Transcript of Ghouls? Jeff Pearlman on Why Strahan Should've Asked The NFL Question | DLS Bonus Episode

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Bestsellers. You can follow him at TikTok @jeffperlmanauthor on TikTok. He's got a ton of followers, a really unique following. He's the author of Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur, and also season 4 of his very popular YouTube show Press Box Chronicles. It debuts on Monday. He and I are coming under some criticism. I actually borrowed the take from him, gave him credit for it, but when he mentioned the Michael Strahan interview with Chris Johnson, he brought up something that I had not considered, and I agreed with him. And now people are calling us ghouls because he said that Michael Strahan as a football player has to ask Chris Johnson questions about football somewhere within the context of the conversation. Jeff, thank you for joining us. What did you think and what did you feel of the criticism?

I'm not just saying this. I think as I get older, it doesn't really bother me nearly as much as it used to. I just think, Dan, you and I were brought up as journalists in a decreasing, decreasingly less journalistic age. If you have a football player who is coming to say he has ALS, and there is a— there was a study just a couple years ago from Boston University and Harvard saying that NFL players are 4 times more likely to get ALS than general people, general population, to not ask anything about it. And not just that, Dan, they also had an expert on ALS on the same segment and didn't ask her about it. Number one, it doesn't make any sense. And number two, it's just inexcusably bad journalism. And number three, it speaks to the power of the NFL, the power of the shield. Let's keep as far away from this connection as we can.

Do you think it's fair to absorb all of this uncomfortably and put it in the file of this is exactly why I hate journalists? The man is speaking through a machine. What difference does your journalism make?

I don't, I don't agree with that at all. It actually bothers me. Um, here's the thing about it that I keep thinking. As I just said, the NFL doesn't want people to think about the negative impacts of football on the human body. They want us to cheer and love the shiny helmets and go to the games and buy our $15 pretzels. They want that. They want you to be happy watching football. There's a reason the NFL never has a CTE Awareness Day. Doesn't have them where it doesn't— never paints on the end zone. CT awareness, ALS awareness. They don't want you aware of it. So when people come along and say, how dare you ask these questions? How can you ask these insensitive questions? First of all, as you know, and as you've done, journalists do ask insensitive questions. It's sort of part of the job. And number two, to not ask it, to not bring it up, to not even mention it is basically going along with the entire NFL narrative that they want you to do. And neither you nor I are paid by the NFL.

Why, though, is it an insensitive question? It's just a question.

I don't even think it's an incentive. I get— wait, Chris Johnson posted on his social media when he announced his diagnosis. He actually had a notation about the Boston University study and that NFL players are 4 times more likely. So the idea that somehow insensitive or wrong when he actually evoked it as well, to me, it is far more ghoulish far more ghoulish what the NFL does every day. And I love football, but what the NFL does every day with their—

don't—

let's, let's not talk about it. Let's not think about it. Let's not bring it up. Um, to me, I spoke with a former NFL player about this. We were talking, um, how about lifetime health insurance? How about, um— I'll even say it was, it was Tony Mandarich and I had this talk on his, on a TikTok Live the other day. He's like, I would just love them to pay for my Stretch Lab membership. Because I'm in so much pain sometimes. How about taking care of your players and not getting mad at the messenger, but getting mad at these people who every time an NFL player fights a claim, um, files a claim, the NFL is fighting it? How about taking care of your players? And then maybe we wouldn't have to have this conversation.

They don't fight it on ALS though. Mike Florio has pointed out, and I'm just going to read directly here, at one level it didn't really need to be mentioned. The connection has been established. For example, ALS is one of the specific conditions along with Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, early moderate dementia and certain cases of CTE diagnosis after death that automatically qualified retired players as of July 7, 2014 for no-questions-asked compensation from the NFL's Unlimited Concussion Settlement Fund. And in 2021, a study of all 19,423 NFL athletes who played between 1960 and 2019 and played one or more professional games resulted in a finding that risks of developing ALS 4 times as high nearly as those of the general population. So the science of this seems pretty conclusive, but let me just read to you, Jeff, some of the things being said by people and ask you why it is that this is happening. So, uh, and I should mention, I've asked these people to come on with us and have the conversation. I don't even want to argue or debate, I'm just curious what's happening here, and they've all declined. And this person @ZackZackZack said that we didn't even have permission to use his tweet, which is public, but he writes, Dan is a hack and Pearlman is such a blowhard for this.

Dan hasn't asked a critical question to a guest in 8 years. Pearlman is mad that Strahan didn't try to get Chris Johnson to blame football for his ALS diagnosis. Ghoulish weirdos, both of them. Just look at the replies. Peter Bukowski writes, I know Pearlman thinks he's the omniscient ombudsman of everyone, but the idea Michael Strahan, not a journalist, has some ethical responsibility to ask a question to a player who could not speak due to a crippling illness this is ghoulish and representative of why so many hate the media. I'm going to keep going here just so that people can get a feel for this. This asshole really wanted Strahan to ask a man talking through a machine hard-hitting and gripping questions. Since when are we looking to Michael Strahan for hard-hitting journalism? He's on GMA because he's a charismatic host who's willing to read the script. Uh, there are many more, but your thoughts here, Jeff.

Number one, you just perfectly surmised why I'm so happy I left Twitter like 2 years ago. Um, but number two, okay, let's actually flip this a little bit. You're Michael Strahan. You say you asked Chris Johnson several questions, and then you say, I have to ask, um, as you post on your social media, NFL players are 4 times more likely to, um, contract ALS than, you know, if you had never played. You're a young father. You're, you know, you should be entering the prime of your life. How do you at all regret playing football or do you view it differently? And maybe he says, you know what, it was the best years of my life. It made me— it gave me money that made my family secure for life. I have no regrets. I know this is part of it. And that would be a great answer. And maybe he says, I have tons of regret. I sit here now at 40 years old and I wish I'd never picked up a football. And that's a great answer. It's not setting a person up to give you the answer that you want. There actually is no answer you want.

It's just a question in light of the science of it all that needs to be asked. And the number of times that some guy has a CT, some guy has ALS, some guy has some injury, and it's not the right time. It's not the right time to ask. Why are you asking now? How dare you ask now? Why don't you wait till later? What an inappropriate time to ask a question. You hear that over and over. So when exactly is the right time? Do we ask after he died? Do we ask his, his weeping widow after he died at the funeral? After the funeral? When exactly is the right time, if not now, when he is sitting in front of you? And again, he has already put on social media, made note of the ties between AOS and football. When is the right time for these people?

Would you have been satisfied with the question, would you let your child play football?

I think it's a great question, 100%.

But it would have been enough, just one question, because part of the reason you went viral for this, I believe, is people feel sort of helpless and uncomfortable. They're looking, where's the person I could yell at? Because this is on my TV screen and I don't want to be looking at how any of this feels. But also your TikTok that sparked the conversation was titled Chris Johnson has ALS. Media cowards refuse to address ties between the disease and football. Shame. Wait, Dan, I actually—

this is in a way is like a bigger issue. Um, a couple months ago when the Dallas Wings drafted Azzi Fudd number 1 overall, and last year they used the number 1 pick on Paige Beckers, right? And these are both players out of UConn, players who dated, who were very open about their relationship. And Azzi Fudd does a lengthy ESPN interview, not one question about Paige Beckers. She does another interview on a major network, not one interview about Paige Beckers. It's such an obvious question, right? Oh, you're playing Are you excited to be playing with your girlfriend or ex-girlfriend? Are you concerned about it? What do you think about it? It's an obvious question. The league clearly, clearly deterred these outlets from asking. Here again, you have a player, ALS, dying of the disease. The disease is tied to football. It is an obvious question. And obviously the league or someone affiliated with the league is telling Michael Strahan, urging ABC, with Disney ties, obviously ESPN, not to ask the question. To me, it is just an increasingly narrow gap between corporate interests and journalistic interests. And people buy into it because they love the Titans or they love the Jets and they love watching the games and they want to be comfortable watching their sports.

All those people on Twitter, they want to be comfortable watching. So I'm going to do the ALS challenge. Look, here's a bucket on my head. I'm challenging my friend to do it now, my other friend to do it. And the attentions are good. I'm not saying that. But at some point, someone has to address the ties between this and this. And do I think that would have been enough of a question? No, but at least it would have been a question.

Well, when you say someone has to do it, among the criticisms, Jeff, context matters. I'm going to keep reading a couple of these. Context matters. The interview was more to announce that CJ is battling ALS. That's not the time to ask him if he blames football. It was a human interest piece, not investigative journalism. Uh, someone else writes, no, he doesn't have that responsibility. This is kind of gross. Guy went GMA to reveal his ALS diagnosis and the horrible impact it already has to spread more awareness about the disease. The fact that you think it must be connected to football in that moment is so shortsighted.

It's just ridiculous. Also asking a question. Let's say you ask Chris Johnson a question and he says, honestly, I don't really feel like talking about that, or I don't want to address that now, or I don't know enough to say, well, that's fine. That's fine. And how is that a fact? When do we get to a point, Dan, where it is offensive to ask a question? This guy's a— he's a 40-year-old man who's dealing with ALS, who again put on social media about the ties between football and ALS. When did we become so— everyone talks about, oh, snowflakes, liberals as well. When did we become so soft of a culture that we're not allowed to ask questions anymore? That's never the right time. That's too— how dare you? How— it just honestly, again, journalistically, it drives me crazy. And this is why I'm not on Twitter.

Well, but one of the great heartbreaks of my life, though, Jeff, is that my professional life is that people don't care about this stuff the way that you and I do. They don't think about the things that go into the vetting of properly asked questions or information or the lawyering of stories. And in that, the distaste for journalism grows and journalism dies. So you and I are fighting what is empirically a losing fight.

Oh yeah, there's no doubt about it. And also, what it comes down to— I remember years ago when Jemele Hill put out Donald Trump is a white supremacist, right? And ESPN came down on her with the wrath of God. Right. And again, I'm not saying she's right to write or wrong to write it, but like, it was a reminder, don't go against whatever the corporate overlord you have. And as media becomes more and more and more and more corporate controlled, corporately controlled, there are fewer people willing to actually say, wait a second, this isn't right, or wait a second, that's wrong. Because you're not just going against a league, you're going against the owner of your business. You're going into the same people who own ESPN, the same people who own Yahoo, etc. So there are just fewer people. I'm not saying I'm a truth teller or anything stupid like that. I'm just saying there are fewer people willing to say, wait a second, how can you not ask that question? That's a real question to ask. There just aren't that many left.

And what's the cost of it for the country?

Terrible. Absolutely terrible. Corruption run amok. This is no political podcast, but 2 days ago, The New York Times reported Trump has made $2 billion as a president. You would think the news was, oh, it's going to be warm on Tuesday. Like, not even a response. People don't trust the news. They don't listen to the news. We have 8,000 different people feeding us information. People who want to get this news just go to their source who would tell them what to believe. People want to get this news, go to their source. It's a broken— it's a broken echo chamber that leads to a lot of people not even understanding what reporting is. You know, a lot of people just don't— damn, a lot of people, it's not that they object to what we do so much as they don't even understand what it is.

Well, but because of that, though, Jeff, I have found that I was naive in how America's appraisal of journalists is so low that they allowed Trump to win on a platform of trusting him more than the media.

Oh yeah, it's crazy. Trust me, I'm the only one you can listen to. I'm the only one who would tell you the truth. So listen to me. And it, and it worked. Now the one thing I will say, Dan, that I am encouraged by is the rise of independent media. Uh, people just saying, forget this, I'm going out on my own. So you have people like a Heather Cox Richardson, uh, you know, a million different independent journalists on Substack and different formats who are putting out really good material and it's not corrupted. So I, I will say that is a good offshoot of this, but it's not a great time.

The average ALS patient survives 3 years after diagnosis. There's no cure. And I will remind you again that show friends Tom Haberstroh and Bug Chompy do a lot of great work here. ProjectMainStreet.org is where you can go if you want to help people, uh, who are taking care of the people who need care who have ALS. Before I get you out of here, Jeff, can you tell me who you believe, uh, the responsibility first and foremost is, uh, when someone is interviewing, their primary responsibility is to whom first?

To the public and to the viewer, 100%, um, before the subject and before themself. It's to the viewer. You are supposed to be a disperser of information and a feeder of knowledge. Like, that's why most of us went into this business, I think.

The viewer is objecting to your appraisal here that that is the responsibility. I agree with you. I don't think the host's primary responsibility is to the the employer. I think it's to the audience, but they're objecting to you and me here voicing something that is sort of a core principle that you and I believe in.

Why? Well, wait, Dan, I will tell you this. I'm being serious. I would say my comments on my feed for my, for the video I did are overwhelmingly positive, including a bunch of DMs from people who either had a loved one who had ALS or somebody who played sports who wound up with ALS. So I know you're seeing a lot of negative. I've actually— I'm not just saying this, I actually have seen more positive than negative. So maybe it's not as bad.

Maybe it's not. But the people following you are fans of you. And you know that we're all in silos and echo chambers a lot. And very often the feedback you're getting from fans, I'm receiving something different for, as I said, I'm parroting what you said and was sort of illuminated by it because I was surprised that I didn't also think it while it was happening because I was so uncomfortable and shocked, frankly, to see the fastest running back in sports at the time be in that condition. I was so startled by it and so uncomfortable with it that I assume that this is where the vitriol is coming from. We want to blame somebody, Jeff, when we're helpless. Like, you don't, you don't want to just be helpless and you made for an easy target by having an opinion that sort of, you know, that was a little bit of a few degrees away from, wow, this is really uncomfortable to watch. This is— I feel so bad for Chris Johnson.

Yeah, I'm— I don't— you know, Dan, I'm just being honest. Like, even thinking back when I was at SI and you would get letters written at Sports Illustrated, like, most of them were negative. Very few were positive. It was probably 10 to 1. You would get more negative letters than positive letters. Just because I think the people who are angry tend to speak out more than the people are like, oh, that's a good point. So I'm going to— maybe I'm living in my silo. I'm going to choose to believe that there are many people out there who are like, yeah, that is a good question to ask. Yeah, that is irresponsible. And yeah, they are covering for the NFL.

But I appreciate criticism. I find it generally constructive. It's useful very often. So when I ask you again to entertain the hypothetical and we'll get you out here in less than a minute, but just entertain the hypothetical that you and I have this all wrong. Why is this happening? Do you have a better theory than I think people feel helpless, they're mad, and so anyone— if social media is just an outrage machine, you make for a convenient target when you offer an opinion that's just a couple of degrees separated from, man, this feels super shitty. I don't want to feel super shitty. Look at this asshole over here telling me that I should feel even shittier because Michael Strahan didn't do his job compassionate or did his job compassionately instead of critically.

I think people really want to love the NFL. They really want to love their teams. They really want to sit on their couch and watch so-and-so run for so-and-so yards and wear their jersey that they bought at the NFL Shop for $120 and wear their hat that they paid $50 for and feel very, very, very comfortable. And the more people are reminded that football takes a significant toll on the lives of these players, the less comfortable they are sitting on their couch wearing their $120 jersey, wearing their $50 hat, drinking their beer, cheering on their team.

He has written 10 bestselling books, and you can follow him @JeffPearlmanAuthor on TikTok and also season 4 YouTube show Press Box Chronicles. Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate the time. Thank you, sir.

All right. Thanks.

Bye.

Tony, you know that moment at a party or at a tailgate where everything just sort of clicks?

I know it well.

It's usually when I show up, everybody goes crazy. Yeah, you usually take all the credit for it, but But it's because Tony usually walks in with Cuervo. I walk in like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cuervo is a thing that turns hanging out into this is the night. It has that effect on people. It does. You usually take the credit for it, but again, it's the Cuervo effect. It's like that moment in a big game where everyone in the crowd just starts standing up, hooting and hollering. Keep it Cuervo! Keep it Cuervo, baby.