Transcript of Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham Find Themselves in the Middle of a Culture War | Hour 1

Howdy folks, it's Mike Ryan. You know, The Labattard Show and Miller Lite go way back. Pretty much, I want to say like 95% of our existence we've been partnered with Miller Lite. And we believe in Miller Lite, they believe in us. It's great to have a partner with a product you truly love. That's me with Miller Lite. I love Miller Lite, always have. In fact, I consider myself a bit of a Miller Time MVP. The friend who says they've got it. I'll pick the spot. I'll throw the cooler in the trunk, bring some Miller Lite, and suddenly what was supposed to be a couple of hours turns into a whole afternoon. That's me, the Miller Time MVP. And it's great for summer hangs. Cools the body down, that beautiful white can. Not much better than an ice cold Miller Lite because it's brewed for taste with simple ingredients. Clean, refreshing, and easy to drink in the Miami heat. An all-American summer starts with an all-American beer. Miller Lite. Go to MillerLite.com/Dan to find delivery options near you, or you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer. It's Miller time. Celebrate responsibly.

Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.

You are listening to the Dan Levitan Show in partnership with the DraftKings Sports app. Now live in all 50 states.

This episode of the Dan Levitan Show is presented by DraftKings Sports. Trap Kings, the crown is yours.

So there are a number of things going on in sports and in the world that I want to talk about. And it ranges, okay, a bit crazily from the White House Correspondents' Dinner to the Indiana Fever avoiding answering questions about a pro-Sophie Cunningham rally before the game that promoted the barring of transgender students from participating in girls' athletics at Washington schools. And as the politics, sociology, and all of it comes to sports again and again and laps against the shores of all this— Caitlin Clark, now a joyless, wonderful player who's at the height of a race war and a gender war and a sexuality war. And it's all coming to women's sports. And the NBA had 40 years of Magic and Bird to prepare for all of this and still isn't ready. So there is no league that can withstand the present time right now. But Caitlin Clark and that one are going to be burdened by the politics of the day, as the women in that league were stronger and better leaders at the beginning of the pandemic than anyone in sports by leaps and bounds. But now the politics come to that sport.

Caitlin Clark wants to just play ball. Like, it's just amazing to watch this all happen again. Charles Barkley on Sports Illustrated wrapped in literal chains, you know, saying, no, I'm I'm— I don't want to be your role model. I'm— I don't want to be a role model. I'm here to play basketball. This coming to that sport— hey, Caitlyn, everybody, Sophie, solve our transgender issue in America— none of them saw this coming. None of them is prepared for this.

Ali did not have to do exactly this. He was fighting on one front, maybe two if you include literal war, but Ali wasn't fighting on all this all these fronts. He wasn't fighting on behalf of women and gender and protecting the swim meets from the 7th place grifters who use women's sports as, I don't want my high school dominated by LeBron James if he decides to become a woman.

I don't know, I think Ali fought a little, a little bit of a bigger uphill battle.

I'm just, I'm just, I'm saying it's not on this front. He wasn't doing also sexuality, he wasn't also doing gender. I'm not, I'm not minimizing what Ali had. The modern politics of the time make it that for whoever is today's most famous athlete.

Ali didn't have to deal with social media.

Whatever that young person is of thinking, everyone has access to me. Caitlin Clark is now a political figure, could not have thought of any of that in her dreams. Whatever her dreams were about being a basketball player, could not have imagined they're going to be talking about my technical fouls all the time. The amount of pressure and stress we are putting on all of these people, all of these people in sports, not just— I'm not— I don't want to make Caitlin Clark sound like a victim. It just sucks to see her reach her dreams and have it not feel good. Like, I— it— have sports feel super shitty when you're doing the things we all want sports to be when we're dreaming about it in the backyard.

I think the part that's unfair to her, to Angel Reese, to all of them, is that they become avatars in, in a proxy war between people who don't give a shit about their sport. That's the big thing. If it were heated, like people say LeBron or MJ, Like, at least when you talk about LeBron and MJ, even though it's a dumb argument, like, you know that the people arguing here actually watch basketball, actually care to say that LeBron is greater than, than Jordan, or vice versa, right? When it comes to people arguing Caitlin Clark versus fill in the blank, like, the majority of the combatants in this arena are people who don't really watch. They just, they're like, oh well, Caitlin Clark, or I heard that she's like, like, oh yeah, it stands up for good American values, and so now I'm gonna say she's my favorite. Sophie Cunningham's my 'Oh, my favorite player,' a player that averages less than 10 points a game, who is a very nondescript role player in the WNBA, becomes this kind of lightning rod for people who don't watch women's basketball. And then the opposite occurs, where you have this reaction from people like, 'To hell with her, to hell with her,' because they're fighting not about the basketball, not about the product, if you will, but they're fighting a proxy war that they're having in real life about transgenders, about race, about socioeconomic class, and all those things.

And so what ends up happening through the arena of social media is it seems like everyone's really worked up about these people and splitting sides, taking sides in two different camps. The reality is the majority of these people have not watched a second of WNBA basketball.

This is the way though, wherever it is you were, wherever you were 10 years ago on Kaepernick, that's how politics comes to the arena. Like, it's It's always in that disguise. Like, of course it's people who don't have any interest in the game. They don't care in the swim meet that some, some high school girl is winning either. The outrage isn't about that. It's about wrapping your politics in whatever already confirms your beliefs so that you could wave that flag. But to me, it's just sad that after Ali, 65 years later, that we do all of this this poorly. This dumbly, this, this hatefully, this idiotically that we do it with these dumb conversations that happen to also suck the fun out of sports for both Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark because they're no longer about doing the thing that they loved. And the thing that they love doesn't look like what they thought it was, doesn't feel like it was, because the internet's breathing on your neck telling you all the time, hey, congratulations on your success. We hate you. We hate everything you represent. And you're getting all of the applause in the arenas and you're getting all of the money at the top of the league.

But it feels real to you, the commentary of we hate you. You're not doing enough, Angel. You're not doing enough, Caitlin. You need to fight these wars and wave this flag at the top of your sport.

Be Ali.

Be an activist in the modern times. See if you can beat all of the trolls.

Dan, this is what I'll tell you. Two things. Number one, sports is the ultimate passport. It's how you get in, right? If you try to come in, hey, let's talk politics. Like, no, nobody wants to talk about this.

Hey, let's talk.

Oh, you guys watch WNBA?

Like, yeah.

Like, okay, let's talk sports. And then it's like, yeah, it's like all these transgenders. Like, that's— it's the passport to get into the conversation that otherwise would be left outside. That's one. Two, you said, oh, you get all the applause, we all the boos and all that stuff. We just played the Jerry Seinfeld clip, man. I can't take offense. All the money and cars have already— they're already here. And, and for this generation of WNBA athletes who are seeing real money in a way that Cheryl Miller and Sheryl Swoopes and, and Rebecca Lobaugh and those guys did not get to see anything close to that kind of money, like, yeah, that's what comes with it. That's what part of it is when I see my counterparts who do cover the WNBA and are upset about this influx of of new eyes, right? Or like whenever they talk about it on First Take, like, oh, what does Stephen A. Smith know about our sport? I'm like, yeah, welcome to the club. This is how all of us feel about our sports whenever they talk about on First Take. That is the, the, the barter system happens.

Hey, you want money? You want popularity? You want eyes? Yes, but you don't get to curate which eyes. It's going to be a bunch of people who are ignorant about your sport.

But here's the thing though that is most fascinating to me about this happening at this particular time.

We gave the women the responsibility before we gave them the money. Like, they just got to the money, and they've had the responsibility, and now the responsibility is, hey, America's in real crisis right now, become an avatar for all these political stories where I don't— like, Sophie Cunningham's popularity is not because of her politics.

It is—

nor, nor is it because of her basketball. Her popularity is she's beautiful and she's a model, and she's also got opinions that now can be used as an avatar for the other side of this fight. And now the people who are talking about this game aren't talking about the game. They're talking about the easy spots, the cheap and lazy spots, as where we can all talk about it because look, it's pretty blonde woman against a Black league, or it's pretty Caitlin Clark from Middle America against a Black league. That's also, you know, sexually it makes me uncomfortable because I'm person who's not good with the players dating each other.

I mean, they've gotten the responsibility before the money. But they didn't get the responsibility before the popularity though. Like, those are different things, right? Like, the popularity— popularity came before the money, but the popularity came and then it was the responsibility.

The popularity brought the money, but the responsibility— look, it got taken. The men were in the bubble wearing social justice uniforms, and we saw the damage of that. It's real, it's concrete. It has to do with money and lost fans on— we don't want this over here. But when it's Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark, a good segment of today's America does want that over here, watches it and participates in it only because it's over here. They don't know what the Atlanta Dream was doing during the pandemic to actually have and show real power of community. That, that's not what they were paying attention to, where the Atlanta Dream would be a seismic symbol for a people if we were actually paying attention to those politics because of how strong those women were. And now Renee Montgomery is in the corridors of power where she runs a team that is a regional and social emblem as another civil war comes to America. We know down there in Atlanta they got some tough-ass people who are willing to lead this country, not just in basketball.

I wanna play un-sarcastically Dan Le Batard here because I think there's a fascinating conversation that's related to this, not exactly what you're talking about, Dan, but about— you mentioned it, like the players dating each other and what's happening. I made some references to it in Weekend Observations between Melissa Smith and her ex and all that, and I've always been fascinated about this topic because this seems to be the only sport on earth where this is a feature of the league dynamics, of, of player movement, of decision-making.

Incredible.

These two used to date and they don't date anymore. It blows my mind that it's not a bigger storyline when spoken about in mainstream media. And I think because Most of mainstream media is uncomfortable talking about same-sex relationships.

And it's one of the many places that the media lags behind, as the media also gets called too liberal for doing an assortment of things that feel like they're pro-equality and end up going against people's religious beliefs.

Howdy folks, it's Mike Ryan. You know, The Leprechaun Show and Miller Lite go way back, pretty much I want to say like 95% of our existence we've been partnered with Miller Lite, and we believe in Miller Lite. They believe in us. It's great to have a partner with a product you truly love. That's me with Miller Lite. I love Miller Lite, always have. In fact, I consider myself a bit of a Miller Time MVP. The friend who says, they've got it, I'll pick the spot, I'll throw the cooler in the trunk, bring some Miller Lite, and suddenly what was supposed to be a couple of hours turns into a whole afternoon. That's me. The Miller Time MVP. And it's great for summer hangs. Cools the body down, that beautiful white can. Not much better than an ice cold Miller Lite because it's brewed for taste with simple ingredients. Clean, refreshing, and easy to drink in the Miami heat. An all-American summer starts with an all-American beer, Miller Lite. Go to millerlite.com/dane to find delivery options near you, or you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer. It's Miller Time. Celebrate responsibly.

Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.

Back to school means my boys are back to making their lunches every morning, and I like knowing they're reaching for Boar's Head at the deli counter. Boar's Head favorites are freshly sliced to order, made with premium ingredients, and give my boys the quality protein they need to power through busy school days. It's one less thing to worry about because I know they're putting together a lunch that tastes great and keeps them going. For lunchtime inspiration, visit boarshead.com/backtoschool. And for Boar's Head, head to your local deli counter.

Down, Levitar!

Yeah, very impressive.

Imagine if someone told you you couldn't have a Corvette.

I'm a grown-ass man who's not filthy rich. I can't afford a Lamborghini.

Great, Cody!

Well, I probably can, but—

Hey! What the heck?

This is the Dan Levatar Show.

The way that we talk about this league around here and most of sports is very poor, but there is expertise all over the place, and Juju and Zazz and Amin and Trist are all covering the sport in a way that's more complete and has, you know, the game stuff. But I'm curious, as we talk about all of this, and we haven't even gotten to the FIFA corruption scandal, which at any other time in my lifetime, if I take some of these details and make all of this this bankrupt and corrupt, like, all of sports fans would launch into the air in real outrage on this. Isn't for sale.

This did The World Cup's not—

none—

like, you're already commercializing it in the most maximum possible way. It can't go from, wait a minute, really? Trump is going to overturn a red card and now it's all going to be like, just grab all the money from every spot and turn this into a profitable enterprise that is no longer the world's game. We're going to ruin it this fast. As soon as it gets here, we're going to ruin it because it's just going to be soaked in corruption.

I want to ask you guys about something that really bothered me, and it bothered me in delay, and I was surprised by my reaction to it because it's never happened to me before.

So I didn't actually watch the White House Correspondents' Dinner, uh, all of it, until, uh, last night, and it made me furiously mad, like unreasonably mad, to, to see the, the free press sort of dancing at a party with a cartoon criminal clown who is sitting there doxxing reporters and suing places for $20 billion, and a— the biggest enemy of the press that there has been in my entire adult lifetime, the biggest enemy of freedom of speech, uh, when it comes to the press that I have ever seen, and doing real damage and winning. Because if the job of the press is put the truth in front of the people so there can be shame, but you're putting that truth in front of a person who feels no shame and has bankrupted the entire system because he's incapable of shame, and has taken a hatchet to media outlets because he can do lawsuits that take no inventory of shame. I got severely pissed off watching us— a Nero fiddling with Rome when Rome burned situation— watching us party with Donald Trump when he's the biggest enemy that the press has ever had in my lifetime.

And it got me to thinking about And, and this part's hard because it sounds, uh, so sanctimonious, but I would not shake that man's hand in public.

Like, when, when I had to go to Cuba, I had to give real thought to if I ended up in one of these situations where, you know, we're bartering on behalf of Barack Obama, ESPN baseball, and the embargo. Uh, if I get into one of these situations where I have to shake hands with public people who have an affiliation to having my family's blood on their hands, do I shake their hand? When I see this clip, I'm gonna play this clip for you guys, and we made some fun of it here on, on Monday, but when I see this clip of, uh, of just all of this, this is the darkest, the bleakest of comedy.

This year's award goes to The Wall Street Journal. The Journal's courageous reporting on President Trump's Trump's past relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein triggered the release of the so-called Epstein Files, thousands of documents that might otherwise have remained hidden from the public. And despite the president's threat of a lawsuit, the Journal published a story about a provocative letter to Epstein bearing President Trump's signature. Trump quickly filed a $20 billion lawsuit against the Journal. Revealing reporter Khadija Saffdar's home address. Her family had to be relocated. The Journal was kicked off of Air Force One, but the reporters continue to file revelatory stories. Please welcome the winners of the Katharine Graham Award from The Wall Street Journal.

So, Dan, what I would say to you is I don't think this night can be classified as parting with Donald Trump. Whatever face he's putting on right here betrays probably how he really felt, because this night was not a success for him. He did his stand-up routine, he was terrible at it. Like that, that silence when even your sycophants, even the biggest bootlickers in the room who you heard cheer there when they talked about the lawsuit, even those people didn't laugh at his lame jokes. So there's that thing going on. And then what other venue, what other arena could we have where Donald Trump has to sit and listen to Wolf Blitzer say all that, not be able to interrupt, not be able to call it fake news, not tell him to get out of here or anything? You just gotta sit and take it. Yes, it's like, it's not nice that these people had to go hang out with him in a room in a quote-unquote casual setting, but I believe he didn't walk away from that night being like, that was awesome. He felt pretty upset, probably.

I totally agree with Amin. I think it was a victory for whoever is anti-Trump, and Trump having to sit right here and listen to somebody get an award for exposing him and his relationship with Epstein, that's a tremendous victory for democracy. Just that one little segment. And if I don't want to shake hands with Donald Trump, I'm going to boycott the evening. I'm not going to attend. If I do attend, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fake civility because I think civility is important, even if it's an illusion or, or a pretense. There's nothing wrong with shaking a hand of someone you object to, I don't believe.

The, the big thing here, Dan, I think you, you gotta accept this: for him to have to hear that in public, on air, and then repeated across however many shows there has to be people who are willing to shake his hand, even if they like— they object— object to it internally. There has to be, because if it's all a bunch of people like, "I'll never go to that thing," like, yes, congratulations, guess what that thing becomes? It becomes all of his sycophants, all of his bootlickers, and all they talk about is the cookie-cutter fluff stuff that does not represent what's really happening. In order for that— this might be the last bastion of a free press and democracy. For him to have to sit there and witness that and not be able to do a damn thing about it.

Such a bullshit victory when the sentence you just uttered is, "This might be the last bastion of democracy." Congratulations, we won at the end.

Wolf Blitzer, the prize for courage on listen to those details. The president in the Epstein files, $20 billion lawsuit, doxxed the family for doing what? Telling the truth. For getting a Courage Award for the truth. The details on that, on I can bury the truth with my money if I have the power of government to just trash the American press. The last bastion of democracy can't be us laughing.

You dismiss it, Dan, but the alternative is we wouldn't laugh because it wouldn't have even happened. That's the alternative. Like, you can't think about things in a like where it was 10 years ago. Like, that is gone right now. We're fighting for today.

We're on—

it's fourth and inches, but this is that we're on defense.

But this, this pretends that we're still doing polite society. This pretends that that's what we're still doing.

Dan, if you did not want to pretend to do polite society like Greg said, you wouldn't show up. And so none of those people show up, then we get pravda. We get true propaganda, you get true state-run media and state-run— like this, what I'm trying to tell you is, in the football analogy, we're on the goal line and we're on defense and it's inches. And you're like, that wasn't a first down for us going the other way. Yeah, we're just trying to stop these guys right now. We're trying to stop them from getting in the end zone.

Down Levitar!

Can't trade Marino!

Nice hat!

Nice hat, Zed!

It's what he's most known for. It's not like I'm holding on to it.

Great cutty!

They were 9-2! But it's Marino! And then the next time we saw Marino after Greg Cootie traded him, he threw for 5 touchdowns.

Nice head.

And he was Dan the Man on the COVID of Sports Illustrated.

You can't trade Marino.

Nice head, asshole.

This is the Dan Levatar Show.

Okay, so bringing this to this little playground of stupidity where sports is, because I want to talk to all of you about what happened with Michael Strahan and Dan Patrick yesterday. And, uh, I wanted to have Jeff Pearlman on today, uh, because he and I have been called ghouls for trying to protect a journalism standard of some sort when it comes to interviews. Uh, Michael Strahan—

did you guys see this?

Michael Strahan was on with Dan Patrick. And before I play the sound here, uh, some people called me and Jeff Pearlman Ghoulish because we asked, hey, should you have asked Chris Johnson when he's telling you on Good Morning America that he has ALS, should you have asked him if football has any sort of link to that? Jeff Pearlman was very judgmental and harsh on Michael Strahan. I just said and got lumped in with him that I—

I got lumped in as ripping Strahan when I just said he has a responsibility to ask the question about football.

Strahan, what did you think of Strahan's answer to this question before we play it?

I mean, I thought I didn't need my Michael Strahan telling me what an interviewer's job is.

Uh, okay, but if we're going to give the big interviews to the athletes who are going to behave like interviewers, then he might not need to tell you what an interviewer does, but he becomes one of America's foremost interviewers because he's the person that you go to outside of sports with a link through sports. It's Shannon Sharpe, the All the Smoke guys, uh, In terms of access, Good Morning America still matters like that, so you might not want to hear from Strahan what an interviewer is, but he got the interviewer because he's one of America's preeminent interviewers.

I thought it also came off a little bit self-important because for some reason Strahan believes if he would have asked that tough question, which Dan Patrick said to him, Dan Patrick came out in front and, you know, was, hey, like, I was critical of this, and Michael Strahan felt that if he asks those tough questions, somehow the story is becoming about him, that he then becomes a star. And I don't understand that.

All right.

Well, let's listen to Strahan in his own words with Dan Patrick.

You got a lot of attention on the Chris Johnson interview. A lot of positive things. There was one thing that wasn't brought up, and I don't know why. And I brought it up that it should have been brought up. The connection between CTE and football. I don't know. In retrospect, Should that have been a question, a topic for Chris Johnson when you interviewed him?

Well, I had that. I actually thought about that because I saw what everybody— you should have asked this, you should have asked that. Well, you should have got the interview. How about that? Um, that's one thing. Two, that was Chris's moment for Chris to share the story which Chris wanted to share. And when I got the call that Chris wanted to share that he had C— um, you know, ALS, that was the story. It wasn't for me to try to grandstand, which I hate when people do this, Dan. As an interviewer, our job is deliver information. I'm not trying to get a bigger name for myself by putting somebody else in an uncomfortable position. I was there at the service to Chris for what Chris wanted people to understand and know about his life and where he was now. I was not there to make a story about myself or to get a big headline. That's what it wasn't about. The headlines were about Chris is where they needed to be.

How is asking him important questions that the audience would like to know making the interview about himself?

Well, does the audience want to know? Because I've got a number of thoughts here, and I'm just telling you that this is where the ground is shifting on how this stuff is going to be done when there are giant partnerships involved with how the news is presented to you. I think the audience does like that Michael Strahan is a really likable television personality.

It's one of the amazing success stories in the history of media in sports that he rose up through what Tiki Barber was looking to build in New York and became a giant black dude who came out holding the hand of a tiny white television personality to replace Regis Philbin because he could be that likable. His job is to be likable. How are you likable? Doing things like this and arguing against the idea that there should be any tough questions during an uncomfortable interview that nobody wants to see that football might have done this to him. Nobody wants to see it, nobody wants to look at it, nobody wants to talk about it, nobody wants to televise it with their morning breakfast, letting America out into the world on Good Morning America. Michael Strahan's job is to be a likable television personality, and that will get the future interviews. You good with that?

Is anyone with me when I think that if Strahan didn't have that gap tooth, he wouldn't be as popular?

Put it on the poll at Levitard Show: would Strahan be as popular if all of his teeth were perfect?

It's a very valid point.

Greg, what are your thoughts here?

Because I disagree with Michael Strahan, uh, and I don't think there's anything particularly unlikable or controversial if you have a player who has admitted he suffers from ALS. I don't think there's anything controversial about asking him, do you think that could be related in any way to what you've done for a living? He's— you're inviting him to give his opinion on something that's very—

but here's the thing though, we're sitting here agreeing with each other and slapping each other on the back saying we're what the audience wants, and we're not. Like, we're not. What the audience wants is that interview. And Michael Strahan just said, did I get the interview or you? Well, yeah, what was the trade?

It—

what was the trade? And if America doesn't care about what was the trade, is the trade that you're protecting football? Is the trade that you don't want people to see this? You could say that it's grandstanding. I don't think it's grandstanding to ask that question. Like, I Like, it's— I'm not doing that to bother him. I'm not doing that to show people, look at me, I ask tough questions. I'm just curious if Chris Johnson thinks that football has anything to do with why it is he has to do that interview in the first place.

Right. If you're going to do the interview, the audience wants answers to some questions. Chris Johnson didn't need that. Michael Strahan makes it sound like as if Chris Johnson needed that interview to get the word out. That he is suffering from ALS.

Nope!

It's really easy in today's day and age to get the information you want to get out to everyone. You could do that yourself whenever you want. So if you're gonna go on an interview show, I think questions that are pertinent should be asked.

To me, the most basic value of interviewing is to extract from the person you're interviewing the information that people would be curious about. Okay, this is a young guy, an athlete, who has ALS. It's natural to wonder how is that related in any way to football.

But so let me, let me continue to stop all of you on this point, okay? Whatever degree you think backlash is, whatever is the sound of backlash, there were many people critical of me saying that Strahan has a responsibility to ask that question. Some people framed it as I was ripping Strahan. I'm not ripping Strahan.

I don't know how the audience wants its interviews, but it seems to me that the audience wants its interviews to be a little more aligned with wherever it is Michael Strahan is in the world on the important thing is to get him to sit down, the questions after that don't matter. The reason athletes are making the documentaries now, like this, all of this stuff is really interesting to me from a business perspective, okay?

Just from a business perspective. When I was talking to All the Smoke and they were partners with us, we were— I was talking to Matt Barnes about something. He's like, how would you feel about what was happening right now if you weren't in the position you were in? I'm like, I'd feel terribly, terribly threatened by the number of athletes coming over and grabbing power.

And because they have the access, they can tell all of the stories because we built the business.

And this is difficult for me to talk about because a lot of people think always that I'm bitter about ESPN when I couldn't be more grateful. Grateful for all of the things ESPN provided because I'm a sportswriter from Miami who has no business having the access to some of these things.

But the athletes now are replacing the interviewers. Shannon Sharpe and All the Smoke are really good at it. Gil's Arena had something really special that broke apart across ego and nonsense and the things that fracture these things. But there are all sorts of authentic media places where you can get what you want from your trusted source And if that trusted source is the one who can get the access, whether it's Good Morning America or Because All the Smoke are interviewing Obama and the First Lady because they are credible and authentic and they have audience, what do you do with Michael Strahan has the Good Morning America platform? And if Good Morning America is tied as a media outlet to everything happening in all the partnerships around football, and you get to the point, as we will, you're not going to ask any of those questions ever about football again on any of these platforms because Amazon and Netflix and Good Morning America, they don't actually have any obligation to be press, to be journalists, to press. They don't have any obligation there. Do you know why people care so much about ESPN and not when Fox starts laying people off?

It's because of the journalism the last 30 years. Like, they banked on it, they made the bet, And then people care because they expect them to live to a standard that Fox doesn't have to live to.

Fox can fire all the people, nobody says anything about anything that Fox is doing.

They care about the brand that was built on the journalism. And so I ask you now, 5, 10, 15 years from now, you good with it going more and more Strahan's way? Because it's going to. It's all gonna be that soon.

Yeah, not really. I would like interesting stuff to be asked of interview subjects. I would like interesting stuff to be asked of athletes when they're in that spot.

I just wish he would have been like, "Ah man, I wish I'd asked that." Yeah. Like, "Oh yeah." I think the part of him being like so, he was so prickly about it, that's what threw me off. It's not that, "Hey, you should have got the interview," or, "Hey, I don't want to grandstand." It's a very relevant question. And it's a question which the answer would have been the star, not Strahan for asking it.

Why does he think he becomes the story for asking that question?

Yeah, crazy. I don't think even Chris Johnson would have been insulted or even surprised by that question, but the larger point is—

Chris Johnson would probably leave, "Man, I can't believe he asked me about football!" I know, right?

Maybe he would have wanted to talk about it. Give him the opportunity. But look, Strahan can be as genial as he wants to be. He can trade off on, on the fact that he's not going to be a hard interviewer. He's going to ask softball questions. That's fine if he wants that access, makes that trade-off. He's totally entitled to do that. I just happen to think that it's valuable to have asked him that question. And I think a lot of people, a lot of people don't care, didn't want to hear that, but I think a lot of people did. And hopefully there's always going to be interviews out there, interviewers out there with the access who asks the tough questions. There has to be.

The mate was a mighty sailing man, the skipper brave and sure. 5 passengers set sail that day for a 3-hour tour.

A 3-hour tour.

Hey!

Did we find finally what the top 10 are gonna be? Because we now need an official ranking, top 10 movie theme— or I'm sorry, television theme songs of all time. We need to get the rankings in order. We need to do this properly. We can't have all of these songs being sung around here and all of them being 45 years old. I need someone recent. I need a young voice. Find me a young voice watching television today who can sing a theme song that rivals anything Alan Thicke. You're not going to tell me that Alan Thicke wrote the best of this 40 years ago. It can't be Different Strokes and Facts of Life. It can't be him and Quincy Jones dominating the market and 50 and 60 years later.

It has to be our ignorance that other people are making good music now and we're not paying attention. We don't have time for theme songs anymore.

Now we're moving on up.

Ooh, yeah.

To the East Side, to a deluxe apartment in the sky. I'm moving on, I'm moving on. East Side, we finally got a piece of the pie.

Dun dun dun.

Pizza on the grill. Took a whole lot of T-Ryan just to get up that hill. Now I'm up in the big leagues, sitting out there on that bat. And I'm learning something, and I'm learning something. And ain't nothing wrong with that.

Out of curiosity, how do you guys feel when someone is singing around you and they don't know some of the words and it just becomes them saying, "And something this and something that." How does that— not in the world of, you know, here at the lowest rung on the show business ladder.

I'm just talking about in life as you're walking around.

Makes me uncomfortable.

I love it.

I get secondhand embarrassment. So I don't like it.

Flintstones.

Meet the Flintstones, they're a monotonous family from the town of Bedrock. Brrr da da da, brrr da da da dee. Meet George Jetson, his dog Elroy. His wife! His dog Elroy. His boy Elroy.

Dog Elroy. Was that a dog or his son?

Elroy was his son and Astro was the dog.

Ah, that's right. Good catch.

Rosie was a maid.

Yeah, robot.

According to Rolling Stone, Dan, there was a tie at number 2 for top TV theme songs of all time between The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island. 100 songs they ranked, and there was a tie at number 2.

Here's a story of a man named Brady. That's where I learned of Lady Bunshuu. Here's a story of a manly lady who was living with 3 girls of her own. They were all 10-something-something. Youngest one includes. Then though one day when the man had met this lady, then they knew that it was much more than a hunch.

There goes Asuko.

They knew that I'd never want a family. That's the way we love it. The Brady Bunch, the Brady Bunch, the Brady Bunch. That's the way we became the Brady Bunch.

Number 2, tied for Gilligan's Island. Number, number 1 is moving on up with the Jeffersons.

Holy shit, but where's Hawaii Five-O?

I need to hear this top 10. Wait a minute, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

So The argument began with me saying, "You're not gonna find many songs ever in the history of television better than Gilligan's Island as a theme song," and you said, "I can name 10 of them right off the top of my head." I could. Now Tony has found an authentic internet list of some sort with great credibility that proves my point that Gilligan's Island is number 2 tied all time in the history of songs.

What—

what is the source?

TVthemesong.com.

Okay, there you go!

Boom! Wow!

Got the domain name credible, passes for media in the modern age.

All right, 15 was Mission: Impossible from 1966 to '73. Number 14, The Wire.

Hold on a minute, slow down tone, just tone, tone.

The Wire, which version because every season they had a different version.

Yeah no it doesn't say that season, it says throughout all levels.

If a meme is that moved by song and inspiration to dance to Mission: Impossible let the man come out.

Cook.

All right, number 13, Cheers.

Oh, come on. Oh yeah, that's 13. What, we trusting this list?

Uh, 13. I mean, Cheers, a lot of people would put Cheers in the top 10.

That was a song that was famous beyond the song, beyond the television show.

Hit record.

13 is too low is what I'm saying.

On the radio, number 12, Hawaii Five-O.

Oh yeah, that's blasphemous. That's not in the top 10. That needs to be in the top 10.

11, Game of Thrones.

Get out of here.

No, unacceptable.

10, Adult Swim's Too Many Cooks.

See, okay, this is an unserious list, but Dan was asking about—

I know, modern ones.

That is modern, but it's also on—

number 9, The O.C.

California.

Number 8, Friends. Number 7, Fresh Prince. Number 6, The Twilight Zone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good. Number 5, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Number 4 is a crazy one, CW's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

What are we doing?

Never even heard of that.

Never heard of that one. All right, number 3, Sanford and Son. A tie between Gilligan's Island and Brady Bunch. And then obviously number 1, moving on up by The Jeffersons.

I am glad we got a conclusion on that. Uh, we will get to less important matters next with Master Tesfatsion. We're gonna talk about the greatest scandal in the history of sports corruption.