Transcript of Hour 2: The Unthinkable

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This is The Dan Levator Show with the Stu Guts podcast.

I wanted to ask this group, Gojo Charlote and Dan, how the New landed with you because it broke over the weekend. We didn't get an opportunity to talk about it as it broke. We were talking about all the other things that were happening on the Pat McAfee show regarding Aaron Rodgers. But after we shut off the microphones last week, it was reported by Andrew Marshawn that Pat McAfee and ESPN pay Aaron Rodgers millions of dollars for his weekly appearances. And it also goes on to say that Nick Saban is also compensated. And I learned about this in a group chat. And my initial response to it was, well, that's a bad look. That's a bad look because there's this thing in our industry that, especially if you're on a national show, you don't pay for access to guests. It's kind of like a golden rule of the industry that's never spoken, because why would it be? And I'm like that's a bad look. And someone asked me that's not familiar with our industry, that's outside of it, why? And I really struggled to articulate why it's a bad look. And it made me kind of evolve on my position because initially I was like, Well, Pat can't be doing that.

That sets such a bad precedent. And in talking it through, I didn't have that big of a problem with it, honestly. Now, throughout the history of this show, when we were local, it's not uncommon to see a weekly recurring guest get paid for their time. I think we had a deal worked out with to that actually helped us in the ways that Aaron Rodgers has helped Pat McAfee's show. You usually see it with a tie in to a sponsor and it's usually the David Samson show brought to you by Cadillac Azuzu. But on the national level, you don't really see that. And the only place that I actually think it's a bad look for Pat and I actually thought his reaction to it was oddly defensive and not like the way that Pat usually gets defensive, which is entertaining and having fun with the audience. He seemed genuinely bothered by this, calling Andrew Marshawn a rat. I guess you have that in common with Pat McAfee, that you have names for Andrew Marshawn, which this was good reporting. And this does paint the Aaron Rodgers segment in a different light. So this is why I think it's a bad look.

Number one, because of how it's presented. The way that it's presented is that Aaron Rodgers is just kind of hanging out and Pat McAfee has this show that's a really cool vibe that you just want to kind of hang around. And he's this big time charismatic talent who I personally really enjoy. And it's the place to go if you're an athlete, to be comfortable because the host is charismatic and a former athlete, and he kind of gets you. That kind of changes a little bit when it's known that people are being paid for their time. Also, what is this money going to because naturally, I'd be like the spin is just to say aaron Rodgers is donating the cash, but what to RFK Junior Super Pac? Like, I need to know where this is going. And I'm wondering and talking it out with you and gojo, you were there. The second place that I think it's a bad look specifically for this to be reported. And it's not so much that they're paying him, it's what they're paying him, which is reported in millions. ESPN, as you know, a lot of turnover, a lot of good people, a lot of really talented people no longer working there.

So this isn't exactly how budgets work out because there's health insurance and headcounts that go into it. So it's not exactly applicable.

I'm also not positive that this is ESPN's money. I would surmise that Pat McAfee himself, from his cut of money, is giving some of it to Aaron Rodgers, because one of the things that McAfee said in what you thought was defensive is we've now got a half a billion dollar company that Aaron Rogers helped me build. So I just assumed that he sliced up. I think a lot of people really don't understand some of the things that have been happening with McAfee or us and the business arrangements. McAfee walked away from four years, $120,000,000 to take less money at ESPN walked away from FanDuel's money because he knew that the company would get larger in worth. Once it got to the reach of ESPN with the freedom that he has to do it as he wants, which is much different than the way ESPN has done it. So he framed it as, I'm taking care of my own, I'm taking care of the people who made this company.

Worth what it is.

It's an important distinction because in negotiating this with Pat, he probably had a discretionary budget for these things. But you could already tell almost immediately how that landed with former Espnners. Like, really? We're paying Nick Saban and Aaron Rodgers. We're giving Aaron Rodgers this platform, which has been a tricky spot, whether it be spreading misinformation or antivaxx propaganda. We're giving him millions of dollars, you know, from being in there. This isn't necessarily the way that ESPN gets down, but they've surrendered themselves totally to the Pat McAfee experience and doing a lot of different things. As a former ESPN on air guy, how did it land with you?

Kind of the same way you described it there where I looked at it, and I usually ask, and this is the conversation we have around any long standing practices, well, why are we doing this? And I was actually curious to ask you guys, as people that have been doing this at this level, a lot better and longer than I have. What the aversion to that was because his explanation made sense in a base form to me. Like, all of this in the way that we present all of this, we're all pretty close on and off air, but sometimes on air you embellish even a little bit closer. Like, we're not 100% authentic, even if most everyone in this room is closer than a lot of places. And so this idea that, oh, well, he's not as close with Pat and those guys, so what? People go to strip clubs all the time to try and suspend a little bit of disbelief and live in that world. I looked at that and said, all right, I don't really have a problem with that idea of him paying it like that, but the optics of it against what's going on around the company maybe this is just the sports and the little bit of athlete still in my background.

But I looked all the time on every team I was on, and I could see, all right, what does that guy do for the team here? And how valuable is it compared to what I do as like a reserve offensive lineman on the squad? Of course, I'm not going to be treated the same or valued the same as someone who's scoring touchdowns every weekend and doing all that. So if I can look at myself honestly and say, well, I'm as valuable to us on air as what, Nick Saban's providing them with that hit, then I can get mad. And maybe this is a conversation about the delusional self confidence that both athletes carry. I don't have that. So I look around and go, well, yeah, I'd pay Nick Saban more than me too. Hell yeah.

I think, though, that where it gets tricky. And the original reason you didn't pay people, especially if it's people you cover. Aaron Rodgers and Nick Saban are both in the news all the time for sports. ESPN is covering them. They are also paying them to come on their show that inherently colors how they are going to be pushed, which is they're not. Pat lets Aaron say whatever the heck he wants and Aaron Rodgers, to me, is just an agent of chaos. I don't think he has a set series. Set series. I don't think he has set beliefs. I think he just does whatever he thinks will get people talking and to poke the bear. He clearly did that. He also seizes upon those opportunities. Travis Kelsey was the most talked about person still in sports right now. So Aaron Rodgers was like, you know what? I'm going to take a shot at him. Pat doesn't push back. It comes out he's being paid. And I think we're even beyond the we're not talking about journalistic ethics anymore because that doesn't exist basically anywhere that has it's very hard to find. And so I think that when it comes out, though, that it's not only someone who is covered so often by the outlet that's paying them, but also pushing weird stuff.

I don't love that.

I think from that standpoint, too, because you're right, like the journalists, I've never been a tried and true journalist. So when people throw that at me, I'm like, I don't have the same background.

Neither is Pat McAfee, which I think is important to all of us, and.

Neither do most people listening to this care about any of this subject matter because they aren't doing the defining of journalism that I might be doing because I dedicated my life to that craft. I think that most people listening to this, the grand majority, care not at all about journalistic ethics.

But I do think at some point, and this is kind of what Charlote was getting at if it affects the way that you cover that person enough to where you're going to ignore the thing that people do want to know about. Like, I always go back to that Swamp Kings documentary on Netflix talking about the early 2000s. Florida Gators ignored all of the things I came as a viewer to want to learn in that documentary in favor of catering to the people that were willing to sit for them.

But a very popular documentary nonetheless ended up being watched.

People don't care.

People just want Pat McAfee's audience also doesn't care. There were some people, but I don't know from social media who's his fan base and who's not. Why would it matter to a Pat McAfee fan? This is a whole new brand of athlete led media. They don't care about unspoken journalism rules.

No, but I guess it's not even that, because, Dan, to your point, people watched that Swamp King, I'll use that one as the example here. People watched it because of the fascination in my mind of what I thought I was going to get out of it. And now, because of that, I trust that Untold series a lot less like the next time they come out with something. Because of that, because of the man's. I'm like, all right, I kind of understand the way you guys are playing with this. And so maybe over time, if it affects the way you cover it enough to where you ignore an obvious thing, I want to know as the View viewer, maybe it erodes some confidence. Maybe if you're looking for maybe.

But I would say to you that, generally speaking, conflict of interests are all over the place in sports journalism. ESPN, for one, has a bunch of business relationships with the leagues that they cover. And I don't think that most people listening to this care how they navigate those conflict of interest. I believe when Mike says, I've heard this phrase so much over the years, bad luck. And then people are asked to elaborate on, well, give me what is the infraction? What's the illegality? What has happened here? Well, I'm just not comfortable with how that is because it represents a change from what it is that I'm used to. ESPN has made a decision in paying a handful of people while laying off a whole bunch of other people $17 million a year. $15 million a year. We are banking on these ten stars, and we are changing the way that we do business. And our business model, which once upon a time decided for reasons that may not matter anymore, that are totally antiquated, they decided to be a journalism company when no one asked them to do that. And it seems like no one cared whether they did that or not.

And now slowly, they're getting out of that business with compromises like this. And I don't think it affects the brand at all. I think when I saw all of that happen, I'm like and there's the industry just changing and there's that place changing. And evolution isn't always bad, but people are going to get uncomfortable with it, and people are going to say bad look because it looks different than what they're familiar with.

Yeah, after talking it out, where I initially went, like, that's just a bad look. And I couldn't exactly explain why to resigning, to the fact that I couldn't explain why to ultimately being like, oh, well, thank God he's not that much cooler than us. Like, he's paying them millions of dollars. That's why Aaron doesn't want to come on. Oh, thank God.

That show from Boulder was amazing.

They had the Rock out there. Maybe they're paying everybody and everyone just likes them more because they're getting paid.

It's a bad look because people like them.

I was going to say Pat kind of hinted at that, though. It's like, oh, yeah, I'm making these people valued for their time that they're giving me.

He made a bunch of false guess.

Like, guess what?

Draymond. Green gets paid by the volume.

Like he's hosting a show. Dude, that part wrong. But I guess in terms of the quality, they're all hanging out. Like, yeah, they might not be best friends, but hey, if I'm getting paid, I'm probably going to give a little bit more effort to the situation. That's kind of how jobs work.

Fascinating, though, too, to me, that money would be something here that would contaminate a utopian ideal that I don't believe sports fans care about. They care about I'm turning on my television. Who's there? And whether they're being paid or not. I think we've paid Tim Kirkshin and I think we paid Terrell Owens over the years.

Both had sponsorship tie ins, and it's a weird national local radio dichotomy that there is because you see it all the time on local. Like Javon Holland has, like, a car dealership deal with one of the local shows, but on Nationals, there's something that you do not do, which is funny.

Because then we go to Super Bowl week, and I think we interviewed emmett Smith with a literal diamond necklace from Zales that he brought that day. And I'm like, how does this feel? All that different? Don Levatard.

Did you guys see Gilbert Arenas's assessment of Zion Williamson?

Agent zero stugats.

Did you answer my question there or no?

No?

Okay.

Very good.

This is the Don Levitar Show with the stugats.

Guys. I think Jada Pink has done the unthinkable. She's turned Will Smith into a sympathetic character. I never thought I thought after that slap, this dude's going to be a villain. The Punchline, with a bunch of jokes and everything. And Jada's on, I guess, her book tour. She's putting out a book. So she's been doing, like, the car wash thing in the media, and with every additional interview, I'm like, I get it now. Feel bad for this guy. It's just remarkable. Have you guys seen any of this?

I've read it and been confused by it and was wondering I didn't realize that it was a book tour because she has her Red Table series. And I thought if she was trying to bring attention to something that I was confused by why is this all coming out now when everybody for the last year has wanted to know the history of what is happening there? I don't know. What are the signature items for you? On Feeling bad for Will Smith, whether it's her saying we haven't been husband and wife for a long time, I was surprised to hear him call me his wife, whether it's saying that Tupac Shakur is actually her soulmate, what are the things specifically that are making you feel bad for him?

You named a lot of them. As an aside, the most interesting thing she said was Tupac Shakur had Alopecia as well. And I said wow. Hold on. Have you seen those eyebrows and eyelashes? No chance. No chance. He was just balding, that's all. That's what that's called. No, but her depiction of their not really a marriage. It's a marriage of convenience in the most literal sense that we raise children together and we appear as a united front to the public. But we have not been husband and wife, she said, since 2016. But then it reminded me of what happened in 2016, which was it was revealed that she was dating August Alcina, who was her son is a singer who was her son's friend. And after that came out, she had Will on the red table, and they had to talk this out. And I'm like, Why? And I realized, oh, yeah, it's all for the sake of content, right? There is no boundary.

What just happened there? Did you just sit on a water bottle?

Is that what happened there? I hope nobody heard it. I was like, Maybe if I keep.

Talking, it didn't quite work out how you imagine.

No, not quite.

It is amazing in all of this, in someone who has used all of their life for the express purpose of content. And Dan, to your point, had the red table that was already this vehicle available, that there's still this much left over where we're hearing stuff and doing that because I think we all do kind of look at celebrity life and the things that go along with it. And people kind of do a version of it, of what they do to athletes all the time, which is, well, some of this is just the cost of being business. If you want to be famous like this and you want to play this sport or do this thing, this is what comes with it. And then you look at it through the prism of, all right, if you're a husband and a father and all this is going on, that kind of sucks, because we can relate to all of that. And and watching this guy go out there and publicly embarrass himself at the Oscars in the name of a person who's now on the back end, not claiming him in that moment feels sad, no matter how you feel about him.

As a guy banned for ten years, ten year ban from the Academy Awards. I don't even know why he said that. What are you talking about? Just as a gesture, what did you just like, I mean, we're not together, but thanks for doing that. It just felt really odd. And the other part of it is when you say, oh, this is the cost of doing business, right? That's usually when we, the public, are prying into ain't nobody asking for these details, man. Nobody asked for this.

That's also an amazing thing, Charlote, in this day and age, with content, where we get so much of everything, we've all kind of universally looked at this and gone, yeah, I think I'm good. I don't need any more of this.

The thing that flashes into my head more than anything else, literally anything else, is the headline from there was a New York Times opinion piece called we all need to know Less about each Other. I think of that phrase at least three times a day. I also think, though, something very interesting to me about Jada Pinkett, about the celebrity culture, about what we think we know. We're getting their version, and as media keeps dying, they control the narrative. And there's so much we don't know. Like, I don't know how Will Smith actually feels about this. I don't know what Will Smith's been doing for ten years. And I see what you mean, the optics of it, but everything to me now feels so calculated. It's like, well, there's got to be a reason. Is it really just to sell the book?

Isn't it wild that in the before four times, when the media controlled the narrative, it's like, oh, I couldn't be who I wanted to be. The media controlled the narrative. It's like, things like this happen now. And I'm like, if you're a celebrity. Don't you kind of want the before four times? Because it wouldn't look this bad in speaking her truth, or whatever you want to call it? She comes off looking way worse than it was. Just, hey, Will and Jada didn't make like, most of the time, people kind of assume it's infidelity on the man's side. Usually that's the kind of like, oh, of course, because Will was in a couple of movies with Margot Robbie. I'm sure something happened there. But when this all comes out like this, you're like, oh, no, man. You guys are like you like, this is who they really are. And it kind of sucks.

And it's like, that's what they're telling us they are.

No, I know, but I'm saying which is wilder. Charlote Wilder.

Yeah.

Like, the idea that they would come out and no, no, this is how it happened. You're like, you look worse this way. You know what it reminds me of? And I'm glad we're having this conversation in this building when Winning Time season one came out, all these Laker people came out. Oh, that's not this is terrible. None of this happened this way. Wait till our story gets out. Wait till we tell the story, right? Magic Johnson had a documentary. The Lakers had a Docu series on Hulu, and we just wait. This thing, it's completely false, or that's not how any of it happened. And then those documentaries and Docuseries came out, and I watched them, and they were good. They were really good. And I said, all these people should have picked up the phone and called Adam and said to Adam McKay, thank you for making me look a lot more sane than I actually was. Magic left Cookie at the altar, like, seven times before he actually married her. You are actually worse in real life. Like, imagine saying, hey, man, I heard Gojo ate a mud pie the other day. I'm like, Dude, stop spreading these awful rumors about me.

It was shit that I ate. What are you doing? Just let them tell the story and let you preserve your dignity.

You say you're good with information. This reminds me you're good on this subject. You don't need anymore. But I remember the way we were howling when Tiger Woods, the veneer of whatever he was selling in the Buick commercials came out and there was howling about how he betrayed us and we needed some sort of explanation. And then when he's in front of that sad blue screen in Orlando and he's hugging his mother, at that point we realize, well, why was I asking for this? Why did I demand this from this man? But in this particular case, I would say that people can't get enough of what is happening with the information around this that anything that Jada Pinkett gives us will be selling her book no matter how bad it makes him look or her look. Because people are starved for the gossip around. Show me the privacy in your life. Show me the stuff that I don't get to see. I don't know that people can, even if it makes us uncomfortable. The truth, I don't know that people can get enough of it. We're talking about it now, at least in part, because we can't believe how appalling the truth is.

I am so guilty. I'm like, we all need to know less about each other. And then any little sliver. I am that idiot. I follow e news on instagram. If they say link in bio for this, I click it more than anything else on instagram. I don't know what it is. My brain. I found an op ed I wrote in high school from 2005 about celebrity gossip. I can't get enough, but I think I just don't want to know as much about people I actually know in real life, because then it just makes me like them less. I'm like, tell me very little. Tell me everything about the celebs you.

Were in high school in 2005.

Sorry.

Good god.

Sorry.

I remember that about then was when Bill Simmons wrote an article about the formula that will Smith had to become the biggest movie star in the world. That went right up, I think, until wild wild west got screwed up by a giant spider. But the know, he went into orcs and a variety of different things that made him go from indisputably the biggest movie star in the world, an unbelievable acting job in that ali movie, like a really strong actor, to the last 15 years or ten years of it doesn't feel that way at all anymore. Like, the deterioration has been a substantive one. I don't even know where will Smith is. I don't know how will Smith rehabilitates everything that has happened to him and how precipitous a fall it has been from where it is that he was.

It is interesting to consider all of this as what the starting point is for that information, because in will Smith's case, it's like I always say, the most debilitating thing for me ever would have been seeing my dad get his ass whooped in public. Like, this person who is the image of everything you want to be and all of this to see them taken down that way, that would be jarring to you. Will Smith, for a lot of people, was everything they thought a Hollywood a list actor should be. And now seeing these sad details about his life creep in. It affects the way that we perceive the world with that person's involvement in it. I look at it conversely, mantiteo, my former teammate, that documentary came out. The starting point was a lot more sad back then where you've got people saying these terrible things about him. This goes on, and you feel like then you get one version of it from the media. And where amongst this new group of documentaries. His was probably the most well received because all of a sudden you get this much more sympathetic picture of a guy that wasn't afforded the ability to tell that version of events then.

And so I think that being perceived that way because, all right, it makes us feel a little bit better about things. Oh, we were bad back then, but it's better now. Versus the Will Smith has been a deterioration from the best we saw of this person to now. Oh, I'm knowing a bunch of stuff I don't want to know about a.

Guy I really liked before the nerds jump in here. He did win an Academy Award for his portrayal as Richard Williams in King.

Richard, which people forget because he also Chris Rock in that same ceremony.

Oh, my God.

That was a forget.

People forget that movie. I think you and I have talked about this before. Not that good. Their actual story so much more interesting than what that movie that movie felt like hollywood feeling like it needed to give Will Smith an award for that movie because of where we were in the times it worked. Am I wrong, though? I don't think of Will Smith as having done something that would be considered great work. That was a long time.

That was great work by him. The movie wasn't good, but that was great work by him in the same way that Leonardo DiCaprio playing Jay Edgar Hoover did an amazing job in an amazingly boring movie. That movie wasn't good, but he was awesome in that role. And in a way that's kind of sad, right? It makes me think of guys like Brendan Fraser and we just write these people because they took a bunch of shitty roles. But it's like, oh, the talent is still there. He could still how's the quote go? I'm not as great as I once.

Was, but I'm as good once as I ever was.

Exactly.

And I think, God, I was hoping he wouldn't help you there. You were going to just sit on that water bottle again and fart yourself. You did not have that quote in the arsenal.

No.

Don Lebotard at the end of our conversation with Alex Smith, and we talked for about 30 minutes, but I feel like nobody is going to remember anything about that conversation other than how you fell flat at the end with your very last word. Listen to how Stugats here at the end of this interview says goodbye, just exhausted to Alex Smith.

Thanks, Alex.

Stugats, what happened?

Alish dan.

I'm exhausted.

I haven't stopped talking in a month.

I mean, I don't know what to tell you.

This is the Don Levitar show with the stu gats.

I have mentioned before that a lot of people do not know, as they do know, the names of Adam Schefter and Woj and Choms. They don't know what a mental health insanity those jobs are.

I.

Would not want to be one of those people in this industry, no matter the amount of money being paid to those people. And The New Yorker has done a profile on Shams because his story is fascinating for a number of reasons. He, under the tutelage of Woj, has become the new, younger woge does many of the same things. There aren't many of these information people. What are they, five total throughout the country that you would look at and say worth $10 million a year, can move gambling lines. Their information is so valuable that I associate their names with a sport. There are only a handful, and Shams is top three. He's on the medal stand right now. What did you find interesting amin about the New Yorker profile on you know.

A lot of it is stuff that I knew because I've known him since he was the teenager who was breaking in. But the extents to which he doesn't have a life is the stuff that I see him, I talk whatever, but I don't know that part. And to see it come out in the piece, specifically things where he says he can't drive anywhere because he's got to be on his phone, he can't. Going on dates like having a social life is almost impossible for him because he's always on his I wonder, you know, when you think of Adrian and you think of some of these other news breakers adam Schefter, Jeff Passen these are guys that is Diana just I'm talking about the people who feels like.

She'S the athletics insider. NFL.

But I think what I'm getting at is Adrian and Shams, they don't write stuff. Their whole world is just diana writes stuff. She writes features. Right.

Does come around to write, like, a whole feature, like he did with the Damien Lillard.

Occasionally, every time someone needs a solid, he writes a feature.

Is it fair to say under the tutelage? I know that Shams was brought through when Woj basically had his own cutout at Yahoo sports, but we've talked to Shams before, and it's been kind of dissected at how overstated the Woj part of the tutelage is.

It is because he had built himself by breaking the news that nobody else wanted to break. This guy's ten day, this guy, the G League. G League call up. Right. And what happened was the people that he wrote about, those agents, those players, some of those players began to rise and become more important people. A great example, which was from the piece was Bernie Lee. Bernie Lee was Jimmy Butler's agent. He represents Ben Simmons. Bernie Lee is a power player now in the game. But once upon a time, Bernie was a guy who represented a lot of fringe roster, guys like John Lucas II and with Mike James, right. From Amityville. So there's a part of this where it's like, yeah, his circles and his connections were kind of weak in the beginning, but as time grew and these people grew, they became stronger. And so he's getting real scoops. And the one that they mentioned in the piece, which is the Lual Dengue is getting traded from Chicago to Cleveland. He got that on the strength of a relationship he had built years ago with someone who at the time, most would consider, oh, I don't care about your news.

That's not newsworthy. So what Adrian did was get him somewhere where he was getting paid a lot more money because he was doing all this out of pocket in the beginning and the exposure of having him alongside him in all of the video stuff that they put out. But the tutelage part, I agree with you. Mike is very overblown.

I know you're just I'm more fascinated by the hustle and how depressing the hustle makes me, how consuming it is, how crazy it is to be competitive in this space. I've told the story before, the one year that I had it, to compete for news in Miami. I was sobbing in the Miami Herald bathroom at midnight, still at work at midnight because I couldn't stop. And I didn't like the path that my life was, was I was getting hit in the face by basketballs when I was playing basketball because I couldn't stop obsessive compulsively thinking, not just because I'm clumsy and unathletic. I was distracted. I could not stop thinking about I was always falling behind and it seemed to me a torturous life. So when I see these guys be excellent at it, I actually think to myself, there cannot be happiness there. You can conquer and have success and it's just an empty hole that you're constantly shoveling into trying to fill it, but it's always going to be an empty hole.

You were feeling that before the advent of this, the smartphone, where there is no disconnection. You are always on and always available. You could actually go away. It was like from a time when people would go on vacation and they might be dead.

Who knows?

We'll see if they come back.

So what I was getting at is when you talk about these people who are pure newsbreakers, right? Most of them, if not all of them, had a life where what Mike just described, they worked for the local paper and they covered this team and they covered that team, and then they got to this place. Shams never had that. His entire existence has been with that thing in his hand. His entire existence has been just NewsBREAKING. Not writing stories, not writing features, not covering a high school team, just NewsBREAKING over and over again. And so I think most of those other people, if not all of them, married with children. This dude isn't even 30 yet. And so what effect does that have? It's almost like a child actor, right? Like you didn't have a childhood choms.

At some stage, I think it's also such a different world from when we were like I came up through the Boston Globe system. I worked for Boston.com, I did local reporting, got to a point where it was less about the news. Now I'm sitting here talking with you guys. I think that that is very different. Synthesizing a bunch of information into one cohesive whole is very different from getting tiny bytes of information throughout the day. Sometimes they're huge, but you have to get the tiny ones to get the huge ones. And you have to wish someone a happy birthday so that they tell you the huge news. You can't just sit there and wait for the news to come to you. Shams has to be like remembering people's birthdays, congratulating the new jobs. Like you have an endless social rolodex in your head. That is not for you. It's not for him. It's for his, you know, his dating life, his family. This is all consuming in a way that it leaves no room for anything else. And I wonder if at some point, is that its own kind of fulfillment of knowing you're at the top of doing it?

And when, if ever, does that not become enough anymore?

I think it's an insanity. I think it's an actual clinical type of insanity that you're inviting that much success to get to the top of this perpetually competitive and that I don't think it arrives at fulfillment. I don't think any of these guys sign the big contract and then stop worrying that they're not going to get beat on that story three minutes later.

The obsessive compulsive nature of the job and constantly checking the phone is fortified by the stories that you break. So there is a distinct correlation, direct reward. Me being in my phone, totally connected to this device as opposed to everything else, gives me the results that I need to be at the top of the industry.

I'll tell you what else I found interesting in there. The quotes from Skipper about why they decided to sign Adrian. And it was basically a dick swinging competition. We wanted to be able to say that, oh, the news breaks with us. And that has been at the core of kind of my whole diatribe of where this sports media thing is going off the rails, which is nobody cares who breaks stories. You watch undisputed, you watch first take, you watch all the smoke. It is what it is. US, what we're doing is we're all going to the same trial book. These are the stories of the day. And now our opinions and our stuff is going.

So you don't think nobody cares, though.

Social media makes mike, I'll give you a great example. Who broke the story that Paul George was getting traded to the Clippers? Remember? No one knew. And then all of a sudden we woke up and it's like, Paul George got traded to the Clippers.

I don't recall because it doesn't matter, Mike.

It doesn't matter who. Right? Because here's the deal. If we lived in a world where Jeannie said, take away all the news breakers, how would you know the press release? Okay? No press departments, either. How would you know that Paul George got traded to Clippers? The first time you turn on a Clipper game is huh? Paul. George is a clipper. It's not news. It is not news. Right? News is finding out that Bill Belichick and Tom Brady each other. Right? And remember, it was a wickersham who wrote that? That was like oh, my God. I had no idea. They seemed like they were on the same page the whole time. That's news, right? That's reporting. When Ethan Strauss wrote that Nike completely the bed with Steph Curry, they had him in the bag, and they messed up his name in the presentation. And it was unprofessional, all that. And that's what led him going to Under Armor. That was, and I believe still is, the number one most read article in the history of ESPN.com. More than Gate, more than LeBron going back to Cleveland, more than any single big news story you could think of.

Tiger woods crashing his car. Number one was that story. Why? Because it was actual news. It was stuff that if Ethan did not do the journalism, we never would have learned about it. As opposed to so and so got traded. Guess what I would have found out when I turned on the game?

Why is there so much social capital tied into it?

Because it's the boogeyman that you give life to. It's like Freddy Krueger. Like, if you believe in him, you're scared of him. He exists. Right? So hearing or reading Skipper say that, I was like, you breathe life. Who gives who broke it? They're not turning on yahoo to hear about it. They turn us on ESPN at the time, worldwide. That's who they turn on to hear about why so and so got traded.

Maybe I'm kind of with you and you're shaping my opinion a little bit and changing it, but I do remember ESPN's basketball coverage when it was headed up by the likes of Chris Broussard being laughed at.

Okay? So first of all, it wasn't the coverage. Chris had some, but the news breaking.

No, the news breaking.

So people have done this math before. At the time. Mark Stein outbroke. News over. Adrian like Mark Stein was doing. Now, this is what would happen. You guys want to take a real insight here? How much time we got? Okay, so the bottom line, right? The bottom line, this all started because it would say, So and so got traded, according to media reports. And all the people who weren't at ESPN started crying. Like, they don't give us credit. They say, According to media reports. So then ESPN started saying, fine. I don't know why, but they started saying, Fine, according to adrian Wojanowski of Yahoo sports.

Right?

But here's the thing. When ESPN reporters would break, when Mark Snyder would break something, it would say, according to ESPN reports. So when you see the bottom line and you see a name, a name, a name, but the guy on your team doesn't get name checked, guess what? It creates this perception in John Skipper's mind. Like, how is this guy getting everything? If he saw Mark Stein as many times as Mark broke stuff, maybe Skipper would have had a different perception. But we were all following the flies around the elephant's tail dance.

And the reason I think well, I think we care about these things because we have a 24/7 news cycle in sports. So when there are no games, you need other things to write about. So there are people who have built their brand on giving you that gossip. Because I do think that sports is gossip. I think around the industry. I think that it's a safer way traditionally, too, for men to be able to gossip about something with each and be like, did you see this guy got signed? And they tapped into that, built a brand around it, and then now there are two at the top of the mountain. I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying I think that is how this happened.

I agree with you, but do we care who gives us the gossip if.

You make it a brand?

But why do we allow it to become a brand?

That's my pay grade.

I mean, once you get to credibility can be bought, and you have to pay $10 million a year for these things. I mean can say that nobody cares, but we're paying for it as if it has a value that suggests that there is caring involved.