Transcript of Chuck Klosterman on the Cinema Revival, Sports Tsars, Owners and Commissioners, Analytics, U.S. Soccer Groundhog Day, and State of Reading New

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The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by PayPal. We are also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I did a Rewatchables last week. We did Ali. If you missed it, it was our 9th Michael Mann movie. And the one we have coming up on Monday, it's a movie that's also on Netflix, by the way, She's the One, 30th anniversary, very important Gen X movie. We're gonna explain all the reasons you should care about this movie. It's an interesting one to discuss 30 years later. So we have that, and then we have Hitch with Will Smith and Eva Mendes. That is going to be the week after. So that is the plan. Coming up is a long conversation I had with Chuck Klosterman over the weekend. It goes in all the directions it always goes with Chuck and I. Sports, culture, all kinds of things. And it's a really good one. So if you haven't heard me and Chuck do that, we've been doing these shit since, uh, I got my podcast at ESPN in '07. So, um, I don't remember when he started coming on, but we do these a bunch and this was a rollicking, rollicking effort.

So it is all coming up next. We're gonna take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Chuck. This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by PayPal. You know a clutch move when you see one. A no-look pass, a buzzer beater, a big steal. Well, imagine if your wallet could pull off moves like that? That, my friends, is PayPal. Right now you can find offers from hundreds of brands like Sony, Allbirds, and Viator, and save offers before you check out, earn unlimited rewards. Plus you can add those rewards on top of credit card points. Now that is clutch. Download the PayPal app today. Save those offers. Start scoring rewards. Terms and exclusions apply. See paypal.com/rewardsterms. Credit card points subject to issuers. Terms and conditions. All right, Chuck Close to Minutes here. We're recording this on a Friday even though it's running on Sunday, so there's going to be some World Cup stuff this weekend. Hopefully nothing too crazy. Have you been into the World Cup, Chuck?

Yeah, I, I, not, I mean, I not really. I haven't watched much of it. You know, now, now you've, you don't even have to try to follow things. Things just come to you. So of course I hear non-stop conversation around it. I know that the games for the United States are supposed to be like at good times now, but the times have not worked out perfectly for me. So I, I've, I've seen here and there, I've seen some of it.

Yeah. Do you feel like we're in a loop with US soccer where every 4 years everybody decides this is the time that it's— I, I feel like you and I have talked about this for 20 years and it just becomes Groundhog Day every 4 years where they build our hopes up and then people get disappointed and then everyone says how soccer's taking off and I feel like we've been doing this since the 2000s.

There is some similarities with the conversations, although I will say every time this happens, the conversations become a little more serious. Like, you know, in the '90s or whatever, it would almost be sort of, you know, people make more jokes about— people are less willing to joke about soccer now, in the same way they're kind of less willing to joke about everything. Um, uh, what is of course I think to me always fascinating is then the, the, as soon as the, the US gets eliminated, there's the immediate conversation about why don't we dominate soccer? Why aren't we more dominant? What do we need to do? Do we need to have our best athletes not play football and basketball? Is it that we have to change youth sports? Is it the financial structure? Um, it's very interesting. I kind of have my own theory about this, but I'm wondering first of all what you would say if you were tasked with this idea that everybody seems to want, that we need to have like a, a, a national team that's as good as anybody in the world, what do you think would need to happen?

Well, I want to hear your theory first. You said you had a theory. What's your theory?

Well, sort of I do. Okay, so, um, okay, this is gonna kind of seem meandering, but, uh, so like after the Communist Revolution in China—

okay, okay, okay—

China's this sort of— what's it— once like this mostly agrarian country, you know, now It's, it's, it's poor, uh, that this, the, the entire country has been sort of thrown into chaos, but they need— they want to become a world power in every context. They want to sort of be a, you know, a, uh, you know, not just in, in economically, but also like in things like sports and arts. So, you know, they made a very conscious decision. They looked at the world of sports And they said, what is a sport that is not emphasized anywhere else? And that there is no sort of, uh, uh, problem with the physicality and the, the, the, the size of our athletes or whatever. And what they came to the conclusion, one of these things was like table tennis, like ping pong.

Hmm.

We can dominate. Like they made a choice to become a ping pong power. And that happened. It was like they saw this vacuum, right? They saw this empty space that if we wanna be a dominant, you know, and they did this with lots of things. Like the manufacturing of very small, cheap plastic toys, you know, like the kind of toys that are like, you know, 99 cents or whatever. They're like, well, no one's really thinking to themselves, we need to build an industry around this. They did all these things. They made all these choices based on sort of seeing what wasn't there and then like kind of filling that vacuum. I don't think that can be done with a sport that is basically the most popular sport in the world. All these other countries, uh, are obsessed with soccer and have this big head start. And I, I like, I, I'm not sure what could be done. It might be that you just can't decide we're gonna be great at something, have it happen. And like maybe that shouldn't even be a demand. Yeah.

I have a, a friend of mine, David Diamond, sent me this long text after the World Cup, after we lost, talking about just everyone was like, oh, see, we weren't as good. This was all mirage. And, and his take was we actually did have a lot of talent. And the difference with our team compared to, you know, some of the other teams that you see out there is like the experience, kind of the nastiness, like the edge, which I mentioned on the pod the other day. Berhalter came in at one point and, you know, was like energy guy and, and they actually felt like they had some cohesion. And his question was, hey, it, it's not a question of how do we get more athletes, it's how do we get the type of athletes that seem to succeed in the World Cup? Who are all these guys that have these edges, right? And we have this in the NBA and we have the NFL, all these other ones. And in soccer, it seems like our teams are, are always too nice. Like the best, the most successful team we ever had was the '02 team.

That was the team that beat Mexico and then probably should have beaten Germany. And there was the handball in the net that would've been a big deal if that happened now. But that team was just feistier. And I, I wonder like, if I'm trying to do like the blame pie for all the different reasons we can never get over the hump, um, the athletes thing's a piece of it, the youth soccer is a piece of it, but I also wonder like, is there some sort of mentality personality thing that we're just never gonna have? Like it's basically a sunk cost. There's, there's just, there's no way we're gonna have it compared to what some of these other countries have where they know all the tricks and pulling jerseys and And there, there's a nastiness to even the best players, right? And, and I always feel like over and over again, we don't have it. So why don't we have it?

Well, I mean, that would, that would suggest though that there's like these kind of intangible secrets to soccer that somehow we can watch and not, I mean, that, that shouldn't be the case, right?

I mean, if, if, but that's it. How do we, how do we copy, how do we build on these intangible secrets? That we apparently just don't have. And, and I guess the other question would be, why don't we have it? Right? Is it something about the structure we have that building from youth soccer, the culture of it, is there some sort of weird toughness that we seem to be missing? Because the weird thing about the Belgium game was they really, like, pulled our pants down. Like, that, that was like one of those football playoff games you watch in round one where one team just gets blown off the field. And embarrassed and knocked around, and they just don't seem tough or gritty or anything at all. So I, I just, I don't know how we get those people because it feels like those are the type of athletes that drift to the other sports. So to me, it's less like athletic talent and more like all the other stuff that comes with being great. Like, somebody sent me a great email about Anthony Edwards, how he just carries himself in a basketball game. And did you see anybody on America who carried themselves like that?

Right. That, and you watch these other countries and you see somebody like Mbappé and, you know, he's not like the biggest, most intimidating guy, but he's got like some, some oomph to him, you know? And that's what we seem to, and it's a weird thing to be like, oh, how do we develop that? But I don't know how we do.

But I like, okay, there are more people in the United States playing soccer than there are in Belgium. We have a larger—

way more.

Yeah. We have a larger pool to choose from. So it's not like— that's why this idea that it's like, if, well, if all our best athletes played soccer, it would all be different. I'm not sure that would necessarily be the case. Yeah. It's just— I mean, I don't know. You can use Anthony Edwards as this example. So let's say we lived in Norway and we were like, well, we want to challenge the world at basketball. So we look at our basketball players and then they look at the Norwegian basketball players and they're like, why don't you guys carry yourself like Anthony Edwards? I don't like, like, I'm like, how, how does that—

I'm just saying that's a piece of it. But they, so Norway's a good example, right? They have Haaland who carries himself like a cross between, you know, Rob Gronkowski and Ray Lewis. And he just moves around the field like a shark. And, but that's somebody who, his dad was a really successful soccer player. Like they have like a whole infrastructure in place that if they have somebody like that, they can develop them differently. Everyone's talked about this youth soccer stuff, which I, I have some experience with cuz you know, we're in California. My daughter went through the whole thing. It is expensive. It is one of those things where the coaches put a lot of pressure on people to only play soccer and do nothing else and not play multi-sports, which I've talked about on past podcasts. That seems to be really dangerous when you're specializing in something from like age 7, 8 on. But I, I don't, I don't think there's some grand solution. I, I just feel like this is going to be the way it is for the rest of my life. We're going to be, we're going to be solid, but never great.

In the course of your life, they have gotten better. So maybe that will, maybe they'll continue this in the, you know, same sort of general up. I mean, I would think overall the trajectory is upward, right? Maybe.

Like, we were really good in 2002. Like we were good in 1994. Like, and I would say all the countries got better because there's just more people playing soccer and probably a better infrastructure for it. Now, the people like the, the diehard soccer fans that I know, and we've had some of them on the pod, are saying we have the most players playing abroad on good teams that we've ever had. So that seems like a bonus. But then you, you go against a team like Belgium and they have people all over the place that are like playing key roles for the best teams. And that's where I don't know how we get over the hump with that. I mean, it also might be that you might have to do more Balagan stuff where you're just basically getting people to switch citizenship and come here.

How good should they be? This is, I think, a question that is kind of the unasked thing here. It's like what people keep thinking, that we should be able to challenge for the World Cup, we should be a consistent world champion or a world power. I, I'm not, you know, okay, the biggest country in the world is China. Most popular sport there now is basketball. They're not a World Cup power.

Second, I agree with that.

India is India. Most popular sport there is cricket. Third biggest country is the United States. So soccer is the most popular sport in the world, except that the, except in the three biggest countries, it's this separate thing. So I mean, maybe this is just maybe the natural way these things kind of work out. I mean, it's like, um, that, that there has to be sort of a distribution of, of sports excellence or whatever, and the United States is not in a position to have that role in soccer. You know, I, I— it almost seems like people are saying like, we've got to be good at the World Cup, otherwise soccer will never be popular here.

But it is popular here.

I, I—

the thing is, I think soccer's got more popular here It's really, over the last 25 years, like there's no question. And I think even you see some of the stars that are in this World Cup where people like, we have real familiarity with now that we've been watching on all these different channels and streamers for 20 years. There's, there's one piece that I don't know how we fix this, but like, you know, if you're in England growing up in like Manchester, the moment you're like 3 years old, they're putting the soccer jerseys on you. And if you have any talent at all, you're playing and you you're just dreaming like someday I'll be on the World Cup team in England. What do, what do kids dream about here? It's all kinds of things, right? Like if I'm in Florida and I'm growing up and I'm a good athlete, maybe I'm dreaming of playing for University of Miami football someday, or you, you know, or Florida State. Or if I'm in Alabama, maybe like my dream is to play for Alabama someday from the moment I'm 4. Whereas like in some of these other countries, the dream is to just be, playing soccer for, you know, the best possible teams and for the, for the country, and that's it.

So, so all those young, like, fledgling athletes are just thinking about that. But here they think about all kinds of sports. That might be a piece of it.

I guess it depends if, uh, you know, dude, does the— like, what you're saying is the dream sort of manifests itself as reality, and that if kids here dream of winning the World Cup, eventually that will happen.

They will almost sort of like wish-cast it into Yeah, it's like you take like somebody who has awesome genes and athletic ability and at age 4 they've just decided, I love Messi, that's my guy. I want to be the next Messi. Like a good example is what happens in Canada, right? Canada has been pumping out hockey players forever and they have this whole system. And when you think about even like, like we finally, I think, caught up to them. You could see from the Olympics, like our best 30 guys are probably pretty even with Canada's best 30 guys.. But if you talked about the percentage of Canadian athletes who are like 4 years old, like someday I want to do blank, it's the hockey's gonna be way, way higher there than it would be here.

I mean, what you're basically saying is it's, it's, it's, this is a cultural thing that, yes, that, okay. Okay. So if that is true, if that is the case, and that's a very good argument, but if, let's say if it's the culture, well then it's not just the culture directly around the sport. Like, the reason that we produce great football and basketball players here is not just the culture of football or the culture of basketball. It's sort of the culture of everything. In Canada, for example, you're saying, well, why is— what makes that different? Well, it's not just their interest in hockey. It's not just them getting kids on the ice young. It's not just them worrying about what month their kid is born or whatever. It's everything about living in Canada, you know. So If that is what does it, if it is the totality of these cultures, then it's got to be everything about the United States has got to in a way change. And I think some people think it kind of is. I think there's a lot of people who feel like the culture of the United States is changing, but I don't know if it's necessarily changing in a way that's going to produce more soccer players.

These questions might be too big to solve. There's nothing that can be done. Now, somebody would say, like the people in Norway would say, well, 40 years ago, we changed youth sports. They all became free. And now look what's happened 40 years later. This is, you know, this is the result. Maybe that's true. I mean, it would be, it would be really, I think, wonderful if the United States decided all youth sports were going to be free for everyone. It's something that they could do, but they never will. That's never going to happen. Um, but if we, if that did happen, I wonder if that would change a lot of things, you know. I mean, it would change the, the kind of kid who, um, you know, it would become something that if it was free, that like some parents would be like, you're playing football this year, you're playing soccer, you're playing tennis, because it would be like a free summer camp, basically, uh, and that would— there's probably some kids we miss due to that. Like, they just have no chance to be involved, so we never know if they could potentially be.

No, it's the— once you get to the travel club soccer level, it is, it's legitimately expensive. You know, and for some people it becomes prohibitive unless there's scholarships or teams raising, raising money to pay for a couple extra kids, things like that. I, there's one other piece that we didn't mention. We've never had the transcendent soccer player here that would become like, like the hero for somebody, you know, like, like for instance, Caitlin Clark dating back to, uh, the last 2 Iowa seasons and then going to the WNBA had a profound impact on girls who play basketball. Like that, it's just a fact. People watched her, they were like, I want to be like her. I want to shoot like her. We saw this with Steph Curry too, with 3-point shooting in America where Steph started having that. Basically it started at Davidson, but when it really started to happen with the Warriors, you just saw the sport transform and all of these people all over the place were like, I want to shoot like Steph does. We've never had a soccer player like that here. We've never had an Ameri— we've never had an American Messi, and we probably, we might, we may never will.

But, um, but I do wonder if we had somebody like that, how different it would be. Like, how many people did Tiger Woods affect when he made his golf run in the late '90s? And did he, did he cause more people to play golf? I would argue that he did.

Either, uh, did golf in the United States improve in the wake of Tiger Woods?

Yeah, I think, I think more people played. I do think he had an impact.

I mean, I don't, I don't have my, I don't have a research paper handy, but it, I mean, it's, it's actually in a way starting to seem like Tiger Woods' impact is slightly less than we thought it was going to be. If we'd had this conversation in say 2003, True.

Well, yeah, talk about minority golfers.

2003. I think we would've imagined a world of golf now.

Yeah.

That would've been like many guys who look like Tiger Woods and like a different, you know, and like, and, and, and golf has changed, but I think that not as much as we thought it would.

Well, it's another sport that you need money to get really good at, which, sure.

But that's all, I mean, that's, you know, it's like a, It's not like there's not money here.

The best example is—

there's enough money in the United States for enough people to play golf. I mean, it's like, um, sure, I don't— it's— I mean, I like this question, actually. Like, you know, I don't follow— obviously I don't follow soccer. I'm not watching these games, but I find this concept real interesting because one, it's just this belief that as the United States, anything that we want to be good at, we should be able to be great at. You know, it's like we should be able— we should just be able to do it. Like, we have the resources, we have the people. But it kind of is proof that, like, like, there's just a different way of, of thinking, you know. I mean, I, I mentioned that, uh, that thing about, you know, after, like, the Chinese, you know, revolution or whatever. Have you ever seen the documentary on General Tso's chicken?

No.

Okay. It's fascinating for a ton of different reasons, but particularly for one. Okay. So it was just sort of, it's also kind of like a history of like Chinese food in the United States. So, you know, after like, you know, the railroads were built, there are all these, you know, Asian people in California and there's, you know, and they did these, they made up this Draconian law. Okay. Where it was like, if you were of Chinese origin, You could only operate a restaurant or a laundromat. Like, they changed the laws of who could own these businesses. And they— and so the people there that did something that's just incredible to me. It's like they got all the people, all the Chinese people, into like essentially like a big meeting or whatever. And they said, look, if we all open restaurants here in San Francisco or whatever, we're going to kill each other. Like, we won't be able to survive. So here's what's going to happen. You and your family, you're going to go to Kearney, Nebraska. You're going to open a Chinese restaurant. You and your family, you're going to go to Stillwater, Oklahoma. You're going to open a Chinese restaurant.

And they just sent these families to these places where there was no one else like them and said, you know, open a Chinese restaurant. And that's why sometimes you drive through a town like a small town in the middle of the country and like they have like a Subway, a grocery store, but there's a Chinese restaurant there, you know, it's like, like it really worked. Okay. That's the kind of mentality that I don't think Like, it's not a very American way of doing it. It would be really hard to do that, right? To take Americans, put them together and go like, look, I'm going to send you someplace you don't want to live. You're not going to know anybody, but you're going to start a business because it'll be better for all of us if we do that. You know, it's just, I don't know if the way that the, you know, like the, the, the, if the US mentality, like the things that we're good at, maybe create problems that make it very difficult for us to improve at things that don't naturally come. You know what I'm saying?

That was really interesting. Right? What did, did they figure out who came up with, is it General Gao or Tsao or how did—

here's the deal. There is no General Tsao.

Okay.

There used to always be this idea. There used to be all these, okay. They, they basically took a Chinese food and they were like, we gotta make this palatable to Americans.

Yeah.

Like what's it, what's it, you know, we, we, there's gonna be people who have never seen Chinese, you know, this is the past. People have never seen Chinese food before. They're gonna be freaked out. So we're gonna use chicken and we're gonna make a sauce. It's kind of sweet and kind of crispy and we're gonna throw some broccoli in there. Then there were all these kind of myths about it. Oh, General Tso was a general, and when he would win battles, he would reward his troops with this food. Or General Tso, when he was fighting battles, needed an easy food to make to feed his troops, you know, so that's what they ate when they were, you know, sort of out in the wild. None of this is true. And then even though General Tso's chicken is a completely constructed Americanized food, there's now sort of an issue over its authenticity. Can you use white meat in it? The people say no. Traditionalists say no. How, how spicy or sweet is the sauce supposed to be? Like, even though this thing was a completely manufactured concept, there's now a debate over whether or not—

tradition of it. Yeah.

You know, and it's just what's great about this documentary is it really does show like this is how culture actually works. Like things that, that become so entrenched in our life. It's like we seem to think in some ways that like they're arbitrary or that there's some puppet master, and it's kind of a weird hybrid of those two things where it's like you can't control how people feel about things. We can't really control how people feel about soccer. We— every 4 years they try, like the soccer community in the media tries to do this every time the World Cup happens. They try to convince people that both soccer is going to become more popular and that it's actually more popular than you realize, that people actually already like it. And you're just not gonna talk people like they gotta actually feel that way.

Which I think is what's happened in the last 15 years, 15 years or so. I actually feel like more people do like soccer myself.

They do. No, there's no question about it.

But in the 2000s, it did feel like they were that community was trying to sell us on it versus it actually being the reality.

It's also unique in that it has a different meaning in the United States than in other countries. The, the idea of liking soccer, like the, the idea of liking, you know, when, when you think about, say, in the UK or whatever, like, you know, like the book, like Among the Thugs or whatever, like, like it's like that's the world for people who were cut out of everything else. It's like they don't have a relationship to art, they don't have a relationship to making a lot of money in entrepreneurship, but they have this thing. Soccer is for the kind of person who has, that's what they're union. In the United States, it's the opposite. That if you're really into soccer, it tends to mean like, well, you kind of have a globalist mentality in that you're not like some SEC football fan or whatever. They call it the beautiful game or whatever. And they read how soccer explains the world and these things. So I think that the rise in popularity of soccer in the United States is also the rise of a certain kind of person, that there's a certain kind of person who likes to see themselves as a sports fan who is not a retrograde thing.

It's like that they're sophisticated, that they're— And you really see this on social media. Every time the World Cup happens, there's these people who wanna like suddenly become like soccer tacticians and want you to describe all the things you're not seeing. And it's like, oh, it's like, I know you like watching, you know, you like watching baseball or whatever, but like we know this is how it is. So it, I mean, but that you're right, it is more popular for sure. There's no question. I was, when I wrote about soccer back in the '90s, like I was wrong about that. Like soccer is going to become, like one of the major US sports, if it isn't already. But it doesn't necessarily mean we're gonna do well in the World Cup.

I mean, like, there, there's history with it too, because people have teams that they picked, you know, when this was happening in 2000, like I wrote that piece about picking a Premier League team in '07, I think. And I, at that point I was in my mid-30s. What you're seeing now is people are picking their team when they're 8 or 9. Like they become an art, and now those people are in their 20s. So they have like the same way you would pick any team. It's not like they jumped in late. It's been part of their lives. And I think that's, that's what's probably changed the most. But I still feel like, you know, big picture with the soccer stuff, um, like we basically what we've been circling around is the concept of a sports star and, you know, which I've joked about for 25 years. But we actually saw a glimpse of it when Trump did the red card thing and got it lifted for, for, uh, Balogun, the, the striker of the American team. And there was some wheeling dealing going on. And I was thinking about— I, I don't— this is the first summer I'm like, we actually might need somebody whose job that is for real.

And I've made the cases in the past, but even like with this Kawhi situation right now It's ostensibly supposed to be the commissioner of a league, right? But it almost feels like we need somebody who has more oversight than that, who can be like, yo, what's going on with this aspiration thing? Like, we have to, we have to come up with a decision. Somebody who could float around, who has, I don't know, a little bit of authority. And I, I don't know why that's not a job. Like, we have a Department of Transportation, we have all these different parts. What, what part of America generates like more, more money from an entertainment value than sports? And why wouldn't we have more oversight over it?

Well, you know, when you, when you, or, or would oversight be bad? You mentioned the sports czar thing, like back when we first started doing these podcasts.

Yeah.

It was more like a joke. I will admit it doesn't seem insane now in that same way. For what we were just talking about, youth sports.

Yeah.

Like, if I was sports czar, before I would deal with anything with pro sports or college sports, I would first get involved with youth sports. That is the, the place where it really does need— seems like somebody could have enough oversight to say, like, look, this way, it's— this isn't good for anyone. It's not good for the parents.

Well, same thing with the NIL and the college conferences where— yes, it's like, all right, we've now drifted to this place that I think everybody feels like is pretty rocky. Like, this could, this could maybe be not sustainable in 10 years. So how are we going to fix this? And nobody seems to care.

Well, like, the situation, like, with the Texas Tech quarterback and the gambling stuff, it's like there was a point when it was like, this seems crazy, but what can we do? Like, what could really be done here? Like, there is— there isn't anything that can really— like, it's not really made up that way. It's— as crazy as this is, is like, pro sports are actually probably a little more stable than all the things below it. I mean, it's like there's just— Right.

At least pro sports has commissioners and billionaires and smarter—

Well, the thing is though, it's like the commissioner's tough because he's working for the owners. So of course it always seems like the commissioner's not doing what they should be. And if there was this next level, if there was this next political level, I mean, the problem of course is that people do not like the intersection of sports and politics. And, you know, they go like, well, people don't like it when it's against them. It's like, well, that's going to happen half the time. It's like, it's not, you know, we used to look at the World Cup or whatever, like, you know, Mandami coming out and he's like, I'm looking forward to like Morocco upsetting France or whatever. And it's like, that's a weird thing to say, kind of. I mean, it's like, I understand why he wants that. I understand his feeling, but It's like that, that is, it's not really, it's not really necessary to the, like, I don't, I don't like when this happens. Well, we, I was having a debate about this with some people over text just yesterday, kind of. It's, it, it's, it, whenever a political figure uses sports in any way, it seems to make things less comfortable for everyone.

Well, we saw it twice with Trump, right? We saw when he went to Game 3 of the Finals. In the Knicks— the Knicks loss. Yes. And then we— the red card, which, um, just made people crazy that he got involved, right?

Well, especially since so many people who love soccer hate Trump, so they didn't know how to feel about this. It was like the most complex day of their life, sort of. It's like, uh, the person I hate most has done this thing I need more than anything. It's like, you know, right? Yeah.

And also, like, technically the red card was kind of ridiculous, and it's weird that that act would cost somebody a game and a half. But this goes back to like even the concept of a sports star, like, hey, what's up with this red card situation? So you, you basically out, like, like in the NBA where they have a commissioner, Wemby, when he elbowed, uh, the Nas Reed and he got kicked out of that game by World Cup rules, he would've also had to miss the next game. And Adam Silver looked at that and said, all right, that's, That's kind of dumb. We're not gonna— he's not gonna lose 2 games for that. So he brings him back. There was like common sense prevailing, which I'm not sure we always have. We gotta take a break.

Think of those— oh, if you— a sports star, it can't be a world sports star though. So it's like, how could—

no, it would have to be an American sports star.

Yeah. So it's like they couldn't end them.

Wait, we, we gotta take a break. I wanted to talk commissioners with you for a second. This episode is brought to you by TikTok. Did you know you can use TikTok to connect? Even more for the sports you love. I love a lot of sports. It's not just highlights, it's everything around the game, including the sports community. You can find breakdowns of classic basketball plays. I love that. Deep dives on baseball stats, even videos on how athletes train and recover. I guess they don't have podcasters. Uh, there are people teaching strategy, sports history, and ways to improve your own jump shot. Mine doesn't need improving. It's a great 18-footer. It's kind of like the biggest locker room ever, and everyone is sharing what they know on TikTok. Join the fun, download TikTok today. So we're talking about how leagues and World Cup, all these different things, youth sports, all these different things could run. Do we need a sports hour? But then the commissioners, um, of these different leagues that we've had forever, you know, going back to I, I don't even remember what the first NFL commissioner was. In baseball, we had, you know, most famously when a commissioner used his power in the, in the 1900s, it was the Black Sox scandal.

Yeah. That was the first time where a commissioner was like, I actually need to take over and take control of a situation that got really bad, and I have the authority to do so from the owners. And I was thinking about Adam Silver. And just in general, commissioners, 'cause we've seen this with Goodell, um, when a commissioner takes over a league, they come in initially and they care about the sport, the sport itself, and the, the good, the good things that can, that they can, um, affect in the sport. But then also the owners and the business side of the owners and making everybody more money and making the making the league healthy and sustainable, right? So you have these two separate things. And what's interesting is the owner, the commissioner will come in with the, you know, a little more idealistic, right? And then as the years pass, they basically become Michael Corleone, Godfather II. It's all about the business. And we see this over and over again with everybody. And I don't, I don't really know why it happens, but I feel like we're seeing it right now at the NBA. And I think Silver for the most part has done a good job, but Some of the things that are happening with the league, the second apron thing they did, the CBA that they negotiated with the players to put in basically a hard cap is having so many bad ramifications already for team building, for players staying in, in the same place.

And they did this to basically protect the owners and so everybody could make more money. Now they're gonna do expansion, which I think is, I, I personally think that hurts the league and I would much rather see them relocate. They're also doing this NBA Europe thing. And all these things are really smart financial moves, but I don't think any of them have made the NBA better. I think the NBA is in a worse place than it was 4 or 5 years ago because they're making business decisions and not league decisions. And when I say that, everyone in the league gets mad at me. And then it's like, well, why, you know, why are you so hard on Adam? And, and, and I, it's, to me, that's not the question. The question is, Is his job to elevate the league or just make money? And they would argue, well, both. But have you elevated the league this decade? And I, and I don't know if the answer is yes. And even I look back to the COVID thing and when they had the COVID they come back, they play the bubble playoffs, they start the next season, they have to do 72 games or whatever.

They ended up 71, whatever. And there was that grind and then playoffs. And then the next season there was basically no off seasons for 2 years. They basically, played almost 3 seasons in 2 to try to keep all the money the same. And I think it had real damage to the players and to the teams and the competitiveness of the league. And that it was just kind of like, well, we had to do it that way. Everybody, we can't lose money. I'm just, I'm concerned about the intentions of the league and even some of the owners they've let in, like this Portland owner. Some of the stuff he's done.

Yeah.

Weird, you know, and, and, you know, they, they greenlit this Dallas owner. I still don't know why Mark Cuban sold. But just in general, I just think the league's in a weird place. So what's your take?

Okay. Like the thing you said about how they begin sort of with the good of the league, what's good for the sport, how can we grow this over time? And then over— and then eventually it becomes this thing where they're just kind of like the owner puppet. Well, I mean, the first part is like how you get the job. It's like they're trying to pick a new commissioner, they talk to guys about basketball and about the meaning of basketball or its place in the world and all these things. But then as soon as they're actually doing it, then it's like, "Well, okay, but remember, you work for us. We need to make money. I'm glad you have those ideas. Try to implement those ideas while also doing exactly what we want." the amount of money is part of it. I mean, it's just the sheer mass of money, the expansion, right? You can make a lot of arguments over why expansion's just going to water the league down. There's already too many teams tanking. There's already too many games where you turn on and no one's playing. How will, you know, putting two more teams in there help?

You can't really make the argument for it except that the buy-in is now, you know, in the— so what, every, every owner gets what? If this one— I think you know the number exactly.

So it's like, so if they get— let's say they get $7.5 billion for each team.

Yes.

It's $15 billion for the combo. There's 30 teams. They would, they would all get a check for $500 million that they wouldn't have to share with the players, by the way.

So, you know, because— so if that check, you know, is like, you know, $80 million, it's possible somebody can go like, well though, It's like, this could hurt the league. Maybe in the long run it could cost me money, you know? But when the number is $500 million, it's just too big. It's like the expansion. They're going to expand the NCAA basketball tournament again to like 76 teams. Now, is that the number next year? 76?

They're going to expand World Cup too, to probably— they'll probably go to 48.

I do not know, or 64. I forgot a single person. I've not talked to one person who's like, I think the NCAA tournament needs more teams. I think it'll be better if they—

but here's the difference. Here's the one thing that Difference with the NCAA, it's completely rudderless and lawless right now, right? Who's in charge? Nobody even knows. And people just do whatever they want and they're afraid of all the big universities and people can just form new conferences and super conferences. And we're in this situation we're in now where you have UCLA who's flying around to all these different, you know, parts of the country, which makes sense if it's the football team, but not if it's like the cross-country team or the women's soccer team just flying. All these, these alleged college athletes are just flying around because of, because we've just let college sports go to shit. I think the NBA is a little different because they have actual control over what they should be doing, where the team should be, how many should they have, what should the salary cap be. That could be, you know, I, I just think when we get to the point when You know, and there's a lot of reasons why Brown and Tatum couldn't have stayed together, but when it makes no sense for them to stay together financially, that's not good.

Yeah.

Because if you go back to the, the league that we loved and we grew up with, you're basically saying, all right, I love the, I loved watching the '80s Lakers and Celtics, and it was really fun when MJ and Pippen were together. Well, I don't know if, I don't know if Pippen, they have to do that Pippen, the famous Pippen trade now in '94. Right? We don't get those other 3 titles with MJ and Pippen because Pippen's on Seattle. You know, Kevin McHale's not on the Celtics in the mid-'80s 'cause they absolutely would've had to trade him in like 1985 'cause they couldn't have afforded max contracts for Bird and McHale. Like, I, and honestly, I think this is what the league wants. I think they want complete parity like NFL. I don't think they want teams to be good for more than 3 or 4 years.

Well, one thing I think, and, and this kind of happened this year, to be honest, is I felt that from a consumer perspective, this was a real troubling NBA season. I've mentioned this so many times, I can't count how often I tried to watch, look forward to a basketball game and realized a bunch of guys weren't playing suddenly. Or it just seemed like— but they're always like, when the playoffs happen and the playoffs— serious.

Yeah, we're great.

Bailed out at the end. And that kind of happened. We had this great sort of Western Conference final where this guy suddenly is like, oh, this is the new Wilt Chamberlain or whatever. Then he goes and plays the Knicks, becomes the villain. It's like, for if you're trying to write it, if you're the NBA trying to write this narrative, it can't be any better than this. Yeah. Plus they lose to the Knicks, one of the most likable teams. Yeah, I can remember in a very long time, but also from New York. It's just like this contradiction. Like, it all kind of works out at the end. I think that's kind of how the NBA sort of looks at this. This, right?

But like, you know, and then they had a great draft with a whole bunch of great players that came in.

Have all these problems, people will forget. People will forget when they see these amazing games. They'll just sort of be like, oh yeah, I still, you know, you know, fantastic, or whatever, right? Um, I wanted to ask you something about Jaylen Brown though, and, uh, not really about him, but sort of about kind of the debate going on around him.

Okay.

And I'm sure you've probably talked about this already, but maybe not in this specific way. So, you know, if you I listened to like Bob Meyer talking, or maybe it was Winhurst. It was kind of a, it was a rational guy, right? It was a rational guy talking about analytics. And what do you think they said about the use of analytics? What's the rational take about analytics in basketball? What are you supposed to say if you're like not a crazy person?

You're supposed to say it's part of the puzzle for evaluating a player and a team.

Exactly.

It's not the, it's not the part, but it's That's part of the process.

Okay. But can that be like, can it? If, you know, like one of the stats that was really hurting, you know, Jaylen Brown was, I think was it was one where it was like Jokic was number one and then he went down a little bit in the play. It was the one that him.

Yes.

Yeah. Okay. Him and DeRozan were the ones at the bottom.

Yeah.

And when you looked at all the other guys, it actually did seem pretty accurate. It was like Jokic was the Joker, was the best player, but he didn't play as well in the playoffs, so it went down. Like he kind of went down on the list, it kind of made sense.

Yeah.

Like, if, if the idea is that analytics watch every game, that the, you know, the human eye sees one but analytics sees them all, um, can you actually say we need a hybrid of these two things? I mean, it doesn't work that way in chemistry. If we're doing chemistry experience— experiments, we can't be like, we got to measure everything out except when we use, you know, uh, radioactive material, then we're just going to eyeball that because that's like, like if something has kind of a numeric underpinning. Yeah, you can act, you know, it doesn't have to kind of be all or nothing either. You have to say that we're not going to look at this because this is a good point. I think I don't know if it can be both. I mean, you know what I'm saying? Kind of. It seems counterintuitive. It seems like it should— like a reasonable person to be like, well, of course you consider this, but you also got to consider the old stuff. But if it's numbers and it's math, isn't— don't you have to sort of accept it in totality if you accept it?

Yeah. House and I talked about this a little yesterday because I went back and I looked at— there was 85 guys ever who had a usage rate of 30% or more and then averaged at least 28 points a game. There's 85 guys ever in the history of the league. And then if you rank those guys by like win shares and BORP and some of You know, some of the better advanced metric stuff that we can understand. Jalen was like the worst or one of the worst on every list. And the, the best guys in the league that you would think would be the best guys were the best guys in, in the list. So then the question becomes, can you have outliers with numbers like this? Or, or is this telling you like, yeah, the, the eye test is actually fooling you. It's, it's a tough one for me and I tried to explain it. When I talked to House about it, like, 'cause I obviously watch more Celtics. I watch the Celtics the most out of any team I watch. Like, I have the most opinions on them. I have the most thoughts. I have the most memory of year after year.

And I, I just thought he was really good last year. And it was one of the only times, like, what I saw with my eyes did not match the stats. Usually I'm like, oh, I see that, but I can see this too. This one I'm like, I'm seeing this. And you're telling me this instead. But, but the good news is they did win 56 games, and maybe that's the ultimate advanced metric. And you could argue like, well, how'd they do that? But so it's possible you can just have outliers with stats, right? It's not a massive sample size.

What? What? How can that be? I mean, I'm not, I'm not even disagreeing with you, but I'm saying like, how can there be like—

well, here's a good example. Allen Iverson.

Numbers are in a sequence. There isn't sometimes where a number actually is larger than it seems, that actually, you know, 6 items is more than 8 items sometimes. If we're using these, if they're actually doing what they're saying they're doing, right? The idea of the outlier doesn't really— I mean, granted, these are still humans.

Here's where it applies though. So Iverson's a good example too with the 2001 Sixers, where Iverson was a pretty flawed player by the stats year after year because he wasn't a good 3-point shooter. He needed the ball a lot. Defensively, even though I loved Iverson, but you know, he was 5'10", so you could take advantage of him and you really needed to build the right kind of team around him to protect him. Right. And you couldn't have, like, he played with Jerry Stackhouse, it didn't work. You know, he needed like people like Eric Snow, Aaron McKee, Theo Ratliff, these Keith Van Horn, these people that filled specific roles. Trying to build the right kind of team to make Iverson succeed. Right? So if he comes out of the lineup from that and the team's built around him specifically, it's gonna be weird. Right? Maybe it'll make— so maybe the on-off stuff will look better with him, but it doesn't change the fact that they built this specific team for him that really only succeeded once. Like he lost in the playoffs every year except for '01. And you could argue in '01, like Toronto took them to 7, Milwaukee, the next series is one of the most rigged playoff series we've ever had.

Like, like the— ask any Bucks fan about that series. So he didn't have as much success as it seemed. And then every other year he had no success. So people revere Iverson.

Is Iverson an argument for or against analytics? You're saying it's an argument for analytics.

I think it— but that's the thing. I think he's an argument for and against because they succeeded and made the finals in 2001, and the analytics are actually a little bit more favorable to him that year than the other years. But he's basically playing the same style every year. So it feels like the team they put around him affected his numbers in the right ways. So last year with Jaylen, the Celtics were supposed to be a 500 team. The only way they were gonna do better than that is if he played 90% of the games, had this huge burden scoring-wise, right?

Where—

and had to guard the other guy's best player and do all this stuff that nobody thought he could do, and he did. And they won more games than they thought. But then the analytics said, well, okay, I don't know.

You said they were supposed to win 50 games, you said?

No, they're supposed to win 41.

Okay. Why are they supposed to win 41?

Because they didn't have Jason Tatum.

Yeah, but who said they were supposed to win 41? What was the, what was the thing that said if you remove Tatum, this is a 41?

Well, they, you also removed Porzingis and you moved Jrue Holiday, so they lost 3, and Al Horford, so they lost 4 of their best 7 guys. Including their best guy.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And Vegas looked at that and all the advance— everybody who runs numbers is like, eh, that's a 500 team.

So do you suspect that the 41 number was mostly an analytic conclusion, or was that a conclusion of this hybrid where they were using analytics?

It's tough because I think it was kind of people throwing that number in the middle because they didn't know if the Celtics were gonna tank. So it's almost like that's the safe number, and if they tank, you don't get get killed, and if they don't tank, you don't get killed either. But I, I never thought in a million years they'd win 56 games, you know? So that's where it's like, I, and that's where I did the eye test, just didn't match the analytics in that case. Here's the difference though, baseball, which we've discussed in the past, like that is a math sport. In basketball, the teammates and who you put around people and your bench can affect on-off stuff. If your bench is awesome, your on-off stuff's gonna look worse than it is. Somebody like Denver who's had no bench the last few years, Jokic comes out, they crater. You could see with Wemby in the San Antonio games when he came out, they were craters. So his on-off would be better. But baseball's just math. And I, and I, and as we've discussed in the past, it's made it less fun to argue about because the argument's solved by math every time.

There's just, that's it. You're just like, oh, here. Here's the evidence, and then the argument's over.

Okay. I'm not— because what I'm expressing when I'm asking these questions, I don't want to seem like I'm really unsure about this, but does it not seem possible that there's been all these— I've heard all these discussions about why the Celtics would have done this, and what no one seems to be saying is this possibility. Maybe they just didn't want him.

Oh, I think that's a big piece of it. We don't—

he's actually— we actually don't. Want him. I think what they—

but what they didn't want, I think, is the— him as a complementary player did not make sense to them at $57 million. If you're paying him to be the best guy on your team and you're trying to overachieve, maybe that's worth the money.

Your contract is also real large.

The money for 2 years. Yeah, yeah.

You know, um, I, I, I, I, it's just I mean, if, if the, if you think about analytics as like, this is like, as just like a small tool, I guess. But if you think of it as something that's, that's like a real thing and this is a way to understand the world, I mean, maybe that was just, I, I, I do, do, does this trade still like, have you kind of changed your view on this trade? Do you feel better about it now or do you feel worse?

No, I still don't like it. Um, I maybe understand it a tiny bit more. I do think it was more of a personality trade than an analytics trade. I just feel like they felt like they ran their course and when Jalen ran the team last year, now he can't go back to the other way of doing it. The question for me is like, you know, you have these people that own teams. It was interesting that more teams didn't go after him and I, I thought that, that piqued my interest. Like, what are the reasons? Is it Like, if you, if you, if you're some owner on another team, do you look at him and be like, ah, I don't know, I saw him going at Stephen A. Smith last week. I'm not sure that's the kind of guy we want around here. Like, I just kind of want guys who are just going to play some basketball and go hang out with the kids in the community.

Or like some other guys, like, I trust Brad Stevens. Why does he want to get rid of this guy?

Well, that's, that's another piece of it.

Like, what, what, what, why are they doing this? Like there must be something else there.

Um, well, that's that, that— but that's a real thing though. If it's like, why is this person trying to sell his car so frantically? You'd be like, huh, what's wrong with the car? It's a nice car, I thought you loved it. Or like, now you'll take half price.

I would guess people don't want to trade with Danny Ainge because they feel like he might screw them over.

The Lakers just did. Well, one of the things that's happening in Boston is they're talking about the new owner, Bill Chisholm. Who's, you know, a VC hedge fund background and people really worried about, you know, and I don't think this is a fault of his, but a lot of the moves he's made since he took over the team were shedding salary, right? Because they had all this tax stuff. And now if you're gonna defend him, you'd say, well, there are all these penalties with the tax stuff. There's repeater tax, there's frozen picks. You can't make 2-for-1 trades. Like it really does hamper the way you can build a roster. So, but they got rid of Porzingis, they got rid of Jrue Holiday, they let Luke Kornetko. Now they, they traded Simons for Vucevic last year, which was whatever. And then Jalen goes for Paul George, who's a year less on his contract and makes like $3, $4 million less. But it did make me think, 'cause I was reading this book, you know this book Tall Tales by Terry Pluto.

Okay.

I was zipping through that 'cause I was, I was, uh, interested in owners and I was, it has some good stuff about the owners back then. And I was thinking there's 5 eras of sports owners.

5 eras. Okay.

Let's go. We're in the, we're in the 5th era.

Okay.

And I don't know how this era plays out. First era basically takes us all the way through the '60s. And it's the people that own teams are like local business owners and families. Right. Wasn't like very rarely was it just somebody who was like, Mr. Moneybags. It was like that, the guy who owned the Syracuse Nationals, he owned like a bowling alley, you know, Walter Brown, the guy who owned, um, the Celtics, you know, wasn't like the super rich guy.

And on that, it was not an impossible dream to own an NBA franchise during that time, right? And very doable.

And maybe you didn't want to own it, you know, and same thing for NHL, maybe had a little more money because there was only 6 teams, so they were a little more desirable. Um, but then we go into the '70s and '80s, which is the era we remember as kids. So now you get wealthier people. You get like the Dr. Jerry Buss types. You get the goofy characters like we grew up with Charles O. Finley, people like that. Like these people were like, you know, their own documentaries. And then you would get that— I wrote down misguided local heroes, people who felt like they either had to save the team or keep the team, but maybe didn't totally know what they were doing. Like, we had the Sullivans in New England, uh, for the Patriots. There was local guys, and— but they really kind of, kind of overskied. What's that saying when you shoot over your skis?

Yeah.

Um, the third era, this is '90s now, legacy kids, ego guys. Smarter local heroes. We had some ego guys coming in here and be like, oh, I'll buy whoever.

So it's like Mark Cuban, you're kind of saying?

No, we're not there. Mark Cuban is the next era. This is more like '90s, like, oh, it'd be cool if I owned a team and it's starting to, you know, the prices are starting to go up. I'm gonna get in. But you also had the kids from the families are now, like the Celtics had Paul Gaston, who was Donald Gaston's son, who was terrible. But there was a lot of like legacy kids. Dolan takes over the Knicks and 2000. The fourth era is the 21st century. And this is internet guys, guys with internet money, early VC guys, and smarter legacy kids. And all of a sudden now you have, you have like the guys who bought the Celtics where it's like Wick Grossbeck, son of Irv Grossbeck, one of the most respected, you know, business guys out there. And he buys it with Steve Pagliuca, who I think was with Bain Capital. And they're like, we'll buy the Celtics. We're gonna blow this out, make it bigger. That happened with the Red Sox. That happened with the Warriors. You know, there was like real purpose to this where, oh, these are better assets in these big cities.

We're gonna blow them out. And they were right. You know, the Red Sox are worth 20 times probably what they paid. Now in the mid-'20s, I feel like we're in this kind of massive money state. Where you just need like a shitload of money to buy any team, right? So you have like, you buy the Broncos, it's like the Waltons, right? Um, you buy the, the, the, the, uh, Lakers, it's the guy who had the Dodgers and probably has like, you know, Middle Eastern money behind him. Um, the guy who bought the Celtics, he puts this whole consortium together and then gets as the final piece The, I think, second richest family in India throws in another billion and the groups that are being put in with Vegas, these are now like buying these giant, giant things. And I guess the question is why? What are these people trying to get out of this? And how do you, how do you gain value when you could argue that the value is already there? So like if we wanted to buy the Bears right now, let's say the Bears became available. What type of person wants to buy the Bears?

It's not somebody who's like, I lived in Chicago and I'm rich. That guy has no chance.

Okay. So I, I don't know what era according to your kind of sequence there this fits in. I dunno if this is 3 or 4. Yeah. But I remember there'd be kind of a cliché a lot of times that it was like these rich guys buy these sports franchises and they're not trying to make money off this. Like it, it's like a tax write-off. Like they, they make their money in—

that's the second era. Yeah. That's the, that's like when John Y. Brown bought the Celtics and the own Kentucky Fried Chicken.

But now, like, when you look at someone like Jerry Jones and like what he paid for the Cowboys in 1989 or '88 or whatever year it was, what it is now, it's like now that it's— it— I guess it's completely sort of lost its relationship to the idea of like the ultimate rich guy hobby. Like, you know, like, I think there was a time when it was like a rich guy was like, yeah, my friends buy racehorses. You know, I buy, uh, the, you know, the, the Boston Bruins or whatever. That's what happened.

That's what happened to the Celtics over and over again. They would have these guys buy it in, they'd have it for 2 years, and they'd sell it.

I mean, because now you're buying something that, I mean, as long as the world exists as it does now, it's like it's an asset that's just going to be worth more and more because it's almost like, it's kind of like, you know, When I first started making a little money, I remember my dad trying to tell me, he was like, come back here and buy a bunch of land in North Dakota. I was like, I'm not going to do that.

That would have been a good idea because they can't create land.

He's like, they cannot make more of it. So, you know, I was like, now I obviously I should have done that. I mean, I like— I probably would have been smart.

You know, you'd be like the new Taylor Sheridan. You just have this giant ranch.

You know, I just— I thought it was just a crazy thing he was suggesting that I do. I was like, buy it. But, you know, you— there's— so now these franchises are these things where it's like, you know, it, it is the thing itself. The rest of the world is becoming this sort of this kind of digital, almost like, like false simulacrum of reality, but these things are real. So I suppose a guy who would be buying the Bears, he would be saying like, well, I'm really investing in, in many ways, the NFL, and that that, you know, that there's this thing that in his maybe opinion is like one of the few things that is not only stable but has the potential to get bigger in big ways. You know, like, uh, I, I, I think that it is— the meaning of the franchise has less to do— there was probably a period where it was like, uh, I, I want something kind of for me, for fun. Like, I love sports, so this is a way to do it. Like, I think if you had become extraordinarily wealthy probably when you were a young person, you would've attempted to buy into some sports franchise.

I did.

Well, I remember, oh, no question. Well, I remember this really was the, like the late 2000s when the, at one point, I remember writing about this for ESPN. It was pre-Grantland. And there was, at one point it was like 9 or 10 NBA teams available because including New Orleans, which the league had to take over. Like, think about that. They couldn't even sell New Orleans for like, I don't know, $500 million or whatever they wanted for it. Um, because there was this lockout coming, they were really scared about what was the future of the business, what's gonna happen with media, what is the internet gonna mean? Like, they a— everyone kind of looked at it the wrong way. And I remember when Lacob and those guys bought the Warriors, I think they paid like $360 or like $400 or something. And it seemed like a lot and they outbid, um, What's his face? The, the, the Ellison, I think that's who, or the Oracle guy, one of those guys. And everybody's like, wow, that's a lot of money. And I was either writing about it or talking about it. I was like, that's, that's an amazing purchase.

Like they, they just bought this. Everyone loves that team in the Bay Area. That's one of like the 7 best teams you can own. Like it's been poorly run for 20 years.

Now I have—

now you have that asset. You can turn that into something great. The problem is there's not a lot of those opportunities, I don't think, anymore in 26. Like, even the Bears would be— if you get the Bears, that's amazing, right? You have the— it's the third biggest city, it's the only team, but you're paying like $11 billion. Like, right now the Seahawks are available and there's two groups going for supposedly— who knows if Bomber is going to be in it. One of the people is Wick Grossbeck. Who combined with that, uh, that Indian family, the, the Middles, and, you know, that might go for like $9 billion. So if, like, if we were, if he was on right now, I'd be like, why would you do this? The answer would be no NFL franchise has ever gone down in value, right? That's, that's why these guys get in. It's like, go back and look at the values 5 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. Is the arrow just pointing like this? Yes. Well, why is that? Because people love football, live rights, media, all that stuff. So I guess they, the answer to your question is it probably is still a great investment.

Well, it, I mean, certainly it seems that way, although it's just like, you know, we for— it's so easy to forget things like, you know, like do you remember why Monday Night Football moved to ESPN?

I don't. I used to know this.

So bizarre. ABC was like, Desperate Housewives is more popular, right?

They didn't want—

now that seems impossible now, that if you had a chance to have a primetime NFL game somewhere, what could you possibly be like, well, this TV show could be bigger? That wasn't that long ago.

No, that was what happened. You have the right thing, but it was they could have had Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football.

Well, that was part of it. That was part of it.

And NBC ended up getting Sunday Night Football because Disney decided, I think this was Iger, decided, well, Disney, we have Desperate Housewives. It's a huge night for us. You take something like the NBA, it's like, why do these values keep going up? Because people wanna buy in, 'cause they wanna own teams. You have a lot of wealthy people that have extra money that they can spend. But you also have a league that seems to be perfectly willing to just let everything kind of go, all the prices, all the salaries, everything just go up. And let it, and, and that's just how it's going to go. Franchises are going to go up. Players are going to make more money. The media rights are going to make more and the tickets are going to go up. The ticket part's going to be the one that's going to be hard because already the cap went backwards because the local TV stuff kind of wasn't what they thought, right? Local TV revenue got really hurt. The national TV revenue went up. But if the ticket prices keep going up, but they can't solve the schedule piece and having the players be more available in regular season games.

Now you're really playing with fire, I think.

But you know, we, we kind of say this with everything, with like concert ticket prices, movie ticket prices, but at least concert tickets, you're paying for Taylor Swift.

You know Taylor Swift is gonna be in the arena for the date you paid.

That's true. I guess.

That's true. If Steph, if you paid for Warriors come to Portland, you're like, I wanna see Steph Curry. And then he doesn't play, are you less likely to go see the Warriors the next time they're in Portland? I would say yes.

Yeah, but I would think more so the thing is, okay, using Taylor Swift as the example, okay, she plays SoFi or whatever 5 nights. On the last night, the worst ticket was $1,800. Okay, so that's the worst seat in the place on the 5th night was $1,800. To me, it's less the security about knowing whether or not she is there. The question becomes like, how, how is what I'm getting worth what I'm investing? Like you say, with the, the Warriors come to Portland, and even if Steph does play, okay, uh, so I, you know, I can take— yeah, what is the, what is the price point where it's like, this doesn't really—

I can't do this? Yes. We depend on—

even if you can do it, because there's always going to be people who can do it, but at some point even they will be like, this is crazy. Like, you know, like, you know, you, uh, you would— we'll always have enough money to pay for these things, but I think at some point somebody's being like, it's just— I, like, I can't justify it. Like, it's ideologically too weird. Like, I'm not going to pay $3,000 to see a play or something. And people would be like, even if I have a billion dollars, like, I'm not going to pay this much for that. Um, well, I wonder if, like, will this— will that become what it is? Not, not the idea that you're— that you're not getting your money worth— like, that you're missing Steph Curry or whatever, but like the event itself can't equate with the amount it costs.

This leads into the movie conversation I wanted to have, but we're gonna take one more break. All right, so we were talking about tickets for movies and I was thinking about this with, uh, The Odyssey, which I actually went to a screening for, so I didn't have to get tickets.

But, um, did you know, did you give your response to the movie yet? Because one day on social media I just saw all these people saying The Odyssey is wonderful. The Odyssey is amazing.

Yeah, I mentioned the tail end of a podcast last week. I was just saying, uh, I thought it was awesome. You know, it's under embargo till it comes out. I'll have more thoughts. But, uh, I thought it was an awesome movie theater experience. I had a great time. Um, and there was a lot of care and great casting and, um, a whole bunch of things. But what's interesting is post-COVID, um, we had this moment in, I think it was maybe late 2000s, early 2010s when they started to try to shove 3D down our throats. Remember, it's like 3D is the next thing. Sure, you got to get 3D TV, 3D theaters, and nobody really liked it. It took like 3 years, but it was— they were able to charge more money for the tickets, all this stuff. Now they have half stumbled and half, um, because of the best directors like seeing their movies on these awesome theaters. Now it's like this 70mm and all that IMAX The experience of going to the theater is actually back. It's an, it's been an amazing resurrection this, this decade, which seemed inconceivable even pre-COVID, but definitely during COVID like, wow, movies.

Oh my God. TV. You're just gonna watch everything from home. And that's flipped. But now there's this next piece and I wonder if it's gonna happen. And you think about it with something like The Odyssey, where Odyssey, it's like, oh, it's the 70mm in Universal City here in LA. Oh, I wanna, I wanna go the Friday night. It's just the tickets are gone. Next night, gone. Tickets are just gone for a month. Do you think we're gonna get into a world where like the best 25 tickets or best 30 tickets, the best 30 seats in a theater when these things come out are gonna be treated like we do with sports where it's like Odyssey Friday night, $1,000 a ticket for the, for middle row center, best seat in the thing. It's not, it's not gonna be $25, it's gonna be $1,000. And do you think people would pay it?

Um, short answer, yes. Um, I think what is going to happen, or might already be happening, is the idea of seeing movies in theaters now is going to become closer to a luxury experience. It's sort of like the lowest tier of the luxury experience, because, you know, when people talk and, and You know, this is a common thing now. It's like, uh, Tom Cruise, I guess, is the forefront of this. You know, we must save movies. Movies are important. The experience of going to a movie and eating this popcorn and all these things, like, this is central to the American understanding of, like, how we understand the world. Movies teach us this and all this. But what— so we're trying to save that, right? There's this real attempt to save this.

Like Nicole Kidman walking down the stairs with that smile on her face, sitting in the chair. What was that for? AMC? That chair?

You know, that little preview they would show with Nicole Kidman be like, "The magic of movies." But this is what I think is kind of getting, like, could be, like, kind of a misstep, or maybe not a misstep. I guess there's maybe no other way to do it. But I think when people talk about the magic of movies and the experience of movies, and how that is just so different. It's actually a somewhat simpler experience than we're now sort of evolving into. The thing that was magical about a movie is that like the screen was big, it was totally dark, nobody was talking, you're just looking at the thing. So the reality becomes that screen. There's not— no other part of your life is there.

And you're feeding off like some reactions from everybody else, like laughter, um, scared silence, all that stuff, horror movies and stuff, but you're sharing it with other people.

But I think it was mainly just that, to me, maybe I'm just speaking from my own experience, but like, for me, it was sort of like when you go to a movie, that's all that's happening. There's no other part of your life that's going on. You're only with the movie. Your vision of sight is encompassed by the screen. That's all that is. That is reality for you for 2 hours or whatever.

You zone out of everything else in your life.

But now they're sort of like, well, okay, we got— we've got to make this something people— that's like different from their house. So it's like the seats have to be better, you know, and maybe we got to give better food or feed them during this thing, or doing all these things around it and stuff. Um, I, I, I, I think that that will sort of make it into, like I said, this like this luxury experience where it's like you have to pay a lot for all the trappings of seeing the movie, even if the movie is now almost secondary. Like, it'll be like something like— I, I, I, I, I suspect in the future, 20 years from now, there will be people who are like, we really got to take the kids to a movie. They got to know what that's like. Because maybe no one will do that that much because there'll be one theater in town or whatever that will be this high-end place.

Um, see, I would argue it's gone the other way, and people are going to movies more than ever. I think especially with the younger generations. Yeah, I think it is. I think especially with people 25 and under, which I, I don't think we're going to movies quite as much for a little bit there. I think it's back. I think especially like, and they've found out ways with like the 70mm, um, or the IMAX, like the special experience of it combined with like horror movies are the hottest they've ever been in I mean, that's years and years.

That's like, people have been talking about that for like 2 months, but it's kind of happening.

Like, what just happened with Obsession, uh-huh, was really unusual. Like, over the course of movie history, we've seen hit horror things before. This became like something else, and it, it infiltrated culture in a way. I thought I talked about this on a podcast last month that I felt like TV had taken the baton from movies for setting cultural conversations and like you know, in like a consistent, um, just kind of elevated way. And it feels like it's shifting back to movies now, and TV's just getting worse. And these shows are— these TV shows are just like Bs and B pluses, and then the movies are where the really interesting stuff is happening. We've seen a bunch of them come out this year already.

Does it not seem though like the cultural conversation about Obsession and Backrooms seems to be about the idea of those movies being popular though.

No, there's, there's stuff coming out.

Do you feel like the ideas from those movies, especially Obsession—

I don't know if you followed some of it, but Obsession has led to some, some pretty intense discourse. And it's a little like what's happening with the WNBA now, where it becomes like this, this kind of thing that we use to discuss all the other things we want to talk about anyway.

That is interesting because it's like, you know, sometimes I think we've talked about it. I think you and Derek Thompson have talked about this idea that, you know, it's possible to follow the NBA in one of two ways. Like, you can watch the games or you can just follow the narrative and the discourse. And it's almost as if the— like, we're doing this, we're doing this. And then, like, they do it in a way that's actually much more elevated than the way the NBA does it.

Right.

I mean, it's like, like the WNBA, it's just, it's, it's incredible to follow as something if you're not watching the games. It's just still, it's just crazy.

The craziest thing about WNBA. Yeah. Um, no, there has not. And Sierra wrote a really good piece for The Ringer about this this week that now the, now politics has gotten involved and there's like, you know, and it's, I think that's probably gonna unfortunately get worse and worse, but What's interesting is, um, I really want to talk about movie theaters, but I did want to say this one WNBA thing. Um, have you seen Olivia Miles play?

A little bit. Like her glasses.

Yeah, I think probably the most fun WNBA player for me. I like the Lynx anyway because I, I just— for, you know, not like I like the Celtics, but that was kind of the team that I was fair-weather fan rooted for. But Miles is like pretty special. And it's crazy to me that all the discourse has just centered around Caitlin Clark and her teams being mean to her. And then politicians coming in and it's really, and the commissioner being terrible, which is, you know, a topic people should talk about. But it's not like they don't have Like Paige Beckers and Olivia Miles, like, these are really fun people to watch play basketball, and none of the dialogue is about them. Like, nothing. It's all about all this other stuff. I've never seen anything like it.

Well, I mean, they just, uh, I, I mean, it's always like, it's just, there's just no, there's no league like this. It's just, you know, it's like where You know, it's like, you're like, you're— if it happens to Caitlin Clark, you just know immediately now, like, you know, she gets punched or something and you're like, now she's got to apologize for getting punched. Like, it's got to happen. Look, you know, it's like, like, there's— it doesn't— it, it, I— it's so— and then like, she's like, like, listed like the 11th best guard or something by the players or something. That'd be like if it was like, well, the bigger—

yeah, the bigger—

somebody was like, Eddie Van Halen's the 7th best guitar player in Los Angeles or something. It just is so weird. Um, I can't think of any— when Caitlin Clark came into the league, I think a lot of people would have been like, boy, it's just going to get sickening. They're going to ram her down our throat. All we're going to do is hear about her.

Literally the opposite.

Beyond the opposite. It's like, it's like, I just, you know, it's just, it's so—

I guess in a way, just in the past couple of years, yeah, they left her off the Olympic team. Which she clearly just should have been on because she's the most popular women's player we've had. It's the same reason like LeBron and Durant will be on the 2028 Olympic team for the men. Like, sometimes you got to do it. The Nike, who you would have thought would have got behind her right away like they did with Tiger Woods, like, did the opposite. I don't— they took like forever to put her shoe out. Um, the, the players definitely seem like like they resent the attention she got. I don't know whether they don't like her or not, but it, you know, like they're not doing any of this stuff. I haven't seen to Olivia Miles, who's come in this year as like the rookie phenomenon, and she's not getting knocked around. Um, at the same time, it's been kind of, kind of fascinating, a little bit fun to watch. It's almost like there's like a hockey element to the league now where I mean, like, I really like the old like Knicks Heat series. There's like really animosity on both sides or whatever.

I just, you know, but it's, it's had a bad—

the WNBA almost seems like kind of like this psychop where it's like someone's like, you know, these stereotypes about gender and race and sexual orientation, we've got to bring these back into the world. Like, let's put them all into this league and have them just sort of— it's, it's, it's just nothing comparable to it. I can't think of anything that's comparable to it.

And it's I, I, I just don't know how it plays out. What's ironic is the, the quality of play is easily the best it's ever been. Like, the games are good. Like, you watch some of these games, it's like, this is like really good basketball. Like, it, like, it's a lot of— I, I just think the, the, the play has evolved so much, and yet I don't feel like people talk about that at all. And it almost seems like you're better— like, I'm sure this will get cut out and aggregated in some way, then, you know, but that, that's how this is gone where it's become like almost political to even talk about it anyway. And well, yeah, like here's a really good example.

I'm controversial by saying that everyone knows that, but here's everyone knows this.

Yeah. Here's, this is where I thought like if you're gonna be a giant league, so Dallas has the first pick in the draft last summer, right? And they take UConn guard who's Paige's former teammate.

Yeah.

Who they really move.

Brilliant move in terms of getting people to talk about the WNBA.

Well, and they were, had been in a relationship at one point and they don't seem like they were. But if you go back and you read all the draft mock draft stuff and everybody's like, decision, why, why are we trying to make a big deal of this? It's like if this happened in the NBA, this is all we would talk about for months that they didn't take who the best person in the draft was. And now you think like they could have had Miles and Paige Beckers together, who I think you know, are probably as fun or maybe even more fun to watch than Caitlin, and they could have been on the same team. I don't even know how that would have worked, but holy shit, if this was the NBA, we would—

I—

this would have led like 7 podcasts for me.

Yeah, yeah, just pretty funny.

Yeah, so people are like, you know, I think we'll see how it goes with the league, but it, it does feel like, uh, this Caitlin situation— I talked about it like 2 months ago Um, I don't think— I, I think it saps some of the joy for her. I don't think she ever wanted any of this. I think she just wanted to play basketball and shoot threes.

I can't imagine what it must be like to be her.

She seems miserable.

She is having a singular experience in American history, right? Like, I mean, she's not the first person who's ever dealt with problems as an athlete or whatever, but like, her specific experience is so Strange. And she seems to be handling it extremely well by just saying nothing and letting it all happen around her. But it's got to be wearing on her. I mean, I just— I don't know.

It definitely is. If you go back and you look at even footage from her like 3, 4 years ago versus now, like, she looks like she's carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders now. And by the way, she's making a lot of money. She's famous. Like, there's a lot of good things that come with it. It's just This was not what was happening with Steph Curry in like 2013 and '14, where it was like, who the fuck is this guy?

He's not—

he's the 11th, the 11th best guard thing, which granted was, you know, a player poll, and I think too much has been blown out of proportion for it. But there's just no way— if you actually watch the league, there's no way she's not one of the 5 best guards. You could say she's 5th, 3rd, whatever, but there's just like, you know, it's The whole thing's just bonkers anyway.

Um, can I make my bold prediction though?

Oh, go, let's hear it.

Okay, this is my— is the bold prediction. Okay, Sophie Cunningham in the next— maybe I'm, I'm gonna say 2050— is going to be Vice President of the United States. She's going to be vice president of the United States by 2050. I think that, you know, I think that will be the year. I think that will be the— that will be— I don't know what party she'll be in.

Is there an election that year?

Yeah.

42, 38, 34, 30. Oh, so it'd be like 2048 or 2052.

2048.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't know what party she'll be in. I don't know anything about her political views, but she will be the vice presidential candidate, at least the candidate.

Yeah, I love this. I hope we still have the internet, um, in 20 years, 20-plus years, that people can be like, oh, remember, remember that, that city podcast, that guy Chuck?

You know, I was, I was pretty wrong about Cooper Flagg, okay? Everybody else— so I, I feel I'm gonna go the other way and take even bolder attempts, you know, even bolder predictions. I don't know what it is, like, I have no You know, that's— it's something about the fact that she wears, like, she wears those sleeves on the court. Something about the way she triggers inbound plays at the end of games makes me think she will be someone's ideal vice president. You know, she's getting a likable personality, and, you know, she's definitely likable.

I thought the finger-pointing thing was one of the funniest things that's happened in, like, 3 years. I thought it was, like, genuinely hysterical, and she was just— she kept it going for 25 seconds.

Yeah. And at one point when she kind of cocked her head to a side and I was like, you know, it's like that, that was, you know, she really is funny.

Well, I, I don't know. Now that World Cup's going to be done, like there's going to be no sports on. I feel like I'm going to— I feel like I care about the characters in the league now in a way that I haven't before. I have real opinions on the teams. I like Minnesota the most. I also like watching Indiana. I like watching Beckers. Wilson on Vegas is— yeah, I don't even know what her NBA equivalent would be at this point. She's basically putting together a Kareem 1970s kind of run. But there's a lot of good stuff going on. Did we have any more things you wanted to hit on? You said you had a big picture thought about movies. Did we hit it?

Oh, well, you know, this is— you know how sometimes Uh, you guys with The Ringer, like, you'll do these live events.

Yeah.

Okay, you know these live events? If you ever do a live event around the rewatchables, uh, we have— yeah, I know, I'm saying Portland.

Okay. Yeah. Um, I'm not angling for this, but I'm saying if you do, I'll go there tomorrow.

I would like to be the person who, like, moderates the event because I think something interesting has happened Okay, I'm going to start this with a compliment. Okay? I think it can safely be said that you absolutely changed sportswriting when you were writing a lot at ESPN. I think that that was an incredibly— I think that you altered the way people wrote about sports and in some ways maybe even thought about sports, but it didn't really alter the way people consumed sports or watched sports. I feel like now you and Sean and Chris and Amanda, your cousin, like the whole idea, sort of like the success of the rewatchables has had a very interesting impact on the culture of how the average person thinks about movies now. Okay, and I'd like to interrogate that idea with you guys.

You want to do that in Portland instead of a library somewhere like that?

You know, because it's, it's almost as though the Rewatchables and The Big Picture and you, all the, all this together, you have kind of created this aesthetic for consuming film and what's good about film. And I find it to be a very interesting kind of collection of ideas. And there's some things like you really overrate and sort of made things like, like I, I feel like you guys' obsession with Tom Cruise is weird. Um, I feel like you've now made Heat an overrated movie where for a long time it was underrated and now it's vastly overrated.

Oh, I'm so excited we were part of that.

Like, there's, there's like a, a variety of things. I just sort of— the idea of like what a movie's supposed to do in your life. I think that this has been like a real kind of like, like you've affected movie culture, and I think it's very interesting. Not in a negative way, but in a different way, in a way that that surprised me to me.

I would have thought— all right, so counter, you don't feel like a lot of that stuff was in there already? Like, we— like, TBS would show Shawshank Redemption every 2 weeks for, you know, 20 years. Like, I do think people were rewatching stuff over and over again. I remember— oh no, even with my, like, going back to the Boston Sports Guy days when I was writing about, like, sports movies and stuff, we were all watching the same 20 sports movies over and over again. I don't know if that's the case.

Here's the difference. So if it's like 1999, and they're like re-showing The Shawshank Redemption, and someone is at home, and they're like, oh, well, I guess I'll just watch this. I've seen it. It's good. I'll watch it. Now you've sort of created this idea that there's a meaning to that. Because it used to be if you— people who rewatched movies, yeah, those were people interested in filmmaking, cinematographers. That's why you would rewatch a You guys have sort of introduced the idea of rewatching movies for the content.

Mm. Like, for nitpicks and what it meant in the moment and all that shit.

Yeah. And it's— what I love is that it sort of dovetails with my ongoing slow cancellation of the future stuff I always talk about, because it seems as though the idea that what we have in the world of cinema now is kind of just going to be the world that we exist in going forward. We'll just sort of rewatch and reinterpret and remake and reboot these things over and over again, right? I just think it's a— I think that there is something that is changing about what a movie fan is supposed to be now, and that there was a time when the idea of movie— being a movie fan meant you liked a specific kind of movies, and now it means you support movies ideologically, like the political idea.

It's more, it's more than just us. Like, there's other, there's other movie podcasts. I think Letterboxd is a big piece of this.

Sure, that's part of it.

Which, by the way, that's the one part I've never dove in on, the Letterboxd. I always make fun of Sean and Chris about this, where it's like, I haven't either.

Oh, I want, you know, but even like the idea of like Sean buying, you know, all these Blu-rays and stuff like that, it's it's a, it's a different kind of possession. He's possessing them seemingly more like artifacts than, than like ways to watch a movie.

Like, you know, or a combo. Yeah. The physical media. It's interesting. I found this piece I wrote, um, cuz we were doing Ali for Rewatchables and I wrote about Ali back in 2001, whenever that was. And I had written a piece heading into the holidays, my favorite DVDs. Um, you know, if you wanna buy stuff for the holidays or ask for stuff, here are all these different DVDs I like. Cuz I really liked DVDs back then. And I realized I'm actually the king of physical media at the Ringer, not Sean, because I have this column. He didn't have— he doesn't have anything. I mean, I was— 2001, I had like 30 DVDs. So I don't know, I feel like I should get more credit for that. I was talking about the director's commentaries and the deleted scenes. I was doing this years ago, so I don't think Ben and Sigrid's credit anymore.

I mean, this is a— this is a tough thing in a way for you to respond to, but like, okay, you need— you know, you did that list, you did that episode with Sean and Chris about your most rewatchable, the—

my 50 most rewatchable.

Yeah, yes. And I think I saw this clip of you mentioning Limitless.

Yeah, yeah, number 16, Limitless. Yeah.

Why do you think that happened? Why do you think that specific moment was what people were so like— that almost seemed in a way to be, uh, like a, like a, like a, like a totem of your entire sort of film worldview? That's kind of what— yeah. Why do you think that was? I—

it seemed like people like that pod because, um, it was just a thing. Everyone was doing all those lists the whole— those first 25 years, all these different movies, TVs, all this stuff. And the premise of that list kind of, I think, just flipped it where it was basically the premise was, I can't defend this list. These are the 50 movies I've watched the most the last 25 years, and I'm gonna rank them from 50 to 1. I, I don't know why this was the list, but this was the list. And then I got to Limitless at 16. I think it was the reactions of Sean and Chris.

So that was part of it for sure.

I think the reaction was very telling.

Yeah. Like the reaction, we've all been working together for 15 years, so it's like we all, we have like a shorthand with each other, but it's sort of in some ways describe, I mean, I guess what if somebody was like, if they were like writing an academic paper about it and they were kind of like ringer noir. Or something, or like, what is the Ringer aesthetic for what makes a film great, you know?

Yeah.

And it's like all these things, it's like, well, it's kind of like, oh, Michael Mann, you know, anything he does is great. Or like, you know, but it's also this idea that it has to be like hyper-populist, but it also has to have like kind of a major star, 'cause you guys are really into stars more than acting. Like you like actors way more than acting. Like, you like the people, right?

And so, of course, we've, we've had movies that we were going nuts about the performance more than—

there are always exceptions. There are always like— well, I'm doing broad strokes here. I'm sort of describing like what is the old world.

To me, Limitless though is like the ultimate rewatchable because it's a pretty dumb movie. Yes. But it's got a great premise. You put yourself in the thought of how far would I go if I was in the shoes. There's good actors. It's well done. And it's just easy to watch.

It's also like it has essentially low stakes in reality. You don't really look at that, you know. But, uh, but it also— it's like it has high stakes in terms of, like you say, like, like, like the pitch, the concept of this, you know. Yeah, I just think it would be interesting to have— because I, I feel like when I listen to the Rewatchables, you guys are always kind of like talking around these ideas. But they're always there. Like, what is— you know, and I just— I think it would be interesting.

Well, so we did— we just did Rewatchables about She's the One, the Ed Burns movie from 1996.

Okay.

Which is not a movie that should probably be on the Rewatchables, but it's a really interesting movie to talk about. And that's always what the premise of that podcast is. Like, is there a good conversation to be had about this movie? What is the reason for it? So sometimes it's easy because it's a classic, and you've come on, you've done a bunch of them with us. Um, so like we did— did we do Reality Bites?

We did Reality Bites. We did, uh, JFK.

I think, yeah, Reality Bites. Um, Reality Bites is a perfect conversation for Rewatchables because we get to go into Gen X and early Ethan Hawke and Ben Stiller directing and, uh, the music that's in it.

Kind of like that, that the, the strangely brilliant part of this is like when, like, when Spielberg goes on through Rewatchables, right? In some way, and like he's really up for it He really was. He loved it.

It was shocking.

Um, in some ways, this kind of rewatchables concept has tapped into, like, the primitive primordial feeling people have about movies. Like, what they like— like, what is really important about these movies to them? Like, the reason that, like, you know, 2001 or whatever is important to him. He can talk about all these little details, you know, knows Kubrick, knows all these things. Um, but it's like, it's like I, it's more like I wanna say this about the movie. I, I wanna be able to say this thing that resonates with me because that will, that shows like what the meaning of this movie is, you know?

Right.

Yeah.

Well, that's the thing you have, like I watched Kramer versus Kramer a couple nights ago just 'cause it was on and I still have cable, but we've already done that on Rewatchables. Like I wasn't watching it to scout it for the next one. And sometimes when you've seen movies a bunch of times and then you're watching them again, you're watching them for different things, right?

Totally.

And for whatever reason, I started watching it this time, and I was really focused on the structure of how they do it with the Dustin Hoffman character, the first 20 minutes, versus how things change and how much they're showing and not telling, which I think for some reason I had Taylor Sheridan on the podcast a couple weeks ago, and he was talking about how he structures storytelling and how the mistakes people made. I thought he had some really interesting comments in there, but one of them is, is he thinks basically he's, he's, one of his takes was everything's overwritten. I want to show stuff to you. I want, I want you to like feel the location. And, um, I'd much rather like dwell on an actor and how they're reacting versus like having this like witty repartee back and forth, which you can have too. And there's this great scene in Kramer vs. Kramer near the end when, uh, Dustin Hoffman he's lost the suit, right? Meryl Streep's gonna get the son, and they have one last breakfast together, and they're just like kind of making the French toast, which in the earlier in the movie, they make French toast and it's a disaster.

They spill it, like everything goes wrong because they haven't made a meal together. By the end of it, it's just like the routine of them making the French toast, and they never say anything. And then the kid starts, you know, the kid wells up, and it's like this emotional moment. But I was thinking, like, you know, I was watching this time, and I'm thinking, like, this is— this is, like, a— the kind of thing you should show young directors, like, that are thinking about, "How do I make a movie?" Like, little moments like this that we don't seem to have in movies in the same way anymore. And I feel like they're starting to come back. So I wonder, like, the next generation of people that are moving into movies and making films are really starting to think of these moments now? Instead of just being like, oh, I— if I can do 2 movies, maybe I'll, maybe I'll be able to do a Marvel movie. You know what I mean?

In general though, movies are becoming less visual.

But my, my point is maybe it's going back the other way because Obsession has moments in it. I thought Obsession was really interesting, but Obsession has moments that are all about the visuals. It's all about the choices the actress is making. You know, with, with like some of her faces and stuff.

Um, well, I mean, it's a, it's a visual medium, but by saying it's getting less visual in the sense that I always hear these things now that— well, I mean, like, actually your buddies old Matt Damon and Ben Affleck talk about this, how like Netflix wants you to give exposition at times for no reason because people might be folding streamers. Yeah, there's, um, yeah, so that, that's, you know, it's kind of the opposite of like what Sheridan would be saying or whatever, that, that, you know, if you're folding laundry while his shows are on, I suppose it might—

you might not know what's going on because But I would argue the streamers have different, different kind of, uh, I don't know, things they have to solve, right? Like in a streamer, there's so much content now, and they've been open about this. There's so much content, you have to grab somebody in the first 4 minutes or they go, right?

You click on it.

I don't know if I like that, you're out. If I'm going to a movie, I'm stuck there. I already made the decision to go. So whatever, whatever ride you take me on for the next 2 hours, I'm not going anywhere. I already, I already bought my ticket.

So when you texted me about this podcast, you'd mentioned that Atlantic story about like the end of reading or whatever, you know.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's another—

oh, it seems like no one's going, like, you know, the reading might be over or whatever, you know. Um, so, uh, a couple weeks ago, um, I read this book. It's a book called Stoner. You're familiar with this novel?

No.

My whole life people have told me to read this book, and I assumed it was because the guy must be stoned all the time. That's not what it is. It's about, it's, you know, it's just about the story of this guy. It starts in like, you know, early 1900s and kind of goes through his life. And it's a really quiet novel. And now I'm reading a book called Butcher's Crossing by the same author, similar kind of in tone in some ways. But, you know, it reminded me of how like how you're reading these books, you know, and everything that you visualize has to be described to you. Like, you know, everything about the way the guy's hair sits on his face, um, the way he walks into a room, all of these things, you know. And it is, you know, it's really deliberate. And it, it, it's easy to understand why the way things have changed makes reading novels harder now, in that we're just so accustomed to the idea that we're just going to have like a passive relationship, like this thing's going to be dumped on us, all what everyone looks like, however— like, I think part of the reason that people struggle reading now is because it's like they just aren't willing to imagine everything they have to imagine.

Like, it really is a— it's been an erosion of the potential for imagination. Like, people are just like, I'm I'm not going to spend time to visualize what a green shirt looks like. I just want to see the guy's shirt, you know. Um, and I wonder if this part of, you know, everyone thinks this, this, this reading situation is all solely because of phones and the internet, and I think that is the biggest factor. But I also wonder if our imaginations now have changed in a way that it makes it very difficult to understand anything that isn't obvious, like, you know, that, that, because it's where it's work to surrender the reality. Yeah.

You know, do you think people— like, I, I feel like more people in my life listen to books than read them is the other interesting piece to this. They're basically like more elaborate podcasts, but like my wife is more likely to listen to a book than read it at this point. And I don't know what that means either.

And you know, a lot of that had to do with the overcoming of what was a prejudice. Like, when I wrote my first book in 2001, there isn't an audiobook. And at the time, the idea of doing an audiobook, I mean, they almost said like, well, you know, that's for people who can't actually read, ha ha ha, or whatever, for blind people or whatever. Now it's like, it's almost like half the market. Like, the book I have coming out this September, I'm recording doing some of the audio stuff next week. And it's, you know, now any book I write, I will always do the, the audio for, you know. Um, but it's great, uh, it should— but it's, you know, because I know people, people want that. Like, people want to hear, um, yeah. I, I did want to mention one thing that I find is kind of interesting. It kind of ties back to this.

Wait, I had, but I had more on books. Okay, go ahead, go ahead, because I had to— I had this office where I used to do my podcast, and it became— before we moved out and finished this thing, the studio we have now. And so I fixed the office, and I really, like— my wife was making fun of me for weeks because I was like, really, like, I should post a picture of it on Instagram, um, putting all my books in the right— yeah, well, so, but I redid it. I found more books in the attic, and now I have even more books, and I have it stacked. And I had these two shelves of basketball books, but I found this, I found these two basically things of, of paperback books that I had, not like the smaller paperbacks, but the bigger ones. Cause you know, in the '90s we would buy the paperback books cause they were cheaper. Right. So I had, I had basically like 10 years of books I read that were just in these two things. So I added that to the thing and, and then I was looking back and I was looking at all the books.

And I've actually read all the books, you know, and it's, it's a lot of books. And you, and you think like, fuck, this probably shaped 95% of the choices I made in life were all these books I read because I was an only child. I read books all the time. So did you. Um, and so when I read this stuff about how people don't read anymore, reading has turned into texts and, you know, internet stuff and Twitter and Reddit, and that's people are reading the same amount, but they're not reading the actual books. Like, the question I get the most from everybody, you know, if people are like, people with young kids who want to be a podcaster or writer, or somebody who's breaking in the business, or somebody who's in college, like, hey, how do you have a tip for me? And I'm always like, fucking read. I feel like the reading, that was how I learned everything. That's how I learned how to pick styles. That's how I learned information. That's how I learned what happened in The course of history and how to not repeat the same mistakes or decisions people made or analyzing the decisions.

And, you know, every book you read is gonna have a different effect on you. But that's the part that scares me is that if people are reading less and they're just going to these other things, is there, is it affecting their brains in the same way? And I don't know the answer to that. Yeah, it's, it's, it's wild.

You know, like I, one thing, okay, so this, this book I have that's coming out Yeah, September. Okay, I'm doing an interesting event in October. Okay, um, so the book comes out in September, but I am doing a book event at New York Comic-Con.

Hmm.

Okay, now I was completely baffled when this was initially thrown at me. I have to say, it is my son's ultimate dream. It's the greatest thing that could have possibly happened, you know. So we're all going to New York to go to the Comic-Con or whatever. So I don't even care if no one comes to this event because I'm in my mind, I'm like, well, okay, these people are paying a bunch of money to like see the stuff, you know, see comic books and Marvel movies and, and, you know, Magic: The Gathering, all this stuff, you know.

How do you fit in?

Are they going to come on and see this like a book reading or whatever, like a book event? Then, you know, I was starting to wonder if maybe what will happen going forward is this Maybe if reading really does kind of fade from the culture, people will still buy books as collectible objects, like physical media, almost like Pokémon cards or something. It's like, oh, I like this author, uh, I know what— yeah, he— I've heard him on podcasts, I've seen him or whatever. Oh, buy this book, and this book will sort of be like the physical representation of who I, who I am, what my identity is, what I like, what I'm interested in.

Put out on the bookshelves.

Maybe I won't, maybe it'll just be on the shelf or whatever, you know. But I wonder if there is— I mean, I don't, I don't— I mean, in a way that's kind of a scary thing to think about if somebody sells books for a living or tries to sell books for a living. But I, I do wonder if the possession of physical books in the future could help save books. Well, yeah, well, like, it'll be sort of like how, um, you know, there was— it's— there was a time when people would buy vinyl records even though they had it on CD or they had it on cassette. They like to collect records. They like the gatefold. They like the feel of it. They like the smell of it. They like the idea of what it was, you know. Um, like, maybe that's how it's going to become for books in a way. That, like, you'll, you'll still have to write them. You can't— you know, the books have to be written. You have to put all the work in it. If someone actually does read it, it will need the merits of a book in the classic style.

Like, they won't just buy a book just for what it looks like. It's got to be the thing. It's got to be that if people see that you own this book, they know that it's like, that's, you know, it's all this information. Um, so I'll maybe— so maybe like going to like a Comic-Con is like a reasonable thing to do, sort of like, you know, maybe the kind of people who go to that are already in the mindset. It's like, I buy the things that are, you know, important to my life. Like, I, you know, guy buys like a figurine of like the Incredible Hulk or whatever. He's not gonna play with the Incredible Hulk. He might not even take it out of the box, but maybe he will and he'll put it on a shelf and it'll be like, when people see this, they will know not only do I like this, this, but like, I'm invested in this. So I'm, I'm very curious to see what this is going to be like. I've got very curious to see if I do this book event at Comic-Con New York and people show up or not, you know, and, and if they want to buy the book or if they have questions.

I just have no idea. Yeah.

One thing about books, you said this earlier because you mentioned Among the Thugs, which I knew immediately what you meant because I have it and I read it. I didn't know anything about early '90s hooligan soccer fans in the UK, right? Neither did you when you read that book. So it was like, it brought me into this whole world that I would've known nothing about otherwise. And it's that, by the way, an excellent, excellent sports book. Um, is it too easy to discover stuff like that now where you don't need a book? I feel like people now would have opinions on, Hooliganism and soccer and different things, and they, they would just know more and they wouldn't even necessarily have to read a book to learn all the same stuff we learned from the book.

Yeah.

I mean, like, there's shortcuts to it now. You wouldn't have to read the book, which is kind of frightening.

I mean, the, the scary thing about this is that it is possible that maybe books are just not the most effective way to learn things. Right. I mean, I think you and I both were raised or kind of with this, but maybe it's not, because I will admit some nights I'm at home, you're lying in bed, and I'll just go to YouTube and I will watch, say, like, just random shit, a 9-minute documentary about, oh, um, like, uh, like the, like how, uh, primitive men, uh, were able to keep fires burning during inclement weather, and it'll be like 9 minutes long. Yeah, like, I will get it all. Like, I will learn this thing, you know. Or I'll— like, I watched one, I think I maybe have mentioned it on another part, it was just a fascinating short little documentary about like how they selected Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two places they dropped atomic bombs on. Like, the conversation that led to—

that's amazing.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, like, like one city was saved just because one guy at the meeting was like, I've been there, it's nice, don't drop a bomb on there. Yeah, it's like, that was like, there were these, you know, and it's these things that, you know, like, in a way I almost didn't even, had never even invested the time in wondering about, you know. And that can be done so quickly now that you can watch so many, you can watch them at like 1.5 speed. Like, you know, so you're, so even something that's 9 minutes is now 6 minutes and you've got all this stuff. Um, it's— it is hard sometimes to, to, to— like, I'll, I'll write a book and I'll be like, okay, so who's the person who's going to read this? Who's the person who's going to put the time in to do this? Like, right, you're just kind of praying that there's 100,000 of these people out there.

But, you know, that would be a great Letterboxd sequel, is just you log crazy things you watched on YouTube. Because like yesterday I went on, I went on my YouTube. That was about, it was literally, I was like a half hour from going to bed and I went to search for something on YouTube and, you know, the algorithm really knows me now at this point. So for some reason it suggested this Mark Knopfler, um, this concert that he did in 1996 where he plays what some people think are the great, is the greatest guitar solo of all time. I think it's from the Expresso Love or Tunnel of Love, one of those. And it was on some concert thing. And then he didn't like— I guess he messed up like 2 things during this like 3-minute solo. So he took it out of the concert. So the song wasn't out there, but all these people had sworn they had seen the thing. And then in 2024, it appeared again on YouTube and people were like, Knopfler, guitar god. It's back. And they were— so I watched the whole thing and it was amazing. And then I was like, I feel like I saw him on Letterman once in the mid-'80s, and he did a song with the band, and it was like the best thing I've ever seen anyone do with a band on late night.

And then I went and I was right. It was 1985. Mark Knopfler came in and he sang Expresso Love with the band when the Letterman band was like the best it's ever been. Like, Shafer. It had Steve Jordan was there. And, um, and it's like this awesome 5 minutes. My point is that was just 15 minutes of my night last night where I watched those two things. And then I watched, um, 5 minutes of a 1980 Dire Straits. And all of a sudden I was down a 20-minute Dire Straits deep dive out of nowhere. And that's just what happens night after night if you let it, you know.

Oh yeah, it's very easy to do that. I mean, I—

that would be a good Letterboxd.

Well, it— but also it's just that the fact that like it's all there, like you have memories that you don't even know were real memories. Section in like— when I wrote Fucker Rock City like in 1999, 2000. Yeah, it was out in 2001. There's a chunk in that book where I talk about the strangest thing about rock videos is that you see them constantly for 2 months and then you never see them again, right? So there's one summer I saw the Black Rose video for the song Remedy every day. At some point, because MTV was on my house all the time, you know, I saw the video for Remedy every day and then it was like gone. And it appeared like this was just sort of how the world was going to be. There would be these things you're hyper-involved with and then it's pretty much gone unless you like buy Black Rose DVD or something. Now there's nothing like that. Like, there's nothing that, that if you experience, you have to, you know, like, you know it. You know that if I— well, if I don't see it now, I can see it again, or I can see it at my leisure or whatever.

I wonder if that has changed the way that we watch these things. We're not doing it consciously, but I wonder if unconsciously we now realize that these things can of course be accessed at a different time, right? Different way, and as a consequence, I don't have to care as much. I don't have to invest anything in it intellectually because it'll always be there. And that we're kind of doing this with everything now, and maybe that's why everything seems less satisfying than it used to.

I remember I had these VHS tapes of different things from the '80s that I'd just recorded in real time, including, I think, 3 Letterman anniversary shows in a row. Right? And I was like, I would have put these in a safe. I had a whole bunch of stuff, like, whole bunch of games and just things. Like, I'm so glad I have these, because if I didn't have these, they would be gone. And one of the VHS, like, the tape melted or broke and it was just gone. I think it was the Letterman anniversary ones. Maybe it was something else. And I was just like, oh my God, it's gone. Now all that shit's on YouTube.

It is.

It was like my— one of some of my prized possessions, you know, the Michael Jackson Motown 25 and shit like that that I actually recorded in real time. I was like, oh my God, what would happen if somebody stole this?

You should keep those though, because actually what is amazing is that the stuff that you didn't think you were recording, the ancillary stuff, right, the commercials and stuff. Yeah, from, uh, for my birthday, my wife, like, my guest went on eBay and got me a bunch of Sports Illustrateds from the early '80s. So I was like reading through them on, on July 4th or whatever, you know. And like, you know, like there's this story about like a, uh, I think, I think it's a Frank Deford story about like Wilt Chamberlain at the age of 50.

I remember that one. That was a good one.

And it was also— I'd forgotten about this. It was like he almost came back and played for the Nets, like, you know. And like he probably could have, you know, like almost certainly could have. It's like Um, and you know, I, and I kind of did vaguely remember that story because— and you might remember this— at the front of the magazine, it's a close-up of Wilt's hand, how big his hand is. And you know, in that you could put your hand on— it's like, yeah. So I did remember that story, and I remember that happened. But it was so weird, like, looking at some of the cigarette ads in this thing, or like the 19th Hole, all the letters. Like, the— let somebody— wrote a letter to Sports Illustrated. There's no way you can't You cannot go on the internet now and find like random letters to Sports Illustrated from 1983, but here they all are, right? And it's like, and it was also strange to hear, to read some of these letters and like see like, boy, you know, people are still saying that now. Like he's, he's describing this thing as a new thing, but it's like still happening now.

People complaining about announcers, which now we have with Alexi Lawless where everybody's just like, I can't stand Alexi Lawless. But in the '80s we had somebody else.

So like, I bet if you went back and like watched like a, like a, or like when I was writing the football book, you know, it, uh, I was, uh, uh, like went back and I rewatched like the, the Boston College-Miami game or something, you know. Yeah, yeah, when the Flutie game or whatever. But like before it happens, I think it's like Brent Musburger talking about like Falcon Crest is going to be on or whatever, like these things I just totally forgot.

You'd forget happened, but Well, there's this, first of all, I don't, you must have watched some of these old NFL games, just random week 6 Browns versus Steelers, 1978, and it just will be the complete NBC broadcast.

Mm-hmm.

It's kind of riveting. There's this account on YouTube called Rare NBA Footage, which has only 8.4K, 8,400 followers right now. And they just— he— I don't know where this person gets all the video stuff, but he'll have some good fights every once in a while. And he had, he had the, uh, when Kareem punched Kent Benson, he had that whole thing. But then the aftermath of Kent Benson with this huge black eye being like, what the fuck just happened? Um, it feels like everything's out there. There's I, it's just, there's more and more footage people are just finding. And it is, it's really crazy.

The point now where it's like, it's almost more surprising if you can't find something. Like you almost expect you should be able to find it.

Um, uh, yeah, because there's stuff, there's NBA stuff from the '60s and '70s where they did, they literally didn't televise the game. So there's no way to find it unless somebody for whatever reason had a camera in the upper deck or something. It's just games that don't exist. Most famously the Wilk game, but that was 1962. But there's, you know, a whole bunch of stuff. Anyway, all right, we went 2 hours, we went too long. Can you plug some stuff?

Well, no, I mean, I, I got a— I have a— I got this book that's just called Rock that's coming out in September. What's—

so what's Rock about, quickly?

Okay, I don't want it— one thing I found promoting that football book, I just— I did so many podcasts that occasionally you'd end up saying the same thing on multiple podcasts. And I really feel like a lot of people are like, I kind of read this book. Like, I heard him talk about it enough. Like, you know, I like it.

Keep the mystery. So this is just kind of rock.

I'm going to try to, to not talk about what's in this book as much, but I will say this. Okay. So it's like, it is a fictional history of rock music. It's fictional, but it starts in 1967 with the premise that the Velvet Underground's first record is released and immediately becomes 25 times more popular than the Beatles and the Stones combined.

You told me this idea, great idea.

And it completely alters all of the culture over the next, you know, many years, and then ends in 2002 where 9/11 has been blamed on the Strokes. Okay.

Yeah.

So, but, but there's a lot that happens in between that. So that's— those are kind of the bookends of this book. Wow.

And you, you really were a podcast whore for that football book.

Well, I guess, you know, but they can't— you know, people ask me to go on a podcast, I'll do it. Why not? Because the thing is also, they don't— it's amazing how little they overlap. There's only a certain kind of person who listens to all of them.

But, you know, yeah, true, it is like pieces of different audiences.

But it could— I think it could have been a mistake though, because I did so many of those podcasts and people always wanted to talk about one section of the book. They wanted to talk about the one chapter near the end about the eventual sort of erosion of football or football receding from the culture, which now I think many people think that's what the book is about. It's like, it's like 5% of that book maybe at most. But I did— I probably did too many podcasts.

For that, you know, trying to think of what the Velvet Underground, what the sports version of that would be. Cause I was gonna say like, if Doc, if the Knicks had bought Dr. J from the Nets in '76, is the next 50 years of NBA history different? Well, but it was, Dr. J had already been around for half, for half his career. So maybe it's not as impactful.

But you mean the conceit of this book though is that all the records from 1967 till 2002, they're exactly the same. The records haven't changed. It's the perception of the records and the perception of the artists.

Oh, so that could only— that couldn't be with sports.

Yeah, so, well, no, a sports version would be that all the games played out exactly as we remember them, but everything we think about sports is completely reversed because of the way it is perceived.

I'll have to think about what the sport— I, I, I need to, I don't wanna say the wrong thing here. Trying to think of what the basketball version of that would be. You said for some reason I was thinking about the late '70s. If Gus, if, if the Sonics-Bullets series was considered to be the series that saved basketball and Gus Williams was like, Magic Johnson for Magic Johnson. And then we just go. All right, Chuck, thank you for the 2+ hours. I had a great time as always. Um, okay, now you made me want to come to Portland.

Well, you never do. Uh, you know, uh, well, I don't have to twist Chris Ryan's arm.

He goes there anyway just to socialize.

He comes quite often.

Yeah. All right, say hi to everybody in Portland for us. Thanks for coming on.

Okay, bye-bye.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chuck Klosterman. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo and Jack and Chris and everybody else at The Ringer. As well. I'm going to be coming back midweek with a podcast. Um, it's going to be a very unique podcast, uh, probably on Wednesday. So stay tuned for that. And don't forget, Rewatchable— She's the One is coming. Um, see you next week. Must be 21+ in President's Select states for Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ in President's Select states, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. Or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope Is Here, visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.