
God. Oh, geez. If I did, if I did, I apologize. I have been trying though to figure out like, how do I articulate what my show is? People have never listened to it. And so I am trying to be always self aware about like not over promising. But the very nature of what I do is I solve mysteries for my audience and myself and my friends. And so is this a mystery box that I open up and wow, inside of this can be Rick Patino or the NFLPA scandal, or this videotape starring James Gandolfini, the knicks made for LeBron, or whatever else. Yes. The whole point is journalism. Finding out something that you didn't know about that you already. I would say this is a key thing for me. Something that you did not already express to the algorithm that you wanted. Right. Like that. To me it's almost. We are so oversaturated with the creator influencer economy and the algorithm feeding us all, force feeding us all of that. I was like, wait a minute, I come from magazines. I think this could be fun and also like meaningful.
- [04:15]
B
I think you do. It's like a magazine on a podcast. I like that analogy. Well, I want to, we're going to talk Patino because we both love Patino Story. But I think what you, you were doing this podcast, you were trying to get traction on it. And I think it's fair to say the Bill Belichick, Jordan Hudson story got you the traction. And I want to go into it because I'm fascinated by it. Just like, like everybody can act like they're too good for it, but they're not. But I also, from you, I know there's gotta be a part of you that goes, I was doing all this serious stuff. Why did it take a 71 year old man dating a 25 year old woman to be the thing that got me broke through? Did that bother you at all?
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A
It certainly lodged itself in my brain a bit as sort of just like this reminder of you can try to dress up whatever it is that you're doing that may be, you know, award winningy or whatever, but people ultimately look, scandal, conspiracy, the age gap, relationship plus, like the nexus of power at a state, at a school like North Carolina, in which the highest paid employee of the state is this guy who you remember, except he's the opposite, and now he's dating this woman who you've never met before, but you suddenly everywhere. Like, I did not find myself surprised by the magnitude of reaction, but I did find myself having to sit down for a second and be like, am I at peace with this? Because it was definitely the biggest look, when you talk about, like your freak flag flying for a show, you want people to know you exist.
- [05:54]
B
You had to do it. But I mean, that's part of it. You know, in Kentucky, I have to. I basically do this all the time. I mean, there's a big part of me that would like to sit and I mean, part of the reason I did this podcast is so I could talk about things that were not 19 year olds throwing a ball through a hoop. But you also have to understand, like, to get people to care about that, they have to care about you. And to get people to care about you, you have to talk about the things they're interested in talking about a little bit. And that's just life. And. And I can't act like I'm better than it. I found the Belichick, Jordan Hudson thing amazing. So let's just talk about it. 71 year old, 25. Do you think the age gap is why people are so fascinated with it? And is that at its core what it is? Or is it also that he's this old, grumpy man? And then, like, what do you think it is?
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A
I think the sticker shock begins with the age gap.
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B
That's true.
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A
And then when you realize, oh, wait a minute. And this is something that I reported at the bottom of the rabbit hole, I was like, wait a minute, they met when she was 19.
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B
Is that how old they were when they met?
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A
Yeah, on that airplane, we reverse engineered the whole, like, what do you think.
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B
Happened on that airplane? So, like, what was that interaction?
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A
Some people were like, wait a minute, Belichick flies commercial. He flies JetBlue. And it's like, yes, I can report that. He flies JetBlue. He flies Logan Airport in Boston to West Palm to go to Trump's golf club. In Jupiter. And that's his routine. And so he sits down. Bill Belichick, the greatest football coach of all time, sits down. And next to him sits a young woman who turns out to be 19 years old, carrying a philosophy textbook by a Harvard professor named Warren Goldfarb, who we interviewed on the show. As a side note, that's not essential to the understanding, but this is the.
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B
Length to which we do this. Warren Goldfarb.
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A
Oh, Warren G, man. Dr. Warren G. Was a great quote. I had no real idea, but was so proud that his book was an aphrodisiac, basically. But you see, you see in the textbook, man, like, so this is a Jordan Hudson. She is a Bridgewater State philosophy student. And so she shows. Then this is the way you sort of reverse engineer this. There's an Instagram thing in which she has an inscription from Bill Belichick, signed and dated. And I'm like, okay, so let's, let's now work backwards from this and try to figure out who everybody was, where they were headed. And she, she herself, by the way, was in her own preexisting, pre Belichick age gap relationship with a guy in his 60s who was also. I am.
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B
Oh, she was dating a guy in her six, in his 60s already, who.
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A
Was also hanging around Trump National Golf Club.
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B
Oh, also Trump. So is that so? All right, well, let me take a step back. I, at first I had the natural reaction, everybody else did, which is, this is kind of weird. This is creepy. This is whatever. And then there's a part of me, I mean, I. It's still weird. I'm not gonna act like it's not, but there's a part of me that says, like, I feel like the hate always comes in, in these stories on the woman. It's always the misogynistic world. Says the man, oh, he said, like, everybody loves younger women. Of course he's gonna be into her. But the woman becomes a gold digger and she becomes all this. That's my natural instinct. When you say, well, she was dating a 60 year old. And a lot of that, I think happened even more after you did the story. Do you think that's fair to her?
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A
I think that people, if they listen to the reporting I've done, should have the impression that I have had, which is, Jordan Hudson is kind of a brilliant young strategist when it comes to many aspects of her life. And she is absolutely a 24 year old in some key ways that basically have proven to be wildly self destructive. And so I should say that you're totally right. That on some level this story fits into, frankly, a deeply cliched thing that we. I, who wants to be surprising and interesting and sort of like enlightened about such things or whatever, I should seek to actually tell the different.
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B
The opposite story. Right. Like from Monica Lewinsky's point of view. Right. There's a part of, you know.
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A
Exactly right. That's exactly right. Now, now, here's the thing, though. The age gap is not, to me, the most interesting. It's not the most interesting part by far.
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B
Okay.
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A
Most interesting part by far to me is that Bill Belichick is somebody who was truly the embodiment of one way of living in public.
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B
Yeah.
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A
He was. Mr. Privacy, Mr. Do your job. Mr. Discipline. Mr. No distractions. No distractions. Benching. I mean, benching Malcolm Butler. Right. Just like doing stuff. Doesn't care. Media has questions, doesn't need to answer them. Doesn't have time for insta face and whatever it is that he would call these. These social media platforms. So that's him. Right. For 20 plus years, as he is the greatest coach of all time. He is, of course, basically thrown out of the NFL. No one wants to give him a job. The Patriots are like, we're done with this. No one wants to make him a general manager plus head coach. He goes and figures out what do I do next. And what he does next, Matt, is he launches like a half dozen media enterprises. He has podcasts, he does appearances on television. He is everywhere.
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B
I thought he was good on Inside the NFL when he did that. I actually thought he was pretty good at it. I found him interesting.
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A
I think Belichick talking about football is inherently interesting.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Because he is, in that context, a genius.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But when it comes to the other ways in which he's trying to be a public person now. Well, that's where I think of what Bob Kraft said. This was quoted in Seth Rickersham's book. He's an idiot savant. The guy is very good. Brilliant, genius level at football. But you'll notice when it comes to, like, who. Who he's hired, his coaching tree. Just be football nerd for a second. Like, there aren't a lot of great.
- [12:13]
B
No, they haven't. They haven't branches. Yeah, they haven't. It. But is it. Is the simple explanation, though, why he's into her? Just she's young and attractive, or do you think there's something else there?
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A
So definitely a big chunk. I talked to a former Patriot and he was like, look, this is the least surprising story of all time.
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B
Okay.
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A
Yeah. Older man likes to.
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B
All guys do that. Well, not all guys, but many men. This is the story. This is how they. You see all these powerful men who make all these amazing decisions, and then there's this thing where they just show a different side.
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A
And she's a cheerleader and a beauty pageant.
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B
I can't believe he was at the main holiday.
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A
The Miss Main pageant was real, just. But this brings me back to, like, why is it interesting? It's because the question of why is Belichick Suddenly Mr. Media, Mr. Public figure, in which he is writing a book, in which he is now sitting for these interviews in which he's trying to sell himself, in which he is eventually, of course, becoming the head coach at the University of North Carolina. The key. The key thing to realize about his decision making during this era of his life is that Jordan Hudson is the most powerful person in his inner circle, to the exclusion of everybody else that had been, frankly, like, attached to him. Like these remora fish, right? These kind of, like, mediocre coaches and guys who, like, needed him to get a job. Jordan Hudson comes into his life and is like, I am a young person who. Who is native to the Internet, who can tell you all about what it is to be online and to brand yourself and to be positioned to be not just the greatest coach of all time and grumpy, but also so much more. And that's this moment in Bill Belichick's life that I've been just sort of like. That's what I've been obsessed with. How do you go from the archetype of one thing to the opposite, the actual opposite, in which you are publicly. I mean, dude, the yoga photos, right?
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B
So the yoga photos. There's the CBS interview.
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A
She's dressed as a fisherman, catching her as a mermaid.
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B
There's the when they walk out of the stadium and her jacket is on, you know, and she looks like a child. Here's my question, Pablo. I freely admit to being interested in it for the same reason. I don't like Love island, but I do like bad reality shows. And I was on. Not a reality show, but I was on a docu series. So, like, I know that life. So I'm not in any way saying I'm above being interested in it. But you seem to have also argued, and this is where I disagreed with you a little bit, that it was also, like, news that it wasn't just curry, like, period, like, just this interest of. I just. I want to know about that it was news. Explain why you think it was, like, newsworthy.
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Because I think sports are important.
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B
Okay.
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A
You know, I think at a certain point, if Bill Belichick doesn't matter, then nothing matters. And maybe I'm just sort of like the kind of guy who's clinging to your point earlier about, like, how what I do is not merely, as they say in newspapers, the toy department, but even more now that it's a podcast. Right. Maybe I'm just clinging to that, admittedly, maybe that's my psychotherapy. But I think that the greatest coach of all time, acting one way and then the opposite, in which he is also the highest paid public employee in North Carolina, in which he is also now this leader of young people. And I'm not saying that, whoa, Belichick's corrupting the young people. No, no, no, no. I'm merely saying that this older man, this 71 year old man is trying to figure out, how do I relate, how do I win these kids over? And the way he does it. You can't understand his solution to these questions without understanding the impact of Jordan Hudson and the influence of Jordan Hudson to the degree, by the way, that everybody in Belichick's life, including his family, his inner circle, people around the administration in North Carolina, not everybody, but I would say a majority of them have expressed a clear concern for like, oh, boy.
- [16:17]
B
So do you think it's going to work? You think like, I mean, the games start here in four weeks. Is it going to work?
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A
I would say that if he makes it to a second season, everybody should be extraordinarily happy. I see it as one and done, man. I do. I just. I just feel like there's. Look, I. I've just seen too much in terms of reporting the backstage aspects of this to say I. To be naive, you know?
- [16:43]
B
Well, the first employee I ever hired, Pablo, at KSR 15 years ago, is. It's all I can do not to call him all the time because he works in. In. He works there now. And he is like, he does the. Helps with the nil fundraising and stuff. I mean, he was. You talk about, he left John Calipari. This is. You'll think this is funny. He was doing that for John Caliperi. He kind of got tired of John Calipari and he was like, I'm gonna go somewhere that's more low key. And he goes to North Carolina and then a year later, Bill Belichick ends up there. Like, what? It's crazy.
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A
It's. It. Look, I have FOIA public records requested enough emails to know just how deluged and how tough it is to be a normal person who was like, I thought we were getting one thing and instead we're getting the opposite. That sucks. On some real level. But as to go back to your, your analogy to the reality show or the bad reality show thing, is this a good or a bad reality show? My vote is firmly in the camp of this is one of those. It's so bad that it's good reality shows.
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B
Yeah.
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A
I think that when, when it comes to the way in which look, Belichick has his son on staff. Right. Steve. It's not like he can sort of parse. And this is the thing that Jordan Hudson said after that disaster CBS thing or this is what North Carolina came out and said, is that she is not employed by the football team. She is employed as a personal advisor, media strategist, PR thing to Bill. And you covered John Caliperi. I ask you this, can there actually be a distinction between professional and personal head coach of a, of a program like that?
- [18:31]
B
No, no, no, no. And it bleeds in whether they're, it doesn't really matter if there's a check signed or not. I, I, I, I get it. I now you went on, you kind of had a back and forth online with Bill Simmons. I have sort of a love hate relationship with Bill Simmons in the. I don't hate him, but love frustration because I am in this business because I read Bill Simmons sitting at my law firm at Wilmer Cutler in D.C. in 2002 and thinking, if he can do that, I can do that.
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A
Billable hours of a different kind.
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B
Exactly right. And I loved, I love, like, I think he changed a lot of this. And so I have a huge amount of admiration still listen to his podcast almost every time and you go on there and I was like, this is going to be tense. And I have to say, you totally owned him. I mean, he wasn't prepared for the interview. He was not, he had not. I think he had only almost seen clips of your thing. I don't even know if he'd listened to the whole thing. You came in, were you nervous to do that? I mean, this is the biggest. Along with part of my take the biggest podcast platform. And you kind of destroyed him.
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A
Well, listen, I am one of, I'm one of you in that regard. I grew up reading him. I distinctly remember just like the color scheme of page.
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B
Oh yeah, yellow. It was that yellow and red.
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A
It's just it imprinted itself on Me, I read no sports writer because he also wrote 10,000 word columns. Right?
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B
But. But, like, his draft reviews were so good. I would.
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A
The live running. So good. Yeah, all, dude. I read all of it. All of it. And also a listener to his show. Still today, we have many, many friends in common, which is part of why I had my backup a bit about, like, why is he coming at me for this? Without seemingly, as I would discover, really having listened or watched the stuff that I made, Was I nervous? I was at that point so steeped in the reporting on Belichick that I was ready. But it was nerve wracking in the sense of, like, this is an opportunity for me to kind of step. I've had these moments a couple of times when you start doing television. Certainly you kind of feel like you've climbed into the television when you meet certain people. Simmons is like that. He was like that in that moment. I remember I was going to the airport. I was, like, about to fly home. I was headed to lax. My suitcase was in the studio, and I was like, I'm about to get on a plane right after this. I'm gonna feel either very bad.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Or, or, or maybe at best, just like, pretty good. And it ended up being a conversation that I was very, very, very glad to have had because I got to argue my way to, I think, some point of public persuasiveness.
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B
But also, you changed my mind on it. You changed my mind. I mean, I was critical. I thought you had kind of like, all right, that's enough, Pablo and I, I.
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A
Which is a. By the way, that's a fair. So the whole thing of, like, what I had done for people who aren't familiar, it got to the point where I was like, I'm going to solve every available mystery that I feel is significant to the understanding of the story. And so there was a ring camera video that Tom Brady.
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B
When you did the ring camera, I was like, all right, that's a lot. You're. You're doing this. Didn't you rent the Airbnb or something?
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A
I stared at the bed where allegedly the magic would have happened. I recreated the ring camera video. I hired an army. I mean, not hired. I didn't pay him anything, but I enlisted an army of geo guessers to help geolocate it. Yeah, I. Look, I do serious things stupidly and stupid things seriously. And I do not, I do not have any illusion about the idea that when, if, if someone were to see that in isolation, they would say this. You're an Insane person. And I would have to own that. And so for me to explain, like, this whole approach I had inside of a larger story I was telling that I can and won't belabor here, dude, I appreciate you listening, because all I can ask for in an era in which we are flooded by everything is for someone to give what I'm doing a shot.
- [22:41]
B
And I think. I think people should listen to that. It's. It's the. On a Bill Simmons, I think you did a great job, and you did kind of flip my perspective. And I was like, that's very cool. By the way, you also are friends with. I mean, the two people that I would still be a lawyer if these two people did not exist, without question, is Bill Simmons, who I haven't met, but who I've talked to. And then one person who I have never met who, if I don't meet before he dies, will make me very sad, which is Tony Kornheiser. I mean, my entire radio. If you turned on my radio show, it is a cheap imitation of Tony Kornheiser's radio show. I love him on pti, but his radio show, to me, was like. Like everything that I wanted to do was Kornheiser. And the combination of Bill writing and the way Tony made the radio show his life to where I cared about the Washington Nationals through him. And you're close to him. Tell me, because I don't know if I'll ever meet him, because he just doesn't go anywhere. Is he awesome or is he a grump? Or do I.
- [23:54]
A
What? Yes, yes and yes. I mean, he's the closest thing to Larry David in real life.
- [24:00]
B
I love Larry David, too. So, yes.
- [24:03]
A
Oh, he's a recluse. He is unapologetic. He has a point of view. He will call me and without any introduction, just start yelling, takes at me. And it's the best, man. It's the best. And his radio show, to your point, which is now a podcast, Tony Kornheiser show. I have talked to him about this. Not because I have a radio empire like you, Matt, or because I aspire to make a show like that one, but simply because I have gotten to appreciate the way in which he is. Also this template for doing something differently that inspired a lot of people to figure out how to creatively do radio that involved their friends. That involved. Of course. And Simmons took this from Kornheiser to pop culture as well as hardcore sports fandom.
- [24:47]
B
Well, he made the people on the show like, that's what I Loved about. And you're right, Simmons does it, too, with his friend Joe House and John in complex litigation. And these people that I'll never meet, but that I feel like I know he did it with his little crew. And it's funny, because now I do ESPN radio. Right?
- [25:06]
A
Yeah.
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B
And when I first started, they were conscientiously moving as far away from the Kornheiser way of doing radio possible. And I came in and they. I remember I said, my heroes, Tony Kornheiser, and they looked at me like, your hero should be Mike and Mike. And I was like, I kind of think Mike and Mike sucks. But they left me on. And now fast forward seven years, and ESPN is embracing what Kornheiser did 15 years ago with the whole McAfee. And they let me do, like, I do my thing now. Yeah. But it's funny how that shifted. Kornheiser was ahead of his time.
- [25:43]
A
Oh, look. My whole bet. And I talk to Kornizer all the time. He is, like, truly, genuinely a mentor of mine. And he is somebody who is so blunt about how he feels about things that I really do look up to him in ways that I can't personally enact in my life. Like I can't be Larry David.
- [26:04]
B
Yeah.
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A
But when it comes to why and how he made his show, like, what he always tells me over and over again, which, by the way, I have quietly plagiarized the. These coming words in everything I said already. He just goes to me, smart and funny.
- [26:18]
B
Yeah. He said, I've heard him say that. I've heard him say. I've heard him say that about you before.
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A
But. And that's the greatest for me as a fan of his. And it's also the greatest thing that I appreciate in others. If you think about it, I'm like, look, I. If you can be funny.
- [26:38]
B
Yeah.
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A
Without leading with it. If you can be smart without hitting people over the head with that, then, like, you can. You can get away with a lot. I mean, he. And by the way, there's another thing about him, which is, like, he's a. He's an unapologetic generalist. Like, he's.
- [26:54]
B
He just starts his show with what happened to him yesterday, which is what I do. He would talk about the music coming out of breaks. Like, talk about the songs, which, I mean, I don't think my listeners realize how much of my show is just stolen from him. He literally would talk about, like, going to get breakfast. He would talk about the song as it comes out. I took stole that from him too. He would just make his fandom. His is the Nationals. Mine is, well, Kentucky. But like I do the Reds and the Carolina Hurricanes and people follow it through me like it's all stolen from him. And so I was supposed to meet him once Pablo and I had a, well, I had a relative die and I had to, I had to miss it. And I still, one day I will.
- [27:38]
A
I will, I will be a backstage okay connector however I can because I do think he would appreciate somebody who studies and does radio in a way that he would obviously recognize. And by the way, the thing that I asked him when I was launching Pablo Torre finds out which is not like that show, but has of course spiritual sorts of like aspects. I am telling stories to my friends. I am not taking myself terribly seriously. I do try to be smart and funny, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The thing that he told me about how to do a show was you want to start a club in which anybody can be a member.
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B
Love it. Yes.
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A
And I'm like, yes, you want. Yes. So inside jokes references this internal sort of history that you build, but you want it to be accessible to whoever wants to join. And that to me is, I didn't.
- [28:31]
B
Know he said that, but he's exactly right about that. You want it to be in Kentucky. I have always tried to make it to where listeners feel like there are friends. And I think that's, that's how you know you're, you're doing it right. You know, summertime means hot days, hard work and fighting to find time to slow down. That's important. Thankfully, we've got Cornbread Hemp. They're here to help. Their lineup of natural hemp based wellness products are designed to help you stress less, move more and sleep better. I use them. They help me to feel great. And whether you're looking to swap your evening cocktail for something without the hangover, if you need relief after a long day of work or you just want to find a moment to chill, they got you covered. Infused seltzers are light, refreshing and perfect for those moments when you want to feel good but not feel guilty or have a hangover. Plus, their full spectrum gummies and oils are made with USDA organic ingredients that work. Go to cornbread hemp.com Matt Jones and go ahead and use my code. Matt Jones. It's 30% off your order, by the way. There are other places you can get this, but this is a better deal. Cornbreadhemp.com Matt Jones and the code is Matt Jones Cornbread Hemp this is the good life. All right, let me ask you about Rick Pitino.
- [29:50]
A
You.
- [29:51]
B
Years ago, I think I met you because you wrote me and asked me something about Rick Pitino. I think everybody knows that he had sex with a woman in an Italian restaurant. And I think most people know that his staff paid for prostitutes for recruits. I still don't, however, think the country understands just how crazy that story was. As someone who sat in. In every moment of the Karen Cipher trial and heard him say, I did down my leg in less than 15 seconds. It was my tweet that got that out to the world.
- [30:29]
A
Yes.
- [30:30]
B
Do you think the craziness of the Rick Patino story is still not totally appreciated?
- [30:36]
A
Absolutely not. And it's a shame, because if you appreciate something like a true crime story that is just full of almost like this, whether it's Veep or the Coen brothers, just like this deep incompetence that's borderline Mafioso, there's nothing really like it. I mean, the thing that I keep on. And by the way, I remember I was covering the story for Sports Illustrated when I was there. I was in Louisville. I was. I remember I interviewed Karen Cypher at her kitchen table.
- [31:04]
B
Yes.
- [31:04]
A
I was going through forms. I hugged her at one point. Just like a very surreal. Like, I'm just now. It's, like, coming back to me. But the thing that people.
- [31:12]
B
She called and asked me to represent her. Oh, my God, dude, I'm not kidding. I can say that because I didn't say yes, so I can. But she did, like. And I was like, that would be too insane. You can't have me do that.
- [31:25]
A
In the movie version, you do. For the record, in the movie version, you do that. But the thing that I don't think people realize just fundamentally. And we did an episode of my show in which we dove down the rabbit hole and found yet more burrows that are just bat on this story. But the thing on the front end, you got to know is that Karen Seifer did not disappear.
- [31:47]
B
No.
- [31:47]
A
She then married one of his most trusted.
- [31:50]
B
Okay, don't just. You can't skip over, though. This is even crazier. She married the man that Patino asked to take her to drive to go get the abortion. And they fell in love on the trip. And in the trial, he testified that he fell in love with her. When they pulled over at a subway on the way home from the clinic, Matt.
- [32:28]
A
They just wanted it to have. She wanted to have it her way. All right. Is there anything wrong with that?
- [32:37]
B
That's a wild story, dude. There's no wilder story.
- [32:40]
A
Every. Every granular detail, and you're so right to. To slow it down. Every granular detail is absurd. The fact that they have a child. The fact that on the baptismal certificate which I reviewed is the priest that would sit on the Louisville basketball bench. He was the one who signed and. And validated that this child is going to have it. I mean, every step of this for years was coexisting in a way that seems incomprehensible given that she was also the person who would, you know, go to jail for trying to extort him. Like, all of these things coexisted in a way that I think is a remarkable window into how Rick Pitino does business.
- [33:26]
B
A great moment of the trial, Pablo, is they brought these men in who were having a relationship with Karen Cipher at the same time. I think the theory was to say, look, you know, that. I don't know what the. I guess that she also was into other men. And this man came up and he worked for the. For the water department in Louisville. And their premise was going to be that Karen Cipher fell in love with people without them, without really knowing them. And she asked this guy, and he's this country guy. He comes, he's got a pot belly, and she goes. And he was like, trying to say, she was really into me. She was really into me. And on cross, Karen Cipher's attorney goes, she wasn't really into you. I said, she was like, honestly, sir, do you. How do you know she even knew your name? And he looks there and goes, well, it was on my belt buckle. And I decided at that moment that it was my favorite trial of all time. I mean, she knew her name because it was on his belt buckle.
- [34:32]
A
I didn't. This is. I'm finding some stuff out today. I didn't know that detail. Somehow that fell through the cracks on my.
- [34:38]
B
Funny, there was almost like the Louisville media wouldn't report the trial. They literally. They would not report the trial.
- [34:44]
A
I met her as she was walking out of the. A hearing about child support, which, by the way, Rick Pitino was providing. So, like, the whole thing of just like, everything about this had this small town feel. But Louisville is also not actually a small town. Also a town, a major American city for whom Rick Patino and his protector, his protectors at the university who stood by him through all of the other crazy things you alluded to, including, you know, strippers and sexual. I don't even know what the right noun is to follow Sexual. Fill in the blank escapades at a room. In a room at a building named after his dearly departed 9 11. You know, victim, Billy.
- [35:36]
B
He's like, Billy Minardi. Yeah.
- [35:38]
A
What are we doing here?
- [35:40]
B
It's. It's unbelievable.
- [35:41]
A
So look, I could. I just like the fact that part of my reporting also involved going up. Porcini, the restaurant.
- [35:47]
B
So you went to Porcinis?
- [35:49]
A
Oh, yeah. It's great.
- [35:50]
B
I've sat in the booth, right?
- [35:53]
A
I was. I remember. I remember trying to be like, okay, so I'm ordering whatever, like, the meatballs. And I'm like, so Vinnie Tatum, who was lying down horizontally across the seats right nearby, like, keeping watch of the door, while Karen cipher, within 15 seconds is. Is, you know, is running a real, you know, hurry up offense.
- [36:16]
B
And Vinny Tatum has become a friend of ours. Like, it is such a bizarre. I, I, I could.
- [36:21]
A
God bless Vinny Tatum.
- [36:23]
B
God bless Vinnie Tatum. Man, you. Everybody needs a friend like Vinnie Tatum. I'll just say so.
- [36:27]
A
So, so this is also the thing about it, is how these coaches who are not merely just like sports figures, but, like, really important, local, I mean, borderline political leaders, how they create the system around them, Right. Belichick is doing it one way. Patino, man, the, the, the. The guys he curated, since they were ball boys with the Celtics in some cases.
- [36:53]
B
Yeah.
- [36:54]
A
This is a loyalty that is generational. And so.
- [36:57]
B
And it's still there. The same faces that were at Kentucky and, And we're at Louisville now. Sit on the sidelines at St. John's I mean, they really do. I went to St. John's first game under Patino. I went. They was at their Luke Carneseca gym, at this old gym on their campus. And I was like, I've seen all of these people before. They're all. They're all here and now. And then Rick Pitino ended up on my show, which I never thought would ever happen, but it did. You know, Clayton and Croom was founded on a simple idea. All leather goods should last a lifetime. They make everything from bags, belts, wallets, and much more. And the best part, they're doing it right here in Kentucky. You can check them out. Claytonandkrum.com that's C R U M E dot com. Or you can visit their flagship retail store in Louisville at 216 S. Shelby St. That's in Nulu. It's Clayton and Croom. Quality leather goods. Built to last. Well, I want to give you some credit because I don't want you to think I don't Want people to think you only do these, like, salacious stores.
- [37:57]
A
You. I don't just investigate older, greatest of all time level college coaches.
- [38:03]
B
Well, they are the more interesting. But you also ended up getting the NFL Players association president to resign. And I actually, this is a little salacious, but it's also, you know, he ended up. I saw. The thing I saw about it was that he would take the players association money and go to the strip club. But there was more. There was deeper than that. Explain to people what that was.
- [38:25]
A
Yeah. So my curiosity started with this, because there was a collusion ruling, which is, by the way, like the number one hot button issue that the union was suing the league over, that went to arbitration. And this ruling never was talked about, never leaked, never was discussed. And so me and Mike Florio, I mean, Mike Florio basically put out a ransom being like, can anybody get this document? And I'm a guy who gets documents. And so I'm like, let me see if I can get it. And what you realize in this document is the answer to a question of why would the NFL and the nflpa, the union and the league, these sworn enemies, arch nemesis. Why would they both agree to keep something secret from everybody, including the membership of the union as well as all these executives in the NFL?
- [39:18]
B
So collusion in what way? How are they colluding?
- [39:21]
A
So the finding was that the league attempted to collude by Roger Goodell. I mean, this is documented. So let me. Let me wind up a little bit. So Deshaun Watson gets signed to the worst contract in NFL history, right? Fully guaranteed 200 plus million dollars. And the reaction from the league office, it turns out, because in this collusion arbitration, in the series of legal proceedings behind closed doors in which Roger Goodell, eight NFL owners, Lamar Jackson, Russell Wilson, Kyler Murray, the NFL's general counsel, a slew of executives, the executive director of the nflpa, all of them have to testify. All of them, Matt, and you as a lawyer will appreciate this. All of them submit to expedited discovery.
- [40:13]
B
Mm.
- [40:14]
A
Which means you get the. You get the cell phones, you get the texts, you get the emails. So I say all that to say that Roger Goodell documented in emails, sent messages to his general counsel in which they told the owners at the annual meeting, the league meetings, the big meetings in front of the 32 NFL teams do not give guaranteed contracts out. That is the. The Cliff Notes version of it. And that attempt, the arbitrator documented in detail. And there are again, just texts between owners in which they're Celebrating not giving guaranteed deals out to Kyler Murray, which will save the Chargers owner money on Justin Herbert. You have the realization that Lamar Jackson, after he was non exclusively franchise tagged by the Ravens, got zero incoming offers. Zero.
- [41:06]
B
Yeah. And the reason that matters for people who, who wouldn't sort of understand is in order for the NFL to kind of get exempt from antitrust laws, they have to operate under this sort of fiction that they're all competing with each other, which they are on the field. But you would be on the path to violating antitrust if the owners all agreed behind the scenes to do things that they didn't, that didn't do in collective bargaining. So for the same reason that like if every gas station in the country all agreed to raise gas prices, that would be antitrust. That's why what you found would matter.
- [41:44]
A
Yes. And I would say that even if you don't appreciate what Matt just very succinctly summarized better than I could, you just get a window into the way that all of these people talk behind the scenes. And so you get the texts, you get the emails, you get these transcripts, these testimonies, and they are bumbling. They are simply saying the things that the NFL Players association has been trying to get people to believe for decades. And they finally have this proof. It was called to me by a union source, the Holy Grail. Because here you have proof of this attempt to collude in like 4k level quality, right? Billionaires, I mean, Robert Kraft, John Mara, like down the line, just like famous, powerful people, clearly doing the thing they never want to be caught doing. They got caught doing it. But the union and the league agreed to suppress via confidentiality agreement, this document, which no one had ever seen until I published it.
- [42:49]
B
And so why did the players association head agree just because he liked to go to the strip club?
- [42:54]
A
Well, the larger story there is that this whole arbitration grievance, the collusion grievance, was filed by the previous regime. That was Demora Smith. Demora Smith was the adversarial former prosecutor. Yeah, I remember this regime was led by aforementioned strip club enthusiast Lloyd Howell, who was by his own reputation, his self styled image, somebody who was a businessman who was going to get along with the league in ways that the previous regime didn't. And so that plus the fact that the election of Lloyd Howell, as we report exhaustively in the episode, was this deeply corrupt and unusually secretive process in which literally the names of the two finalists for that job that went to Strip Club Guy, the names of the finalists were not Revealed for the voters until the day they showed up. Because the union executive committee, the players who run this thing, had amended the constitution to prevent the media from apparently looking into this. All of it was unusually secretive and suspicious.
- [44:01]
B
All the more. I'm sure that'll make players like Russell Wilson more than they already did, which wasn't. Which wasn't a lot. I want to go quickly before we get done. I want you to give you a few minutes on a couple of these other things. These are recent episodes that caught my eye. Guy. I'm a big wrestling guy, you know, I mean, I. I bought a terrible financial decision wrestling company, so I love it. You say Dennis Rodman and Carl Malone, who fought, played each other in the 98 finals, but also were fighting in wrestling at the same time. Well, just tell me what the argument is about them, because people will remember they played in the finals, but then they would also show up in wrestling rings.
- [44:44]
A
Yes, they. I mean, I didn't realize how truly parallel this wrestling timeline was happening to the 1998 NBA Finals. The most iconic finals. Michael Jordan's legacy being sealed. The mythology of him being born with this shot over Brian Russell, Karl Malone and Dennis Rodman. We talked to. I mean, we talked to Diamond Dallas Page about this.
- [45:06]
B
He does good yoga. He should help.
- [45:08]
A
Oh, my God. Just a truly. A truly limber character.
- [45:13]
B
He's actually changed a lot of people's lives with that. Yeah. I mean, he's saying no joke. Yeah, for real joke.
- [45:19]
A
But the point being that with him and with Eric Bischoff, they outlined how the best. This was like proto influencer, economic logic. They realized that the best advertisement for the bash at the beach, which was the event that Rodman and Malone were going to wrestle at, what was it?
- [45:38]
B
Was it going to be Rodman and Hogan versus Malone and Diamond Dallas Page.
- [45:41]
A
Right. Yes.
- [45:42]
B
Okay.
- [45:42]
A
Yes, yes, yes. And the best possible advertisement for that setup was literally the NBA Finals. And so they orchestrated a plan to get Malone and Rodman to basically promote by fighting each other during the finals.
- [45:59]
B
Oh, so when he kicked him, that was set up.
- [46:03]
A
It was just the big. I mean, that clip, which was in the Last Dance, was the tip of the iceberg. We went back and rewatched the whole thing.
- [46:11]
B
Yeah.
- [46:11]
A
And you see all you. I didn't remember how much the diamond cutter got thrown into the air. Like, I'm not you. Could we play it in the YouTube channel? You see multiple. Just like it's.
- [46:27]
B
And by the way, by Carl, you mean he would throw.
- [46:29]
A
Yes. By Karl Malone. His Partner. And so he's throwing up the diamond. And I'm like, either it's, it's just, I mean, truly, without being so tongue in cheek about it, it just seems undeniable that the reason they were behaving Malone and Rodman in the NBA bleeping Finals, the reason they were behaving the way they were was because they were also promoting this thing that was going to happen.
- [46:53]
B
That's amazing.
- [46:54]
A
Right after the Finals, you're like, how do you deny this?
- [46:57]
B
Yeah. My wrestling fandom was at its probably heaviest and I always sort of suspected that the kick had to be a little bit of wrestling, but I didn't realize that it was so much of it. I'm going to have to go back and listen now. You also talked about one of my favorite stories in sports history, Mario. Do you know that the Yankees players once traded wives? Two players on the Yankees traded wives and families, I believe. Tell people what that, what happened.
- [47:30]
A
You might know it as the wife swap. The Yankee wife swap. But you are right, Matt. This was two pitchers, two lefties on the same Yankees pitching staff in the 70s, actually trading places so that they swapped families and pets.
- [47:45]
B
They did it to their pets.
- [47:47]
A
Oh, it was, it was, it was truly like a Trading Places scenario. And the best part about this story, which again, I cannot stress this enough, is completely real, is that one couple, this is Mike Hacking and Fritz Petersen by the two Yankee pitchers. One couple was like, within a week, we're like, we, this isn't going to work. We got, we should undo this. And they were like, yeah, yeah, we should undo this. The other couple was like, hell no.
- [48:13]
B
We love it.
- [48:14]
A
This is, we love it. And that couple, spoiler alert. Lasted for more than 50 years.
- [48:20]
B
No way. So let me go back because I, I, I, I knew this happened, but did they just like get together and say switcheroo? Like what, like, what was the, what did they, how did they make it happen?
- [48:35]
A
Effectively, yes. I mean, so there. Look, this was the 70s, man. The 70s.
- [48:39]
B
70S were a different time. Yeah.
- [48:41]
A
Not to sound like Charlie Murphy, it was. Yeah, it was a real, it was a real different time. Look, there was a party that was held by a sports writer for, I believe the Daily News at the time. And it's the sort of party in the 70s where like the Yankees would go. And so there is this scene that we recreate in which the two couples who arrived as they previously were, show up and they, you know, there are, let's be clear about this, there are like swinger kind of vibes.
- [49:09]
B
I've heard of it.
- [49:09]
A
Tea party kind of vibes here. But they end up agreeing, hey, let's leave in separate cars and meet up at a diner.
- [49:17]
B
Like, this is like a 2am okay.
- [49:19]
A
And one couple goes right to the diner. The other couple gets there like an hour or two later. Right. So they are like, okay, now. So they're. They're enjoying themselves.
- [49:30]
B
So they switched at the party, went off their separate ways to swing, and then we're gonna meet at the diner to have some hash browns after.
- [49:39]
A
Yeah. Like real Americans. Okay. And. And what turns out to be the case is that they both decide to do this, which is, again, it's. It's just.
- [49:49]
B
That is one of the great. That's. That's kind of like the Patino Story. More people should know it. That's. That's crazy.
- [49:55]
A
By the way, Matt, there were press conferences about this Spring training, the tabloid. Johnny Carson. We play a clip from the Tonight show from the 70s. Johnny Carson makes a joke about this.
- [50:06]
B
I love it.
- [50:07]
A
This, this. So. But the, the. The real, like, nitty gritty of like, what was it like as a character study? Who are these people? That's where again, like, this is. These are all. Every episode you've mentioned so far, which I'm so glad you have. These are movies to me.
- [50:21]
B
Yeah.
- [50:21]
A
And it's crazy that people don't know. It's crazy that they're not bigger box office hits.
- [50:26]
B
As a matter of fact, somebody's gonna make a movie about that. The Yankees thing. It just hasn't been like, there's a Netflix documentary or there's something that will come. Well, your documentary, by the way, you can listen to all these on Pablo Torre finds out I did one. I did not listen to that. I want you to give me the quick version of I saw the headline that TRL was rigged. Is that true? I watched tr. Are you telling me the Backstreet Boys were not number one every day?
- [50:58]
A
It was an inside job, man. The most influential television Show in the 1990s, the thing that drove the business of pop culture and music was rigged. And it was presented. For those who don't know, it was presented. This is Times Square.
- [51:16]
B
Every day after the biggest thing in.
- [51:17]
A
The world screaming like the, the, the, the. The archetype of just like the 90s boy band era.
- [51:24]
B
And everyone would get on it. Eminem, like every musician. Oh, there's the famous Oasis interview with the guy. Like everyone came on.
- [51:31]
A
But, but the point. And to your. And by the way, Puff Daddy then Diddy is there. Like everybody from that time, JLO is there. But the point being that, like, these boy bands kept on winning. And of course, they were very popular. But also, of course, there was this sham democracy in which it was a call in show. You would call in and you wait for the lineup to be revealed from 10 to 1. And it was. We got the MTV executives who ran the show on tape to admit this. Yes, they rigged it.
- [52:01]
B
Oh, no.
- [52:01]
A
And it's just like, are you gonna.
- [52:03]
B
Tell me Ruben Studdard did not beat Clay Aiken? Is that gonna be the next thing you tell me?
- [52:09]
A
I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm gonna start sounding like Donald Trump talking about, you know, smartmatic voting machines pretty soon.
- [52:16]
B
Yeah, you've got to be careful about that. Okay, this is. This is for the KSR listeners. We have had more fun in the last 15 years laughing about what I still think is one of the. Is maybe the funniest moment, certainly on the NBA draft ever, where when Shane Battier interviewed this kid that got picked from Russia and he asked him a question and the poor kid could barely speak English. And he just says like, he was this, he was that. And then Shane Battier has absolutely no idea what to say. And he just looks at him and goes, well, that's great. And we've been using that drop of well, that's great for over a decade. It's maybe my favorite clip of all time. I saw you had Shane Battier on and you were talking about how his ESPN career failed. And I think if you went back and looked at Shane Battier in college and with you would have probably said, though there's no more sure thing as a media analyst in the history of mankind than Shane Battier. Why didn't it work with him? And just how does he feel about that? Because everyone thought he would be the next. Whatever J Bill is, sort of pick your person.
- [53:27]
A
Oh, by the way, that clip is the clip we played for him that made him reckon with exactly what your read of it is, which is he is not good in this role.
- [53:37]
B
He just wasn't.
- [53:38]
A
No, no, he wasn't. And I think there's a. And he. He sort of reclines on the therapy couch with us about that for a bit. Because what's so stunning as you listen to him on this episode or just in life is how charismatic, effortlessly charismatic he is. He's.
- [53:52]
B
I was at Duke with him. He dated my next door neighbor growing up. I got to know him. He was smart.
- [53:59]
A
He.
- [53:59]
B
He was charming. I Thought, no way. He doesn't work.
- [54:03]
A
Oh, and he can laugh at himself and he's great. And so it's like this special combination of things. But he was just. I think there's. Look, we see in sports television all of the time how people get put into roles that aren't actually playing to their strengths. That interview, like Badier, shouldn't be interviewing random draft prospects, number one. Number two, though, they should at least.
- [54:25]
B
Be able to speak English if they're.
- [54:26]
A
Going to, you know, that it was. It wasn't doing him any favors, certainly the language barrier. It was also the case, though, that Battier, this job was a job he started doing almost out of an obligation to what everybody expected him to do at a time when he was still, like, not at peace with him no longer playing professional basketball. So it was like this incredibly. Just like, just a sad mental image of Badier just, like going from city to city trying to cosplay.
- [55:00]
B
What does he do now?
- [55:02]
A
Oh, my God. I mean, so he was in the front office of the Miami Heat.
- [55:04]
B
Okay.
- [55:05]
A
He left that job, and now he's one of these guys who has, like two books coming out and he hosts a podcast. And he is doing exactly what he should be. He's like. He's a renaissance man. He's doing a zillion different things, and he's.
- [55:16]
B
That was a great. I hate Duke. Even though I went there, I hate it worse than anything. The baddie, a Williams boozer dunleavy team is, if not the best college basketball team of my life. It's in the conversation. I mean, it's. They were. They were unbelievable to watch in person. I'll finish with this. You worked with Bomani Jones, who's my really, really good friend, and you. You worked with him on a TV show. And I remember when that started, I thought, this is going to be great. I mean, these two dudes are both insanely smart. I mean, it's gonna work. And I actually thought it looked amazing. I have a. My ex girlfriend at the time was in TV production, and I remember we were watching it one time and she said, that show looks amazing. Just visually, like, the way it was done, the show ended up not really working. I know I've talked to Bomani about how hard that was for him. Was it hard for you to have a show with that platform and it just didn't work.
- [56:21]
A
Absolutely. I mean, I remember, dude to sort of like go full circle here. I remember the day after our first episode. It was an hour long. It was live. It was Shot in this cinematic.
- [56:32]
B
Yeah, that's what it looked like. A movie. Yeah, yeah.
- [56:34]
A
Way it was. That's Eric Ride Home, who had the aesthetic idea for it, almost like a western, was how it would open the bell and then like this soundtrack.
- [56:43]
B
Yeah, I forgot about that.
- [56:45]
A
The day after we did the first episode, Tony Kornheiser calls me and he says, you guys are gonna take over pti. I've seen enough. That's it. And he does not do this easily or freely, but that's the level of sort of like expectation and the level of just like, wow, this is working after day one. And then when you go back in time and you realize, okay, so the show then about a year later, got sawed in half to 30 minutes. It got moved time slots, and concurrent with that was this idea that. Wait a minute. Neither of. Neither Beau nor I felt like we. Like we were being our best selves in that role. To me, did you feel that?
- [57:27]
B
Cause I know he felt that way. You didn't feel like it was using your best thing?
- [57:33]
A
I didn't. I was not experienced enough at that point in my career to have the vantage point that Bomani had about, like, what he was missing from his own sort of like, vision of himself. I was very like, I am just paddling as fast as I can to just keep this thing on air because I want this to work and all of that. But when I look back and I realized, like, what did we both do since we left that show? I'm like, we chose to do things that are far more. They're far more like us than what that show was having us do, especially in that 30 minute sort of format. To me, the squeeze really became palpable when it went from an hour to 30 minutes. And it felt like now we have to try and be. We were like auditioning to get bit more.
- [58:19]
B
Well, you had to try to be pti. And that wasn't necessarily what you two do.
- [58:25]
A
No, I mean, like the thing that I loved the most was in the hour long version, there was our D segment. The segment was called this Blank Story. And it was basically like any topic from sports, even vaguely sports, you would just get like a 10 minute chunk to just like deep dive into it as if we were podcasting.
- [58:44]
B
Yeah.
- [58:44]
A
And that was where.
- [58:46]
B
And that's what you do.
- [58:47]
A
That's where we were most differentiated. Everything else felt. It felt to me in retrospect, and I'm. I'm so proud of what we tried to do. But I also cringe at myself because I'M like, man, I'm also like, cosplaying what I thought I should be and that was not fun for anybody. So I look, I am glad that we had that. I am glad that we both ended up finding, like, what it is we should probably be doing with our respective careers. But yeah, I just think that when it comes to the show that exists in the tradition of pti, you really immediately appreciate why PTI is important.
- [59:33]
B
I'll finish with this. I. I've always wondered this, and I hope you understand where I'm coming from with this. You. There's a group of people, you're one of them. Bomani, Mina Kimes, Katie Nolan. This, this group of people that ESPN brought in, all very smart, all very interesting, all people that I really like. I mean, there's a number of them. What's the guy's name that Skipper? Is that the person who brought all those folks in? And when culture changed and people just all of a sudden started using the word woke in a derogatory term and all of a sudden there was this flip. ESPN is to whatever you guys in some ways became the face of that to me, unfairly. But you did. And you have the Clay Travis's of the world who decided that you, Mina, you know, Jamel Hill was part of it. I don't know that I put her with you all, but that. But that group, you guys became almost a cultural flashing point that ESPN was not sports, it was woke mob stuff. I hated it. Bomani would fight people about it. But you, that's not you. You're not go on social media and hit people, which is what Bomani would do. Did that hurt?
- [60:58]
A
I was bothered by it, but I also just feel like I have this philosophy when I'm walking down the street in New York City where if someone wants to start something with me, I have so much more to lose as a general principle than whatever they have to gain. I'm just somebody who's like, yeah, I'm just going to keep it moving, man.
- [61:17]
B
But it didn't bother you like when, when, when you are a cultural talking point and the president is sitting there railing on if not you, the whole idea of you, does that bother? I mean, it had to be hard.
- [61:32]
A
Here's what was frustrating about it. We talked about sports so much. So the whole idea of like you guys are doing an hour or a half hour or whatever it is on ESPN and the thing that keeps on getting used against you is the one topic in a given day in which you are doing something That I think we were hired and empowered. Perhaps to the problem everybody is, is complaining about to actually be smart and funny about this thing. Like, Bomani says this all the time. And I agree, not everybody should be weighing in on these complicated topics.
- [62:10]
B
Yeah, but those who, but coincidentally though, I mean, they, let's be real, there were no white males put in that conversation. It was. They came after you, they came after Bomani, they came after women. Katie. Like, it was very me. Like, no, I mean, it wasn't convenient. It was intentional. Like, even LeBatard, who shares your all's point of view, he rarely got put in that group. It was you all. So I think it was unbelievably unfair.
- [62:39]
A
Yeah, I mean, I, when you put it like that, I am mad. No, look, but you should be.
- [62:46]
B
I was mad for you all. And I, I don't even, I barely know most of you.
- [62:50]
A
The thing that was bothersome to me was to have your whole thing, what you do professionally, reduced to being quote, unquote, woke. I'm like, man, you really are missing why any of us are any good at what it is that we do. Like, it's not the ability to talk about quote, unquote, social issues is certainly a strength, certainly for Bomani, certainly for. I'd like to think that I can do that too. But man, the whole thing of you guys have hijacked the ESPN airwaves to shove down the viewers throats. This thing they don't want is an active misrepresentation of what it is we were doing on a minute to minute basis. It just wasn't the majority and it wasn't even close to the majority. It was like the one topic we would do. And frankly, Matt, the thing that was frustrating was a lot of people were. And now we're just in a vastly different time. But back then, a tweet you sent in your own personal life was an example of something that ESPN was allegedly saying on air. And so if you were at all weighing in on Donald Trump and Colin Kaepernick in, you know, 2016, it was as if you were saying that on SportsCenter and we weren't.
- [64:07]
B
But they also never ply it the other way. I mean, Clay Travis can write a book called Stick to Sports and he has not done anything of the sort ever since. And I, you know, that is what annoys me like as a progressive person, that is fine saying it.
- [64:26]
A
Right. I.
- [64:29]
B
But I get annoyed on your.
- [64:31]
A
Behalf because I'm afraid of saying it.
- [64:34]
B
By the way, but I don't but they also. I also am coherent enough to recognize that while people will tell me to stick to sports, they just accept stuff from me that they will not accept from you and they will not accept from. From a woman in sports. And it just. That infuriates me. Like, if you want to tell me I suck too, that's fine. But, like, I. I just think it was. I think the way they treated you all just in terms of whether you got hired or fired is honestly mostly a financial decision usually.
- [65:05]
A
But.
- [65:07]
B
But I just thought the way you were treated was just unfair.
- [65:10]
A
Yeah, I mean, we were. We were. We were classified as the problem. And the explanation, by the way, for why espn. It was not the decline of the cable bundle, Matt. It was not the rise of the.
- [65:24]
B
Internet, and it was not that maybe you and Bomani just weren't in the thing that you would be the best at.
- [65:30]
A
It wasn't any of those things which are far more mundane and like a lot of other things that lots of people experience in the business of sports media, it was the fact that we dared to essentially insult the audience by shoving race down their throats. And look, maybe you get that impression if you're on Twitter, I guess. But now the thing that I marvel at, sort of in retrospect, is we're at this moment in time where Stephen A. Smith is plausibly running for president, in which he is the first one.
- [66:00]
B
That's ridiculous. He is. Okay, come on. I have to be careful because I work at the same company. Stephen. But Stephen A. Smith is not running for president. We died later. Who is for Stephen A. Smith?
- [66:13]
A
I've seen crazier things happen.
- [66:14]
B
I haven't. I'll take that. You. You pick the odds. No offense to him, I don't know him, but that's not, That's. That's not happening.
- [66:24]
A
The point. The. By the way, I look forward to replaying this video.
- [66:29]
B
Well, we're not putting this one up because I don't need to get calls from the British. This will live on the podcast, but it will. It won't be on social media.
- [66:37]
A
Use your discretion. But to that point, the podcast versus Linear Television. Stephen A. Can go on his private independent podcast and talk to Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens and any number of politicians. And he doesn't wear the criticism of sticking to sports.
- [66:57]
B
But it's all. I mean, McAfee can have Aaron Rodgers talk about vaccine skepticism, and it's changed. You guys just hit this period where it was not allowed.
- [67:08]
A
Yeah, because we were non white people andor women and or these quote unquote woke libtards who dared to dare to take over a lot of people's favorite thing. And I just, I'm like, man, look at the, look at the, just the, the math. Like, how much are we on air talking about this stuff? That's the thing that always just bugged me. I'm like, you guys are overreacting to something.
- [67:31]
B
Yeah, Pablo, this was. I really enjoyed this. So Pablo, Tory finds out. It is very. It is excellent. He. I always liked Pablo and I liked the episodes that I would hear. But I was. So what was. What's great about what you did is I was so skeptical. I mean, I. We talked about on the whole Belichick thing and then you kind of won me over by the end of it. I think that's really cool and I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. Thank you very much.
- [68:03]
A
Look, persuasion in 2025 is arguably the most magical, unexpected thing for anyone who makes anything to accomplish. So it is really cool to say that, to hear you say that. And also I look forward to having you on the eventual Rick Pitino sequel episode because you know that's coming.
- [68:21]
B
Oh, dude, I would listen. That's in my wheelhouse. It's either that or it's that or ranting about Mitch McConnell. I can do either one of those two things. Whichever one.
- [68:31]
A
Why not both? Why not?
- [68:32]
B
Why not both? Thank you, Pablo.
- [68:34]
A
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