Transcript of Acquired Podcast on the NFL (with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal)

Wndri Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcast, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcast. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert. Hi, Monica. Hi. Hi, Erin Weekly. Hi. We have a really fun and special episode. We love, and you've probably heard us talk many times about Acquired, one of our favorite podcasts. They do these incredible Incredible deep dives into different companies, the history of the companies, their finances, everything. And the Super Bowl is upon us. That's right. And so I thought it was your idea. I was about to say you had a great idea.

Well, I had the idea to bring them in to do this.

You did. And then they had the idea, what about the NFL? What timing? So we're going to learn the history and the finances of the NFL. And I need you to give me a testimonial. It's so much more interesting than probably anyone would expect, right?

It's so interesting. I don't care about NFL. When they suggested it, I thought that's a good idea for timing, but I wanted the row. Sure. But you know what? It was so fantastic. And I was talking about it all night at your party.

Acquired is hosted by Ben Gilbert and Dave and Rosenthal. Please, if you like this, check out Acquired. There is certainly a business that will interest you. Costco.

Everyone should listen to the Costco episode and be reminded what a beautifully run business. Ethical. Very ethical, lots of integrity. And it's such a good company, and now I'm obsessed with it.

I've been in the Costco religion for years.

I know. I'm late.

I've shot two movies in Costco. Yeah. Please enjoy Ben and David on the NFL.

I'm Jon Robbins, and on my podcast, I sit down with incredible people to ask the very simple question, How do you cope?

From confronting grief and mental health struggles to finding strength in failure, here. Every episode is a raw and honest exploration of what it means to be human. It's not always easy, but it's always real. Whether you're looking for inspiration, comfort, or just a reminder that you're not alone in life's messier moments, join me on How Do You Cope? Follow now to listen to the full trailer or listen to early episodes at free on WNDYRI Plus.

I'm Efa Hersch. I'm Peter Frankerpan. In our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history.

This season, Ginges Khan. Best known for his brutal campaigns, he was accused of causing millions of deaths, but he also gave his followers religious freedom and education.

So is there more to his story than Violence and Bloodshed?

I suspect that there might be, Peter.

And since Violence and Bloodshed is basically all I ever learned about Genghis Khan growing up, I'm actually really curious to find out what lies behind the legend.

I can I promise you are in for a treat because the Mongols were capable of exceptional acts of brutality. But all the stuff in the positive column either is never talked about or gets brushed to one side.

So I'm really grateful to have the chance to speak up for Mongol history.

Followed Legacy Now, wherever you get your podcasts.

Or binge entire seasons early and ad free on WNDYRI Plus. He's an armchase, he's Okay, gentlemen, we are so tickled that you came.

Yes. This is a freebie for us because normally I would have had to do a ton of research, and that has now fallen on both of your shoulders. So Ben and David, you guys are the hosts of Acquired. Does it get back to you how much we talk about Acquired? Yes. Oh, good. Good, good, good. We never know if we're in a vacuum I know.

Even my Hermes hiccup seemed to have made its way back.

Because you liked it so much and you wanted to buy one of the old bags.

And I stand by it.

I don't think there's anything wrong with liking Hermes. Right? Thank you. It is a truly unique thing in the world, and they make it by hand, and it's special.

Wait, why'd you get in trouble?

I was unrelatable.

Too rich. I get it. When I was poor, I hated people like Monica, but now I love people like Monica.

I don't have one. That's the whole point. I just want one.

There's something interesting about what we file offensive or gratuitous, but we don't because a piece of art. No one's mad at Picasso's worth $150 million. They're like, That's rad. But for some reason, this is very triggering for people.

You're mad at the person who owns it.

What I think the counterintuitive thing that I didn't realize till we did the episode on them is there is this spectrum between a functional object and art, and Hermès is somewhere along that spectrum where stuff you buy from Amazon is about the product. You're buying history and brand when you're buying Hermès as much as you are the product. Yes.

Well, I'll tell you, I think it was your Hermes episode that got me interested because our friend Eric, who has zero interest, he was a lawyer who quit, and now he just trades stocks. And he called me and he's like, I've got to get some Hermes stuff.

This is how it happened. This was so funny. We were at a dinner, and we both had these Goyard card case holders, me and this other person, and one was a dupe. He was looking at both of them and he goes, The saddle stitch is the most impressive stitch.

And I was like, Excuse How do you know that?

It was because he had just listened to your episode and he got all of us totally in.

Yeah, all he knows about is the stock market. He vaguely knows law and he knows peptides.

He doesn't know who Natalie Portman is.

Soccer team owner, I think.

Yeah, exactly. You've heard of her. So at any rate, it's really, really great to have you guys. A little bit of background on both of you, because this was a question of mine when I started listening. I was like, why is it these guys have such a deep knowledge on all these things? And then as you cover different companies, I would say that episode, which was phenomenal. Thank you. I was like, they had to be programmers or something. For them to understand the tech as well as you guys both did, I'm sure one of you was better than the other. Ben, you have a computer science degree. That makes a little more sense. But I'm just, as I listen as a fan of the show, trying to piece together how it is you guys ended up with this podcast. Let's just start with, it really was just an endeavor for fun, right? You both have your own careers. You both have different disciplines. So Ben, kick us off with how you came to the podcast.

David and I met at a Passover Sater and we instantly hit it off. You know those friends where you keep thinking, we should do drinks more often, and you try, and then it's like every two or three months. You're like, why don't we see each other more often? Well, at one of these scheduled drinks that actually happened, I gave David two pitches. One was acquired and the other was a podcast that was a much worse idea.

I would love to know the worst idea.

It was companies that had successfully innovated more than once.

It would have been a very short one. I was going to say, I can't imagine you get a ton of episodes.

You might run out.

Okay, but you went to Ohio State? I did. Congratulations. Did you guys just win?

National champions.

Well, I went to UGA, so I also have a national championship background. Just throwing that out there.

You and I did a lot.

We've done so much. I see you another fishermen.

Now, okay, why did you end up at Ohio State?

I grew up in the Cleveland Akron area. I applied to nine colleges, but my entire family went to Ohio State. We were touring, and we were opening different gates, walking around the Horseshoe, and one was open. My dad and I walked all the way up to top of the South stands. We're looking out over all of campus and I'm looking out over the field and realizing I could go to a lot of games if I come here. I think there's a specialness to being in a place like that and looking around at what your future could be.

Yeah. I'm going to keep this really brief because Monica will kill me. But just off the top of your head, what's the greatest amusement park in the history of the world?

Cedar Point. Yeah, of course.

That's an easy question.

You got that right. Halfway between Cleveland and Detroit.

Yeah, Sandusky, Ohio. Every time we have any guest on within the Tri-state area, we'll do 20 minutes on Cedar Point, and she cannot I hate Cedar Point now.

I'll never go. We should have done it on Cedar Point.

Yeah. Millennium Force, Top Thrill Dragster.

Magnum XJ 220s, the Gemini, the Demon Drop, the Corkscrew. Oh, my God. Yeah. They were just acquired by 6 Why. That's right. You really could do an episode on them.

We actually should.

You just turned me on to Defunct Land, this YouTube channel. What's that? Ben, you can tell it better than me, but it's like acquired episodes of old defunct amusement parks. Oh, that's fun.

This could be the first thing that got you interested in Cedar Point if they actually did an acquired on it.

I would. I would listen.

Too successful to do it on. Have you ever heard of Action Park? They just made a documentary about it. No. In New Jersey? Yes. This was the YouTube channel that popularized people looking back and being like, That was completely insane that Action Park existed.

I forget the stat, but I just read it as well. I want to say it's in the order of six trips to the emergency room a day that it was open, that part.

No, thank you. It's like a badge of honor.

I think Adventure Land, that movie, is based on that. Oh, no way. Yeah. The writer of that film or director, it worked there at the Nuts one. People would go upside down and they would come up with lacerations. You graduate with a computer science degree, and then you end up moving to Silicon Valley? Seattle.

I was going for a job at Microsoft or Google, and I had an offer from Microsoft. I made the mistake of saying, I also am waiting to hear back from Google. They said, When are they going to tell you? I said the date, and they said, We are not going to extend your deadline. You can tell us before you hear back from Google, or that's it. Oh, God.

That was your first lesson in negotiating.

Yeah, that's a rookie mistake.

I I have no idea if I would have gotten a job at Google or not. You just took Microsoft. I wanted to go to the West Coast. I wanted to be in tech. I grew up in Ohio, and that was my ticket.

In retrospect, do you wish you had worked at Google?

No, it worked out great. I live in Seattle. I've been there 13 years now. I met David there.

No I heard no Microsoft.

Okay, now, David, you go a fancier route, if we could say.

I don't have any national championships.

Undergrad at Princeton and then Stanford graduate school. You have an MBA. What's your undergrad degree in?

French literature.

Oh, you romantic You're a son of a bitch. The long hair and the angular features. Yeah, you want to mix. You're a babe. You must know this, right? I appreciate that. Yeah, what a stuff. Ben, you're hot, too. I don't want to leave you out.

I grew my hair long during COVID. It didn't play as well as.

Yeah, that's an enviable head of hair. So, okay, how do you end up?

I always wanted to work in venture capital, not the easiest thing to do with a French literature degree. Just randomly, I learned about the industry at Princeton, actually, and I was like, I would do anything to do Sounds like the coolest thing in the world. I got an opportunity a couple of years later to join the biggest venture firm in Seattle. I didn't know anybody in Seattle. A headhunter called me and I was like, Hell, yeah, I will move to Seattle.

Am I not wrong in that headquarters of venture capital is generally those Silicon Valley? Oh, yeah. Have you read Nate Silver's new book by chance? No. It's about gambling and it's about venture capitalists and it's about- Risk-taking. Friedmann.

Oh. Thomas Friedmann? No.

Is that? No. Sam. Sam Altman Friedmann. No.

Sam Altman.

Sam Friedmann Altman? That's two people. All right. Sam Altman, which is also in the book, is OpenAI. Sam B.

Something like, Sam Beckman Fried. Oh, my God. I think this is where they're going.

We're going to keep that in because of you coming through.

He just blew Princeton, Stanford, UCLA, and Georgia out of the water. Ohio State knew it. Okay, so you end up there and you are employed in that capacity.

That led to the Passover Sater where Ben and I intersected, and then we were trying to recruit Ben to join us at Modrona at the firm, and then we ended up working together. That's how this beautiful friendship began.

This is great. How many years ago was that?

Ten that we started acquired, 11 that we met.

So Dave and I were just in Taiwan doing this crazy interview with Dr. Morris Chang, who started TSMC, one of the very few trillion dollar companies in the world not on the West Coast of the United States. The He was 93 years old. Oh, my God. He was around at the beginning of Moore's Law, central figure in Semiconductors. We realized that we were doing that interview exactly 10 years to the day from the drinks where we decided to do acquired.

That's awesome. Isn't it crazy where these podcasts can take you?

We're in the hotel in Taipei. You texted me while we're getting ready to go over to his office to interview. What a way to spend our 10-year anniversary together halfway around the world.

Yeah, we're interviewing you on our seven-year anniversary, and I feel equally.

Is it really?

Is it? No. But it'll come out, probably.

The 14th is our actual anniversary of the first episode out. Our first recording, I don't know.

Okay. I should know this. What give you guys the idea to do this crazy thing?

Wait, I think I know this. Please, please. If Wikipedia is accurate, you wanted the opportunity an opportunity for people to experience what an AA meeting is without necessarily having to become an alcoholist. Pretty much, yeah.

Could we do in public what happens in an AA meeting? There's a lot of explanations. They're all true, and there's not one. But probably more accurately is serial, the podcast. Because Monica and I were both consuming it. At the time, Monica was babysitting, and we would fight for hours in the kitchen about whether Adnan was guilty or not. I'm like, You're not a dude. You don't understand. Dudes do fucking weird stuff. I know kids like, That's not shocking. We would fight nonstop. We had a hobby of arguing with one another.

Which turned into arguing about just everything.

We thought that's a good engine for a show.

Good grist for the mill.

They're going to know a lot of venture capitalist terms.

Is grist for the mill?

Yeah, sure.

I love that good grist for the mill.

Serial paved the way for this whole industry.

Okay, so you guys start doing it, and it's just for fun, right? You don't have any aspirations, I can't imagine, nor did we, that it would be a business. At this point, it's also a nice business that you guys have, I'm imagining.

It's our whole thing now.

Oh, you're completely retired from all that.

We are full-time podcasters.

We do some investing as part of Acquired. Our previous career is we have Sunset.

What year did you guys make that decision? And did you guys get together and be like, I think I'm ready.

We did it different times, actually.

Yeah, David did it three, four years ago?

Five years ago. And Ben, you?

Last year. How does it feel? Right.

That's a good answer. We're entrepreneurs who took the least risk out of any founders I've ever worked with.

Well, we're doing a different thing. Yeah.

But by the time I went full-time on it, it was an extremely good business very established in the world. It's not like I plop down my life savings.

We accidentally built it on the side.

Yes. I'm not qualified to say this, but I do think you're a little bit inoculated from both a plateau and a decline because the folks that are already drawn to it. For me, it's like this American life. I'm never going to not be interested. It's not a pop culture phenomenon. You didn't have a guest on who talked about some sexual escapade with someone in that. I think you have such a solid foundation of a listenership that will only grow as people like us talk nonstop about it.

Thank you for doing it. In any given month, a third of all consumption of Acquired is episodes older than six months.

I believe that for sure because you get brought in for a certain topic you're interested in and you go, Oh.

I got to listen to every single one of these.

You start shopping as I did.

Exactly.

Okay, so because the Super Bowl is upon us, it was Monica's brilliant idea that what if we could do a mini acquired episode about the NFL? Oh, no.

I'm not going to take credit for that. It was my idea to bring them in to do an episode for us, and then they came up with the NFL.

It sounded too smart, to be honest for you. How did it? It really did. It always was a little suspicious.

We workshopped six or seven different ideas before.

We did. Of course, I threw out the row.

Let me guess. Taylor Swift's car collection. The row. This is a candle company I can't get the handle of.

Is Taylor Swift a car collector?

No, no, no. No, but you know, they have a great episode on Taylor Swift.

I know that. That's why I had the throwing car collector because they already did Taylor Swift, and it didn't make any sense. That's why I was like, Is there something we didn't find? I bet she has a collection of SUVs she gets driven in, is my guess.

That's probably right. She should.

What a great time to learn all about the NFL. It'll be very fun for us, and we're very appreciative to let you walk us through the history of it and the economics of it.

I was wondering if you were actually going to do this or not. I had this feeling it's not actually going to get handed over to us to do. I'm preparing the script as if it's like, okay, we're ready for an acquired episode, but I was very ready to throw this away and be like, oh, we're just doing-We will be interjecting because we can't help ourselves.

This is like a live studio audience for an acquired episode.

Yeah. I looked at the transcript the first time we did the NFL episode four years ago. It's 40,000 words. David started the version to send to you, which I think is three or four pages.

But as obvious to me is each bullet point is like the Browns win for a decade, ruining the thing. You're not going to say that sentence. We're not going to hear more about that. This is a very concise bullet pointed outline.

Our recording day typically is an 8: 00 to 10: 00 hour day. People say, why don't you split it over multiple days? But you probably know that you lose the thread in your head.

Of course. Yeah. And your voices sound different.

So that8 to 10: 00 hour day turns into a 3: 00 to 4: 00 hour episode when we cut because we produce for each other, too. I'll be at home in Seattle, David's at home in San Francisco, and we're both saying, Do that again, but shorter. Do that again, but punch up this part. That part's actually not very interesting.

You're copiloting one another.

You guys probably have little ego if you're able to take that from one another.

We have a large trust with one another.

That's lovely. We've had good, hard conversations. Okay, so- The NFL.

The NFL. Here we go.

Football is by far America's favorite sport. The Super Bowl is watched by over 100 million viewers every year in approximately two-thirds of America's household. My favorite Super Bowl stat is that the weekend with the fewest weddings per year happens on the Super Bowl weekend.

You know Seth Green? He's a geek, admittedly. He loves the Super Bowl because he goes to Six Flags because nobody's there. He's basically like,.

Sunday afternoons, when in Seattle there's a Seahawks game, it's actually a great time to go to Costco. Oh, yeah.

Another fantastic episode of yours that really turned me on to Costco.

That's my favorite company. My favorite company, too. I've shot two movies inside of Costco, and I loved it. One was just nights for six weeks. I had a bicycle I rode around. What movie? Employee of the Month. I had a little notebook in the back of my pocket, and I would find items I wanted when I got home, and I just accumulated this list of wants for six weeks. Well, my favorite thing in your deck was, of the 100 most viewed broadcasts of the entire year, 72 of them were NFL football games. Holy shit.

And in previous years, it's been higher. It's been closer to 82 to 85. Last year, because of the election, there was things that people watched en masse. But basically, America watches NFL games, college football games, the Thanksgiving parade, and presidential debates. Other than that- Nothing cracks.

The punchline of this episode is the NFL props up the media industry. Except the streamers, which that's a whole another conversation, the economics of that. But linear television would be dead than a doornail at this point. Probably all the other conglomerated media companies, again, except for the streaming part of it, there's nothing else that people watch on TV anymore. Yeah.

It has the most coveted audience, which is they're watching it live and they're going to sit through the commercials.

Exactly. So award shows are not making the list then.

Oh, award shows do. That is one of the 20 that are not the NFL. Got it.

Interesting. Also interesting, ESPN was responsible for some enormous percentage overall of Disney as a corporation.

Historically, every year, a little bit worse. It's getting eroded.

But there were moments where that was just the crown jewel in this thing with all the IP.

Sports really in America means the NFL. It's not baseball anymore. Basketball is a complicated thing, but it's basically just the NFL.

The fact that the NFL is the thing that America watches is extremely intentional and has been finely tuned every year for 100 years.

Really World War II. The NFL more than anybody else, the teams and the players are different, but the NFL as a collective embrace this is a entertainment product, and we need to put the best entertainment product on the field, but really on the television screens of America.

It is the most incredibly produced content you see.

I mean, the 17 camera production, the whole director producer, you forget that it's a show while you're watching it.

I don't think of it like that.

My 10-year-old is watching the lines game with me a few weeks ago, and she goes, How did they know that was going to be the score? And I go, What do you mean? She's talking about the graphic. There's this incredible graphic package that It happens instantaneously. She naturally is assuming, Well, someone would have to design that a day or two ago. I go, No, hon, isn't that incredible that they have these real-time graphic packages that just emerge?

We take all this for granted. The NFL invented that. That didn't exist before Pete Roselle and then the NFL collectively realized that television is this incredibly powerful thing.

There's basically two chapters to the rise of the NFL. There's riding the television wave, and then there's the fantasy and betting wave. One tapers off right as the other one picks up. It's this classic stacking S curves in business parlance.

When is it invented and when does the NFL form?

Yeah, let's get back to a quiet.

Take us to Princeton.

Okay. Princeton was going to be relevant here. American football was invented, I think it was 1868 between Rutgers and Princeton. '69.

It was close.

But football, really, until World War II, was a college thing. It got very popular around the turn of the 20th century, but it was like an elite Ivy League. This was where the future government and military leaders of America proved their medal was on the grid iron of college football. It was amateur, it was sacred. To the extent professional football existed at all. It was like a dirty thing.

And shameful that people would be paid to do it.

It was profaning this sacred American elite.

Collegiate right of passage for young men. Oh, wow.

In fact, the formation of the NCAA happened because the game was super violent. There was no padding, many, many deaths. Lots of college men died playing this game.

From head injury?

Before leather helmets. There was a thing called the wedge formation.

There was no forward pass. This was basically rugby.

Oh, interesting.

People would try to just line up behind one person and all pile on. It was like the extreme push push.

Nobody's wearing helmets. It was the touch push without helmets.

They would just make one human the Vanguard of the spear.

People are getting trampled. I can't remember when 11 players was standardized, but for a long time, it was like the student body.

Everybody who wanted to show up and play. President Teddy Roosevelt, this was in 1911, I think. His son was at Harvard.

1905. I'm going to keep that. Can I have real-time? I know that's your His son was at Harvard, got seriously injured playing football.

He called all the Ivy League presidents together and was like, You all need to fix this. We can't have all these serious injuries and deaths among our country's best and brightest here. In the Ivy League presidents instituted the NCAA.

It was organized around safety initially?

Yeah, by the President of the United States. Wow. Yeah. Which is wild. That made the game safer. They started introducing some padding. That's when they introduced the forward pass.

Neutral zone, wedge formation gets banned. It starts to resemble football like we know it today.

Was it hard to get this done? Because I'm thinking about now, people are talking now about trying to put more restrictions on some of these things because of CTE. Obviously, that had to come up.

I couldn't wait. I'm proud you waited that long to say CTE.

I bring it up a lot.

Old Debbie Downer here.

I am conflicted watching football because it's one of the most entertaining things in the world to watch. Amazing story lines, ways to communicate with your family, your reasons to get community together. It's extremely dangerous, and the NFL knew it for a long time. Right.

It's just weird to hear that they all came together and they were like, Yes, let's do this, and they were able to do it, and now that feels impossible.

But, Monty, it was in the wake of many, many deaths.

There are many, many deaths.

It was a different time. Instant deaths, not like 30 years later.

I would even argue If we had watched two dozen NFL players drop dead-Remember with DeMar Hamlin a couple of years ago? When he laid there? Yeah. Very scary. That was a really profound moment, I think. You could also make a case that they were even less safety-oriented. Maybe. A bunch of people had died already.

Keep in mind there's no money on the line at this point in history.

That's the big difference.

Good point. We're not even talking to Ohio State, Michigan here. This is an institution of the elite.

It's almost like cosplaying European. It's the Ivy Leagues trying to be as cool as the English colleges. They were trying to emulate. Yeah. In the Lady 1010s, America still had this little brother syndrome to England.

It's a shame Ben's taken.

I talk about little brother syndrome. Oh, really? Little brother energy. I'm a little brother.

I've done okay. It seems like. You can be a little brother and not ever- You just got to brought their energy.

It's very specific. But yes, this is what it sounds like America was doing.

That's the origin of football. The NFL started in, Ben, fact check me here, 1920, Kent, Ohio. Jordan and Hup Automobile.

Hup Mobile showroom. First of all, it was called the American Professional Football Conference. Oh, wow. It has a nice ring to it.

The American Professional Football Conference.

Apfl.

I think you could probably say Thinly Valed Marketing Attempt for Mostly Automobile Dealerships.

It was these individual local teams in small markets that were until the APFC. Apfc, I messed that up. Then NFL. It was not an organized league. People would start their own team, call around and say, Anybody else want to play some games against us? And maybe some people come watch. It was very loosely organized.

The local car dealership will sponsor the whole thing.

Exactly. In fact, the Chicago bears.

Were the Decatur Steleys.

Yes, because it was in Decatur, Illinois, the Staley what company?

Staley Steel. No, but it has a ring to it. Staley Band.

They should have done that. Corn starch. Corn starch. Corn starch. This is why you have a producer.

Yeah, he real-times. It's nice.

We're flashing forward a little bit to the Decatur's Dailys, but this idea that you couldn't really, in good conscience, have a proper professional football team. It had to be, oh, we all work at the same company.

Like a company softball.

Yeah. There's a Canton team. There's the Columbus Panhandles. There's the Akron pros. This is the original NFL teams.

This grew in the NFL.

There's 14 teams. Teams came and went. There's some great infographics on this. The modern teams have been there for a long time. The early ones were a complete mess of this team was in one year, but not that year, constantly cycling through. There's a few of these original APFC teams that survived the The bears, the Cardinals, and the packers.

The packers is the only legacy of this era. Why is there an NFL team in Green Bay?

Packers? Was that a nod to meat packing? Why was it the packers? Do we know? Can we get a real-time fact check?

The Indian packing Company. Meat Packaging.

Meat Packaging. Okay.

I assume it was probably like the Staley's, whatever the company was that was sponsoring.

The other reason they needed a sponsor was because it didn't make any money. Everyone was doing it for the love of the game. I I think they're paying players already, but at the very least... They're employees of the company. Right. There's operational stuff to do to market the team and to get people to come to the game. And so every single team is loss-making.

Do we have any sense of what the attendance was of these? Are they playing in high school stadiums? Are they playing in college venues?

I think in this time, it was sub-10,000, maybe sub-5,000. Right.

This is state of play till World War II. Nobody has ambitions. There's no vision of the NFL as we know it today.

So 38 years of that.

1920 was when the NFL started. Oh, 1920. So 25 years. Okay, great. Then World War II happens, and that leads to a couple of things. One, the whole West Coast of America happens. Television.

Small market teams can't really survive because there's so many people that are going to fight in the war. This is when the Stalies moved to Chicago, the Cleveland Rams would eventually move to LA. In World War II, the Steelers and the Eagles actually combined to form the Steegles because they could not field a full roster. It's amazing, they eventually decoupled and went back to their original teams.

Then post-world, these GIs come back. They want an entertainment product. Importantly, though, these GIs are not Ivy League-educated people. They have no affiliation. They have no reverence for this sacred institution of the elite of the past. Just profaning the college game means nothing to them.

I'll add the end of World War II is the birth of the Hell's Angels. You also have a lot of young men who are now bored out of their fucking mind. Yeah.

Even before everything the NFL has done to make it an entertainment product, you just go see a high school football game. It's entertaining. Yeah, exactly. After the war, an upstart rival league to the NFL gets started, and that's the AFC.

All-american football conference.

The centerpiece of that is Paul Brown. Folks may know that name, the legacy of the Browns.

The founder of the Cleveland Browns.

I didn't, and I've always wondered why a team would be named the Browns. So finally, that's the answer.

It's a great color.

It is a great color. But also it does have poop connotations. The Browns?

Yeah, it does. But now we know it's a human name. Yeah.

Not the first thing I'd probably pick. Blank Slate.

I prefer Steegles.

To add even more confusion to this, he would go on later in his career to coach the Bangles, and the Bangles Stadium was named after him. Paul Brown Stadium is in Cincinnati, not Cleveland.

Oh, weird. Oh, wow. What was his background? He's, I imagine, a business owner, got some money. He's a football coach.

Oh, okay.

He's the first modern football coach. He coached the Massillon Tiger's high school football.

He essentially goes to Ohio State and then Navy, right?

Yes, he's Ohio State's football coach, and he's the first one who is deciding, let's watch game film, and let's get everyone in a room, and let's be analytical.

Let's have a full-time built-out coaching staff. Yes.

Oh, wow. We need a quarterback coach. We need a defensive coordinator. We need an offensive coordinator. We need to employ these people year round because we need to do recruiting. We need to plan in the offseason.

He gave the players written tests. We all know now, it's like, oh, football is a physical game, but it's also a mental game. Nobody was honing that, which is arguably the more difficult part of the game.

Oh, God, yeah. He's pioneering the earliest stats. You talk to football obsessed people now, and there's 30 different stat lines that they can quote you. Other than the score and third down conversions or a few primitive stats, they don't really exist pre-Paul Brown. He's the one coming up with what are the metrics that we care about to do better in each game.

Do you think he is just observing baseball and recognizing the power of them having kept all these stats?

That's the other part of the background here is baseball was the national pastime. It's not like professional sports, writ large, weren't big. It's like no, professional sports was baseball.

Yes, right. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

I'm Sir Djafri.

And in the latest season of The Spy Who, we open the file on Vitold Pilecki, the spy who infiltrated Auschwitz.

Resistance fighter, Vitold Pilecki, has heard dark rumors about an internment camp on on his home soil of Poland. Hoping to expose its cruelty to the world, he leaves his family behind and deliberately gets himself imprisoned. The camp is called Auschwitz, a headish place where the unimaginable becomes routine. Poletsky is determined he needs to organize the prisoners, build a resistance, and get the truth out. Except when the world hears about the horrors of the camp, nobody comes to the rescue.

In the end, it's just him alone, with only one decision to make, accept death or escape.

Follow the Spy Who on the WNDYRY app or wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can binge the full season of The Spy Who Infiltrated Auschwitz early and ad-free with WNDYRI Plus.

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad, but when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims, all while armed guards stand by with shoot to kill orders. Scam Factory, the explosive new True Crime podcast from Wundery exposes a multibillion dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out. Follow Scam Factory on the Wundery app or wherever you get your podcast. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining WNDYRI Plus. Have you ever gotten a message out of the blue? Maybe you ignore them, or maybe you end up in conversation. Maybe they tell you about an amazing offer. I can really show you how to make some money. And maybe that gets you into a lot of trouble. But this isn't a story about people like you, the people receiving these messages. This is a story about the people behind the messages on the other end of the line, thousands of them working in a micro-city built for scammers.

From WNDYRI, the makers of Dr. Death and Kill List, comes Scam Factory, A new series about survival at the expense of others. Follow Scam Factory on the WNDRI app or wherever you get your podcast. You can listen to Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining WNDYRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcast.

The NFL is resting on their laurels.

They're the only big football league, and all the little ones that were the barnstorming teams have fallen by the wayside, and there's major market cities that are NFL teams now. But they're classically not seeking to innovate. They're like, This is good enough.

There's some interesting parallels here with wrestling.

Very much like wrestling.

All these regional divisions, they chopped up, they would have TV rides. And McMahon was smart enough to start trying to accumulate.

This is where the McMahon character started to emerge. And Paul Brown, he goes and fights in the war. And then when he comes back, he was well known enough as a college coach, I think, particularly from his time at Navy, that a group of entrepreneurs said, Oh, we should make another professional football league in major markets all across the country, take advantage of television. Our marquee thing is we're going to sign Paul Brown.

Our product is going to be significantly better because this person is innovative.

They were so confident there was already a Cleveland team, the Rams. The Cleveland Rams. The Rams are now LA Rams.

Now the LA Rams.

They start with the new league. They have a Cleveland team for that league, too. That's how confident they are that Paul Brown is big deal. They're like, That's great, you already have the Rams, the NFL. Afc is going to have the Cleveland Browns. They build this league, but they haven't discovered all the stuff that we talked about, about making the NFL a show and keeping it really competitive and trying to make sure that the best teams play the best teams and the worst teams play the worst teams. What happens is Paul Brown goes 47 and 4 over the first four seasons of the AFC.

Wins all four championships, loses four games in four years.

Because is he just saying, I want to play this team now?

He's just so much better. He's so advanced. They blow the Rams out of the water in Cleveland. They're getting 10X the attendance, and the money is all in the ticket sales. Tv is not a big thing yet. The Rams in Cleveland, they're like, We just got to get out of here. That's when they move to LA.

They get run out of town.

Yeah, but LA is all these GIs coming back from the war. It's the beginning of the television industry. It's automobile.

Glitz, glamor, people that understand marketing. Meanwhile, the AAFC is actually a failure because it's not interesting to just watch the Browns run the table over and over.

The Browns sell out all their home games. No other games make any money. The Browns go on the road. Sure, some people want to come see Paul Brown, but they don't want to see their team get decimated. Then the other teams aren't that good.

The league actually folds. 1950, they had only played four seasons. The Browns, 49ers, and Colts joined the NFL. There's now two Cleveland teams. That's a big problem. The San Francisco 49ers are established. There's now this real West Coast presence for the NFL. It's funny that it wasn't even as if there was a merger or some consideration. Yeah, the NFL got lucky.

Yes. That's nuts.

They got to basically buy a company in bankruptcy. Yeah.

The AFC had no better option.

I keep going back to we had Kate Mar on. She and her sister, Rooney Mara, they are the grandchildren of the stealer's owner and the giant's owner. My assumption is they grew up incredibly wealthy, and she's like, Yeah, we obviously had a lot of money, but you have to understand my grandparents, I'm like, Yeah, where'd they get the money to buy a team? And she's like, It didn't cost anything. Both of them were Bookies. Wow. So back in the day, if you were just a Wheeler Dealer Bookie, you could own a-Buy a team. Which goes to say, and that was going to be one of my questions, when the entire income of the endeavor is just the live audience tickets, I can't imagine they were terribly profitable.

If you were the Browns and you were selling 60,000, 70,000 tickets.

They weren't that big yet.

The first Brown game sold 60,000. So I don't know if every game was, but they were crushing it.

Were they playing 12 games a year?

I don't know. There were eight teams in the league. Maybe they played each other twice, so that would have been 14 games, I guess.

Okay. So I mean, you got an arena, you got a staff, you got a lot of players.

So some money, but not- Some money.

I just can't imagine anyone at that point owning the team because they have any sense it'll be worth billions of dollars or that it's some cash cow.

That's still the case at this point in time.

I think many of the entrepreneurs who started those AFC teams did it because they wanted a professional football team. Some of them probably saw television. This might be a way to make some real money here.

Yeah, and I don't want to jump ahead or behind, but I feel like this would be a good time for me to learn what the actual arrangement is between the NFL and the teams. They're owned by individuals. They join this league. What does that mean to join the league?

Until a couple of years ago, the NFL was a nonprofit organization. It then switched, but it doesn't matter. It's a thin layer on top of the teams.

It's not like the commissioner is the boss of the teams. No, he's an employee. The commissioner works for the owners. The league exists at the- Pleasure of the owners. Exactly. The real power is the 32 team owners. The NFL is this agreement that they've created with each other that governs how the game is played.

Then they hire the Commissioner to represent their interests.

But what really matters is, I don't think it's a democracy. I was going to say what the majority of the owners want, what the most powerful owners think is good for the sport.

Those early years of the NFL, my assumption then would be that they are just given a budget that they're going to operate at net zero from these team owners. It's not like that organization itself is going to try to generate money.

And it still doesn't. It gets distributed out to the teams.

Well, how does Goodell have a 70 million a year contract?

He's paid by...

By the team owners.

The top level NFL entity, its mission is not to aggregate profits. Let's flash forward to today. Why is the NFL so freaking awesome? On average, 70 % of all the revenue for each team comes centralized from the league. The bulk of that is the television deals. So the NFL, uniquely, and this is what we're going to get into, centralizes and collectivizes the television. When you watch football and you're watching it on Fox, or you're watching Monday Night Football on ABC or YouTube TV, any streaming network, all 32 teams collectively is the NFL do those deals and then share that money out to each team.

It's not like the Rams are striking their own TV rights with anybody.

Until recently with the NBA has now moved to the NFL model. Baseball, the Yankees have their own broadcast network. All the other sports, it's all each team for themselves.

That's what the early NFL was, too. You ask this the perfect point in history, because 1960, the appointment of Pete Rizel as Commissioner is what changes everything.

What they learned from the Browns is it actually freaking sucks of the product on the field when one team has more resources and gets this positive cycle and wins everything.

I mean, it's almost a miracle this would have ever been agreed to because clearly there are people that were in huge markets that had teams. They could have taken the lion's share of all TV, revenue, continue, and they're going to have to presumably make a little less to give this bozo team some money. It's like actors negotiating together.

Yeah, that's what I was about to say. It's like the friends deal. Yes. Going it all together. Which rarely works.

If you actually link arms and you actually hold arms, which almost never happens, at least for a long time, it starts that way and then fracturing.

Exactly. People start saying, Well, I'm.

The guy who does this is Pete Rizel. The Rams get run out of town of Cleveland by the Browns. They land here in LA. Pete Rizel. He's a PRPR intern? Pr intern, Compton College alumnus-Wow. Joins the Rams when they come to LA as a intern doing PR and media relations, which meant newspaper relations.

He's doing stuff like realizing newspapers aren't going to write stories about the teams because no one cares about his league. Base is still the dominant sport, and so he's hiring writers.

Well, he does it himself at first. He's like, I'm going to write the stories for you.

Just give them to the journalists.

I'm not going to give them to you.

He's trying to get it in the spotlight.

He rises through the ranks here at of the Rams, becomes GM of the Rams, and then ultimately at age 33, gets elected Commissioner of the NFL.

Which also only happens because of a weird standstill.

The existing Commissioner died unexpectedly.

There's these factions of owners. This faction has their guy, this faction as their guy. They can't agree.

It's like the beginning of our country.

Yes, totally.

Pete Rizel is the least disagreeable candidate.

The analogy is perfect. It's like the founding of America. You got all these states that have their own interests, and then there's this pressure from the outside from Great Britain, and then they got a band together.

Then even Washington, he was the only guy who wasn't outspoken. He said the least. I trust him. Yes.

That's exactly what happened.

He turns out to be exactly what the league needed at this point in time. A young person who saw the future, who got TV, who got entertainment, comes from LA.

He's able to make an argument to all these old school owners. We've seen what happens when one team gets too dominant. We need to put all sorts of checks and balances in place to ensure the best product on the field, which means competitive parity. The phrase any given Sunday Sunday. You guys probably know this.

Of course, I know it, but I don't know what it means. Me neither.

This is the origin.

Oh, and then any given Sunday, the team could win. Anything could happen.

Any team could beat any other team.

The NFL's dream is for every team to go eight-eight. Right.

There's so many things they do to make this happen behind the scenes.

Again, it's amazing they got the dominant teams to go along with this strategy. Totally amazing. It seems impossible.

Just like last time, the NFL, without a competitive force, couldn't actually come to the conclusion that you're stuck on Dax. There's another new upstart called the AFL, which, spoiler alert, becomes the AFC.

It becomes a conference within the NFL.

Yes. When they eventually merge, they sign one collective TV deal as their way of coming on the scene with ABC.

Which, again, they're in a very vulnerable situation where they probably only have any appeal if they're all one thing. They're probably doing it out of desperation originally.

They need money to sign players. So They go to ABC, NBC and CBS. They're the legacy, came out of the radio era. Abc was a new television network.

The AFL has eight teams. They secure a five-year, eight-and-a-half million dollar deal that is leagueside with the profits from the deal shared equally.

They do that deal with Rune Arledge. Rune Arledge built ABC Sports, things like Wide World of Sports. If you guys remember that, that was all him. He was Bob Iger's mentor. No way. Bob Iger came came up under Rune Arledge at ABC. Interesting. Then took over Cap City's, the Disney merger.

So he's a visionary.

No Rune Arledge, no Bob Iger. No frozen.

.

This was Rune Arledge's big career-defining thing was signing this deal in national football.

Nfl is already being televised on those other networks at this point?

One-off local deals. The owner is going to the local affiliate and saying- Detroit WKBD.

Exactly. The Giants had a great deal in New York. I think they were making a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year in TV money. That was just theirs.

This is the bargaining chip that Rizel needs to then go to the owners and say, Look, if we don't do the same thing, they're going to smoke us. This is the right strategy because it will ensure that all of the teams are doing well so they can be the most competitive and the most entertaining.

We're now starting to talk about real money from this TV, like eight and a half million dollars in 1960-ish.

That seems like an unsellable proposition. It's so It's impressive that they did it.

It's just like the old adage we hear all the time, the rising tide lifts all boats. It's real.

It is, but I imagine the delta between some of these franchises. I'm sure some teams were 8X.

The Green Bay packers are still in the league. They're not making any money.

Right, exactly. It's like Costco. It's making me feel Costco feelings.

I want a shirt that says Costco feelings.

Exactly.

We can make that happen.

It just seems interesting, too, that a guy that it seems like maybe was allowed to take on this position because he wasn't overtly charismatic and powerful, somehow is secretly quite visionary.

P. R. Zell was the king of soft power. You look up soft power in the dictionary, it should have his photo there.

This is so much more interesting than I was It's always expecting, to be honest. It always is. I thought it just was the money because I'm a greedy pig, but that's absolutely fascinating.

That is the only way that these things get to exist in our world. Nothing started as big money, and most of the things that try to start in a big money way don't end up becoming successful. They don't build that grassroots, durable, passionate following, and they don't follow an organic path to building something great. Look at the birth of your show. It's not like you launched on some big network that promoted the hell out of it. You made something that for that moment in time, people really, really wanted it and craved it. All these stories, the Costco, the Starbucks, the NFL, they always start an obscurity with these passionate visionaries who are trying to will the future into existence.

And big money is true, too. I think that eight and a half million dollar deal that the AFL had done, the Jets signed Joe Namath.

The Jets are the AFL.

He was the first athlete celebrity. In the original episode, you were like, I know him because he was on the braided Bunch.

I watched the braided Bunch episode to prep for this show. But yeah, he comes on and throws a football in the backyard. But he's like, stylish, and he's photographed at clubs in New York City. Oh, yeah.

He was killing it.

When because of TV, he's getting broadcast all across the country. The country is falling in love with Joe Namath. That's what's forcing the NFL. The owners were kicking their feet all along, but they're like, All right, well, you didn't have a million dollars. It's a boatload of money. And look at the publicity that Broadway Joe is bringing to our Rival League here.

When you think all-American, he was born to be on a TV sports.

First celebrity athlete. That's wild.

Well, football. I don't know. It might be out of my depth here, but I think it'd be like if Bob Dylan played football.

I have to imagine throughout this story, we're also getting some transition in who's playing the game, whereas it was people who went to elite colleges and learned this thing. I imagine it's getting more and more democratized as we're going along. I imagine the racial makeup of these league is transitioning.

There's some dark stuff in the NFL history. They were segregated. Nobody except white people allowed for most of the '30s. Interestingly, not in the beginning. In the beginning, anybody could play. But then it's actually the Redskins. It was the Washington team.

They had a big Southern fan base. There was some racism at the highest levels of the Redskins.

I'm so shocked that the team named the Redskins has-Yeah. I know.

It makes no sense. I It's on brand.

From a monetary perspective, they were incentivized not to change.

I think they were the Southern most NFL team.

If they had a black player, there would have been people protesting.

It was the LA Coliseum where the Rams played in LA when they moved out here, said, We won't let any organization, because it's a public facility, apply their trade here, run business here, if there are segregated teams that are visiting. That's what forced integration.

Let's go LA. Boy, it's interesting how many different forces can work on one thing, how dynamic that is. They're going to play in a a publicly held facility, and there is the leverage by which that could be claimed, otherwise not.

But yeah, to your point, though, about Blacks coming into the League, that's actually good for business, too. You got Jim Brown, and the makeup of the league is totally changing at this point.

Name the list of famous players, and it's some of the most loved.

O. J. Simpson. Well, sure, for a minute.

Well, for more than a minute. I think mostly we know the quarterbacks, and then outside of that, we don't know many white players.

But O. J. Wasn't black. He was O. J.

That's right. Did you watch the documentary?

Yeah. That was so good.

Okay, so AFL, how do they absorb them?

Do you guys know Al Davis? Owner, GM, and head coach of the Raiders for many years. No. Oh, he's such a gangster. I don't know if it still carries anyway, but they were like the pirates, F the law type attitude. That was Al Davis.

Oh, that's interesting because that carries to this day. If you want to bet on someone getting knifed in a parking lot, there's only one bet to make. It's a Raiders game. It's going to be obvious. Totally. It starts with the original owner.

But the original owner. They were in the AFL. It was clear that the AFL wasn't going away. They had this big TV deal. Then the NFL got their TV deals with CBS and NBC.

Interestingly, the CBS deal, the NFL is granted an antitrust exemption. I think that JFK signed into law because what you had is all these teams with their individual TV deals, and then they get together, they collude, and they say, We're going to sign one TV deal. If you're the TV networks, you're like, What the hell? What's the competition? This is illegal. But JFK deemed it in the good of the nation to have this.

This is also back to Roselle and Soft Power. He cultivated the Kennedy's. Relationship. He put a lot of effort into it.

Having the NFL in communities, being broadcast on TV, being a rallying force, loved that. They passed an exemption. So there's a federal exemption to antitrust for the NFL from 1961 in order to sign the 1961 CBS TV deal.

And I'd imagine that has some collateral impact. And I'm confused. I don't know which league do this, but I think most people just knowing you don't get to pick where you go is already an interesting thing contractually, right? If you're a player that gets drafted.

I think it's part of the collective bargaining with the Players Association. It's essentially a unionized trade.

It's still interesting contractually.

It's totally interesting. The trade is it's a good enough deal for us to get some stuff in return that Yeah, we're open to being relocated, and it's not really up to us.

Back to the Paul Brown era, and it sucks when one team wins everything. There are two things that the NFL did in response. One was the draft. So still to this day, if you have the worst record in the league, you're getting the first draft pick. That reverse order, that was direct response.

It's because of that to keep the competition.

To keep the competition going. The other thing they do that still exists this day that very, very few people know is they... Jimmy, the schedule used to be explicit. I'm now implicit. Goal is that every team should be 500 at the midway point in the season.

The first half of the schedule, bad teams play bad teams and good teams play good teams.

That's orchestrating.

The lions are going to have a really tough first half of the year schedule next week. I didn't know that part. Most audience has no idea.

That's not the same with college.

No, that's exactly where I was going to go with this. It's fascinating watching this whole playoff system and transfer portal and all these NFL-like things that they're putting into place because this is not a goal of collegiate football at all. The goal is for the really good teams, have a schedule that lets you win out, play just enough hard teams in your conference for people to take you seriously, and then historically, have the big bowl game where you're put on a national stage against another good team. But if you're a fan of a good team like Ohio State, you expect them to go undefeated or near undefeated. It's like the Browns of old. Wow.

Yes. You're right. It is near impossible for an NFL team to get a perfect season.

It's happened once.

Was it just braided?

Did braided have a perfect season? Dan Marino had a perfect season with the Dolphins.

He's my Taylor Swift. You shouldn't even bring him up because I will not be able to get off of him.

You got him on the show? I have.

When you're rooting for Tom braided, you don't give a fuck how far you're down. It doesn't mean anything. You go to that fourth quarter down three touches, and you're not even worried.

The Patriots almost did it but lost the Super Bowl. There you go. There it is. Even Tom braided can't have a perfect season.

God, it's heartbreaking.

That's so poetic that the season they went undefeated in the regular season, they lost in the Super Bowl. Yes. See, the NFL story lines, they're so good. It's wrestling. You cannot script it.

They are scrimpting it in a way with the NFL. They're planning it for that outcome.

There are levers in place, and they're pulling all the ones they can.

After the season, I don't know if it's every year, every other year, there's something called a Competition Committee that is a set of owners that gets together to try and say, Okay, what loopholes do people find? How can we make it even more competitive and tweak, tweak, tweak every year?

Wow. Sort of like Formula One that way.

It's just endless. Yeah, it's just a business. We forget because we just think of it as sport, but it's a real business.

I'm really mad. I just learned this term in Bill Gates's new book. It's a Japanese manufacturing principle. It's what Toyota imply, which is every year we must improve our manufacturing process, and we must improve- Kaizen? Yes. Whoa, God, you just earned your paycheck. Look at this Ohio state.

Yes, good job.

Wait, what's it called?

Kaizen. Kaizen. The other half of that is reduced waste. We can stand to do a little more Kaizen.

I think you guys do it just fine.

You got to know your business. You're not in an optimization business.

We're trying to ride that line between jazz and classical. You don't know how much you're supposed to improv and be loose and how much you're supposed to be classical.

Tell us about it.

I know you guys are very classical. You're an orchestra.

We've gotten more so over time. I think when we started because we had nothing to lose. We were more jazz.

What have you gained and what have you lost from that evolution?

We're right more often, but we have less fun. Yeah.

Well, we have fun in different ways. We get to go to Taiwan. Well, it's that thing.

We talk about it all the time. Once you have something to lose, Things get harder, they get scarier, they get more stressful, there's a little bit less fun, there's more rigidity. It's tricky.

Honestly, this is a breath of fresh air. If this were an acquired episode, we would have a 100-page script in front of us. We'd be retaking everything for fear of getting anything wrong.

Well, the person I have felt most guilty interviewing, which we've now done four times, five times, is Malcolm Glasgow. Revisionist History is the most perfectly produced product in the marketplace. In the amount of effort that's put into it, we finish an episode and we're friendly, and I'm like, Is that not annoying the fuck out of you? We just created two hours of content, and it's almost minute for minute, real-time content. That's it. There's no more work to be done. That's not true.

You know.

I heard what I had to say. Monica's like, You have no idea what I do.

It's not like revisionist history.

But we actually put at the top of the script right before we start now, have fun. You need a reminder of just because the stakes are higher and just because all these people are going to listen. The reason people like it is we're having fun. We're doing the thing we love.

I have the same resolution, which is, yes, getting mired in these very complicated deals with humongous companies. I had to get to the point. I was like, remember you love talking to people, and somehow you guys have figured out how to get the most interesting people in order to swing by your house and talk. Fucking stop thinking about anything else.

I didn't realize this was your house, by the I walked up and I was like, I'm pretty sure we're just at Dax's house.

Indeed you are.

By the way, you asked us about our careers earlier. Do you guys consider this your career now? Yeah.

A hundred %.

Yeah, especially we do 152 episodes a year now.

We have three episodes a week, and we had five episodes a week up until September. So it's more than a full-time.

I, in general, don't want to act, but if Tarantino for his 10th movie calls me, I'm going to figure it out. But how do we do it at this point? It would be very hard.

I don't know anything else that could speak to the power of podcasting and the rise over the last 10 years. Clearly, you've made the decision that this is a better trade for you.

I'll admit this out loud. I remember Joe Rogan stating that years ago. He's done with acting and hosting, and I was like, I don't buy it. I don't think you're having the opportunities you want. I think this is bullshit. And I was completely wrong. He definitely was just in the position we are now in much earlier. And yeah, it's much more fun to me than acting or anything else. So now the NFL absorbs the AFL. Which is fast forwarding for time, but due to basically, Al Davis being a gangster.

He's like a Mafia boss. He directs all the AFL teams to go sign all the NFL teams' quarterbacks, just like as a bargaining chip, because there's no free agency in either league, but not between the league. They could fight as much as they want. They had a gentleman's agreement that they wouldn't poach.

They had just signed a new big TV deal. So AFL got NBC to pay them 37. 5 million over five years. And they're like, guess what we're going to do with the cash? We're going after the NFL.

Let's go take that money and go steal all their quarterbacks.

This is the Ted Turner-Mcman war section of the story now.

Basically, as soon as he does that, it's all over and then they merge.

It's so crazy they got outperformed twice and still remained the NFL. Exactly.

Yes. Here's the terms of the merger, which is so fascinating. The NFL absorbs all the AFL teams. They're also going to add additional franchises. They're trying to cement monopoly. They're basically saying, how do we make sure we cover all the biggest markets?

Cut off a future uprising.

Yeah, make sure this doesn't happen again.

We're going to pull the TV deals. There's now one national TV deal. We're going to do a common draft between both of us. I think there was contracts in place, maybe TV contracts through 1970. Even though they're doing this in '66, there's a phased plan over the next year to truly merge as one. Pete Rizel maintains the commissionership. At first, the AFL was supposed to pay a ton of money to the AFL.

$50 million per team. That was where a negotiation started before Al Davis kidnapped the quarterback.

Totally changed the leverage position. It was, Yeah, you can all join our league. Just pay us 50 million per team as a franchise fee, and you can join the NFL. The actual deal is 18 million spread over 20 years.

Total. Total.

Oh, wow. Yeah, it was a 900 grand a year for however many teams.

What actually ends up happening is all of it, or at least half of it, goes to the New York Giants because they're the most harmed from the Jets joining in the same city.

Okay. Interesting. So they didn't do that evenly?

No. Basically, Al Davis is a gangster.

This is where anyone with less than a 50,000-seat stadium needs to upgrade. They're like, This is the big times now. We're signing these huge TV deals.

Once this is in place after the merger, two things happen. One is the Super Bowl, which we can get to in a sec. Arguably, the more important one is Monday Night Football.

That starts in '68?

Right around there. One of the other just incredible inventions of the NFL was they invent more football.

Prior to that, are they only playing on Friday and Sunday?

They only play on Sunday. Which is a bad spot. When they originally conceived of this, it was no one watches TV on Sundays, so where can we get air time? Cheap real estate.

Monday Night Football is the first time there's only one game happening at a time. So there's one nationally televised game. Before it was, Oh, there would be like a game of the week that maybe more markets would see than others, but they're all happening at the same time. They do the deal with Rune Arledge and ABC to create Monday Night Football. That basically invents the modern football telecast.

Eight and a half million dollars per year that ABC pays the League for one game per week. It's $500,000 per game, which today seems like tiny. It's very large relative to the other TV contract. They're basically saying, because it's one game, because it's primetime, this is a really expensive slot. Oh, and by the way, when you pay us a lot of money for the rights to broadcast this, we're going to make it a spectacle. Football before this on TV had been referred to as football in a cathedral because it was one camera at the 50-yard line.

Up top, just panning back and forth.

No field mics and commentators that would just chime in every once in a while. Oh, that one hurt. Yes, exactly.

They weren't experts at all.

This is the list of things that are introduced at Monday Night Football. They start with nine and then eventually go all the way up to 17 cameras, including handheld sideline cameras.

I'm going to interject movie stuff. A couple of technical innovations that helped it greatly is the Superfly cam, which was invented by John Brown, the DP of Without A Paddle's Father, who had also invented the Steady Cam. The Steady Cam allows them to run along the guide and keep your vision nice and stable. Then the Superfly cam is a four-point system that allow it to go anywhere. Those are huge tech innovations that help.

The three-person booth. So you've got three commentators instead of two. The booth guys have personality. This is when Howard Coselle becomes a character in the arc.

In a lot of ways, it's the precursor to podcast. It's like, oh, Monday night with my friends. Howard and the dudes in the booth.

And talk about filling time. You're going to talk for two and a half hours without Yeah, they got to be interesting. Improved geniuses, really.

Yeah. They've got theme music.

Hank Williams. Remember, Are You Ready for some Football? Yeah. Remember that before you got canceled?

Are You Ready for some Football?

That's the best.

Yeah, that was a good one.

Whenever you're watching football, it looks like somehow the camera is at or near the line of scrimage. Well, when it was at the 50, whenever you'd be starting in the red zone, it's really this oblique angle to be watching the play. They put two more cameras on the 25-yard line, so now you're always looking at or near the line of scrimage head on. They've got parabolic microphones. There's 40 engineers, 20 production people, split screen, interviews. They are for the first time showing cheerleaders on television, so there's now some sex appeal to it. They've got green screens and the big, big thing, replays.

Oh, for sure. Okay, so think this through. You now got this Monday night game for the first time before everything else was happening real time on Sunday, all the other games.

You don't have the technology to show something from another What do you do during halftime of Monday night?

All the other games are done. You can't update what's going on real-time with the other games. You got to fill half an hour in halftime. You show highlights from Sunday.

Great, and build anticipation about next week.

There's no ESPN yet. This leads to ESPN and Sportset.

If you're in a market that didn't show these other games, there was no way to possibly see. There's no way to see.

You could read about it in the newspaper, but that sucks. What a powerful aspect to build interest in the whole league.

Totally. The crazy, crazy thing that is hard to wrap your mind around today because everything is shot in 4K, real-time, stored digitally, easily playback. Most television that was broadcast was in poor quality and never recorded.

Or it was in film, 16 millimeter that needs to go get printed.

So they start NFL films. There's a whole long backstory that we don't have time for. Nfl films are amazing. But they've got these people shooting, I assume 16 millimeter on the sidelines all Sunday at every game.

In parallel to the broadcast. This is not the broadcast. They send teams all the games for the Monday Night Halftime show.

Then they've got a 24 hour turnaround to make a 20 minute highlight reel.

To a central editing facility. Oh my God. Put a highlight package together. Wow. Get that back out to wherever the Monday Night game is happening.

Yeah, those people all got to work at 8: 00 PM on Sunday night, and they did not leave until Monday.

Howard Casselle is essentially the first SportsCenter anchor. He's narrating the highlight reel, but the highlight reel is sliding into the tape deck as it's happening. He's never seen it before, so he's improving. I mean, it really is like the invention SportsCenter.

It sounds like they were smart and invested virtually every dollar they received from this television contract into the product.

I think so. The original Monday Night Football was so expensive.

The owners were also pretty great. They were just a lot of money. We're talking late '60s.

They're I'm just eating 500 grand per game.

No, that's just Monday night.

The show that they're going to put on now with all the extra cameras and all these bells and whistles, this is now becoming a bit more expensive to produce.

500 grand per game in meteorite deals. The NFL says, Oh, ABC, you produce it. Oh, they have to pay for it. Nfl is not paying for this.

Oh, they just want 500 and something. It's just the meteor.

Yeah, yeah. Oh. Abc is investing way more than eight and a half million dollars in this.

This is why the NFL collectively, team ownership in aggregate, is one of the best businesses ever. They sell the rights, but then they don't have to incur any of the costs of doing the deals with advertisers.

Oh, it's entirely on the back of the network. Then they get them to compete and make the product better. Yes. Because now Fox has got to have the blue line on the field.

They got to have John Madden Fox is paying John Madden, not the NFL. That is incredible.

You get your customers to make your product better for you. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. What's up, everybody? It's Jason Kelsi, and I'm here with my slightly famous little brother Travis, a. K. A. Big Yeti Kelsi. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we're here to bring you a next-level entertainment experience with our show, New Heights. We're the baby reigns supreme. We're covering all the hardest-hitting topics in order of importance, UFO settings, the ideal PB&J combo, and Travis becoming a big-time acting star. Big-time is a big stretch. We've got can't miss A-list interviews, though. That's right. And of course, next level access to life inside the NFL and in the booth. Just because I retire doesn't mean I'm out of the game. Yeah, I mean, the old dad shoes suggest otherwise, but those are the I'm out the game shoes right there. Listen and watch New Heights wherever you get your podcast. If you want to listen to us first without any interruptions and get bonus content, join WNDYR Plus in the WNDYR app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Hey, everyone. It's your girl, Kiki Palmer.

Did you know I host a podcast called Baby, This is Kiki Palmer, and you're not going to believe the conversations I've had. Like, is OnlyFans, OnlyBad?

How has dating changed in the digital age?

What's the deal with Disney adults?

I talk to John Stamos, the VP, Kamala Hertz, to Jordan Peel, Raven Simone, and yes, the one and only Jamila Jamil.

And just wait until you hear our conversation.

We talk Twitter drama, bad dates, and then something.

How the hell do you actually get sexy?

What the hell does that mean? I know how to be funny.

I know how to be like, you know what I'm saying? Exactly.

I don't really know how to be like, and take you.

I'm not robbing fucking givens. It's like, how do people do that? I've been in this situation too many times and not felt any of those things.

The dull eyes, the quiet.

I've never been quiet a moment in my life. My fucking life. Yes.

On Baby, This is Kiki Palmer. No topic is off limits.

Follow Baby, This is Kiki Palmer on the WNDRI app or wherever you get your podcast.

You can listen early and ad free right now by joining WNDRI Plus.

At 24, I lost my narrative, or rather it was stolen from me.

The Monica Lewinsky that my friends and family knew was usurped by false narratives, callous jokes, and politics. I would define reclaiming as to take back what was yours. Something you possess is lost or stolen, and ultimately you triumph in finding it again. I think listeners can expect me to be chatting with folks, both recognizable and unrecognizable names, about the way that people have navigated roads to triumph.

My hope is that people will finish an episode of Reclaiming and feel like they filled their tank up.

They connected with the people that I'm talking to and leave with maybe some nuggets that help them feel a little more hopeful. Follow Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky on the WNDY app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Reclaiming early and ad-free right now by joining WNDY Plus in the WNDY app or on Apple podcasts.

Fast forward a couple of decades, what do you think NFL Sunday ticket is?

I'll give you the whole rights packages right now. We may as well flash all the way forward to how much money. This is what I like. Yeah, exactly. Disney/abc/espn's package right now is 2. 7 billion per year just for Monday night football.

Oh my God. That's what, 16 games? Because there's no Monday night the last week of the season. 17 then? Whatever. It's either 16 or 17 games. That's before the cost to produce it. That's just the right.

I did the math. I'll go through all the deals, but across all of them, it averages out to it costs the networks $45 to $50 million per game to have the rights to that game.

Okay, that's net after they've sold advertising.

That is the cost to be able to bring your production crew there. You then have to also invest in the production crew.

Are they recouping? I mean, they have to be.

I walk through them all. Then there's an NFC package and an AFC package. Of course, you should sell those to different networks. The NFC Sunday Games go to Fox for 2. 2 billion. The AFC Sunday Games go to CBS for 2. 1 billion.

Disney is paying more just for Monday nights than Fox and CBS are paying for all the Slate of Sunday Games.

You'd rather be Disney because you'd rather only have the cost of producing one game. Then, NBC, they're like, How else can we slice and dice these rights because there's another bidder, so we may as well let them buy something from us, too. They invent Sunday Night Football, 2 billion a year.

Wait, Sunday night football is different than Sunday football? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Thursday night football.

Oh, my God. For a while, I can't remember who had it, but now Amazon has it. Now it's just a streaming package.

That's what, like One Six?

It's a billion a year.

Seven-ish total.

Call it five total for Sunday between the NFC and the AFC. Two and a half for Monday, so that's seven and a half. Add another one for Thursday or eight and a half. Okay.

Then they have NFL Sunday ticket. What is that? What if you want to be able to watch any game?

You've probably seen all the YouTube TV advertising for- Every time I sign up on my YouTube, I got to deal with this offer.

You're a bar, and you want to be able to flip on whatever game your patrons want. You're a big fantasy football player, which fueled the growth of the league, and you want to all the games to be able to flip around. Well, you got to buy NFL Sunday ticket. The league is like, We don't want to be in the business of providing NFL Sunday ticket. We'll just find a distribution partner. We'll sell the rights to them, and they can figure out how to make it available. That was direct TV for a long time. Now it is YouTube for the pretty penny of two billion a year for that rights package. For the same footage.

Yes, here's the great thing. Nothing new.

All the television networks are producing the games, the camera crews, the commentators, everything. Nfl Sunday ticket is reselling on top of what they've already sold.

Well, how does that not violate the rights?

Commercials are still the TV networks.

Then YouTube is making their money on the subscription model and not the advertising model.

Direct TV when they had it, and now with YouTube TV, if you want an NFL Sunday ticket as a consumer, you have to pay an extra. It's like what HBO used to be. Wow. Wow.

They have skinned this cat.

There's one more that they came up with five years ago. Do you know about Red Zone?

Okay, this is where you're playing four games at one time.

The NFL launches NFL Network. Eighty years in, they're like, We should have our own network mostly non-game content, some analysis. They realize because they're the one dictating terms on all these TV contracts, they can just keep putting in clauses. This clause that they negotiate in is you can't watch any game at any time. But if you leave that channel on, on NFL Network on Sundays, you'll just see the most interesting current moment of football being played.

They're just snapping back and forth to all these different games that are happening. You're just seeing play after play after play.

All day.

It's called the Red Zone channel because whatever team is in the Red Zone at any game going on at any given point in time is the theory.

The NFL doesn't have to take on the costs of filming this.

They have one dude in a studio who just is like, now we're switching to the lions and commanders.

Yeah, and they licensed it to them, but now they're licensing their footage for free. Yes. Yeah. My God, this is incredible.

To your point, do the networks actually make money on this?

At this point, it's not totally clear.

They certainly used to, but NFL viewership has basically plateaued. If you look at any metric first game of the year or the Super Bowl or the average viewership, it rose for a long time. The last 15 years has been pretty flat.

They're just adding more product because then you have Netflix's Christmas game.

Yeah, another 150. Then Peacock has another 110. Madden, video games. That's a lot of money. 300 million a year.

Then also you do think about that Christmas game and Beyoncé. I'm surprised that they haven't done that more. It's only the Super Bowl halftime show.

They have to be able to top everything you've been seeing all year long and bring in people who don't generally watch football, so they need something novel.

But no, Monica, I think you're right. Doing it on Christmas, they traditionally shied away from Christmas because that was the NBA's holiday. This is more speculation, but the NBA had historically operated more like baseball with each team had their own TV deals. Base still, to its great, great detriment. The NBA and Adam Silver realized, hey, the NFL is a better model. So just this past year, I think, they renegotiated and centralized their TV contracts. Interestingly, now, this is the first year the NFL is like, oh, well, Christmas Which maybe we're not just going to let you have that. Christmas is now a battleground. And how does the Super Bowl work? When the merger happened, there was the NFL Championship and the AFL Championship, which had been sold to different networks if you're showing a championship game. Then they were like, Well, now that we're one league, can't have two champions. Then they invent the Super Bowl.

Made the network executives livid because they were like, I thought we had the championship game. You're putting one more game after the game.

That I got to spend money again.

It just totally devalued this other thing we sold people. Totally. The right to show the Super Bowl is, I'm imagining, a standalone TV deal.

I actually don't have that in the sum of deals.

Well, it definitely was in the beginning because I think it was ABC and NBC that had the separate rights for the NFL Championship and the AFL Championship, and then they both each paid a million dollars to both show the Super Bowl.

The first Super Bowl was shown on both-On two networks.

On two networks. Four network rotation starting in 2024.

What is the rights to that cost?

I think it might be built to the rest of the deals. Okay.

I thought they all bid on just that one game.

Maybe. So it rotates every year.

Nbc, CBS. Fox.

What is this year's?

It's on Court TV this year, which is a big win for them. Nbc gets winner Olympic years. I'm so glad I don't have the chart in my office trying to keep track of all the shit we've bought when we're airing it. This sounds like the worst.

Well, these days, if you're a networking executive, you're just a slave to the NFL essentially.

If you really follow the logic of the rights packages are getting more expensive, they're keeping basically the same number of commercials over the last 10, 15 years in any given game. And so if the number of viewers is fixed, how do you make more money? You need to keep raising your revenue with your costs. And so I think what's happening is every time it gets renegotiated, appreciated. The NFL is like...

We're going to take more of the profit pool.

Yeah, there's a total profit pool here. A lot of it used to go to the networks. You have no leverage against us. We're just going to take that profit. The NFL is the only reason you exist. It's slowly shift it over to us, and you'll be near zero profit entities that are a part of something else.

But they're also, not to get too in the weeds on it, they're amortizing the cost of that through some value they assign launching television shows on the back of this audience. They have 16 million viewers. They show a 30-second spot on the news.

Yeah, it's almost a lost leader.

Which used to work, and especially because in the streaming era, you don't monetize through advertising. So viewership actually doesn't matter as much. I mean, it does, but you guys would know better than me.

But yeah, you're getting into this complicated model of new subscribers. Their only metric is new subscribers. And subscribers that are staying, why are they staying? Are they staying for the new show? Are they staying for this thing we had? Talk about a job that's nebulous, that they're trying to figure out best ROI. Who fucking knows why someone sticks around on a streamer? And I think they have good ideas on how to get new subscribers, but I'm not sure they know necessarily.

Then there's also a cap on that.

Seven billion. They've all got a lot of room to go still.

I guess. So Super Bowl, what we're ostensibly here for, many people would disagree with this. I think basically the NFL, just from from a business standpoint, viewed this as more in the NFL films category. How do we add Sheen to the league through this? Yes, it's a game, but this is when they introduced Media Week and the Half-Time show. And famously, the Half-Time show, the performers don't get paid. It's a great honor. Yeah, great honor.

Exactly.

Doing someone's live podcast. It's an honor. We promise.

Interestingly, I don't know for sure, but I believe, obviously, your stated goal as a athletic team is to win the Super Bowl. Purely from a business standpoint, winning the Super Bowl is economically suboptimal because you are playing many extra weeks for which you are not making more money. All the revenue gets shared. All the teams get equal shares.

We should come with the bottom line. It's a $12 billion a year pool of capital that comes from networks that lands in the NFL's pocket to get distributed equally, truly to the state equally.

Packers get the same amount as the Niners. That is why the packers are still up there. Yes.

That is why Kansas City can win Super Bowl.

That's why Kansas City can win Super Bowl.

You would never see that in other sports league. That's so true.

Dead equal.

If you as an individual team, so I only care about my business as a team, I don't care about the NFL, if you make the Super Bowl, let's say you don't get a buy week, so you're not a number one seat, so you're playing the wild card round, the divisional round, the championship, the Super Bowl, four extra games. Then especially if you're a lower seat, and those are all road games, the range in revenue for an NFL team, a small market team, would be 80% of their total revenue is from the centralized TV stuff from the NFL. 20% is local ticket sales, sweets. Merch? Merch is centralized. No way. That was another Pete Rizel thing.

There's some merch that's not.

But most is jerseys all centralized. The reason for that, Rizel was like, we can't have all the teams having different quality levels of merch. We need to make a promise that if you buy a packer's jersey or a lion's jersey or a Ramster or a lion's jersey, it's a quality product.

This is the most democratized business.

When we were researching it, David texted me, this is communist capitalism.

Communist capitalism.

Yes, it is. One example of communism working like a mother for her.

And it's working. There's a sub-organization of the NFL called NFL enterprises that manages almost all the merch. Then again, all that revenue gets shared out equally to everybody.

Yeah, and if I'm a player, I'm pissed. I'm like, Bullshit, I'm fucking Tom braided. Thirteen % of all Jersey sales this entire year were me.

I'll think about Travis.

Well.

Taylor and Travis, we got to come back to that.

I think he's fine.

He's not getting screwed.

So many Kelsey jerseys on children now because of that.

You're right.

Now, I don't know if on something like a Jersey where it's an individual player name, if the player gets a small cut of that, but probably.

The players actually have it pretty great. It took a long time to get here. There was a big deal in '93 that enabled free agency. '80s, and then 2011, and that collective bargaining thing has been renegotiated a few times. But today, 48. 5% of league revenue is the new salary cap. So players are entitled as a whole to almost half The more money the NFL makes, the more money players will all make.

That's pretty high.

It's really high. Everyone has an incentive.

Top tier quarterback contracts are 55 to 60 a year, and they're by far the highest paid players.

But some of these are half a billion dollar contracts over a period of time.

Now you might say, Oh, my God, there's so much inequality among players. There is, but it's actually a narrower band than other sports. The NFL has done a better job at making sure there's a league minimum that's sufficiently high.

I'm always thinking about it when you watch that HBO show, Hard Knocks Training Camp, and you're like, this guy's making 400,000 a year, and he's sitting next to the guy who's making 29,000 a year. They're arriving in these dramatically different vehicles. It's pretty wild. Most coworkers don't experience that.

I don't know if you have it off the top of your head what the league minimum is, though, but it's pretty high.

Half a million, a million?

Rob?

795,000. That's good.

Most are making more than that.

Yeah. They're what? Any player rosters? These are big teams.

Exactly. Okay, so here's my great question. Is the only way for these networks to fight back is if they themselves formed a coalition and they collectively said, Guys, we're not paying more than a billion five for these rights.

People were concerned about this. People were like, cord cutting is happening. Obviously, traditional linear TV is going the way of the dodo. Is the NFL screwed here. Tech companies.

They're coming in. It doesn't help networks, but it is a way for the NFL to continue to extract dollars.

Thursday Night Football was streamed on Twitter for a year or two, right?

Yeah, that was so weird.

But again, if you look at it right now, it's the exact same situation the NFL was in, in 1960 or whatever, because currently, Netflix would be heavily disincentivized to enter into a collective buying group because they can all spend Everybody. So they are currently someone who would be like, Fuck that. But in the long run, they might benefit more from being in bed with some of these other-They do have these published goals of wanting to grow revenue.

Nfl total revenue last year was $80 billion up from 18 a couple of years ago. And as you know, the lion's share of that is the $12 billion from the TV deal. But then there's all this other stuff on top. I think they want it to be $25 by 2028 or something like that.

Yeah, my last question, and this one was really my agent when he found out I was going to talk to you guys. He's obsessed with you as well. He's like, What is going on with gambling? What's their participation in this gambling? Because this, again, is some potentially huge revenue source. What's their relationship with now this rise of these online gambling platforms?

When we did the episode two years ago, what did we say? 45 million people-ish bet on the NFL.

Which was illegal then. It just goes to show Prohibition is a goofy concept. Everyone still bet. Except you legalize it, and even way more people bet.

A lot more people drink alcohol after Prohibition.

75 million people bet on the NFL last year. It's growing 35% year over year.

That number is huge in and of itself. Only Americans watch football. If you are going to analyze the NFL and say, what is its one weakness? What have other sports done better? It's internet. Nobody except Americans care.

Have they tried?

They have these exhibition games.

It's American expats who go to them. Locals don't care.

It is curious to me why it holds no interest. I'm not a huge sports person, but I just do think Collectively, that game has a magic to it. The results would suggest that, aside from their collective bargaining and all these other things, it's an easy game to jump into really quick in love.

I was just about to say, I think Americans are so attached to our teams. I I think that's a little bit because we don't have a very long history. We have to build our own allegiances and stuff. I don't think all these other countries have it, but then I think soccer. Yeah, all of them.

I'm wrong. Like the Indian cricket. Like the Indian cricket.

Yeah, cricket.

Back to betting. So 75 million people bet on the NFL. The total population of people who care about the NFL is only Americans. What's the denominator? I don't know. 300, 330. That includes children. Right. Probably a third of the country is on the NFL. Wow.

So does the NFL... Are they licensing anything in that process?

Yeah, they've started making money. They wouldn't have let this happen without having some vague in it. There are figures that an industry association puts out that says they're making $2. 3 billion a year from gambling. That's amazing. That's already a sixth of the TV contracts. They're taking credit and double-dipping and other pies, too. So I'm not sure if there's yet a published number on Here's our gambling revenue stream.

They don't want to be known as having made money on this.

But how crazy is it watching football the last 30 years, and there was this puritanical thing where they would never even mention the spread.

And now it's all over the place.

It's like, this is the DraftKings' postgame.

Yes.

I can't believe it.

They did a big old pivot on that.

They really did.

There was this original fear, of course, that it would somehow corrupt the game and people would throw games. And we did see it in baseball. There's some examples. So I think the ostensible threat always was it was going to change the outcomes of these games. Is there any proof of that having happened? I'll tell you in my own personal anecdotal situation, I would have never found a bookie. I stupidly thought that the Jake, Paul, and Tyson fight was real. And so when I heard it was three to one Tyson to knock him out.

You're now convinced it wasn't real?

When a man has that much muscle memory with his Bob left everything and we see him do the entire series and then stop just short of knocking him out, that's a little hard for me to understand. But at any rate, I was stupid enough to believe that that was going to be a real fight. I'm like, well, that's three to one money sitting on the fucking table. Mike Tyson is going to knock this guy out in two seconds. I can download an app right now and make that. I was like, I got to get to Vegas. I'm like, no, I don't anymore. Now, it turns out I would have needed to because in California, you still can't do that. Thank you, California. You saved me $1,000 out of laws.

It's not legal here yet?

I think it has a lot of restrictions.

I think this is part of why there's so many different things you can bet on.

Any state that you have a native gaming industry, which California has, you're going to find that we have more restrictive laws. Every time there's an election cycle, you see all these gambling, anti and pro, funded by different reservations. So I think that's why I wasn't able to bet. So thank you, reservations as well.

Congratulations on your.

Yeah, raises those questions. I guess then you look through another lens of, well, the NFL always explicitly has been, this is an entertainment product. We don't want a Paul Brown situation. They're putting their fingers on the scale in every which way. Let's take the schedule. It's not totally innocuous having the best teams play the best team staying for the 500 record. Actually, it's going to make the best teams worse in the back half of the season because they're more beat up.

Here's the one thing, other than CTE, that could start the decline of the league. We are slowly seeing the erosion of the league first mentality of the cooperative capitalism. Oh, really? It used to be the case that the overwhelming amount of revenue that you produce comes from the league, the national revenue, and still for most teams, about two-thirds. But there are more teams finding clever ways to say, Oh, that's actually not part of national revenue. That's part of my revenue. When you see a new stadium get built and it has an absurd number of luxury suites, luxury suites are different than admission tickets. Admission tickets have a way in which a lot of the money goes to national revenue.

Oh, they have to kick up their own ticket sales?

The justification is a visiting team is half the product.

I thought for sure that was all theirs.

I think 40%. I think it's about a third.

Again, it's not just directly to the visiting team, it's up to the national pool.

Which then gets split evenly. But these luxury suites, for example, that's all local revenue. You get to keep that. Or other businesses that you start around your stadium.

Then you get into games like seat licenses, if you guys have heard of that. If you want season tickets, you need to buy a seat license that gives you the right to them buy the tickets. The ticket revenue is going to get shared up, but the seat license-Oh, that's not mentioned in the national agreement.

The way this nets out is you have teams like the Cowboys that will do something like 600 million in profit in operating income at the end of the year. These are Forbes estimates. But then you've got the Bangles, the Lions, the Bills, teams of that, Ilk, doing 50 to 60 million a year.

Oh, my God, 10X.

It's because Jerry world. They've managed to build a really profitable, local-only revenue business. You do have teams that are making a lot more money than other teams as more of the cleverness shifts to the local business.

You think that could seed some animosity that could start to erode?

Even if not animosity, just some teams are way richer than others.

The salary cap still is low enough that you can, as a small market team, still have parity.

Are a lot of the teams not even hitting the cap, would be my guess, or do they all hit the cap?

I think they all hit the cap. They do. But there's all sorts of engineering you can do around the cap. It's a game of chicken between the players and the individual teams in the league of, well, are you back waiting the contract, how much it's guaranteed.

Your margin of safety isn't that much further with the bottom teams making on the order of 50 million in profit a year before Or let's say the next time there's a renegotiation and it goes from 48. 5% of the players to let's say it goes up north of 50, or let's say costs go up for everyone.

The players, from their perspective, they're like, We just want as much money as possible. We want Jerry Jones to be able to pay us more money.

Wouldn't that then incentivize teams moving much more because if I'm only making 50 million, I see in Dallas, you can make 600.

Well, it's already happening. Look at the Raiders, right? Going to Vegas.

This is the thing that made the NFL was it doesn't matter how big of a market you're in. If you have the best team and we create this really even product it makes for this really powerful league. They're very aware of this. They're not dumb, but money works.

Money talks.

What a fascinating business.

The last thing is the Super Bowl. To put a bow on it. Yeah, please. Again, I truly think every team, genuinely, their number one goal is to win the Super Bowl. If you make it to the Super Bowl, you're playing all these extra games. You're not necessarily getting more money from that, especially if you're not the home team. When you go to a Super Bowl, nobody's the home team. Then you might think like, okay, well, if you get to the Super Bowl, at least you're there, you all the money you would want to win. If you win the Super Bowl, you got to pay for the parade.

That last line item, the parade.

And the parties and all that.

Well, don't players also have Super Bowl bonuses?

Probably the bigger impact is not just Super Bowl bonuses, but what it does for contract negotiations. In the coming years, players be like, Well, I helped you win a Super Bowl. It does affect their value on the market. Their skills are viewed highly while they're part of a Super Bowl team. Could the NFL have a downfall? Baseball was the NFL 50, 60, 70 years ago. Nobody would have questioned national pastime.

You and I were even much more bullish when we did our NBA episode three years ago that the NBA was going to eclipse the NFL. But this 82-game season where the coaches are incentivized to sit their best players and nothing really matters till the end of the season anyway.

Well, nothing matters to the fourth quarter then, and nothing matters to the end of the season. Yes. I was the biggest NBA fan. That was my religion for eight years. I was watching the Lakers during their run of complete dominance. That was so fun. I remember just going, I should really only tune into the fourth quarter. That's when they start playing. Doesn't matter how much they're down. Then I was like, do I even like this sport? If I sit through three quarters, it don't matter? It's interesting the limits that are just inherently in place. I guess the obvious choice for them would be to add games in the NFL, but it's such a violent sport that there's really a limit. They can't play 82 games a year in that sport.

They're likely going to add another week.

Wednesday morning football. Tea time.

Breakfast football.

That's how they're going to finally get Europe. Exactly. Yeah.

Well, David and Ben, this has been awesome.

Yeah, thanks for coming. How fun. Yeah.

Thanks for having us.

We love your show.

Thank you for being such fans. There's not a day that goes by that we don't hear from someone. I heard about you guys on Armchair Express.

Oh, good. Thanks so much for coming in. I hope we get to do this again. Yeah. Maybe another topic will burble up. The row. And yes, we'll be on your show. We'll be on your show.

Yes. Oh, David, were you whispering about? Yeah. Thanks so much, you guys.

All right, take care. Stay tuned to hear Ms. Monica correct all the facts that were wrong. That's okay, though. We all make mistakes.

Okay. Well. Okay. Hello.

If you say so.

Now, tell me if you've ever experienced this, okay? Okay. You get a new scratch.

Scratch?

Yeah. Yeah. It turns into a scar.

Oh. Okay. Okay. You're with me?

Yeah.

You're along so far?

Then when you look at your arm or hand, wherever the scratch/scar is, you don't recognize your own self.

Oh, no.

Oh, you can't relate.

I've not had that experience.

Okay.

That's what you're dealing with?

Yeah, I have a new scar.

Is this the mole you try to pick out or the freckle that you try to dig out?

I do often try to remove my own freckles. You're one to talk, okay?

I've not tried to remove freckle.

You try to do lots of surgeries on yourself.

True, true. But just no freckle removal. I don't know that that's possible.

Well, it is. I mean, I'm not advising it. Yeah, okay. But I've successfully completed many- And replace it with a scar? No, this is not that. This was a scratch or something. I don't know what happened there, but I guess I must have picked at it. And now it's a scar.

Was it a little light white color there? Is that what- Yeah.

Do you see it? Well, it I know it has a little makeup on it because this is where I put my makeup.

Oh, you put makeup? Oh, I thought you were covering up this.

No, I wasn't. In fact, now it's like, now it looks like I'm lying. Right.

Give yourself those scar. Can you see it? Yeah. Oh, my God. I know. It's huge. It's so I can't see it.

Really?

Yeah. I'm sorry. Well, the brown spot? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I see the brown spot. That's him. That's a liver spot, I think.

Don't. That's not what happened. That is not what happened.

It was a stretch. It's time to enter our liver spot phase of life?

I'm going to try to avoid that. Although it's... Look, aging is normal and natural.

It's very natural. If you can do without liver spots, you'd probably prefer it.

Ideally, yeah. But anywho, so now when I'm typing. It's on my hand. I see it all the time, and I'm like, who is she?

Right. Whole new hand. That's fun, though, I would say.

Yeah, it's an opportunity for reinvention. Yeah.

Small Slowing time down. That does a ding, ding, ding. This novel thing slow time down.

Yeah, they do. No one. Maybe that's why Jan is going so slow. Jan braided. January.

We're calling her Jan braided now? Yeah. You got to catch me up.

I'm sorry. I thought I already said that.

Where did you develop Jan braided? That sounds like a Jess.

Absolutely. Well, I've been calling- Jessi Khan? I've been calling her Jan. Okay, right. And then he added braided.

Well, tomorrow it's over. I know.

Yeah.

One more day. We can make it through.

Yeah, maybe. We can. Yeah, we can. Yeah, I started compulsively cutting my hair today. You know how I like to do that?

Yeah, and it's an indicator. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But now I can't blow my nose.

Oh, you're replacing. And I think that it's burbling up. Okay. I think you're going to need a new replacement because soon you're not going to have any hair.

I think I satiated my thing. What happens is I was going to do a little trim, trim. It got bigger and bigger and bigger. And then I thought I had finished in the bathroom, but then I went to work out. As I told you, I have reverse lighting or back light. I know. It exposes all these things. And then the madness of, I'm just going to do a trim. I know that's it. I keep scissors now in my gym, which is, yeah. And then I got a I vacuum it up. And then I'm like, that's it because we can't get the vacuum out again. And I got the vacuum out like five times, I think.

Okay.

Yeah. I was lifting weights, cutting hair, vacuuming, lift more weights, see more hair, cut more hair, vacuum. If someone was watching, which someone could, it's very exposed.

There's a lot of people in this area.

And there's just windows galore. Oh, true. If someone was interested, they probably watched the Ramblings of a Madman.

Your hair looks nice, though. Okay, good. You did a good job.

You see any spots I need to trim? No, I think. Okay. I'm not too far from my scissors.

They're always within an arm's length.

I had a little bit of a gusher. Caught my ear a little bit. Okay. I'm just I'm trying to be accountable.

I know. I appreciate it.

It's like an A meeting.

It just worries me a little. It just worries me a little. Okay, so maybe with your gusher, you're going to start understanding what I'm talking about, about the scar.

I'll be blessed with the fact that it's very hard for me to see, other than when I saw blood, and blood overtook my whole side burn area.

When you get a glance of it, you might be like, Whose ear is that? Yeah. Speaking of people watching you do weird things, yesterday, I was at Sunset Tower. That's a very fancy fancy location in this city.

Wow, we had overlapping days. Continue.

So I went to Sunset Tower, and I was working. I just bought this new bracelet. Okay. And I love it. It's from Sarah Hendler. Great. And she put it on me. And so then when I got to Sunset Tower, I was like, Oh, I'm going to try to tighten it a little bit, like move it up a rung. Okay. So I took it off. And then I spent, I think, 20 minutes It's trying to get this bracelet back on my hand. I could not do it.

This is a great way to meet somebody. I thought that. Ask a stranger. I thought that. Yeah. I'm so sorry, sir. Could you hold my delicate risk and help me get this?

Do you mind helping me with this? I did think it could be a meet cute situation.

Yeah, for sure.

Then the universe is wily, right? Because- Rascally? Yeah. I was thinking about that, a meet cute, and And guess who reached back out? Who? The matchmaker.

Oh, really?

People remember it didn't... Last time didn't go great, and I felt...

Bad about yourself.

Yeah. I did. I felt bad about myself. I'll cut to the chase for you. And this one seems more promising. Okay. Less, less like, conducive to me feeling like I hate myself. Okay, great. So we'll see.

So Sunset Tower, did you see fancy people?

Since I sat at the bar, I couldn't really look. But I'm sure there's fancy people there. There always are.

So I had this dinner with Nate and Panay that was a con. It was really a deception so that I could get to my birthday party. But then I really wanted to have dinner with them. So that was last night. And then Panay was like, Where should we go? Homebase, one of our standards. And I said, I could go to Homebase, or I could also go see some new hot place. I felt like I wanted to see that. Wow. Boy, did he deliver. We went to, have you heard of Navakow?

Navakow? No.

I thought it was Navakow when I saw it written. I was like, Oh, they named it restaurant after Navakow, the writer. Oh. But it's Novakow in Beverly Hills on Canon. And it was everything I could have hoped for. Novakow. It's only been open since July, I guess.

Mediterranean and Italian.

The food was outrageous. You know how when you're at Cara, you can pretend you're in Italy?

Yeah.

I was like, we're in Miami.

Oh, sure.

It was Miami.

Where people were dressed. I got to be careful.

I got to be careful.

It's fine.

Almost all the dudes looked exactly the same.

I can picture it.

Five, nine, shaved heads, probably on a little too much testosterone, but not working out a lot, with very, very attractive younger women.

And Were they wearing chains, maybe?

Yeah, there was a lot of jewelry. There was a lot of paddock watches. I mean, it's expensive. Yeah, yeah. I'm watching like- It's like nobu in a way.

Yeah.

It felt like a throwback to the '80s or '90s, which I enjoy. That's fun. I cannot put it to find a point how good the food was. It was outrageous. I want that. We piqued out like crazy. A risotto with truffle. Oh. Gluten free, blew my doors off my barn. And then a great steak, a baby chicken. Tiny chicken? They described it as a baby chicken.

Not a Cornish hen.

Not a Cornish hen, but an oven baked baby chicken.

They don't need to call it that. That is not as advertising.

Well, I was like, what? Do they mean a chick?

Right, exactly.

But that wouldn't be enough meat, I don't think. It was delicious and it was very entertaining. That's fun. It was. It was.

It's fun to do that every now and then and get in the scene.

Yes, I loved it. What was the vibe? I didn't know you're now working at Sunset Tower. That's a far ride to go.

It is. That's why it's not a main stop for me. But I love Sunset Tower. You love it. I only go once a year, twice a year.

You love it for the food, the atmosphere?

Atmosphere. And what are you seeing? Also the food is very good. I had a fried chicken. And it was really delicious. They have a great Schum-Krock.

Was it a baby chicken? Fried baby chicken?

It was full size, I think. Okay. Grandma chicken? Yeah. It's also such a vibe. It is, for people who don't know, it's a hotel here, Sunset Tower Hotel. And then there's a bar in a restaurant. It's a very LA, old-school LA, old Hollywood vibe. If you will. It got packed. See, I went at 2: 30.

So that you'll be still there at happy hour?

I didn't mean to, but we left at 8: 00. Okay. So we were there all day. I've been craving it for a while, the energy there. Yeah.

Similarly. I was dead. I had ridden my bicycle too far, and I hadn't had caffeine since really early in the day, and I wasn't going to have any. I was driving there. I was like, Oh, a little drowsy for this big outing with the boys. But I did have some DCs at the place, and then the energy really did lift me up.

Do you think that maybe now is not the time for you to be cutting out caffeine?

Well, I think it is in service of making I'm getting good night's sleep.

Oh, okay.

Right.

I think getting a full, uninterrupted aid is ideal right now, which I did last night.

Yeah. I think taking away things that you like.

Blowing my nose.

Exactly. Yeah. It's like maybe now is not the time.

Although I have the right mental attitude. I've decided to go like, yeah, this is uncomfortable, but this is you being strong and not escaping and walking through. And it's fine, and it'll change. So it's been fine. Okay. Yeah. Just a couple of haircuts, a few naps.

That's all right. All that's fine.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare.

Bunk. Bunk.

Bunk. Hey, Michael, what are you doing?

I'm saying Bunk, Vinnie.

What's a Bunk? I'm glad you asked, Vinnie.

Bunk is a super easy to use free digital bank that pays 2. 7 2. 67% interest on your savings. Paid weekly, fully on demand, and can be set up in just five minutes. It's fun to say, Bunk. Bunk.

I see.

What did my bank pay? Next to nothing. A Bunk? 2. 67%, Vinnie.

Paid weekly? Paid weekly. Okay, Bunk.

Bunk. Hey, it is fun to say.

Bunk Ireland is regulated by the Dutch Central Bank and by the Central Bank of Ireland for Rules of Business Conduct. Terms of Conditions apply.

Anything thrilling happened since I saw you last?

I guess those were big announcements that I already gave.

We both went to restaurants. I took a bike ride.

I took a long time to put my bracelet on. Yeah.

Did you end up having someone help you?

Yeah, when Julia got there, she did it.

But not a stranger.

No.

I think that's the best move.

I know, but it's also so-I'm so sorry.

Excuse me. I've been trying to get this bracelet on for 20 minutes. Would you mind? I don't have any cooties. Well, I do have cooties. Look how fun this is already. Playful, dance, dance, dance. Before he even gets the bracelet, you've now talked for 25 minutes.

Sure, because he's going to have a hard time, too. It's much harder than you'd think.

Yeah, and then he's failing and he's laughing.

Yeah, that's funny.

Oh, my God. I'm falling in love just thinking about this. We had a funny moment last night. Every now and then, you'll feel 13, which is really fun, which is George and I went to the bathroom. There was a girl in cowboy hat he liked.

Okay.

Sitting at a table. And behind them was this cool little display of the seafood they have. It was like a little mini market set up, and they're grabbing stuff from there. It felt like you were invited to peruse this little thing. Okay. So on the way in, George spotted her, and he's like, oh, my God, look at that girl in the cowboy hat. Okay, so when we were coming out, I'm like, oh, let's look at these. Let's look at the lobsters.

You were wingmanning.

Yeah. So now we're like, now we are looking, but we're also fake-looking. Of course. We're looking at the vegetables and the lobster and this and that. Then as I turned to walk here, well, they're all looking at George and I. Then I'm like, and now what?

Yeah, he's going to have to talk.

He's going to have to talk. It's so funny. That part's hard. I felt like it was at the mall. We saw some girls at Burger King, and then we acted like we were going to buy something. Then we were like, You know what? I'm full. And turned around and it was like, well, that was the... Then when I left, George- Shows of this. Well, I think we got their attention. And then I was leaving, and George was like, I got to go back. I'm going to go back and see what's happening with the cowboy head. But us standing there looking at this stuff.

It's so weird to be an adult.

Especially 50.

Right.

Yeah. I think it's...

I was hearing the updates of a single life, and I was thinking, yeah, I'm glad I'm not on the scene.

Well, that's Yeah. Seeing of young men, Ben and David.

Oh, wow. Fun.

Ben and David. Yeah, they're great.

Really, really, really.

That was a very fun time. Yes. Now I'm really into the NFL as an institution.

Yeah, as a Corporation.

Yeah, as a business.

As a capitalist communism.

Yesterday, I bought some vintage clothes and bought a LA Rams. There's an LA Rams vintage shirt. Oh, really? I got that because now I really like LA Rams because they were really ahead of their time progressively.

Right. So now you're a huge fan. Yeah.

Of the Ram's. And I live here.

You're a Ram fan.

Well, let's see. The biggest fact to check, and the most exciting fact to check, is Taylor Swift's car collection.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. This is very exciting.

Very. Does she have a car collection? I was a definite no. And I felt very arrogant, in my opinion, because I feel like I know everything about her. Yeah. Only because I listen to a great podcast, Every Single Album, shout out. That breaks down all of her albums. And they do other people, too. And they also just do music industry stuff. The two hosts are really awesome. So I love that. And so now I feel like I know everything because they do deep dive. But I don't think they've talked her car collection. Right. They skipped that part, so she does have one.

This is fantastic. What are her cars?

Okay. There are three sections of cars she has. Okay. Luxury, sports, and practical. Okay. Luxury. Mercedes AMG G 63.

Oh, what a wonderful sedan.

Luxury vehicle.

Twin turbo.

Is that a sedan or a- Is that a sedan or a- Yeah, four-door sedan. Oh, I I thought it was a G-Wagon.

G-wagon is the G 63. That's what I said. Oh, I thought you said S. No, G. Oh, wonderful. Love those. Eric's even thinking of getting one. Really? Yeah.

G-wagon. Yeah, they're so good. I would like to have one in my life.

You would.

At some point.

Yeah, they're great. They're very expensive.

Are they me, though? But,.

Every time I see a G-Wagon, it's mostly Rich Hot women driving G-Wagons in LA. It skews female.

Really? She also has Mercedes Benz S-Class.

That's what I was referring to, but not the AMG version.

Right. Then she has a Mercedes May box S650. That's fancy.

That's like a coach-built Mercedes-based, like a private plane for cars. Wow. It's a rolling atelier. Oh, Wow.

Then there's the Cadillac Escalade.

Standard. You got to have it for arriving at functions. You're up high. If you're wearing a dress, you can exit the vehicle without your beaver accidentally being exposed.

Yeah, special occasions. Okay, now we're into sports cars. Okay. Audi R8.

Okay, yes. Yes. Very elegant design first. Okay. Not the most performing- Oh, all right. Of super cars. Allegedly.

Okay.

No, no, objectively, but very elegant-looking.

It does say right here, a high-performance supercar. Yeah, and it is.

It's got the Lambo V10, or it's got the V8, depending on which- This is V8. Okay. I'm surprised she doesn't have the V10, but when I talk to her, I'll get her.

You'll get her that, right?

Again, that's a very feminine supercar.

Okay. Now, she also has a Ferrari 458 Italia.

That's a shocker. Yeah. Yeah, that feels... That's interesting. That's when she plays That's her lavender haze, I think. That's her lavender haze car.

Is it sexy?

It's just an Italian. I mean, it's so- Italian stallion? Yeah. Very dude car. Very, very few women go out and buy a 458.

Oh, wow. Yeah. I'm looking it up. It looks fast.

I'm going to ask Chad if it knows what percentage of Ferrari owners are men.

Oh, that's a great question.

Because I bet you it's about as high as any brand. What percentage of Ferrari owners are men? The percentage of Ferrari owners who are men is estimated to be around 90 to 95 %.

Oh, wow.

That's really quite high. So She can count herself in the 5 %.

That's awesome. Okay, then she has a Porsche 911 Turbo.

Perfect car. Very exciting. Great taste. Should I see what Chad thinks the percentage of women who own Porsches?

Yeah, it It needs to be higher if it's not- What percentage of Porsche owners are female?

15 to 20%.

Okay. That's 4X, the amount that own 4-4. Right. And that tracks. I know more women with Porschas.

The Cayenne has female ownership estimated between 30 and 40%.

Oh, that's the electric one?

No. Oh, here we go. The Macan, that's the small SUV. That one's got 50% of buyers are women.

Wow. Yeah. Okay. All right. Practical vehicles.

Okay. She has some practical vehicles? She has three.

Okay. She has a Toyota Sequoia.

Great.

She'll have that until she's dead. It'll run until she's dead.

She has a Chevy, which we hope is a She's 150. She's 150.

It'll run that long. Don't worry.

Chevy Silverado, her first car, which she still keeps.

Okay. Is it pink? Yeah, it's pink. It's pink. It's like a Mary Kay.

Then the Nissan Quashquai. That's Q-A-S-H-Q-A-I. That's- She has that.

Why does she have that?

She has it.

Was that given? For one, it's cute. Does she have a deal with Nissan? Does Do you have any- No, she just loves it.

She loves it. Okay, but actually, according to this other site, her very first car is a pink truck. That's very cute. That's cute. Another site has a little bit of a different opinion on what she has, but a lot of these are crossing over. I feel good about that. The Ferrari, the Porsche, they're all on here. Okay, good. The Sequoia, the AMG, the Nissan Quashquai. The everyday Humboldt- Everyone says the Nissan Quashquai?

Mm-hmm. If we have her interviewer, I want to do 20 minutes on this.

I hope she arrives in it. That would be great. She probably will because it says, The everyday humble choice. Oh. It's her latest acquisition. She can move her discreetly. Right. In London. It says in London, specifically.

This vehicle is in London, and it's so she can leave an apartment without anyone thinking it's her.

Yeah. Although, too late. I know. Don't go looking for her quashquise and try to find her. She's just trying to live. She's just trying to be.

She should own a UPS truck and then just deck out the back like a sprinter van and then get driven around a UPS truck.

No one ever- You can design something for her. You've been designing cars with AI. I could.

And then her driver could wear the UPS outfit. That's Or FedEx. I guess if she's in London, it would probably be FedEx.

Okay. Do players get a cut of their jersey sales? Yes. Nfl players receive a cut of their jersey sales. Players receive royalties based on how many other jerseys I've sold. These She's come from group licensing deals negotiated through the NFL.

Okay.

So that's cool. Action Park, I don't believe, is the park based on adventure land because it says adventure land is based on the real life adventureland park in Farmingdale, New York.

Okay.

Action Park is in New Jersey.

Okay. And there's a doc about it called Class Action Park or something.

Oh, 5 to 10 victims daily.

Five to 10 people went in an ambulance away from there.

Emergency room.

Emergency. While they were keeping probably the town emergency clinic in business.

Yeah. Maybe that's what it was all about.

I wonder if they were giving away I like the woman who lost her eyelid on the slide. She got an embroidered sweatshirt or something.

The tease. Yeah.

From Armchair Anonymous.

Yeah, that was a great episode.

They should have had a shirt that said, I was sent to the emergency room by Adventure Park.

And all I got was this little T-shirt. What was it was called?

Action Park.

No, Action Park. Yeah. Well, that's it for Ben and David. They were awesome. Yeah. Really fun.

Yeah. Incredible. And I've been talking so much about what I learned.

Yeah, me too.

I basically repeated the entire episode to my father I'm all on this in time.

Oh, fun.

All right.

Love you. Love you.

Follow Armchair Expert on the WNDRI app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now by joining WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondry. Com/survey. Behind the closed doors of government offices and military compounds, there are hidden stories and buried secrets from the darkest corners of history, from covert experiments pushing the boundaries of science to operations so secretive they were barely whispered about. Each week on redacted, declassified mysteries, we pull back the curtain on these hidden histories, 100% true and verifiable stories that expose the shadowy underbelly of power. Consider Operation Paper Club, where former Nazi scientists were brought to America after World War II, not as prisoners, but as assets to advance US intelligence during the Cold War. These aren't just old conspiracy theories. They're thoroughly investigated accounts that reveal the uncomfortable truths still shaping our world today. The stories are real. The secrets are shocking. Follow redacted Declassified mysteries on the WNDRI app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to redacted early and ad free right now on WNDRI Plus.