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Speaker 1: This is Wins and Losses with Clay Trevis. Clay talks

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Speaker 1: with the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business.

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Speaker 1: Now here's Clay Travis. Welcome and Wins and Losses podcast.

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Speaker 1: I am Clay Travis. We have got I don't know

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Speaker 1: what the number is now, thirty five of these long

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Speaker 1: form conversations. If you're new to us, i'd encourage you

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Speaker 1: to go check out the entire library. The idea is

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Speaker 1: these conversations are just as good in two years or

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Speaker 1: three years, or hopefully ten years as they are when

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Speaker 1: you are listening to them and the week that they

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Speaker 1: are released. The guest this week and or this month

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Speaker 1: in October of twenty twenty is legendary sports broadcaster Bob Costas.

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Speaker 1: And Bob, I've been watching you literally my entire life,

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Speaker 1: and I feel like there are a billion things we

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Speaker 1: can get into, but you reached out to me most recently.

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Speaker 1: First of all, you participated and I thought a really

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Speaker 1: well done piece by Greg Couch about the struggles of

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Speaker 1: the n b A when it came to the ratings

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Speaker 1: this year, UH and trying to analyze where the league

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Speaker 1: goes going forward. And I appreciate you being involved in

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Speaker 1: that OutKick article because certainly I watched you for years

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Speaker 1: and years be associated with the NBA, and we'll get

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Speaker 1: into that in a little bit as well. But in particular,

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Speaker 1: I sent out a tweet one of my listener, one

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Speaker 1: of my listeners, one of my readers out there, grabbed

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Speaker 1: in uh, probably thirty second segment that you had done

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Speaker 1: on Don Lemon CNN show dealing with the return of

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Speaker 1: college football, and I saw it and what immediately jumped

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Speaker 1: out to me was that CNN had mischaracterized the return date.

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Speaker 1: They had gotten it wrong. We are actually talking today

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Speaker 1: on the day that the Big Ten will return. There's

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Speaker 1: a Friday night football game between Illinois and Wisconsin later tonight,

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Speaker 1: and uh, but last week's CNN said that the that

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Speaker 1: the Big Ten was returning that weekend, and it was

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Speaker 1: an interesting conversation, and so I popped it out there,

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Speaker 1: and then you reached out to me. We've never talked before.

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Speaker 1: We had a good private conversation. You said you'd like

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Speaker 1: to come on and do the show. So we've got

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Speaker 1: a lot to get into, but we'll start there with

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Speaker 1: what you felt. And I think this is a fair

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Speaker 1: fair position is at times we live in a social

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Speaker 1: media era maybe all the time, where small clips can

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Speaker 1: be characterized that are not necessarily representative of the entirety

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Speaker 1: of a statement that was made. And that's why I

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Speaker 1: like having long form conversations with people here. So welcome

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Speaker 1: to the show, and we'll start right there with the

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Speaker 1: tweet that I sent and the hit that you did

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Speaker 1: on CNN with Don Lemon. Thanks Clay, and I appreciate

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Speaker 1: the opportunity to speak here at some lane. First of all, um,

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Speaker 1: as you know, I couldn't see the graphic that was incorrect.

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Speaker 1: Somebody at the production level at CNN, and it's not

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Speaker 1: a sports operation, got that wrong. If I had seen it,

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Speaker 1: I would have subtly corrected it. But what I said,

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Speaker 1: Don asked me about the return of college football, and

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Speaker 1: I made all I think the necessary stipulations. I'm sure

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Speaker 1: that they've got all the protocols in place, etcetera, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: But to me, there's something, if you take a step back,

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Speaker 1: something about this that exemplifies how big time college sports

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Speaker 1: football the most, but college basketball also big time college

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Speaker 1: sports has for so long been so out of perspective

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Speaker 1: and so out of proportion that the whole thing is

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Speaker 1: a sham, And well, I shouldn't say it that way,

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Speaker 1: and I didn't say it that way, that it is

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Speaker 1: too often a sham. And what I said was in

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Speaker 1: light of for example, Dan Mullen, the Florida football coach, saying,

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Speaker 1: we need ninety thousand people for our game against l

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Speaker 1: s U. We need to have the swamp full. Ironically,

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Speaker 1: he's the one who drained the swamp. He tests positive,

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Speaker 1: a good portion of his team test positive. And what

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Speaker 1: I'm saying is a lot of people are so obsessed

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Speaker 1: with football, be at the NFL or college football, they

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Speaker 1: just have to have it no matter what. And you

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Speaker 1: know as well as I if you could give truth

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Speaker 1: serum to many college football fans, especially in certain parts

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Speaker 1: of the country, and you gave them the following proposition,

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Speaker 1: over the next ten years, your university will more or

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Speaker 1: less mirror Stanford. You'll always be competitive, maybe once or

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Speaker 1: twice you'll win the national championship or be in contention

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Speaker 1: for it. You'll be good across a wide swath of sports,

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Speaker 1: and the the compact that should exist between academics and

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Speaker 1: athletics will be there. Or you can be in contention

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Speaker 1: for the national championship almost every year, And if a

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Speaker 1: very large number of your quote student athletes aren't really

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Speaker 1: students at all, and if many of them recruited despite

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Speaker 1: dubious and sometimes criminal backgrounds, and if many of them

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Speaker 1: will in fact misbehave and and bring some rather dubious

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Speaker 1: attention to the program, but you'll be in contention for

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Speaker 1: the national championship every year. We know damn well which

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Speaker 1: of those two choices would be most appealing to a

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Speaker 1: huge percentage of college sports fans. And in that sense,

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Speaker 1: to me, it's out of whack. And this notion that

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Speaker 1: we have to have college football no matter what. We

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Speaker 1: gotta travel, we gotta intermingle. We know how large the

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Speaker 1: size of the rosters are and all the auxiliary personnel,

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Speaker 1: even if life on campus is nothing like normal. The

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Speaker 1: one thing that's going to be as close to almost

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Speaker 1: we can possibly make its football. So that's what I said.

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Speaker 1: I said, I think the exact words were too often,

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Speaker 1: not always, too often, football, or in this case, college

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Speaker 1: football isn't just pleasing pastime or an interest of some kind.

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Speaker 1: It is too often a mindless of obsession. Now people

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Speaker 1: object to that, fine, but that's what I said, all right,

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Speaker 1: I think so much of what you said is obviously fascinating.

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Speaker 1: I have spent a ton of time arguing for the

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Speaker 1: return of college football. Uh and everybody out there who

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Speaker 1: is listening right now to this program knows that I've

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Speaker 1: advocated as aggressively as I can possibly for it. So

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to make that argument right here, because

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Speaker 1: we've done it a ton about the importance of it.

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Speaker 1: What I will say is I agree with your larger

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Speaker 1: context that college football fans uniquely and I think it's

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Speaker 1: actually the most American of all sports. By the way,

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Speaker 1: if you actually strip it back and consider all of

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Speaker 1: the different conflicting loyalties and hypocrisies and challenges, and both

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Speaker 1: incredible highs and incredible lows, it is in many ways,

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Speaker 1: I believe, a metaphor for the larger American experience rich poor,

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Speaker 1: the difference between the big schools and the small schools,

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Speaker 1: the difference and resources. I mean, there are just so

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Speaker 1: many fascinating to me representation of college football that reflects

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Speaker 1: both the good and bad of American life in general.

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Speaker 1: I do agree with you on the big precept there

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Speaker 1: that that basically you dove into, and I've said this

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Speaker 1: for a long time college football fans are selective moralist,

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Speaker 1: and what I mean by that is they want other

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Speaker 1: programs to behave morally, but they will forgive anything that

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Speaker 1: their school does if it makes them more likely to

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Speaker 1: win a football game. And I didn't really think about this,

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Speaker 1: uh Bob a lot, and thanks for being on with

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Speaker 1: us here until I started doing local radio. And that's

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Speaker 1: kind of the warrior background in me. Is if somebody

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Speaker 1: when when you looked at an n C double A violation,

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Speaker 1: for example, the first way I would think about it

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Speaker 1: is as I analyzed the case, and I make no book,

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Speaker 1: bring no bones about it. Right. I I am a

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Speaker 1: University of Tennessee fan. My grandfather played for General Neiland.

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Speaker 1: I started going to games when I was five years old.

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Speaker 1: I'm actually going up to watch Alabama probably absolutely obliterate

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Speaker 1: Tennessee this weekend and Kneeland. But what was thinking about

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Speaker 1: it was I always say, okay, if my school is

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Speaker 1: accused of wrongdoing before I figure out what my opinion is.

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Speaker 1: What would my opinion be if it were Alabama or

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Speaker 1: Florida or Georgia one of the rival programs that was

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Speaker 1: accused of doing the same thing. If my response is

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Speaker 1: not the exact same to those accusations. That is a

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Speaker 1: way to test my own fan bias. And so what

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Speaker 1: I would always say on the radio anytime we had

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Speaker 1: a story was I would say, Okay, what would your

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Speaker 1: response be if Alabama was accused of this and you're

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Speaker 1: a Tennessee fan, Well, Alabama they cheat, you know how

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Speaker 1: they are. And I said, okay, but if you're defending

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Speaker 1: Tennessee and you believe it immediately if you were Alabama,

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Speaker 1: then that's an example of bias. And to me, what

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Speaker 1: has happened in a large sense, I'm not surprised about

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Speaker 1: any of the arguments I see on social media in

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Speaker 1: the country now, because basically the country has become a

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Speaker 1: college football fan, right. You will you will defend to

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Speaker 1: the end of the earth anything that your school does,

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Speaker 1: or your party does, or your guy or girl does.

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Speaker 1: But if the other side does it, it's an outrage.

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Speaker 1: And so what bothers me in general is not the

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Speaker 1: decisions that are made. It's the hypocrisy because, as I

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Speaker 1: told you one of our conversation, as my listeners know,

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Speaker 1: I kind of consider every opinion that I have to

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Speaker 1: be almost the equivalent of a judicial opinion. This is

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Speaker 1: the lawyer in me speaking, there has to be a

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Speaker 1: precedent that connects my opinions across the board or else.

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Speaker 1: I'm guilty of what I accuse others of, which is hypocrisy.

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Speaker 1: And I'm not saying I'm perfect. Certainly I make mistakes

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Speaker 1: in the way that I analyze cases and facts and

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Speaker 1: everything else, like any other human out there. But I

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Speaker 1: do believe that there is a logical basis behind most

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Speaker 1: of my opinions. And if you went back and looked

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Speaker 1: at what I wrote in two thousand twelve, it would

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Speaker 1: make sense in two thousand twenty. And if you, for instance,

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Speaker 1: you know to to bring in multiple conflicting areas, If

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Speaker 1: you looked at what I said about Duke Lacrosse and

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Speaker 1: you compared it with Brett Kavanaugh, it would cross O right.

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Speaker 1: It would make sense logically in the Kavanaugh case the

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Speaker 1: same way that it did in the Duke Lacrosse case,

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Speaker 1: or in the Ezekiel Elliott case, or the O. J.

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Speaker 1: Simpson case, which I know you were involved in a

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Speaker 1: big way. There are so many different interesting threads there.

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Speaker 1: But that's what jumped out at me about the first

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Speaker 1: thing that you said there well as you were presenting

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Speaker 1: your argument. In the last couple of minutes, I was

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Speaker 1: thinking about something you got to, which is that that

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Speaker 1: sort of tunnel vision about college football. Uh, mirrors what

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Speaker 1: we see in our politics, where a relative misdemeanor by

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Speaker 1: the other side is in fact an outrage but a

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Speaker 1: certifiable felony, not a matter of opinion, but it's objectively

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Speaker 1: true if our guy or our side did it, either

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Speaker 1: it can't be true, or will ignore it, will soft

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Speaker 1: pedal it. And this is just one example. I don't

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Speaker 1: want to get overly partisan politically here, because I'm much

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Speaker 1: less partisan than a portion of your audience likely thinks.

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Speaker 1: And we'll get to that later. And I'm sure you

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Speaker 1: could find an example of this that is the equivalent

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Speaker 1: from the other side. But when Janine Pierro, with a

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Speaker 1: straight face, says, by my new book, don't lie to me,

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Speaker 1: and all the lives that outrage her, of course come

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Speaker 1: from the left or from Democrats, well, if she doesn't

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Speaker 1: just defend she venerates Donald Trump, who, regardless of your

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Speaker 1: political affiliations, as objectively one of the most dishonest people

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Speaker 1: in modern American political history. You can you can barely

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Speaker 1: fact check him in real time. He lies so frequently,

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Speaker 1: and the irony of that is lost on Sean Hannity,

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Speaker 1: are on Janine Pierrou. That's just the world we live in,

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Speaker 1: all right. So this is this is fascinating in general. Um,

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Speaker 1: and I do think this this goes into my analogy

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Speaker 1: that I've been making for a long time. What matters

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Speaker 1: to me is whether or not there is a logical

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Speaker 1: basis to reach a conclusion. And let me explain what

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Speaker 1: I mean for everybody out there who's listening, and I

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Speaker 1: think you'll follow along too. And I like to use

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Speaker 1: this in all g in sports. Uh. And we're talking

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Speaker 1: to Bob Costas. Appreciate him joining us. If I tell you, hey,

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Speaker 1: I don't think that Tom Brady is going to win

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Speaker 1: Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Bruce Arians never done it before. NFC

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Speaker 1: is gonna be tough, NFC South, you got Drew Brees. Uh,

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Speaker 1: You've got a lot of challenges there. But if I've

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Speaker 1: said I don't believe Tom Brady is going to win

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Speaker 1: the Super Bowl because he's never been there and won

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Speaker 1: it before. You might agree with my conclusion, but the

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Speaker 1: facts upon which I based that conclusion are completely wrong.

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Speaker 1: And one of the things that troubles me most about

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Speaker 1: society today is the basis of facts. And I think

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Speaker 1: there are lots of politicians of both parties that agree

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Speaker 1: with me here, and unfortunately they don't have a prominent

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Speaker 1: of a platform in their parties. In general, we can

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Speaker 1: disagree about conclusions, which are basically opinions about ways to

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Speaker 1: address problems, but when we don't agree on the most

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Speaker 1: basic factual level, then we can't in any way have

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Speaker 1: a legitimate marketplace of ideas. And worse than that, we

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Speaker 1: have people who look at the conclusion and say, oh,

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Speaker 1: I agree with where that person he or she got

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Speaker 1: from a political purpose, but they don't understand that the

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Speaker 1: facts upon which that was based are quicksand and there's

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Speaker 1: nothing there and therefore the essence of the argument is

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Speaker 1: not legitimate, and that bothers me in a big way

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Speaker 1: by by and large, And this is a generalization, and

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Speaker 1: it's more true in the social media world than it

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Speaker 1: is and what still passes from more traditional forms of media,

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Speaker 1: which is anything that aligns with my predispositions and or resentments.

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Speaker 1: I'm inclined to believe without skepticism. Anything that challenges that,

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Speaker 1: I'm inclined to dismiss. The mainstream media has many flaws

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Speaker 1: that should be held to account. But when you've got

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Speaker 1: an all purpose intellectual will get out of jail free

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Speaker 1: card that says it's all news, which really has come

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Speaker 1: to mean anything I don't want to hear, and anything

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Speaker 1: that doesn't align with my prejudices, or anything that is

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Speaker 1: critical in a responsibly journalistic way of someone I don't

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Speaker 1: want to see criticized, I can just immediately dismiss it.

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Speaker 1: Never consider it as fake news. Okay, what happens in

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Speaker 1: the Twitter world, And that's what started this conversation, and

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Speaker 1: I'm glad we're acquainted through it is a fragment that

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Speaker 1: misrepresents not only is out there, but you think people,

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Speaker 1: no matter what their political affiliation is, no matter what

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Speaker 1: the rooting interest is in sports, you would think that

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Speaker 1: they had learned, They would have learned by now that

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Speaker 1: a lot of what is out there is either untrue, misleading,

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Speaker 1: or incomplete. And so you had people responding to what

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Speaker 1: you tweeted, Well, what about all the people who rely

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Speaker 1: on Saturday college football for the hotels and the restaurants.

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Speaker 1: Of course, I'm aware of that of co words, and

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Speaker 1: I've stipulated that many times, um this this may seem trivial,

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Speaker 1: and it is, except sometimes something that isn't all that important.

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Speaker 1: It's like a grain of sand on the beach. A

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Speaker 1: geologist can tell you what the beach is like by

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Speaker 1: examining that grain of sand. Jason Starr, the acclaimed baseball writer,

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Speaker 1: Hall of Fame Baseball writer. As a matter of fact,

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Speaker 1: I went to college with him at Syracuse, and he

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Speaker 1: wrote something very nice about my induction into the broadcasters

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Speaker 1: and he tweeted out, and I'm not much of a

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Speaker 1: twitter guy, but some people called it to my attention,

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Speaker 1: he tweeted out one line from what he called my

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Speaker 1: wonderful speech or something to that effect, and that line

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Speaker 1: was that very often the way we recall the most

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Speaker 1: memorable moments in sports is dependent upon how they were

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Speaker 1: framed by a great writer or by a broadcaster, producer, director.

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Speaker 1: And in my Hall of Fame speech, which was about

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Speaker 1: people other than myself, I mentioned the Vince Scullies, the

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Speaker 1: Jack Box, the Ernie Harwell's and also the producers like

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Speaker 1: Um David Neil and Mike Weissman, and a great director

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Speaker 1: like Harry Coyle, and how they shaped people's recollections. I

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Speaker 1: used Kirk Gibson's Home Run as an example, and Gibson

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Speaker 1: himself says he was at the center of it, but

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Speaker 1: partly how he remembers it is how you now here

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Speaker 1: Vince Scullies call, and the way Harry Coyle directed it.

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Speaker 1: It was like a movie, right, So this one line

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Speaker 1: is there, and then I shouldn't have done it. You

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Speaker 1: should shouldn't waste your time going down these rabbit holes.

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Speaker 1: But since someone had called my attention to Jason's article

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Speaker 1: and then the tweet that accompanied it, there were a

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Speaker 1: bunch of responses. Maney of them are very kind regarding me.

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Speaker 1: But somewhere, oh right, Hostess says that the broadcasters are

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Speaker 1: more important than the players. Thought about the players, it's

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Speaker 1: about him. If you had seen the speech in context,

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Speaker 1: it was the exact opposite of that. It was less

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Speaker 1: about me than almost anybody I think who has ever

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Speaker 1: stood there behind that podium. It was about my love

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Speaker 1: of the craft and my love of baseball. But wouldn't

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Speaker 1: you think that by now somebody wouldn't think that they

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Speaker 1: could go off and voice an opinion based on a

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Speaker 1: fragment of something. And yet that is rampant in our

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Speaker 1: media culture. So people, including some people of goodwill, believe

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Speaker 1: a lot of things that just are not so, are

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Speaker 1: not so factually, or are not so about the beliefs

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Speaker 1: and motivations of people they either support or opposed. All Right,

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Speaker 1: this is fascinating to me what that whole story in general.

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Speaker 1: I I have said for a long time that my

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Speaker 1: biggest talent to the in that I have one is

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Speaker 1: and my wife says this, drives are crazy about me

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Speaker 1: one of many things. By the way, we've been married

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Speaker 1: sixteen years, so they're basically everything I do. Drives are

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Speaker 1: crazy at this point. But yeah, welcome to the club. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: be sure to catch live editions about Kicked the coverage

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Speaker 1: with Clay Travis week days at six am Eastern, three

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Speaker 1: am Pacific. We're talking with Bob Costas. This is the

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Speaker 1: Wins and Losses Podcast. I genuinely am not impacted by

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Speaker 1: what someone says about me online, positive or negative. I

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Speaker 1: don't know why that is. I but I think it's

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Speaker 1: been important in allowing me to basically continue to plow

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Speaker 1: forward in my career even as social media has become

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Speaker 1: more all encompassing. I'm sure I've got my phone sitting

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Speaker 1: in front of me right now. If I typed in

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Speaker 1: my name, I could go through and there would be

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Speaker 1: ten awful things that have been said about me today

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Speaker 1: already that I just haven't seen. And so you are

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Speaker 1: one of the most accomplished broadcasters in the history of

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Speaker 1: sports on television. Kevin Durant, for example, is whatever you

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Speaker 1: want to say about him, one of the four or

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Speaker 1: five best at his craft of basketball that has played

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Speaker 1: in his generation, right, I think that's probably fair to say.

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Speaker 1: Yet I do believe that there are many people out

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Speaker 1: there who are wildly accomplished like yourself, like Kevin Durant,

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Speaker 1: and I'm we're using athletics in particular, but I think

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Speaker 1: it could be the president. I think it could be

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Speaker 1: other people who are, you know, reading the mentions and

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Speaker 1: reading the tweets that are really taking into account what

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Speaker 1: other people say. And and my perspective on that is,

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Speaker 1: if I'm one of the best in the world at anything,

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Speaker 1: I don't care what someone who is not in my

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Speaker 1: field thinks about me at all, And I don't know

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Speaker 1: why that is. I care about people who know me right,

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Speaker 1: people who have interactions. But for you, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Like I told my mom, never read the comments to

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Speaker 1: anything that I say. Read it, have your own opinions.

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Speaker 1: I almost have never read any comment that people have

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Speaker 1: put after my articles in my entire life. Same thing

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Speaker 1: is true for Twitter. At this point, I barely read

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Speaker 1: the mentions. I share my opinion. What do you think

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Speaker 1: it was about that that made you click down below?

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Speaker 1: What you said was a nice thing. Jason Stark, who

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Speaker 1: is an incredibly accomplished writer, was saying, to see what

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Speaker 1: people you didn't know we're saying about what he had

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Speaker 1: said about you. You mentioned rabbit holes. To me, that's like,

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Speaker 1: that's like going all the way in the rabbit hole

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Speaker 1: to China. Like you, you've gone really far at that point.

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Speaker 1: And truth, that took about five minutes, and but it

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Speaker 1: is fascinating and it's seductive, and I think it speaks

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Speaker 1: to social media in general, which is designed to make

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Speaker 1: us care what people we don't know think about us

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Speaker 1: all day long, whether you're a celebrity like Bob Costas,

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Speaker 1: who's one of the best sports journalists of all time,

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Speaker 1: or whether you're somebody's grandma who's going on Facebook and

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Speaker 1: making a comment and then it goes viral and a

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Speaker 1: lot of people she doesn't know suddenly respond to it

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Speaker 1: and she feels compelled to read what they say to Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think the key here, Clay is I'm trying to

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Speaker 1: make a larger point, and you'll have to take me

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Speaker 1: at my word here. I am well aware. I hope

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Speaker 1: I have enough perspective to be well aware that on

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Speaker 1: the worst day of my life, I am more fortunate

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Speaker 1: than most people will ever be. And I'm very, very

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Speaker 1: appreciative of all the nice things that have been said

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Speaker 1: and written about me, and about all the breaks and

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Speaker 1: great experiences I've had in my career. I truly feel blessed.

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Speaker 1: And so I'm not losing any sleep over this, and

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Speaker 1: I'm not spending undo time on it. But where it

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Speaker 1: interests me is in the larger point. And sometimes you

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Speaker 1: have to use your own experience, because if you're an

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Speaker 1: honest person, you're going to be credible about your own experience.

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Speaker 1: You're going to know the wise and wherefores of your

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Speaker 1: own experience. And if it illustrates something larger, that is

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Speaker 1: of some importance beyond yourself, then I think it's legitimate.

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Speaker 1: And so we may talk, for example, about the gun

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Speaker 1: thing from eight years ago on NBC and how you know.

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Speaker 1: I wish it hadn't happened. I wish people didn't have

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Speaker 1: a misimpression. I wish I had done a better job

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Speaker 1: in that moment. But I also think it illustrates a

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Speaker 1: larger point. And that's why we're talking about beyond me

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Speaker 1: just muttering to myself. We're talking to Bob Costas. This

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Speaker 1: is the Wins and Losses Podcast. I'm Clay Travis. Okay,

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Speaker 1: I want to get to the essays and everything else,

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Speaker 1: but I want to start here. You have won a

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Speaker 1: legendary career as a sports sports broadcaster. There are a

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Speaker 1: lot of people out there right now who have experienced

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Speaker 1: many of your broadcasts over the years. There are also

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Speaker 1: a lot of young people who listen to this podcast

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Speaker 1: because one of the goals with the Wins and Losses

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Speaker 1: theme is to discuss the best and worst parts potentially

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Speaker 1: of one's career and the wins and losses along the way.

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Speaker 1: So I want to start here. Take you back to

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Speaker 1: when you are in college, if you are able to

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Speaker 1: go back and tell twenty year old Bob Costas things

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Speaker 1: that you have learned along the way in your career

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Speaker 1: that you think would have been very important. There are

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Speaker 1: a year olds who would like to be the next

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Speaker 1: Bob cost Us listening to this podcast right now. What

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Speaker 1: do you think you have learned that you didn't know

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Speaker 1: when you were a college kid or maybe a high

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Speaker 1: school kid trying to become what you became. I think

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Speaker 1: I learned this along the way, and it didn't take

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Speaker 1: all that long. No matter how much you would meire someone,

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Speaker 1: you can be influenced by them. I was influenced by

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Speaker 1: Jim McKay. I was influenced directly by Marty Glickman and

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Speaker 1: Marv Albert. I went to Syracuse because they had gone

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Speaker 1: to Syracuse, and because Syracuse had early on fifty years ago,

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Speaker 1: they had a genuine communications department, not just a print

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Speaker 1: journalism department, but a true state of the art communications department.

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Speaker 1: Now almost every university does, but Syracuse was ahead of

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Speaker 1: the curve, and since I got there, a legion of

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Speaker 1: notable sports broadcasters have followed, and some had preceded me.

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Speaker 1: Marvin Marty and Dick stocked In and Len Berman and

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Speaker 1: a few others, But now it's into dozens and does.

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00:24:00,560 --> 00:24:04,200
Speaker 1: But no matter who, you were influenced by Jim McKay,

431
00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:07,480
Speaker 1: Vince Scully, Jack Buck. Early in my career I was

432
00:24:07,520 --> 00:24:10,280
Speaker 1: in St. Louis at km O X. One of the

433
00:24:10,280 --> 00:24:14,240
Speaker 1: things I learned was, do not copy them. They're great

434
00:24:14,359 --> 00:24:19,359
Speaker 1: because they are distinctive, because they are not generic, and

435
00:24:19,400 --> 00:24:21,919
Speaker 1: if you try to copy them, you'll only be a

436
00:24:21,960 --> 00:24:27,000
Speaker 1: pale imitation of the master. Early on, it's inevitable you'll

437
00:24:27,080 --> 00:24:29,760
Speaker 1: copy somebody. You've got to have a starting point, but

438
00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:33,560
Speaker 1: eventually you've got to be able to develop your own style,

439
00:24:34,040 --> 00:24:36,960
Speaker 1: otherwise you won't get very far. And the other thing

440
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:40,679
Speaker 1: I learned early on was that there's no such thing

441
00:24:40,680 --> 00:24:44,120
Speaker 1: as a perfect broadcast, and not even I think Vince

442
00:24:44,119 --> 00:24:46,000
Speaker 1: Scully would tell you the same thing. As close to

443
00:24:46,000 --> 00:24:49,440
Speaker 1: perfection as you could get, maybe have perfect moments. Jim

444
00:24:49,560 --> 00:24:54,800
Speaker 1: McKay was perfect in that moment in munich Ino, Al

445
00:24:54,880 --> 00:24:59,000
Speaker 1: Michaels was perfect with do you believe in miracles? But

446
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:01,720
Speaker 1: if you are a perfect actionist, that can be a

447
00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:05,760
Speaker 1: good thing because it keeps you working hard and it

448
00:25:05,840 --> 00:25:09,800
Speaker 1: makes you concentrate on the fine points and never be satisfied.

449
00:25:10,359 --> 00:25:12,560
Speaker 1: But it can also cost you sleep unless you get

450
00:25:12,560 --> 00:25:16,960
Speaker 1: a handle on it. Because I used to threat over

451
00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:20,119
Speaker 1: things that other people thought were terrific. Some of the

452
00:25:20,119 --> 00:25:23,080
Speaker 1: things that people mentioned to me as among their favorite

453
00:25:23,080 --> 00:25:25,280
Speaker 1: things I've ever done, somewhere in the back of my

454
00:25:25,320 --> 00:25:29,520
Speaker 1: head is yeah, but if only I'd said that, or

455
00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:32,240
Speaker 1: if only I changed one word, or if only I'd

456
00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:37,000
Speaker 1: remember to include that. And eventually I came to understand,

457
00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:40,520
Speaker 1: on my own peace of mind that sometimes perfect is

458
00:25:40,560 --> 00:25:43,360
Speaker 1: the enemy of the good. A lot of what I've

459
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:47,040
Speaker 1: done has been pretty damn good, only occasionally if you

460
00:25:47,080 --> 00:25:50,879
Speaker 1: reach perfection. Did you go back early in your career

461
00:25:51,280 --> 00:25:55,320
Speaker 1: and study your broadcast, listen to yourself to pick out

462
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:58,959
Speaker 1: flaws or so, And how would you do that and

463
00:25:59,040 --> 00:26:03,160
Speaker 1: be effective in being able to analyze yourself? Well? Then

464
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:05,800
Speaker 1: you know, in the seventies, if you're listening to radio

465
00:26:05,880 --> 00:26:09,880
Speaker 1: broadcast on a cassette recorder, uh, you couldn't get your

466
00:26:09,920 --> 00:26:14,280
Speaker 1: television broadcasts unless you went down to thirty Rock at

467
00:26:14,359 --> 00:26:18,400
Speaker 1: NBC and somebody there, you know, quote it up for you.

468
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:22,560
Speaker 1: I bought one of the very early VHS machines. Uh,

469
00:26:22,720 --> 00:26:25,639
Speaker 1: three quarter inch tapes an hour at a time, so

470
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:28,359
Speaker 1: a whole ball of ball game was three tapes. I

471
00:26:28,359 --> 00:26:33,440
Speaker 1: remember the Sandberg game in the legendary Cardinal Cub game,

472
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:36,280
Speaker 1: where Sandberg get the two home runs of Bruce Suitor

473
00:26:36,359 --> 00:26:38,080
Speaker 1: late in the game, and it was the NBC game

474
00:26:38,119 --> 00:26:40,399
Speaker 1: of the week on a Saturday afternoon, when that meant something.

475
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:43,400
Speaker 1: It was a really big deal. Sometimes the Saturday afternoon

476
00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:46,440
Speaker 1: game of the week got higher ratings regular season game

477
00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:49,840
Speaker 1: than some World Series games get now. Um, And it's

478
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:53,760
Speaker 1: probably the signature game of Sandberg's career. It took five tapes,

479
00:26:54,440 --> 00:27:00,000
Speaker 1: um to have that, and I've got those VHS tapes somewhere, um.

480
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:02,640
Speaker 1: But it was much harder then than it is now.

481
00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:05,440
Speaker 1: Now you can everything at your fingertips and you can

482
00:27:05,480 --> 00:27:08,399
Speaker 1: review it. Uh. Yeah. I used to go back, and

483
00:27:08,440 --> 00:27:12,720
Speaker 1: I remember being discouraged early on the first time I

484
00:27:12,760 --> 00:27:16,359
Speaker 1: heard myself on the air at w A E Er,

485
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:19,480
Speaker 1: the campus station at Syracuse, and I heard it back

486
00:27:19,920 --> 00:27:22,320
Speaker 1: and there were still vestiges of a New York accent,

487
00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:26,400
Speaker 1: and it was a thin, reedy kind of penny voice.

488
00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 1: And then shortly after that I heard the twenty six

489
00:27:29,680 --> 00:27:32,160
Speaker 1: year old Al Michaels just a year or two after

490
00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:37,000
Speaker 1: that on the radio on the two World Series between

491
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:39,840
Speaker 1: the Reds and the Age, and I said to myself, damn,

492
00:27:39,880 --> 00:27:43,479
Speaker 1: he's only twenty six. I'll never be that good, at

493
00:27:43,520 --> 00:27:45,320
Speaker 1: least not in the next few years. I'll never be

494
00:27:45,400 --> 00:27:48,920
Speaker 1: that good. Um. And I was discouraged, actually, but things

495
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:51,200
Speaker 1: turned out all right. I guess I'm along run. So

496
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:55,119
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Take me through your career path as a

497
00:27:55,160 --> 00:27:58,639
Speaker 1: young guy. You're at Syracuse. How do you get in

498
00:27:58,920 --> 00:28:02,040
Speaker 1: because you've got to the top at NBC at a

499
00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:06,600
Speaker 1: relatively young age. How did you get along that path?

500
00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:09,720
Speaker 1: What happened to allow you to advance the way that

501
00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:14,080
Speaker 1: you did, and where did you start? Very importantly, I

502
00:28:14,119 --> 00:28:18,360
Speaker 1: had a professor at Syracuse who took an active interest

503
00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:22,680
Speaker 1: in me. He would identify a handful of kids each

504
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:26,080
Speaker 1: year who he thought had the potential to be good

505
00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:29,359
Speaker 1: if they worked at it. And he was a caring

506
00:28:29,520 --> 00:28:33,880
Speaker 1: but merciless critic to the point where and no joke here,

507
00:28:33,920 --> 00:28:37,600
Speaker 1: Clay in the until the mid eighties when I was

508
00:28:37,640 --> 00:28:40,560
Speaker 1: on NBC and pretty successful, I would still hear from

509
00:28:40,640 --> 00:28:44,440
Speaker 1: him after the baseball and football broadcast. That was good,

510
00:28:44,520 --> 00:28:48,040
Speaker 1: but you know, he was still critiquing me, and and

511
00:28:48,120 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 1: he helped me with projecting, with with getting my voice

512
00:28:51,920 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 1: into better shape. I never took speech classes, but he

513
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:57,800
Speaker 1: kind of gave me some tips. Um, and he told me,

514
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:01,560
Speaker 1: you're you're rushing too much here. Ace is important. Try

515
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:04,800
Speaker 1: to pace yourself. Uh, don't feel like you have to

516
00:29:04,880 --> 00:29:07,800
Speaker 1: use all your preparation early on. It's normal to be

517
00:29:07,880 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: anxious when you're young, so you come in really well prepared.

518
00:29:11,440 --> 00:29:13,360
Speaker 1: But if you empty the whole bucket in the first

519
00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:15,480
Speaker 1: few innings are in the first period of a hockey

520
00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:17,800
Speaker 1: game or whatever it is, wait till the time where

521
00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:21,040
Speaker 1: it really fits and the audience doesn't know whether you've

522
00:29:21,160 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 1: used or a hundred percent of what you came into

523
00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 1: the boothworth as long as what you use was appropriate

524
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:29,600
Speaker 1: and it was good. So I think that with his

525
00:29:29,720 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 1: help and being at w A e R, which is

526
00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:37,040
Speaker 1: a legendary campus radio station, and you're surrounded by like

527
00:29:37,280 --> 00:29:40,239
Speaker 1: minded people, some of whom are really quite talented, and

528
00:29:40,280 --> 00:29:43,480
Speaker 1: we fed off each other's energy, I think I became

529
00:29:44,160 --> 00:29:47,600
Speaker 1: pretty good early. I must have had some precocious level

530
00:29:47,920 --> 00:29:51,360
Speaker 1: of talent, and I worked to refine it. And then

531
00:29:51,400 --> 00:29:53,600
Speaker 1: when I was a senior at Syracuse, I got a

532
00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:57,440
Speaker 1: job broadcasting minor league hockey in the Old Eastern Hockey League,

533
00:29:57,480 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 1: the league that the Paul Newman movie Slap Shot is

534
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,320
Speaker 1: based on thirty bucks a game, five dollars a day

535
00:30:02,520 --> 00:30:05,760
Speaker 1: meal money on the road. But that was sort of

536
00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:09,520
Speaker 1: a baptismal um. I wasn't that good at it right away,

537
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:12,880
Speaker 1: but I came became pretty good at it by by

538
00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:15,320
Speaker 1: mid season, and I thought that I'd come back for

539
00:30:15,360 --> 00:30:19,160
Speaker 1: a second season of that, uh and finish up the

540
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:22,880
Speaker 1: remaining credits at Syracuse. When I sent a tape to

541
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:25,520
Speaker 1: k m X and St. Louis on a lark, the

542
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:28,680
Speaker 1: Carolina Cougars of the Old A B A had become

543
00:30:28,720 --> 00:30:31,080
Speaker 1: the Spirits of St. Louis. They would last only two

544
00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:34,719
Speaker 1: years until the ABA folded and only four of the teams.

545
00:30:34,800 --> 00:30:37,560
Speaker 1: The nets dispersed, the Nuggets and the Pacers got absorbed

546
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:41,000
Speaker 1: and the Spirits went away. But those two years were

547
00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:44,880
Speaker 1: big for me. Uh. Somehow, some way, Jack Buck, who

548
00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:47,440
Speaker 1: was the sports director of the station, they had some

549
00:30:47,560 --> 00:30:51,720
Speaker 1: two applicants on real to real tapes, and Jack Buck

550
00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:54,960
Speaker 1: liked my tape and I got brought into St. Louis

551
00:30:55,000 --> 00:30:58,120
Speaker 1: for an interview, and perhaps my willingness to work cheap.

552
00:30:58,840 --> 00:31:02,239
Speaker 1: Eleven dollars was my salary for that first year at

553
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:05,160
Speaker 1: km X, and I would have paid them eleven thousand

554
00:31:06,680 --> 00:31:09,480
Speaker 1: and So I'm at k X, I'm twenty two years old,

555
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:13,200
Speaker 1: and I'm not a colleague of I wouldn't be so presumptuous.

556
00:31:13,240 --> 00:31:16,479
Speaker 1: But I'm in the same place as Jack Buck and

557
00:31:16,680 --> 00:31:19,640
Speaker 1: Dan Kelly, who until Doc Emer came along, was the

558
00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:23,800
Speaker 1: gold standard of hockey announcers, and everyone was terrific. They're

559
00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:26,680
Speaker 1: both in news and in sports. They were all. They

560
00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 1: could have stopped the network with the quality of the

561
00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:32,840
Speaker 1: talent that was there. And you got to kind of

562
00:31:32,840 --> 00:31:35,000
Speaker 1: pick up your game if you're going to keep pace.

563
00:31:35,120 --> 00:31:38,800
Speaker 1: And I think that accelerated my development as well. And

564
00:31:38,840 --> 00:31:40,920
Speaker 1: I'll try to make this as concise as possible, but

565
00:31:40,920 --> 00:31:44,320
Speaker 1: I've already failed in that regard. People love these stories,

566
00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:47,560
Speaker 1: don't don't worry about that. Km o X was not

567
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:50,400
Speaker 1: just an affiliate. It was a CBS owned and operated

568
00:31:50,440 --> 00:31:56,680
Speaker 1: station when that really made a difference, powerhouse station and

569
00:31:56,960 --> 00:32:01,560
Speaker 1: many of their announcers Joe Garagiola, Harry Jack Buck, later

570
00:32:01,840 --> 00:32:05,520
Speaker 1: Gary Bender, and Dan deardorfan of course later Joe Buck

571
00:32:05,560 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 1: and Dan Kelly on hockey. These guys had gone to

572
00:32:09,360 --> 00:32:12,160
Speaker 1: the network while remaining at km o X, so it

573
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:16,200
Speaker 1: was kind of a feeder system. So al Michaels is

574
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:21,240
Speaker 1: at CBS. It's September and he signs with ABC in

575
00:32:21,320 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 1: less than a week before the first game of the season,

576
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:26,680
Speaker 1: and he was supposed to do San Francisco at Green Bay.

577
00:32:26,840 --> 00:32:30,640
Speaker 1: And so the president of CBS Sports calls Bob Highland,

578
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:34,000
Speaker 1: who ran km OX, and says, we need somebody. Well,

579
00:32:34,000 --> 00:32:36,840
Speaker 1: Buck already had an assignment. Kelly had an assignment. He said,

580
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:38,920
Speaker 1: we got a kid here. He's twenty four years old.

581
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:42,600
Speaker 1: He looks like he's four team, but he's pretty good off.

582
00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:44,880
Speaker 1: I go to Green Bay. I had never done, except

583
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:47,680
Speaker 1: for a half of two football games on the radio.

584
00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:50,800
Speaker 1: I've never done a football game. I go to Green Bay.

585
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:53,760
Speaker 1: Jay Randall showed me how to make a spotting board.

586
00:32:53,840 --> 00:32:56,360
Speaker 1: I go to Green Bay. I do this game. I'm

587
00:32:56,360 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: sure it wasn't a game worthy of the time capsule,

588
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 1: but it was good enough. The They brought me back

589
00:33:01,520 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 1: for occasional games, maybe three or four small regional games

590
00:33:04,640 --> 00:33:08,040
Speaker 1: a year in football or backed up basketball games on

591
00:33:08,120 --> 00:33:11,480
Speaker 1: the NBA and Don Olmire at NBC, even though none

592
00:33:11,480 --> 00:33:13,240
Speaker 1: of those games ever went into the big market of

593
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:16,960
Speaker 1: New York. He became aware of me and he hired

594
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:20,480
Speaker 1: me when I was twenty seven full time at NBC.

595
00:33:20,880 --> 00:33:22,960
Speaker 1: And after I was there for only a month or so,

596
00:33:23,080 --> 00:33:25,040
Speaker 1: he calls me into his office and he says, you know,

597
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:27,240
Speaker 1: we really liked to work. We think you have a

598
00:33:27,280 --> 00:33:29,560
Speaker 1: future here. Let me ask me something. How old are you?

599
00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:33,080
Speaker 1: He said? He said, God, damn it, you look like

600
00:33:33,160 --> 00:33:36,440
Speaker 1: your fourth seen that words. He goes, how much older

601
00:33:36,680 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 1: do you think you would look if you grew a beard?

602
00:33:38,960 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 1: And I set out five years at least, and he

603
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:43,400
Speaker 1: perks up. He goes, really, I said yeah, because that's

604
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:47,760
Speaker 1: how long it would take to grow it. So you know, somehow,

605
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:51,480
Speaker 1: somehow it worked out. Um, even when I was hosting

606
00:33:51,520 --> 00:33:53,520
Speaker 1: the Olympics when I was forty, I'm sure I didn't

607
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 1: look the part exactly, but people accepted it and and

608
00:33:57,480 --> 00:34:00,280
Speaker 1: it worked out. And I think I think the outom

609
00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:02,440
Speaker 1: line of it is if you have any talent at

610
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:06,720
Speaker 1: all and you get thrust into situations. Brian Gumbel left

611
00:34:06,720 --> 00:34:09,520
Speaker 1: Sports to go to the Today Show. They didn't have

612
00:34:09,560 --> 00:34:12,360
Speaker 1: anybody in mind to host the football show, and that

613
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:17,080
Speaker 1: eventually became hosting the NBA on NBC and hosting the Olympics.

614
00:34:17,520 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 1: I got thrust into it. I had almost no studio

615
00:34:20,560 --> 00:34:23,440
Speaker 1: hosting the experience at all. The first five years. I've

616
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:26,640
Speaker 1: never used a telepopter at all. I just ad lived everything.

617
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:30,080
Speaker 1: But I just found my way, and you become more

618
00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:33,920
Speaker 1: and more comfortable with it. I think of the luck involved.

619
00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:38,640
Speaker 1: NBC hires Ben Scully, Joe garg Joel and Tony Kubec

620
00:34:38,680 --> 00:34:42,719
Speaker 1: had been a legendary pair. They put Joe with them.

621
00:34:43,120 --> 00:34:44,680
Speaker 1: Then has to be on the a game. He is

622
00:34:44,719 --> 00:34:49,200
Speaker 1: the greatest I inherit. Tony Kubeck the backup game becomes

623
00:34:49,200 --> 00:34:52,320
Speaker 1: a much more important thing. And then I started hosting

624
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:54,480
Speaker 1: the World Series, and in the years where we had

625
00:34:54,520 --> 00:34:57,400
Speaker 1: both lcs is, Tony and I would do the American League.

626
00:34:57,760 --> 00:34:59,920
Speaker 1: That put me on a much bigger stage than I

627
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:02,600
Speaker 1: would have expected at that point in my career. Now,

628
00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:05,359
Speaker 1: if an opportunity comes along, you have to be able

629
00:35:05,360 --> 00:35:09,720
Speaker 1: to take advantage of that opportunity. Uh. David Letterman starts

630
00:35:09,719 --> 00:35:15,120
Speaker 1: his show at NBC one night. He wants a sportscaster

631
00:35:15,160 --> 00:35:19,880
Speaker 1: and to do mock commentary on elevator racist Mark Albert

632
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:22,520
Speaker 1: is the guy. He wants Marvis out of town doing

633
00:35:22,520 --> 00:35:25,880
Speaker 1: a nick game. I'm sitting in the office. They go,

634
00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:28,920
Speaker 1: we got this kid here, Bob Costas send them up

635
00:35:29,239 --> 00:35:31,799
Speaker 1: again on the elevator on on the sixth floor. I

636
00:35:31,880 --> 00:35:34,160
Speaker 1: do this thing for David Letterman. He likes it because

637
00:35:34,200 --> 00:35:35,839
Speaker 1: I kind of get where he's coming from and what

638
00:35:35,880 --> 00:35:39,399
Speaker 1: he wants. This mock serious thing. He brings me back

639
00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:41,040
Speaker 1: to sit down next to him. At the end of

640
00:35:41,040 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 1: the show, I'd say something that makes him laugh. He says,

641
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:46,560
Speaker 1: you're really funny. Would you like to do this again?

642
00:35:47,120 --> 00:35:49,759
Speaker 1: Of course I would. You're David Letterman. Even then, he's

643
00:35:49,840 --> 00:35:53,359
Speaker 1: David Letterman. I was probably on two dozen times, and

644
00:35:53,440 --> 00:35:56,920
Speaker 1: those things not only introduced me to a different audience

645
00:35:56,920 --> 00:35:59,680
Speaker 1: in a different way, but early on, when you're trying

646
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:02,480
Speaker 1: to find your way, you get some laughs there, or

647
00:36:02,520 --> 00:36:05,239
Speaker 1: you get some good notices for what you're doing. In

648
00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:09,160
Speaker 1: the sportscasting world. It increases your confidence and it makes

649
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:12,200
Speaker 1: you feel like you can be more spontaneous and show

650
00:36:12,239 --> 00:36:14,680
Speaker 1: more of yourself, not just color between the lines, for

651
00:36:14,800 --> 00:36:17,760
Speaker 1: maybe color outside the lines a little bit. Fox Sports

652
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:20,520
Speaker 1: Radio has the best sports talk lineup in the nation.

653
00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:23,759
Speaker 1: Catch all of our shows at Fox Sports Radio dot

654
00:36:23,800 --> 00:36:26,799
Speaker 1: com and within the I Heart Radio app. Search f

655
00:36:27,120 --> 00:36:30,560
Speaker 1: s R to listen live. We're talking to Bob Costas.

656
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:33,400
Speaker 1: I'm Clay Travis. We're here with the Wins and Losses Podcast.

657
00:36:33,920 --> 00:36:36,640
Speaker 1: How nervous were you going to Green Bay to call

658
00:36:36,680 --> 00:36:40,200
Speaker 1: that game? At twenty four years old? Shaking like a

659
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:45,320
Speaker 1: freaking leaf. And the analyst on the game with someone

660
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:49,000
Speaker 1: that only older listeners would remember firsthand, Hall of Fame

661
00:36:49,080 --> 00:36:52,279
Speaker 1: receiver Tommy McDonald, who had been a big deal at

662
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:56,680
Speaker 1: Oklahoma and then primarily with the Philadelphia Eagles, one of

663
00:36:56,680 --> 00:37:01,200
Speaker 1: the last to play without forget about a mask, no

664
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:04,600
Speaker 1: no bar, no bar on, Yeah, that's amazing. And then

665
00:37:04,640 --> 00:37:07,319
Speaker 1: went and then went to the single helmet thing, and

666
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:10,120
Speaker 1: he was quite a single bar and he was quite

667
00:37:10,160 --> 00:37:13,759
Speaker 1: a character. But however nervous I was, he was a

668
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:16,920
Speaker 1: hundred times more nervous. He has since passed away. And

669
00:37:16,960 --> 00:37:21,400
Speaker 1: I say this with affection play. He literally froze on

670
00:37:21,520 --> 00:37:25,360
Speaker 1: the on camera open. He couldn't remember what he wanted

671
00:37:25,400 --> 00:37:29,520
Speaker 1: to say. And I'm twenty four years old. Nobody outside St.

672
00:37:29,560 --> 00:37:32,960
Speaker 1: Louis has any damn idea who I am, and so

673
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:36,799
Speaker 1: I basically I'm doing the whole broadcast by myself. There

674
00:37:36,800 --> 00:37:40,279
Speaker 1: were times when he couldn't complete sentences, and that was

675
00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:44,160
Speaker 1: the last game be he ever did. So I was

676
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:46,560
Speaker 1: nervous to begin with, and I was damn near panic

677
00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:49,919
Speaker 1: stricken by the second quarter. But but I muddled through.

678
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:53,760
Speaker 1: They brought me back. So either I was very lucky

679
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 1: or I was a little bit better than I feared. Okay,

680
00:37:57,080 --> 00:38:02,160
Speaker 1: other question, Don Olmeyer, I know that he was incredibly

681
00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:04,920
Speaker 1: important for a lot of different people in the world

682
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:07,920
Speaker 1: of sports. What did he mean for you and for

683
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:10,680
Speaker 1: people who do not know him? Who was he and

684
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:14,680
Speaker 1: why was he important? Don Oldmeyer was bigger than life.

685
00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:18,520
Speaker 1: He and Dick Ebersol, who was even more important in

686
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:22,640
Speaker 1: my career, were proteges of run Ledge. Run Ledge is

687
00:38:22,719 --> 00:38:26,000
Speaker 1: of course, still viewed as the single most important person

688
00:38:26,320 --> 00:38:28,759
Speaker 1: in the history of sports television who wasn't on the air,

689
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:32,560
Speaker 1: although I think Dick Eversol could rival him for that.

690
00:38:33,239 --> 00:38:38,280
Speaker 1: Uh So, first Don and then Dick headed up NBC Sports,

691
00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:41,400
Speaker 1: and they each had a tremendous influence on me. And

692
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:44,920
Speaker 1: the very fact that they liked me and saw something

693
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:47,719
Speaker 1: in me that maybe others would not have seen at

694
00:38:47,760 --> 00:38:51,880
Speaker 1: least that quickly that elevated my career. They put me

695
00:38:51,920 --> 00:38:56,400
Speaker 1: in positions to succeed or I guess fail, and luckily

696
00:38:57,160 --> 00:38:59,880
Speaker 1: each of those worked out. In the case of Dick Eversol,

697
00:39:00,400 --> 00:39:03,400
Speaker 1: not only did he elevate me from late night host

698
00:39:03,520 --> 00:39:05,920
Speaker 1: of the Olympics to primetime host. I've been the late

699
00:39:06,000 --> 00:39:10,799
Speaker 1: night host, he made me the primetime host in in Barcelona,

700
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:15,239
Speaker 1: but he also created a late night talk show for

701
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:20,400
Speaker 1: me in conjunction with Brandon Tartakoff uh later with Bob Costas,

702
00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:24,960
Speaker 1: followed Johnny Carson and David Letterman in NBC's late night lineup,

703
00:39:25,400 --> 00:39:29,120
Speaker 1: and showed a different side of me because only maybe

704
00:39:29,200 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 1: five of it had to do with sports. Most of

705
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:34,799
Speaker 1: it was other walks of life. So ohmy are at

706
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:39,360
Speaker 1: the beginning hiring me, having some confidence in me, giving

707
00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:41,920
Speaker 1: me big assiglence. I mean, in the first year I

708
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:44,920
Speaker 1: was there, when Dick Enberg had an overlap and there

709
00:39:44,960 --> 00:39:47,560
Speaker 1: was a college basketball game and a football game, he'd

710
00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:50,279
Speaker 1: go to the football game and Ollmyer threw me right

711
00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:53,799
Speaker 1: in there with Al McGuire and Billy Packer, a legendary

712
00:39:53,840 --> 00:39:57,920
Speaker 1: combination in college basketball back when a college basketball game

713
00:39:57,960 --> 00:40:00,279
Speaker 1: on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon was a different thing

714
00:40:00,719 --> 00:40:03,520
Speaker 1: than it is now. The media landscape was so different.

715
00:40:03,640 --> 00:40:06,360
Speaker 1: So Don threw me into those things, and basically it

716
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:08,160
Speaker 1: was sink or swim, and I might have sunk a

717
00:40:08,160 --> 00:40:10,279
Speaker 1: few times, but I made it to the other side

718
00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:13,279
Speaker 1: of the waterway, I guess to strain that metaphor. And

719
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:17,600
Speaker 1: then when Don went off and eventually became the head

720
00:40:17,600 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 1: of entertainment at NBC in the nineties, in the heyday

721
00:40:21,560 --> 00:40:26,840
Speaker 1: of NBC e Er Seinfeld, Uh, Cosby, Show, Um whatever, Friends,

722
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:29,480
Speaker 1: whatever it might have been, when NBC was the unquestioned

723
00:40:29,560 --> 00:40:34,200
Speaker 1: number one eversol Is running NBC Sports and NBC Sports

724
00:40:34,239 --> 00:40:36,840
Speaker 1: is clearly number one in that area, and all Myer's

725
00:40:36,920 --> 00:40:41,000
Speaker 1: running NBC Entertainment, and luckily I'm their boy. I mean,

726
00:40:41,320 --> 00:40:43,880
Speaker 1: I'm sure that I aggravated them. I know I aggravated

727
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:46,879
Speaker 1: them sometimes because sometimes I have a mind of my own,

728
00:40:46,920 --> 00:40:48,520
Speaker 1: So I may have pissed them off now and then.

729
00:40:48,920 --> 00:40:51,839
Speaker 1: But what they did for me, uh is something I

730
00:40:51,840 --> 00:40:55,120
Speaker 1: can never fully repay. And they were both so charismatic

731
00:40:55,160 --> 00:40:57,960
Speaker 1: and dynamic. They themselves were as big a star, at

732
00:40:58,040 --> 00:41:00,600
Speaker 1: least among those who knew them as any of the

733
00:41:00,600 --> 00:41:04,120
Speaker 1: broadcasters were. They had tremendous presence. When they walked into

734
00:41:04,200 --> 00:41:07,560
Speaker 1: a room, you knew that you better snap to it

735
00:41:07,640 --> 00:41:10,759
Speaker 1: and pay attention because there was just something about them

736
00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:13,880
Speaker 1: something you know, intelligence is one thing, inside is another,

737
00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:17,080
Speaker 1: but presence in charisma, and they had it in space.

738
00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:20,520
Speaker 1: You mentioned going on David Letterman. So as a kid

739
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:24,880
Speaker 1: growing up in Nashville, I would watch baseball all day long,

740
00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:27,320
Speaker 1: right when I was home in the summers, in particular,

741
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:30,320
Speaker 1: I'd watch w g N with Harry Carey and Steve Stone.

742
00:41:30,360 --> 00:41:33,680
Speaker 1: In the afternoons, I would watch the late night at

743
00:41:33,680 --> 00:41:36,719
Speaker 1: the time ESPN games. And one of the great things

744
00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:38,640
Speaker 1: about being a kid and being able to stay up late,

745
00:41:38,640 --> 00:41:40,400
Speaker 1: and I've always kind of been a night owl despite

746
00:41:40,400 --> 00:41:42,600
Speaker 1: the fact that I have an early morning show, is

747
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:45,359
Speaker 1: I would watch David Letterman, and I just found him

748
00:41:45,400 --> 00:41:49,440
Speaker 1: to be an unbelievably compelling television present who, as you

749
00:41:49,480 --> 00:41:53,120
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, broke pretty much every rule that would have

750
00:41:53,160 --> 00:41:55,959
Speaker 1: existed in television. Right if you had gone through and said,

751
00:41:55,960 --> 00:41:58,920
Speaker 1: how would you design a late night show? Uh that

752
00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:01,839
Speaker 1: they came up with basically the everything that they would

753
00:42:01,840 --> 00:42:05,440
Speaker 1: tell you not to do. And it worked flawlessly for Letterman.

754
00:42:05,840 --> 00:42:08,399
Speaker 1: What was working with him? Like you said, you went

755
00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:10,720
Speaker 1: on a show a bunch as well, and you've later

756
00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:13,520
Speaker 1: followed his show. What did you find him to be

757
00:42:13,640 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 1: like off the air as opposed to on the air,

758
00:42:16,480 --> 00:42:19,439
Speaker 1: And how would the show be constructed, and what if

759
00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:24,400
Speaker 1: anything could you take from that? Well, David, I didn't

760
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:29,360
Speaker 1: want anything to be cookie cutter. You go on other shows,

761
00:42:29,719 --> 00:42:32,640
Speaker 1: they do a pre interview and you talk about a

762
00:42:32,680 --> 00:42:35,000
Speaker 1: few areas that you might discuss, and you give them

763
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:37,160
Speaker 1: a few anecdotes that you have that are sure to

764
00:42:37,160 --> 00:42:40,359
Speaker 1: get laughs and be interesting. And David would have that,

765
00:42:40,719 --> 00:42:43,680
Speaker 1: but he'd depart from it. Jay Leno would pretty much

766
00:42:43,840 --> 00:42:46,800
Speaker 1: stay with it, and Jay was successful for his own reasons.

767
00:42:47,200 --> 00:42:50,680
Speaker 1: But Letterman thought there was an integrity in that. At

768
00:42:50,719 --> 00:42:53,360
Speaker 1: least that was my assumption that if he just painted

769
00:42:53,400 --> 00:42:56,200
Speaker 1: by the numbers, that he couldn't be David Letterman. So

770
00:42:56,360 --> 00:42:58,640
Speaker 1: you never knew. He could get bored with what you

771
00:42:58,680 --> 00:43:00,400
Speaker 1: were saying, or you could want to alan j you

772
00:43:00,520 --> 00:43:03,520
Speaker 1: it could throw something out. So you really had to

773
00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:06,560
Speaker 1: be on your toes when you were on with David Letterman.

774
00:43:06,760 --> 00:43:10,240
Speaker 1: But David was great to me. Um, he was always

775
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:15,000
Speaker 1: very kind to me, said nice things about me, and

776
00:43:15,080 --> 00:43:18,520
Speaker 1: when he went to CBS UM after he didn't get

777
00:43:18,560 --> 00:43:21,160
Speaker 1: the Tonight show and Jay Leno did. Part of his

778
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:24,840
Speaker 1: deal was that he controlled the hour after his show,

779
00:43:25,160 --> 00:43:28,320
Speaker 1: and eventually Tom Snyder got that hour and later Craig

780
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:30,959
Speaker 1: Kilborn and Craig Ferguson. M Snyder was the first month,

781
00:43:31,200 --> 00:43:35,160
Speaker 1: but only after David offered it to me. I was

782
00:43:35,320 --> 00:43:38,000
Speaker 1: very tempted because it was David Letterman, and because it

783
00:43:38,040 --> 00:43:40,480
Speaker 1: was a full hour and it was an hour earlier,

784
00:43:40,560 --> 00:43:45,359
Speaker 1: twelve thirty instead of one thirty. But NBC had the NBA. Uh,

785
00:43:45,400 --> 00:43:48,400
Speaker 1: they still had the NFL, although I was I was

786
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:51,440
Speaker 1: transitioning out of the NFL, but still that they had it.

787
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:56,000
Speaker 1: They were reacquiring baseball. I was the host of the Olympics,

788
00:43:56,120 --> 00:43:59,680
Speaker 1: and so if the offer had come at a different time,

789
00:43:59,680 --> 00:44:01,560
Speaker 1: I said, who would have taken it? And I certainly

790
00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:04,360
Speaker 1: appreciated that David thought enough of me to offer it

791
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:08,279
Speaker 1: to me. Um he remade late night television. You know,

792
00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:12,040
Speaker 1: his his idol was always Johnny Carson, and Johnny was

793
00:44:12,200 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 1: magnificent and he had a certain saboaf there that almost

794
00:44:16,680 --> 00:44:20,839
Speaker 1: no one else could match. For his time period. I don't.

795
00:44:20,840 --> 00:44:22,480
Speaker 1: I don't mean time period at night, I mean that

796
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:28,600
Speaker 1: era of television. He was beyond cool. But David actually

797
00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 1: going forward was more influential. Because everybody as wonderful as

798
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:36,880
Speaker 1: Conan is or or Kimmel or Fallon or Colbert or

799
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:40,759
Speaker 1: whoever you want to name, they all are influenced by

800
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:44,520
Speaker 1: David Letterman. Follow them. There's no doubt at all. And

801
00:44:45,160 --> 00:44:47,200
Speaker 1: all of this kind of leads into this question, which

802
00:44:47,239 --> 00:44:49,960
Speaker 1: I think is is important also for people out there listening,

803
00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 1: and I'm Clay Travis. We're talking with Bob Costas on

804
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:55,680
Speaker 1: The Winds and Lost his podcast. Being able to do

805
00:44:55,840 --> 00:45:00,359
Speaker 1: sports well requires an ability to see sports as part

806
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:04,600
Speaker 1: of a larger landscape of American and world life, and

807
00:45:04,640 --> 00:45:07,560
Speaker 1: certainly you had to do that at the Olympics. Do

808
00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:11,359
Speaker 1: you believe sometimes that people who do sports get so

809
00:45:11,440 --> 00:45:14,920
Speaker 1: wrapped up into the essence of the sport itself that

810
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:19,279
Speaker 1: they lack the ability to understand the larger context. And

811
00:45:19,320 --> 00:45:22,239
Speaker 1: how has that mattered and been an asset to you

812
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:24,640
Speaker 1: in terms of the growth of your career and what

813
00:45:24,719 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 1: you were able to do understanding sports. But also just

814
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:30,560
Speaker 1: based on our conversations, I know that you have a

815
00:45:30,560 --> 00:45:34,320
Speaker 1: lot of interest outside of sports. Sometimes there are guys

816
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:36,520
Speaker 1: and girls in our field where it's like all they

817
00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:39,880
Speaker 1: know is sports, and I think that can sometimes constrain

818
00:45:39,960 --> 00:45:44,200
Speaker 1: them to a large extent. It's a perceptive question, you know.

819
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:47,759
Speaker 1: You listen to Vince Scully through all those years and

820
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:53,240
Speaker 1: then obviously was steeped in baseball history, but he knew

821
00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:57,279
Speaker 1: something about the world beyond that you could gracefully bring

822
00:45:57,360 --> 00:46:01,640
Speaker 1: it in. I knew Jack Buck very well. Jack Buck

823
00:46:02,000 --> 00:46:06,400
Speaker 1: was wounded at the bridge at Remagen during World War Two.

824
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:09,080
Speaker 1: He got either the Bronze Star or Purple Heart, I

825
00:46:09,160 --> 00:46:13,560
Speaker 1: don't remember which. He had worked on the docks. He

826
00:46:13,600 --> 00:46:17,799
Speaker 1: had grown up relatively poor in Massachusetts, one of six

827
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:22,160
Speaker 1: or seven kids. He was a Depression era kid um.

828
00:46:22,200 --> 00:46:26,200
Speaker 1: He'd scuffled a little bit. He'd lived the light. He

829
00:46:26,360 --> 00:46:30,680
Speaker 1: was a reader. He was someone that that got out there,

830
00:46:30,719 --> 00:46:34,200
Speaker 1: you know, he was. He lived a textured light, and

831
00:46:34,239 --> 00:46:37,320
Speaker 1: that came across in his broadcast. As great as people

832
00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:41,920
Speaker 1: perceived Jack being from his network broadcast, it was really

833
00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:44,919
Speaker 1: on the Cardinals day in, day out, night and night out,

834
00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:48,040
Speaker 1: where his sly wit and his frame of reference and

835
00:46:48,120 --> 00:46:53,000
Speaker 1: his texture as a person came across, and that's that's

836
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:54,520
Speaker 1: what you want to emulate. I don't know if you

837
00:46:54,560 --> 00:46:57,280
Speaker 1: ever fully get there, but it's that in your own

838
00:46:57,320 --> 00:47:01,839
Speaker 1: way that you want to do if the circumstances allow it.

839
00:47:02,200 --> 00:47:06,160
Speaker 1: You want the broadcast to be textured. I've always used

840
00:47:06,200 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 1: this example. Over time, maybe you can't get it into

841
00:47:09,560 --> 00:47:14,640
Speaker 1: every broadcast, but over time you hope to do what

842
00:47:14,760 --> 00:47:19,600
Speaker 1: a really good um issue of Sports Illustrated does. Some

843
00:47:19,719 --> 00:47:23,600
Speaker 1: of it is a celebration of sports. It's excitement, it's beauty,

844
00:47:23,760 --> 00:47:27,840
Speaker 1: even the poetry of it, great photography, great writing about

845
00:47:27,880 --> 00:47:31,360
Speaker 1: a big event. Some of it's quirky and humorous. Some

846
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:35,520
Speaker 1: of it's historical and when called for and in proportion,

847
00:47:36,000 --> 00:47:40,600
Speaker 1: there's journalism and there's commentary, and taken all together, it's

848
00:47:40,600 --> 00:47:43,520
Speaker 1: a mosaic. It isn't just one thing, or isn't just

849
00:47:43,640 --> 00:47:47,600
Speaker 1: primary colors. There's different shadings. And I hope that over

850
00:47:47,719 --> 00:47:51,520
Speaker 1: time That's what my career has been and where I

851
00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:55,520
Speaker 1: got frustrated, and it's nobody's fault. NBC does not run

852
00:47:55,560 --> 00:47:58,160
Speaker 1: for my benefit, did not run for my benefit. But

853
00:47:58,239 --> 00:48:00,680
Speaker 1: in the last ten years or so of my career

854
00:48:00,680 --> 00:48:04,360
Speaker 1: there they had lost baseball. They had lost the NBA,

855
00:48:04,480 --> 00:48:07,880
Speaker 1: my two favorite things. I've done a dozen Olympics, and

856
00:48:07,920 --> 00:48:11,960
Speaker 1: the formats became more and more constricting, and so there

857
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:13,919
Speaker 1: was less of a chance to do the very thing

858
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:18,120
Speaker 1: that your question implies. And so if you think about

859
00:48:18,200 --> 00:48:23,880
Speaker 1: younger viewers, they may not have the full sense of

860
00:48:23,880 --> 00:48:25,600
Speaker 1: what I might have been about. And I don't think

861
00:48:25,680 --> 00:48:27,759
Speaker 1: it matters all that much. I mean it matters to me.

862
00:48:28,160 --> 00:48:30,360
Speaker 1: No one's going to put it in a time capsule

863
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:34,080
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, but from the mid eighties too,

864
00:48:34,280 --> 00:48:38,279
Speaker 1: I don't know, early two thousand's the combination of the

865
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:41,000
Speaker 1: late night show of the n b A, of the

866
00:48:41,040 --> 00:48:45,680
Speaker 1: baseball coverage, of the early hosting of football, of showing

867
00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:50,560
Speaker 1: up on Letterman and Atlano and even Carson on one occasion,

868
00:48:50,920 --> 00:48:54,680
Speaker 1: or Nightline or Meet the Press or Charlie Rose, or

869
00:48:54,760 --> 00:48:59,400
Speaker 1: doing pieces for the NBC news magazines, and then the Olympics,

870
00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:03,200
Speaker 1: of course, and then my spint at HBO. I think

871
00:49:03,239 --> 00:49:06,480
Speaker 1: that almost everything I did that was true to me

872
00:49:06,520 --> 00:49:09,840
Speaker 1: as a broadcaster and as a person. And you know,

873
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:12,680
Speaker 1: no one's going to be universally popular, but I'll stand

874
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:14,759
Speaker 1: by that and be comfortable with it because it was

875
00:49:14,800 --> 00:49:18,200
Speaker 1: true to me. I think some of what happened over

876
00:49:18,239 --> 00:49:23,239
Speaker 1: the last decade at NBC didn't perfectly exemplify who I was,

877
00:49:23,440 --> 00:49:26,400
Speaker 1: either personally or professionally. But that's nobody's fault. Just the

878
00:49:26,400 --> 00:49:29,480
Speaker 1: way it goes talking to Bob Costas and I'm fascinated

879
00:49:29,480 --> 00:49:31,440
Speaker 1: by so much of what you just said, and I

880
00:49:31,480 --> 00:49:34,359
Speaker 1: told you this off the air. One reason I think

881
00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:37,719
Speaker 1: I don't care very much what people say about me,

882
00:49:37,840 --> 00:49:41,040
Speaker 1: and this also goes to a larger conversation, is when

883
00:49:41,040 --> 00:49:44,080
Speaker 1: you do daily radio for three hours a day, fifteen

884
00:49:44,120 --> 00:49:47,200
Speaker 1: hours a week, I basically get to have therapy in

885
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:50,279
Speaker 1: public for anything that bothers me. Right, I get to

886
00:49:50,320 --> 00:49:53,400
Speaker 1: tell you exactly what I think. And it can be

887
00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:56,080
Speaker 1: about being a father of three young boys. It can

888
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:58,799
Speaker 1: be about being married. It can be about a game

889
00:49:58,840 --> 00:50:01,319
Speaker 1: that didn't go away the way I anticipated, or a

890
00:50:01,400 --> 00:50:04,160
Speaker 1: bet that I lost, or whatever else. I think people

891
00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:07,759
Speaker 1: who listen to my radio show, and it's obviously you

892
00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:10,560
Speaker 1: know this, it's never as many as you want them

893
00:50:10,600 --> 00:50:12,719
Speaker 1: to write. I wish that more people listen to the

894
00:50:12,760 --> 00:50:15,719
Speaker 1: show continues to grow and everything else, But when you're

895
00:50:15,760 --> 00:50:18,919
Speaker 1: in this space, you always want to have more, right,

896
00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:21,480
Speaker 1: Like that's kind of in the universe in which we live.

897
00:50:21,520 --> 00:50:24,000
Speaker 1: If you're ambitious and you want to continue to grow,

898
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:26,160
Speaker 1: you think you're pretty good and you'd like to have

899
00:50:26,200 --> 00:50:28,839
Speaker 1: as many people paying attention as possible. And we're one

900
00:50:28,840 --> 00:50:31,120
Speaker 1: of the four or five biggest radio shows now, but

901
00:50:31,200 --> 00:50:32,920
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we should be the biggest. And

902
00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:36,319
Speaker 1: the point on a larger scale is though we have

903
00:50:36,360 --> 00:50:38,920
Speaker 1: a big enough audience now where I feel like people

904
00:50:38,960 --> 00:50:40,640
Speaker 1: may not love me all the time, but they know

905
00:50:40,760 --> 00:50:43,440
Speaker 1: me right. I am an authentic person to them on

906
00:50:43,560 --> 00:50:45,840
Speaker 1: many different ways, both good and bad, as the people

907
00:50:45,880 --> 00:50:48,080
Speaker 1: that we all know in our day to day lives are.

908
00:50:48,719 --> 00:50:51,160
Speaker 1: And we have found that I bet you have found too.

909
00:50:51,360 --> 00:50:55,120
Speaker 1: Oftentimes it's not the talents that make people like you,

910
00:50:55,480 --> 00:50:59,640
Speaker 1: it's your flaws, because they humanize you, whether dad, mom, grandma,

911
00:50:59,719 --> 00:51:02,600
Speaker 1: grand paw, aunt, uncle, whatever it might be, you in

912
00:51:02,640 --> 00:51:05,480
Speaker 1: an interesting way. At least in the last you know,

913
00:51:05,560 --> 00:51:08,400
Speaker 1: fifteen twenty years, for many people who are listening to us,

914
00:51:08,760 --> 00:51:13,680
Speaker 1: had a massive audience, the Olympics, big sports, all of those.

915
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:19,719
Speaker 1: But you're within that television window where the larger context

916
00:51:19,840 --> 00:51:22,799
Speaker 1: is not necessarily known. You don't have you've got the

917
00:51:22,800 --> 00:51:25,360
Speaker 1: massive audience everybody may know you when you walk through

918
00:51:25,440 --> 00:51:29,040
Speaker 1: the airport, but at times you're almost an enigma that

919
00:51:29,160 --> 00:51:32,399
Speaker 1: people can project up on to choose to believe what

920
00:51:32,440 --> 00:51:35,480
Speaker 1: they would like to believe about you. Is that a

921
00:51:35,560 --> 00:51:37,719
Speaker 1: challenge in many ways? I would think it's it's such

922
00:51:37,719 --> 00:51:39,480
Speaker 1: an interest, it's it's it's kind of the opposite of

923
00:51:39,520 --> 00:51:41,640
Speaker 1: what I've got now, where the people who listen, we've

924
00:51:41,680 --> 00:51:43,719
Speaker 1: got a good size audience, but they really feel like

925
00:51:43,760 --> 00:51:47,840
Speaker 1: they know me. Whereas when you're talking to million people

926
00:51:47,840 --> 00:51:50,840
Speaker 1: on television or seventy five million or whatever the biggest

927
00:51:50,920 --> 00:51:53,799
Speaker 1: number was that you ever spoke to, they kind of

928
00:51:53,840 --> 00:51:56,640
Speaker 1: see you and and and and you're a sphinx of sorts.

929
00:51:56,760 --> 00:52:00,600
Speaker 1: They project up on you what they think of you.

930
00:52:00,600 --> 00:52:02,840
Speaker 1: You know, that's so insightful, And it's one of the

931
00:52:02,880 --> 00:52:07,840
Speaker 1: subtexts of this conversation. And as an aside, one of

932
00:52:07,840 --> 00:52:12,080
Speaker 1: the obvious reasons why I've taken advantage of this format

933
00:52:12,600 --> 00:52:14,880
Speaker 1: uh and gone on at greater length that I almost

934
00:52:14,920 --> 00:52:17,839
Speaker 1: ever have a chance to go on on television. And

935
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:21,600
Speaker 1: going back to the last comment I made, I was

936
00:52:21,719 --> 00:52:26,080
Speaker 1: very comfortable with what I put out there in the eighties,

937
00:52:26,200 --> 00:52:30,080
Speaker 1: nineties and early part of the two thousands, I think

938
00:52:30,080 --> 00:52:33,040
Speaker 1: that those who paid even casual attention had a pretty

939
00:52:33,080 --> 00:52:37,960
Speaker 1: accurate idea of where I was coming from professionally and personally.

940
00:52:38,480 --> 00:52:42,040
Speaker 1: And if in more recent years they had followed me

941
00:52:42,080 --> 00:52:45,040
Speaker 1: on HBO or on the Baseball Network, then that would

942
00:52:45,040 --> 00:52:49,480
Speaker 1: also be true. But on NBC, my role on Sunday

943
00:52:49,560 --> 00:52:53,919
Speaker 1: Night Football, working alongside Al Michaels and Chris Collinsworth, they're

944
00:52:53,960 --> 00:52:56,040
Speaker 1: doing what they were put on Planet Earth to do,

945
00:52:56,600 --> 00:52:59,920
Speaker 1: and Fred Goodelly the producer, and Drew Sakoff the director,

946
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:03,120
Speaker 1: everybody else what they were put there to do. And

947
00:53:03,160 --> 00:53:06,319
Speaker 1: I was there because I had equity and NBC and

948
00:53:06,360 --> 00:53:09,759
Speaker 1: people associated me with big events on NBC, and I

949
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:14,400
Speaker 1: don't know that that really uh personified anything that I

950
00:53:14,480 --> 00:53:17,759
Speaker 1: truly cared about. There were moments perhaps that I was

951
00:53:17,800 --> 00:53:21,360
Speaker 1: able to contribute something worthwhile that was um if not

952
00:53:21,560 --> 00:53:25,640
Speaker 1: unique to me, than at least distinctive about me, but

953
00:53:25,719 --> 00:53:28,200
Speaker 1: for the most part it didn't serve that purpose. And

954
00:53:28,320 --> 00:53:32,640
Speaker 1: on the Olympics, the same thing. I think the first

955
00:53:32,840 --> 00:53:36,640
Speaker 1: seven or eight that I did pretty much we're close

956
00:53:36,680 --> 00:53:39,319
Speaker 1: to the bullseye nothing, as we started out this conversation saying,

957
00:53:39,400 --> 00:53:42,520
Speaker 1: is ever truly perfect, but pretty close, And then After that,

958
00:53:43,440 --> 00:53:48,600
Speaker 1: the formats and viewer expectation and everything else um changed

959
00:53:48,640 --> 00:53:51,600
Speaker 1: the role. And I think I still handled it professionally

960
00:53:51,680 --> 00:53:55,239
Speaker 1: and competently, and there were times little windows where maybe

961
00:53:55,280 --> 00:53:57,760
Speaker 1: you could hit a great note, but those windows seemed

962
00:53:57,760 --> 00:54:01,560
Speaker 1: to me to be fewer. And and now you coupled

963
00:54:01,680 --> 00:54:06,719
Speaker 1: that with social media, and that's what brought us together

964
00:54:06,800 --> 00:54:10,680
Speaker 1: here and this point. And again I'm not saying it's

965
00:54:10,680 --> 00:54:12,400
Speaker 1: the end of the world. And I'm one of the

966
00:54:12,480 --> 00:54:16,480
Speaker 1: luckiest guys on the planet, so I'm not complaining. But

967
00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:24,200
Speaker 1: there is a widespread misimpression, perhaps especially among your audience

968
00:54:24,920 --> 00:54:31,239
Speaker 1: or audiences that have a certain predisposition. There is a

969
00:54:31,320 --> 00:54:35,560
Speaker 1: misimpression that I'm somewhere to the left of Bernie Sanders

970
00:54:35,680 --> 00:54:38,839
Speaker 1: or Noam Chomsky. And the truth of the matter is

971
00:54:38,880 --> 00:54:42,240
Speaker 1: that anybody who knows me knows that that isn't even

972
00:54:42,280 --> 00:54:45,960
Speaker 1: close to true. That I'm an ala carte guy, that

973
00:54:46,080 --> 00:54:52,160
Speaker 1: I have many views that could be called old school liberal,

974
00:54:52,560 --> 00:54:57,160
Speaker 1: not progressive or leftist. I have a problem with that.

975
00:54:57,200 --> 00:54:58,840
Speaker 1: I have a problem with cancel culture. I have a

976
00:54:58,880 --> 00:55:02,880
Speaker 1: problem with political wreckness. I have a problem with identity politics.

977
00:55:02,880 --> 00:55:05,520
Speaker 1: If it's blind identity politics. I have a problem with

978
00:55:05,600 --> 00:55:08,440
Speaker 1: what I understand is going on in academia to a

979
00:55:08,520 --> 00:55:13,560
Speaker 1: large extent um. But I have classic liberal views, but

980
00:55:13,680 --> 00:55:17,680
Speaker 1: I also have many views that could be characterized as conservative.

981
00:55:18,280 --> 00:55:23,520
Speaker 1: But a few things kind of hope a bear uh

982
00:55:23,560 --> 00:55:27,000
Speaker 1: in the right wing blog of sphere and Fox News

983
00:55:27,080 --> 00:55:30,000
Speaker 1: or whatever. And it's part of the business model there

984
00:55:30,520 --> 00:55:33,840
Speaker 1: to say to the resentments of the audience, not so

985
00:55:33,920 --> 00:55:36,880
Speaker 1: much the enlightenment of the audience. And so someone like me,

986
00:55:37,080 --> 00:55:40,759
Speaker 1: relatively visible and well known, is useful if you can

987
00:55:40,800 --> 00:55:42,919
Speaker 1: make a straw man out of me. Now I'm not

988
00:55:43,040 --> 00:55:45,919
Speaker 1: I'm not as useful as Nancy Pelosi or somebody like that.

989
00:55:46,160 --> 00:55:49,319
Speaker 1: And neither am I aligned necessarily with Nancy Pelosi. But

990
00:55:49,320 --> 00:55:52,520
Speaker 1: but in passing there were times when I served the purpose.

991
00:55:52,960 --> 00:55:55,760
Speaker 1: And the purpose was not let's see what he really

992
00:55:55,800 --> 00:55:58,880
Speaker 1: thinks and let's get into shades of gray and nuanced. No,

993
00:55:59,440 --> 00:56:03,000
Speaker 1: the purpose was he is part of the left wing

994
00:56:03,120 --> 00:56:06,040
Speaker 1: media machine. And it's very hard, as you said, I

995
00:56:06,040 --> 00:56:09,120
Speaker 1: don't have a show like yours. It's very hard to

996
00:56:09,880 --> 00:56:12,879
Speaker 1: answer that you can defend a position you actually hold,

997
00:56:12,920 --> 00:56:15,040
Speaker 1: and you should if you actually hold it, But how

998
00:56:15,040 --> 00:56:17,560
Speaker 1: do you defend or explain a position that's been assigned

999
00:56:17,560 --> 00:56:21,319
Speaker 1: to you, and motivations and a constellation of beliefs that

1000
00:56:21,360 --> 00:56:24,600
Speaker 1: people have extrapolated from one thing that they misunderstood to

1001
00:56:24,600 --> 00:56:27,480
Speaker 1: begin with. How are you supposed to defend or unravel

1002
00:56:27,560 --> 00:56:29,360
Speaker 1: all of that when none of it is true to

1003
00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:33,000
Speaker 1: who you are? What I always say on my shows

1004
00:56:33,360 --> 00:56:38,319
Speaker 1: is social media creates fifty foot tall caricatures that are

1005
00:56:38,360 --> 00:56:41,400
Speaker 1: often one inch one inch deep. Right, you can punch

1006
00:56:41,520 --> 00:56:45,120
Speaker 1: right through it, but the caricature itself is so large

1007
00:56:45,560 --> 00:56:48,440
Speaker 1: that it isn't in any way representative. And all of

1008
00:56:48,520 --> 00:56:51,880
Speaker 1: us out there, regardless of whether you're a Democrat, Republican, independent,

1009
00:56:51,960 --> 00:56:55,600
Speaker 1: everybody listening to this right now has beliefs that conflict

1010
00:56:55,719 --> 00:56:58,920
Speaker 1: with their party if they are intellectually honest. And I

1011
00:56:58,920 --> 00:57:02,640
Speaker 1: always say, if you agree with everything that a political

1012
00:57:02,719 --> 00:57:06,480
Speaker 1: candidate is saying, then you aren't listening very hard. And

1013
00:57:06,560 --> 00:57:09,160
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure if I were running for president

1014
00:57:09,239 --> 00:57:12,239
Speaker 1: or political office that I would agree with everything I say,

1015
00:57:12,280 --> 00:57:16,520
Speaker 1: because I'm constantly evolving and recalibrating what I believe on

1016
00:57:16,560 --> 00:57:19,240
Speaker 1: a day to day basis. That's what I think intelligent

1017
00:57:19,320 --> 00:57:23,160
Speaker 1: people have to do now. A big part of your

1018
00:57:23,280 --> 00:57:25,800
Speaker 1: becoming what I think it would be fair to say,

1019
00:57:26,200 --> 00:57:31,120
Speaker 1: is a is a figure of of of an easy target. Right,

1020
00:57:31,200 --> 00:57:34,720
Speaker 1: Because you work at NBC, you seem like, you know,

1021
00:57:34,720 --> 00:57:37,960
Speaker 1: you've got the glasses on, you seem professorial at times.

1022
00:57:38,280 --> 00:57:41,320
Speaker 1: You can imagine how you could play the role of

1023
00:57:41,560 --> 00:57:45,280
Speaker 1: a feat liberal. Uh, Mom costas right like you. You

1024
00:57:45,360 --> 00:57:46,760
Speaker 1: kind of they put up the picture and they can

1025
00:57:46,840 --> 00:57:49,320
Speaker 1: kind of take advantage of you. Your global You've been

1026
00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:52,280
Speaker 1: doing the Olympics, all these things. A lot of that

1027
00:57:52,400 --> 00:57:55,040
Speaker 1: came out of and you can correct me if I'm

1028
00:57:55,080 --> 00:57:58,680
Speaker 1: wrong here, But in essay you did about guns on

1029
00:57:59,080 --> 00:58:03,840
Speaker 1: NBC J Ring Sunday Night Football, What exactly happened there?

1030
00:58:03,880 --> 00:58:07,680
Speaker 1: What was the experience? What would you change if anything,

1031
00:58:07,920 --> 00:58:12,680
Speaker 1: about the way that that was presented. First of all, I,

1032
00:58:13,000 --> 00:58:17,160
Speaker 1: to some extent fumbled it, and I've always owned up

1033
00:58:17,200 --> 00:58:22,640
Speaker 1: to it. Jovan Belcher, linebacker for the Chiefs, murders his

1034
00:58:22,760 --> 00:58:26,160
Speaker 1: fiance in front of their two year old child, uh

1035
00:58:26,200 --> 00:58:28,400
Speaker 1: and his mother in law, and then goes to the

1036
00:58:28,480 --> 00:58:31,760
Speaker 1: Chiefs training center and in front of his coach and

1037
00:58:31,880 --> 00:58:37,000
Speaker 1: general manager, commits suicide. All right, I do not think

1038
00:58:37,200 --> 00:58:39,320
Speaker 1: that I'm going to be called upon to do anything

1039
00:58:39,880 --> 00:58:44,600
Speaker 1: in essay form that Sunday Night. Uh. They had devoted

1040
00:58:45,160 --> 00:58:48,800
Speaker 1: almost the entire pregame and halftime to looking at this

1041
00:58:48,840 --> 00:58:51,560
Speaker 1: issue still evolving. They had a lot of people from

1042
00:58:51,600 --> 00:58:55,840
Speaker 1: the chiefs with poignant commentary. Dan Patrick and Rodney Harrison

1043
00:58:55,840 --> 00:58:58,160
Speaker 1: and Tony Dunge were handling it back in the studio.

1044
00:58:58,760 --> 00:59:04,200
Speaker 1: UM usually I would my essays sometime after the opening kickoff,

1045
00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:06,800
Speaker 1: and I presented to them so that they could put

1046
00:59:06,840 --> 00:59:09,200
Speaker 1: some b roll on it with about I don't know,

1047
00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:12,360
Speaker 1: seven eight minutes to go in the second quarter. In

1048
00:59:12,400 --> 00:59:14,600
Speaker 1: this case, with about three or four minutes to go

1049
00:59:15,080 --> 00:59:18,440
Speaker 1: in the second quarter, it's we're gonna need a minute

1050
00:59:18,480 --> 00:59:22,240
Speaker 1: to ninety seconds from you and a producer. I take

1051
00:59:22,280 --> 00:59:24,960
Speaker 1: responsibility not blaming it on him, because I'm the last

1052
00:59:25,000 --> 00:59:27,640
Speaker 1: line of defense. I gotta sign off on it. A

1053
00:59:27,760 --> 00:59:31,120
Speaker 1: producer hands me a column written and here's the irony

1054
00:59:31,240 --> 00:59:36,680
Speaker 1: written by your colleague and partner, Jason Whitlock, who now

1055
00:59:36,840 --> 00:59:39,760
Speaker 1: is seen as although it's a caricature, and I have

1056
00:59:39,840 --> 00:59:42,320
Speaker 1: more regard for Jason than to caricature him, but for

1057
00:59:42,920 --> 00:59:46,680
Speaker 1: our purposes here is seen as a conservative voice. He's

1058
00:59:46,720 --> 00:59:50,640
Speaker 1: on Fox, he's on OutKick. But Malason had written a

1059
00:59:50,760 --> 00:59:55,480
Speaker 1: large article about this part of which decried what he

1060
00:59:55,640 --> 01:00:01,400
Speaker 1: called the gun culture in sports. And the gun culture

1061
01:00:01,440 --> 01:00:04,400
Speaker 1: in sports had been something which had been written about

1062
01:00:04,400 --> 01:00:09,360
Speaker 1: and talked about well before the Belcher incident. ESPN had

1063
01:00:09,400 --> 01:00:12,840
Speaker 1: done a big thing about it. There has been takeout

1064
01:00:12,880 --> 01:00:16,520
Speaker 1: stories in the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and the

1065
01:00:16,640 --> 01:00:20,720
Speaker 1: USA Today about a gun culture in sports. And all

1066
01:00:20,760 --> 01:00:23,920
Speaker 1: you have to do is google athletes and guns, and

1067
01:00:23,960 --> 01:00:29,440
Speaker 1: there's a litany of criminality, tragedy, folly associated with athletes

1068
01:00:29,440 --> 01:00:33,440
Speaker 1: and guns. And while certainly it has happened in society,

1069
01:00:33,960 --> 01:00:37,560
Speaker 1: it has happened infrequently, if at all, that a prominent athlete,

1070
01:00:37,560 --> 01:00:40,560
Speaker 1: by virtue of having a gun, has turned the situation

1071
01:00:40,600 --> 01:00:43,760
Speaker 1: around for the better, where any sensible person would say,

1072
01:00:43,920 --> 01:00:47,560
Speaker 1: thank goodness, he did that. So there was a gun culture.

1073
01:00:47,920 --> 01:00:51,640
Speaker 1: Think Gilbert Arenas pulling a gun on a teammate in

1074
01:00:51,680 --> 01:00:56,640
Speaker 1: the Washington Wizard's locker room. Think Ray Caruth, Think Tank Johnson,

1075
01:00:56,920 --> 01:01:01,800
Speaker 1: think a long, long list. And that's what That's what

1076
01:01:02,040 --> 01:01:08,400
Speaker 1: Jason was concerned about, an attitude towards guns, a misplaced

1077
01:01:08,400 --> 01:01:13,480
Speaker 1: notion of street cred or manhood, and the easy accessibility

1078
01:01:13,640 --> 01:01:17,960
Speaker 1: to guns which leads very often to tragedy, no one

1079
01:01:18,000 --> 01:01:20,920
Speaker 1: in the right mind thinks that that Javon Belchi couldn't

1080
01:01:20,920 --> 01:01:24,400
Speaker 1: have strangled his fiancee or beaten her to death or

1081
01:01:24,600 --> 01:01:28,200
Speaker 1: stabbed there. But we know that a gun not only

1082
01:01:28,240 --> 01:01:32,280
Speaker 1: makes it easier, but that the survival rate with a gun,

1083
01:01:32,560 --> 01:01:36,720
Speaker 1: whether it's attempted suicide or attempted murder, is the survival

1084
01:01:37,040 --> 01:01:40,400
Speaker 1: rate is less than by other means. And if we're

1085
01:01:40,400 --> 01:01:43,160
Speaker 1: also just talking about guns in general, you don't have

1086
01:01:43,680 --> 01:01:46,920
Speaker 1: maths instances of people throwing people off the roof or

1087
01:01:47,000 --> 01:01:51,000
Speaker 1: up the building, but you do have mass shootings that

1088
01:01:51,040 --> 01:01:56,680
Speaker 1: involve guns. So now this producer hands me this article.

1089
01:01:57,080 --> 01:02:00,480
Speaker 1: I look at it, and what Jason was saying was

1090
01:02:00,840 --> 01:02:04,040
Speaker 1: obvious to me. He was talking about a gun culture,

1091
01:02:04,240 --> 01:02:07,000
Speaker 1: out about gun control, out about the Second Amendment. It

1092
01:02:07,160 --> 01:02:10,280
Speaker 1: rang true to me, and I thought wrongly that the

1093
01:02:10,400 --> 01:02:15,320
Speaker 1: audience would understand the point, so I quoted a portion

1094
01:02:15,360 --> 01:02:17,040
Speaker 1: of it because they didn't have time to write my

1095
01:02:17,120 --> 01:02:20,800
Speaker 1: own thing. I quoted a portion of it. It was

1096
01:02:21,440 --> 01:02:26,760
Speaker 1: misunderstood as a plea for gun control or an anti

1097
01:02:26,800 --> 01:02:33,120
Speaker 1: Second Amendment position. That's my fault, And in retrospect, Clay,

1098
01:02:33,280 --> 01:02:36,720
Speaker 1: I'm a good enough broadcaster. I knew this an hour

1099
01:02:36,840 --> 01:02:39,560
Speaker 1: later when the response started to come in and people

1100
01:02:39,600 --> 01:02:42,360
Speaker 1: were outraged that they wanted me fired, and the n

1101
01:02:42,480 --> 01:02:46,120
Speaker 1: r A goes nuts and he's anti American, he's anti

1102
01:02:46,200 --> 01:02:50,520
Speaker 1: Second Amendment, etcetera, etcetera. I should have off the top

1103
01:02:50,560 --> 01:02:53,640
Speaker 1: of my head, I should have said, because this is

1104
01:02:53,680 --> 01:02:59,040
Speaker 1: really what I was thinking. Every time a tragedy intersects

1105
01:02:59,120 --> 01:03:03,520
Speaker 1: with sports, we hear one of the dumbest cliches in sports. Well,

1106
01:03:03,920 --> 01:03:06,800
Speaker 1: that really puts it all in perspective, But in fact,

1107
01:03:06,840 --> 01:03:09,680
Speaker 1: that perspective has a very short shelf life because we're

1108
01:03:09,760 --> 01:03:12,240
Speaker 1: right back to obsessing about the same sports issues we

1109
01:03:12,240 --> 01:03:16,120
Speaker 1: were concerned with fifteen minutes ago. If we're really looking

1110
01:03:16,160 --> 01:03:19,280
Speaker 1: for some perspective in the aftermath of this tragedy, then

1111
01:03:19,320 --> 01:03:23,760
Speaker 1: a serious conversation should ensued, including but not limited to

1112
01:03:24,240 --> 01:03:27,720
Speaker 1: domestic violence and are those who play a violent sport

1113
01:03:28,120 --> 01:03:32,040
Speaker 1: more inclined to it than they're athletic peers and contemporaries

1114
01:03:32,560 --> 01:03:35,960
Speaker 1: the effects of football itself. We're learning about the long

1115
01:03:36,080 --> 01:03:39,760
Speaker 1: range effects of CTE, but we're also beginning to learn

1116
01:03:39,800 --> 01:03:44,400
Speaker 1: then in the short term, emotions and impulse control can

1117
01:03:44,440 --> 01:03:48,840
Speaker 1: be affected by head trauma, especially when mixed with alcohol.

1118
01:03:49,240 --> 01:03:53,959
Speaker 1: Performance enhancing drugs or pain killers, whatever it might be,

1119
01:03:54,280 --> 01:03:57,480
Speaker 1: and the whole idea of athletes and guns. And I

1120
01:03:57,520 --> 01:04:00,160
Speaker 1: should have said, and would have said, not talking here

1121
01:04:00,200 --> 01:04:05,600
Speaker 1: about anyone's responsible, lawful exercise of their legitimate Second Amendment rights,

1122
01:04:06,040 --> 01:04:10,400
Speaker 1: but there is an irresponsible attitude toward guns that is

1123
01:04:10,520 --> 01:04:12,960
Speaker 1: part of the sports world, and we'd be better off

1124
01:04:13,000 --> 01:04:15,840
Speaker 1: taking a serious look at that. If I had said that,

1125
01:04:15,960 --> 01:04:18,240
Speaker 1: the n r A types, the absolutists still would have

1126
01:04:18,320 --> 01:04:20,960
Speaker 1: come after me, but a larger portion of the audience

1127
01:04:20,960 --> 01:04:24,640
Speaker 1: would have understood what I was saying. I clarified it

1128
01:04:25,160 --> 01:04:29,480
Speaker 1: after that, almost immediately after that, I went into the Lions.

1129
01:04:29,520 --> 01:04:31,800
Speaker 1: Then I went on with Bill O'Reilly. I went on

1130
01:04:31,880 --> 01:04:34,800
Speaker 1: with Howard Kurtz. But again, if it's part of the

1131
01:04:34,880 --> 01:04:40,120
Speaker 1: business model, no one comes on and says, oh, okay,

1132
01:04:40,240 --> 01:04:43,040
Speaker 1: he clarified it, we get it now. No, that wouldn't

1133
01:04:43,080 --> 01:04:48,680
Speaker 1: serve their purpose. So somebody on box says, Bob Costas

1134
01:04:48,800 --> 01:04:53,160
Speaker 1: is a hypocritical buffoon. He has armed security, but he

1135
01:04:53,240 --> 01:04:56,160
Speaker 1: doesn't want you to have it. So I said to

1136
01:04:56,760 --> 01:05:01,840
Speaker 1: Howard Kurtz, who's their media reporter, I've never had armed security.

1137
01:05:02,000 --> 01:05:05,760
Speaker 1: I've never had personal security in my entire life. Maybe

1138
01:05:05,840 --> 01:05:10,280
Speaker 1: I should, especially now, but I never have. I said,

1139
01:05:10,320 --> 01:05:13,520
Speaker 1: there's massive security. Of course, at an Olympics, where the

1140
01:05:13,560 --> 01:05:15,440
Speaker 1: President of the United States has to go through the

1141
01:05:15,480 --> 01:05:18,800
Speaker 1: same security that someone holding a ticket has to go through,

1142
01:05:19,120 --> 01:05:22,880
Speaker 1: and there is one security person assigned to NBC something

1143
01:05:22,880 --> 01:05:26,120
Speaker 1: I football. Apart from that, I have never had personal

1144
01:05:26,160 --> 01:05:29,520
Speaker 1: security a day in my life, on the job or

1145
01:05:29,560 --> 01:05:32,520
Speaker 1: going to the restaurant or walking down the street. What

1146
01:05:32,680 --> 01:05:35,560
Speaker 1: was the way that was fun? Bob Costa says, because

1147
01:05:35,600 --> 01:05:38,840
Speaker 1: I don't personally pay for it, an NBC does. I'm

1148
01:05:38,880 --> 01:05:41,040
Speaker 1: not a hypocrite, even though I've got all of this

1149
01:05:41,520 --> 01:05:46,160
Speaker 1: personal security. If I could make this any clearer than this,

1150
01:05:47,000 --> 01:05:49,680
Speaker 1: I don't know how I could look. When I hear

1151
01:05:49,720 --> 01:05:54,200
Speaker 1: about somebody whose home is broken into, they're in some

1152
01:05:54,320 --> 01:05:57,320
Speaker 1: kind of danger, and he or she uses a gun

1153
01:05:57,400 --> 01:06:01,920
Speaker 1: to defend themselves and their family, I applaud it. I

1154
01:06:02,040 --> 01:06:07,400
Speaker 1: applaud it. If someone breaks into your home, you don't

1155
01:06:07,400 --> 01:06:12,200
Speaker 1: have time to evaluate what is it here at sixty

1156
01:06:13,320 --> 01:06:17,680
Speaker 1: if you're if you're a woman who could be overpowered,

1157
01:06:18,400 --> 01:06:21,280
Speaker 1: or you're a guy who calculates the odds, and I

1158
01:06:21,280 --> 01:06:24,120
Speaker 1: don't like my chances here in hand to hand combat

1159
01:06:24,600 --> 01:06:27,920
Speaker 1: and my kids are asleep upstairs. If there's even a

1160
01:06:27,960 --> 01:06:31,600
Speaker 1: five percent chance of one percent chance that you, your wife,

1161
01:06:31,680 --> 01:06:35,600
Speaker 1: your kids are in danger, that person who broke into

1162
01:06:35,680 --> 01:06:39,840
Speaker 1: your house put him or herself in jeopardy, and whatever happens,

1163
01:06:40,320 --> 01:06:44,520
Speaker 1: I'm okay with it. I do not want to see

1164
01:06:44,520 --> 01:06:48,400
Speaker 1: the Second Amendment revoked. I think there should be reasonable

1165
01:06:48,520 --> 01:06:54,920
Speaker 1: guns safety laws. UM. Looking at rules about cars um

1166
01:06:55,280 --> 01:06:59,880
Speaker 1: would be a good template. Uh. Nobody says that because

1167
01:07:00,080 --> 01:07:02,800
Speaker 1: or speed limits, and because you have to register your

1168
01:07:02,840 --> 01:07:06,600
Speaker 1: car or have a license. Nobody says that means that

1169
01:07:06,680 --> 01:07:08,280
Speaker 1: we're going to have to go to Grandma's house and

1170
01:07:08,320 --> 01:07:10,520
Speaker 1: a horse and buggy on Thanksgiving because they're going to

1171
01:07:10,560 --> 01:07:14,880
Speaker 1: take our cars away. And nobody says also that you,

1172
01:07:15,520 --> 01:07:18,960
Speaker 1: um that you should be allowed to drive the same

1173
01:07:19,080 --> 01:07:22,800
Speaker 1: car that they use them that they Tonify hundred or

1174
01:07:22,840 --> 01:07:27,640
Speaker 1: at Indie on a city street. These are reasonable restrictions

1175
01:07:27,680 --> 01:07:32,040
Speaker 1: which don't get in the way of people's basic rights. Um.

1176
01:07:32,080 --> 01:07:35,280
Speaker 1: And when someone says they look to take the Second

1177
01:07:35,280 --> 01:07:37,800
Speaker 1: Amendment way, they're going to take the Second Amendment away.

1178
01:07:37,880 --> 01:07:40,760
Speaker 1: Anyone who could pass a Civics test knows just how

1179
01:07:40,800 --> 01:07:46,120
Speaker 1: difficult it is to revoke a constitutional amendment. Exactly one

1180
01:07:46,200 --> 01:07:48,440
Speaker 1: has been revoked in the entire history of the country,

1181
01:07:48,720 --> 01:07:52,800
Speaker 1: and that was the short lived prohibition against alcohol. The

1182
01:07:52,880 --> 01:07:57,240
Speaker 1: steps you'd have to go through to revoke a constitutional

1183
01:07:57,280 --> 01:08:00,640
Speaker 1: amendment are so extensive that hill is so high to climb.

1184
01:08:00,920 --> 01:08:04,400
Speaker 1: And nobody I know that has any credibility has suggested it.

1185
01:08:04,520 --> 01:08:10,840
Speaker 1: Certainly not me, but that kind of paranoia that that

1186
01:08:10,840 --> 01:08:14,320
Speaker 1: that's it worked there this, this person who is prominent,

1187
01:08:14,520 --> 01:08:18,360
Speaker 1: has said something that perchs your resentment, and it's not

1188
01:08:18,479 --> 01:08:21,680
Speaker 1: in our best interests really to clarify it or to

1189
01:08:22,320 --> 01:08:25,840
Speaker 1: acknowledge the shades of gray, because this works for us,

1190
01:08:26,320 --> 01:08:30,439
Speaker 1: this works in our business model. So once once that

1191
01:08:30,520 --> 01:08:32,320
Speaker 1: was in place, and I thank you for giving me

1192
01:08:32,360 --> 01:08:35,280
Speaker 1: this much time, Clay, And I also know that no

1193
01:08:35,280 --> 01:08:39,320
Speaker 1: matter how carefully I've expressed myself, how truthfully and how

1194
01:08:39,400 --> 01:08:42,400
Speaker 1: much nuance, there are some people who just don't want

1195
01:08:42,439 --> 01:08:45,360
Speaker 1: to hear it because it doesn't align with what they

1196
01:08:45,400 --> 01:08:48,880
Speaker 1: want to believe. Bob Costas here Clay Travis Wins and Losses.

1197
01:08:48,960 --> 01:08:51,800
Speaker 1: How much of the reaction do you think had to

1198
01:08:51,840 --> 01:08:54,960
Speaker 1: do with your opinion came out during a football game?

1199
01:08:55,760 --> 01:09:01,320
Speaker 1: Oh a lot, a lot of it did and in

1200
01:09:01,320 --> 01:09:03,599
Speaker 1: other words, if you had gone on meet the press,

1201
01:09:04,000 --> 01:09:06,719
Speaker 1: you know, let's say that weekend, because they had wanted

1202
01:09:06,760 --> 01:09:09,840
Speaker 1: to talk about violence in football and you had expressed

1203
01:09:09,880 --> 01:09:13,719
Speaker 1: the exact same opinions, I don't know that it would

1204
01:09:13,760 --> 01:09:17,439
Speaker 1: have been characterized in the same way as it was

1205
01:09:17,600 --> 01:09:20,120
Speaker 1: because it occurred at halftime of a football game, and

1206
01:09:20,120 --> 01:09:22,800
Speaker 1: whether or not people wanted to see a serious analysis

1207
01:09:22,800 --> 01:09:25,439
Speaker 1: of Jovan Belcher in that situation a lot of people,

1208
01:09:25,439 --> 01:09:27,240
Speaker 1: and this has been, you know, kind of what I've

1209
01:09:27,240 --> 01:09:28,960
Speaker 1: focused on for a long time. I try to think

1210
01:09:28,960 --> 01:09:31,519
Speaker 1: about the average guy or girl out there watching a game.

1211
01:09:31,880 --> 01:09:33,760
Speaker 1: They just want to have a beer, and they want

1212
01:09:33,760 --> 01:09:36,320
Speaker 1: to watch a football game, and they don't really want

1213
01:09:36,320 --> 01:09:40,000
Speaker 1: to see or have to confront larger societal issues for

1214
01:09:40,040 --> 01:09:46,480
Speaker 1: any reason. And so I think sometimes the juxtaposition of frivolity,

1215
01:09:46,520 --> 01:09:51,639
Speaker 1: which is in general football and gun control or racial

1216
01:09:52,000 --> 01:09:55,599
Speaker 1: oppression or whatever it is, that is grating too many

1217
01:09:55,640 --> 01:09:58,280
Speaker 1: people because this is their escape from the real world.

1218
01:09:58,360 --> 01:10:00,720
Speaker 1: So I think that also actored in in a big

1219
01:10:00,760 --> 01:10:03,559
Speaker 1: way here, which goes to you having a relatively short

1220
01:10:03,600 --> 01:10:06,200
Speaker 1: amount of time to suddenly get thrown into the deep

1221
01:10:06,280 --> 01:10:08,519
Speaker 1: end to the pool where you have to address something

1222
01:10:08,560 --> 01:10:11,720
Speaker 1: that is freighted with incredible difficulty and complexity in the

1223
01:10:11,720 --> 01:10:15,120
Speaker 1: middle of something that's otherwise privilege. They asked me to

1224
01:10:15,200 --> 01:10:16,880
Speaker 1: do it, and I should have said I had enough

1225
01:10:16,920 --> 01:10:20,599
Speaker 1: standing to say, look, there isn't enough time. It's better

1226
01:10:20,680 --> 01:10:24,439
Speaker 1: off being addressed in a larger and different forum. I

1227
01:10:24,520 --> 01:10:27,920
Speaker 1: didn't do that. That was my mistake. Look, a guy

1228
01:10:27,960 --> 01:10:31,240
Speaker 1: who wins a gold glove can food a routine groundball.

1229
01:10:31,680 --> 01:10:34,680
Speaker 1: It happens. This is live television in the heat of

1230
01:10:34,720 --> 01:10:37,960
Speaker 1: the moment, and I made a mistake in judgment. But

1231
01:10:38,080 --> 01:10:42,480
Speaker 1: that does not mean that my views should be perpetually

1232
01:10:42,600 --> 01:10:48,080
Speaker 1: mischaracterized and grotesquely caricatured. But I think if I had

1233
01:10:48,160 --> 01:10:51,360
Speaker 1: done what I mentioned a few minutes ago, starting with

1234
01:10:51,439 --> 01:10:55,400
Speaker 1: domestic violence and the effects of football, and then framed

1235
01:10:55,600 --> 01:10:58,040
Speaker 1: the gun part of it as I just suggest that

1236
01:10:58,120 --> 01:11:00,559
Speaker 1: I should have, then it would have been less jarring,

1237
01:11:00,880 --> 01:11:03,160
Speaker 1: and it would have been understood that I wasn't doing

1238
01:11:03,200 --> 01:11:09,640
Speaker 1: it gratuitously because these issues had intersected with with football

1239
01:11:09,800 --> 01:11:12,439
Speaker 1: that weekend, just as when NBC asked me to do

1240
01:11:12,439 --> 01:11:15,559
Speaker 1: a commentary on the red Skins team name that had

1241
01:11:15,600 --> 01:11:17,960
Speaker 1: become a big issue that week. The President had been

1242
01:11:17,960 --> 01:11:20,320
Speaker 1: asked about it. Goodell had been asked about it, Dan

1243
01:11:20,360 --> 01:11:22,719
Speaker 1: Snyder had been asked about it, and Washington was playing

1244
01:11:22,760 --> 01:11:26,960
Speaker 1: Dallas on our air, and I delivered a very measured

1245
01:11:27,400 --> 01:11:32,080
Speaker 1: commentary about it, trying to lay out the distinctions in

1246
01:11:32,160 --> 01:11:37,440
Speaker 1: my mind between redskins and names associated with Native Americans

1247
01:11:37,520 --> 01:11:42,880
Speaker 1: like chiefs, braves or warriors. By definition every dictionary, by definition,

1248
01:11:43,160 --> 01:11:49,519
Speaker 1: redskins is derogatory, pejorative, a slur, an insult. No such

1249
01:11:49,560 --> 01:11:52,920
Speaker 1: definition applies to chiefs, braves, warriors. So I'm not a

1250
01:11:52,960 --> 01:11:55,840
Speaker 1: political correctness guy, even though it was handy for people

1251
01:11:55,880 --> 01:11:58,160
Speaker 1: to luck me in there, because after the gun thing

1252
01:11:58,439 --> 01:12:01,040
Speaker 1: then there were poised to believe um that I was

1253
01:12:01,080 --> 01:12:05,160
Speaker 1: some sort of crazy leftist. Um. Now, I think some

1254
01:12:05,240 --> 01:12:09,840
Speaker 1: people view the Redskins thing differently. Even then, a lot

1255
01:12:09,840 --> 01:12:15,400
Speaker 1: of conservatives, including the late Charles Krafhammer, Kathleen Parker, Phil Mushnik,

1256
01:12:15,439 --> 01:12:18,280
Speaker 1: who is viewed as being writer center media columnists in

1257
01:12:18,320 --> 01:12:21,680
Speaker 1: the New York Post, Tom Cole, a Native American but

1258
01:12:21,800 --> 01:12:25,439
Speaker 1: Republican congressman from Oklahoma, a lot of them agreed with

1259
01:12:25,439 --> 01:12:28,280
Speaker 1: me at that at that time. But what also came

1260
01:12:28,280 --> 01:12:33,080
Speaker 1: out of that play was this this notion, including among

1261
01:12:33,160 --> 01:12:35,800
Speaker 1: people who are fans of mine and who might have

1262
01:12:35,840 --> 01:12:38,920
Speaker 1: agreed with what I've said, But the notion, well, he

1263
01:12:39,000 --> 01:12:43,840
Speaker 1: really leaned into politics. He politicized everything. They were well

1264
01:12:43,880 --> 01:12:47,400
Speaker 1: over a hundred of those halftime essays. Two the two

1265
01:12:47,439 --> 01:12:51,160
Speaker 1: we've just discussed guns and redskins could even be construed

1266
01:12:51,479 --> 01:12:55,280
Speaker 1: as political. Everything else was Tom Brady and Peyton Manning

1267
01:12:55,360 --> 01:12:57,640
Speaker 1: or art Model or al Davis dies and you do

1268
01:12:57,760 --> 01:13:01,000
Speaker 1: some sort of assessment and a pre creation or what's

1269
01:13:01,479 --> 01:13:05,280
Speaker 1: right or wrong about the overtime rules? That's what it was. Herry.

1270
01:13:06,080 --> 01:13:08,679
Speaker 1: And if I'm such a left wing guy as opposed

1271
01:13:08,720 --> 01:13:11,679
Speaker 1: to the ala carte guy I really am, What would

1272
01:13:11,680 --> 01:13:16,719
Speaker 1: it count for? The essay I did about Vladimir Putin

1273
01:13:17,240 --> 01:13:20,439
Speaker 1: in Sochi, which was widely viewed as one of the

1274
01:13:20,520 --> 01:13:24,160
Speaker 1: toughest ever directed towards the head of state and toward

1275
01:13:24,200 --> 01:13:28,040
Speaker 1: a host nation. What would account for me? Asking the

1276
01:13:28,080 --> 01:13:31,120
Speaker 1: heads of the IOC repeatedly, what is it with the

1277
01:13:31,200 --> 01:13:36,639
Speaker 1: IOC and authoritarian nations like China and Russia? What would

1278
01:13:36,640 --> 01:13:40,519
Speaker 1: account for me? Twice in the opening ceremonies and again

1279
01:13:40,520 --> 01:13:44,840
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, pointing out that China was positioned,

1280
01:13:44,840 --> 01:13:48,160
Speaker 1: had the motivation and the means to replicate the old

1281
01:13:48,280 --> 01:13:53,040
Speaker 1: Eastern Bloc sports machine, complete with all the cheating that

1282
01:13:53,040 --> 01:13:56,160
Speaker 1: that implies, and pointing out both in an interview with

1283
01:13:56,479 --> 01:14:00,320
Speaker 1: President Bush in two thousand eight and another common areas

1284
01:14:00,640 --> 01:14:05,320
Speaker 1: small little snippets, judicious small percentage of the overall coverage.

1285
01:14:05,320 --> 01:14:08,000
Speaker 1: But look, there's no freedom of speech here. There's a

1286
01:14:08,000 --> 01:14:11,720
Speaker 1: firewall on the internet. Yes, China has opened up to

1287
01:14:11,760 --> 01:14:14,760
Speaker 1: the world. Yes, the Beijing that I'm visiting in two

1288
01:14:14,800 --> 01:14:18,360
Speaker 1: thousand eight is much different than the p King is.

1289
01:14:18,439 --> 01:14:21,479
Speaker 1: Most Americans knew it that I first saw in nineteen.

1290
01:14:22,600 --> 01:14:26,960
Speaker 1: It's been transformed. It's a modern city, it's there's lots

1291
01:14:26,960 --> 01:14:31,479
Speaker 1: of commerce. They're not a communist country by economics anymore,

1292
01:14:31,800 --> 01:14:36,000
Speaker 1: but they are still an authoritarian country, often often a

1293
01:14:36,200 --> 01:14:41,639
Speaker 1: terribly tunitive totalitarian country. Is that a left wing thing

1294
01:14:41,720 --> 01:14:44,360
Speaker 1: to say? Is it a left wing thing to say that?

1295
01:14:44,479 --> 01:14:48,880
Speaker 1: The two thousand twelve Olympics in London for anniversary of

1296
01:14:48,920 --> 01:14:52,200
Speaker 1: the Munich massacre, when the Israeli delegation came in to

1297
01:14:52,280 --> 01:14:54,960
Speaker 1: point out that the IOC, for reasons of its own,

1298
01:14:55,280 --> 01:15:00,840
Speaker 1: would not acknowledge this, not commemorate the dark this day

1299
01:15:00,880 --> 01:15:04,320
Speaker 1: in Olympic history and here's the key. I wasn't talking

1300
01:15:04,320 --> 01:15:09,519
Speaker 1: about Newtown. I wasn't talking about um Sandy Hook. I

1301
01:15:09,600 --> 01:15:13,840
Speaker 1: wasn't talking about something that happened outside the context of sports,

1302
01:15:13,880 --> 01:15:17,040
Speaker 1: that was relevant in the context of the Olympics and

1303
01:15:17,120 --> 01:15:19,880
Speaker 1: on that occasion. And it took about thirty seconds. But

1304
01:15:19,920 --> 01:15:22,800
Speaker 1: I don't think many other broadcasters in my position would

1305
01:15:22,840 --> 01:15:26,200
Speaker 1: have done it. But it certainly wasn't a left wing position.

1306
01:15:26,560 --> 01:15:29,920
Speaker 1: I think I'm a common sense guy who has, as

1307
01:15:29,960 --> 01:15:32,760
Speaker 1: I said, all the cart positions, some that could be

1308
01:15:32,880 --> 01:15:36,640
Speaker 1: characterized on either side of the central dividing line. Have

1309
01:15:36,720 --> 01:15:39,680
Speaker 1: you voted for Republicans for president as well as Democrats

1310
01:15:39,680 --> 01:15:41,960
Speaker 1: in your life? Yeah, and you're and you're open to

1311
01:15:42,040 --> 01:15:44,320
Speaker 1: doing that in the years ahead. You know, who knows

1312
01:15:44,360 --> 01:15:48,920
Speaker 1: who's gonna be running in That might surprise people who

1313
01:15:48,960 --> 01:15:51,800
Speaker 1: are convinced that you're a left winger. Right, you're open

1314
01:15:51,880 --> 01:15:57,200
Speaker 1: to voting for either side of the political equation. Sure, sure,

1315
01:15:58,160 --> 01:15:59,880
Speaker 1: Now I want to make it too political, but I'll

1316
01:16:00,160 --> 01:16:06,040
Speaker 1: just say this this year, if if a Republican like

1317
01:16:06,240 --> 01:16:12,400
Speaker 1: John McCain or John Kasik, or Mitt Romney or or others,

1318
01:16:12,960 --> 01:16:17,320
Speaker 1: if Republicans of those of that stripe, we're running this

1319
01:16:17,400 --> 01:16:21,599
Speaker 1: year against Joe Biden, who is a decent man, clearly

1320
01:16:21,600 --> 01:16:25,080
Speaker 1: a decent man, but has certain deficits. I would seriously

1321
01:16:25,080 --> 01:16:28,439
Speaker 1: consider voting Republican. Be sure to catch live editions about

1322
01:16:28,520 --> 01:16:31,920
Speaker 1: Kicked the coverage with Clay Travis weekdays at six am Eastern,

1323
01:16:32,000 --> 01:16:35,479
Speaker 1: three am Pacific. We're talking to Bob Costas. I'm Clay

1324
01:16:35,479 --> 01:16:38,479
Speaker 1: Traviss is the Wins and Losses podcast. This ties in

1325
01:16:38,520 --> 01:16:41,000
Speaker 1: a bit with cancel culture, which you said you are

1326
01:16:41,080 --> 01:16:44,720
Speaker 1: not a fan of live television or live radio or

1327
01:16:44,800 --> 01:16:47,960
Speaker 1: any form of live broadcast. You have done it as

1328
01:16:48,040 --> 01:16:51,080
Speaker 1: well or better than almost anyone when you consider the

1329
01:16:51,160 --> 01:16:54,280
Speaker 1: number of hours that you're going to do it. Everybody

1330
01:16:54,280 --> 01:16:56,679
Speaker 1: out there who listens to the radio show knows it's difficult.

1331
01:16:56,720 --> 01:16:59,799
Speaker 1: It's like tap dancing at times above a razor, particularly

1332
01:16:59,840 --> 01:17:03,160
Speaker 1: in social media era, what I would say often happens.

1333
01:17:03,160 --> 01:17:05,000
Speaker 1: And this is what my position on the n r A.

1334
01:17:05,640 --> 01:17:07,880
Speaker 1: I think many people in the n r A are

1335
01:17:08,080 --> 01:17:10,519
Speaker 1: terrified that if they've given inch, somebody's gonna take a

1336
01:17:10,560 --> 01:17:14,120
Speaker 1: mile right and that uh, and that the perspective on

1337
01:17:14,600 --> 01:17:16,799
Speaker 1: you may you may you and I may have different agreements,

1338
01:17:16,880 --> 01:17:19,000
Speaker 1: or many people out there may have different agreements on

1339
01:17:19,360 --> 01:17:22,080
Speaker 1: what should happen with the statue of Robert E. Lee Right,

1340
01:17:22,560 --> 01:17:25,080
Speaker 1: um and uh, And certainly many people could have a

1341
01:17:25,120 --> 01:17:27,559
Speaker 1: variety of opinions. I'm a big history buff grew up

1342
01:17:27,600 --> 01:17:31,240
Speaker 1: in the South. I abhor the idea of taking down statues.

1343
01:17:31,280 --> 01:17:33,840
Speaker 1: I think it's a bad precedent to set. I think

1344
01:17:33,920 --> 01:17:36,640
Speaker 1: oftentimes the statues the museums don't want them, which is

1345
01:17:36,640 --> 01:17:39,559
Speaker 1: a usual thing to say. But I think most people,

1346
01:17:39,840 --> 01:17:42,840
Speaker 1: regardless of where they come down on that issue, would

1347
01:17:42,880 --> 01:17:46,439
Speaker 1: say it's crazy to tear down the Washington Monument, or

1348
01:17:46,560 --> 01:17:49,160
Speaker 1: to blow up the Lincoln Memorial or the Jefferson Memorial

1349
01:17:49,200 --> 01:17:52,200
Speaker 1: or things like that. But to me, the problem with

1350
01:17:52,280 --> 01:17:55,840
Speaker 1: cancel culture is it's the progressive tip of the spear.

1351
01:17:56,000 --> 01:17:58,519
Speaker 1: They never stop right there. There's never like your point

1352
01:17:58,560 --> 01:18:00,720
Speaker 1: on the Redskins name is I think a one. If

1353
01:18:00,760 --> 01:18:03,960
Speaker 1: you told me, hey, you can give away the Redskins

1354
01:18:04,040 --> 01:18:06,920
Speaker 1: name and we'll never have an argument about the Chiefs

1355
01:18:07,120 --> 01:18:09,920
Speaker 1: or the Braves, or the Florida State Seminoles or any

1356
01:18:09,960 --> 01:18:12,800
Speaker 1: of those tribes, that's the end of the discussion. Right.

1357
01:18:13,080 --> 01:18:15,880
Speaker 1: As a reasonable person, I would say, Okay, I'll give

1358
01:18:15,920 --> 01:18:19,600
Speaker 1: you the Redskins. Let's just table all other mascots and

1359
01:18:19,640 --> 01:18:23,960
Speaker 1: whether or not they're offensive. I don't want to be Yeah,

1360
01:18:24,000 --> 01:18:26,840
Speaker 1: I don't want to go uh full board to try

1361
01:18:26,840 --> 01:18:29,759
Speaker 1: to defend the fighting Irish nickname because somebody is upset

1362
01:18:29,800 --> 01:18:32,559
Speaker 1: that it's a caricature of an Irish person who has,

1363
01:18:32,720 --> 01:18:34,479
Speaker 1: you know, so much too much to drink and wants

1364
01:18:34,479 --> 01:18:36,479
Speaker 1: to get into a fight. I'm okay with it, right,

1365
01:18:36,960 --> 01:18:42,120
Speaker 1: let's just yes, right. At some point you have to

1366
01:18:42,240 --> 01:18:45,040
Speaker 1: just say, in my opinion, okay, we kind of reached

1367
01:18:45,040 --> 01:18:48,599
Speaker 1: the logical extension of offense. And the problem with political

1368
01:18:48,640 --> 01:18:51,439
Speaker 1: correctness and progressive culture to me in many ways is

1369
01:18:51,920 --> 01:18:55,040
Speaker 1: then it can't happen because they wouldn't have a reason

1370
01:18:55,080 --> 01:18:57,960
Speaker 1: to exist, right, And so I understand some of the

1371
01:18:58,000 --> 01:19:01,880
Speaker 1: pushback on those issues. But as someone who does live

1372
01:19:02,000 --> 01:19:04,400
Speaker 1: television as much as you have, and and has done

1373
01:19:04,400 --> 01:19:08,000
Speaker 1: as many different live radio events, are you as troubled

1374
01:19:08,040 --> 01:19:11,639
Speaker 1: by the obsession with finding the two minutes that somebody

1375
01:19:11,680 --> 01:19:14,080
Speaker 1: has that may be the least accurate reflection of their

1376
01:19:14,160 --> 01:19:17,320
Speaker 1: career and insisting that we cashier them for it and

1377
01:19:17,320 --> 01:19:19,439
Speaker 1: that they can no longer do what they've done for

1378
01:19:19,479 --> 01:19:26,800
Speaker 1: so long. Absolutely, um, people who demand respect and compassion

1379
01:19:27,240 --> 01:19:32,759
Speaker 1: and rightly so for marginalized groups or historically discriminated against groups.

1380
01:19:33,520 --> 01:19:36,960
Speaker 1: Often are not very respectful of the totality of a

1381
01:19:36,960 --> 01:19:41,799
Speaker 1: person's life, are very compassionate about a mistake that doesn't

1382
01:19:41,800 --> 01:19:48,559
Speaker 1: necessarily reflect the depth of someone's feelings. Um, you know,

1383
01:19:48,600 --> 01:19:51,280
Speaker 1: I think that we can we can work towards being

1384
01:19:51,280 --> 01:19:57,360
Speaker 1: a more tolerant and sensitive society without without needing notches

1385
01:19:57,439 --> 01:19:59,800
Speaker 1: on our belt. We canceled this guy, We canceled that

1386
01:19:59,840 --> 01:20:02,040
Speaker 1: in stitutional we canceled this, that and the other thing.

1387
01:20:02,600 --> 01:20:07,400
Speaker 1: Um with without with failing to recognize that the things

1388
01:20:07,560 --> 01:20:11,000
Speaker 1: took place in a different context. The idea that some

1389
01:20:11,080 --> 01:20:13,880
Speaker 1: twenty five year old kid is going to stand here

1390
01:20:13,880 --> 01:20:19,120
Speaker 1: in and judge something that happened decades and centuries ago.

1391
01:20:19,720 --> 01:20:23,720
Speaker 1: Judge the people. Judge the people, not necessarily the attitudes,

1392
01:20:23,760 --> 01:20:26,920
Speaker 1: because attitudes evolved, and rightly so, but judge the people

1393
01:20:27,040 --> 01:20:29,800
Speaker 1: and what they did and said in the context of

1394
01:20:29,880 --> 01:20:33,760
Speaker 1: their time, and and be so unself aware as not

1395
01:20:33,840 --> 01:20:37,960
Speaker 1: to realize the generations from now. If this continues, you

1396
01:20:38,000 --> 01:20:41,120
Speaker 1: will will be viewed just as harshly and perhaps just

1397
01:20:41,240 --> 01:20:45,120
Speaker 1: as unfairly. You think you've reached the endpoint of evolution

1398
01:20:45,479 --> 01:20:50,080
Speaker 1: in sensitivity and awareness. But you haven't, Jack, you haven't.

1399
01:20:50,160 --> 01:20:53,720
Speaker 1: And if you played this game eternally, eventually it's going

1400
01:20:53,760 --> 01:20:58,000
Speaker 1: to come back and and like Frankenstein's Monster, it's gonna,

1401
01:20:58,200 --> 01:21:01,840
Speaker 1: it's gonna it's going to kill its career gator. That's

1402
01:21:01,880 --> 01:21:05,560
Speaker 1: what history teaches us, and that's why having an understanding

1403
01:21:05,680 --> 01:21:07,920
Speaker 1: of the scope of history is so important. I've just

1404
01:21:07,960 --> 01:21:11,400
Speaker 1: got a few more questions for you. Uh, the Olympics.

1405
01:21:11,400 --> 01:21:14,639
Speaker 1: You've hit on several different times. What is it like

1406
01:21:14,960 --> 01:21:17,960
Speaker 1: for people out there who don't know the procedures and

1407
01:21:17,960 --> 01:21:21,480
Speaker 1: the processes and what is involved to do in Olympics?

1408
01:21:21,680 --> 01:21:24,439
Speaker 1: Is it the hardest thing that you do in live

1409
01:21:24,520 --> 01:21:29,520
Speaker 1: sports business? How would you contextualize that? It's it's very difficult.

1410
01:21:29,560 --> 01:21:32,839
Speaker 1: But what helped me was the advice that Jim McKay

1411
01:21:32,880 --> 01:21:35,559
Speaker 1: gave me and then my own experience, which was that

1412
01:21:35,680 --> 01:21:39,080
Speaker 1: the host of the Olympics must be a very good generalist.

1413
01:21:39,439 --> 01:21:41,600
Speaker 1: You have to have a very good grasp of the

1414
01:21:41,800 --> 01:21:45,519
Speaker 1: history of the Olympics, history and current circumstances of the

1415
01:21:45,520 --> 01:21:48,920
Speaker 1: host city and the host nation, and you have to

1416
01:21:48,960 --> 01:21:53,920
Speaker 1: know about the handful of events and sports and competitors

1417
01:21:53,920 --> 01:21:56,800
Speaker 1: that are likely to be part of the focus of

1418
01:21:57,120 --> 01:22:00,920
Speaker 1: prime time coverage. You know that the researchers are so

1419
01:22:00,960 --> 01:22:04,959
Speaker 1: good that if somebody or something pops out out of nowhere,

1420
01:22:05,160 --> 01:22:09,560
Speaker 1: like I think of Rulan Gardner feeding the seemingly invincible

1421
01:22:09,760 --> 01:22:13,280
Speaker 1: correll In, who was so good that that competitors feared

1422
01:22:13,280 --> 01:22:16,519
Speaker 1: going in against him. Um he was a mythic figure,

1423
01:22:16,760 --> 01:22:19,400
Speaker 1: and Rulan Gardner beat him for the gold medal in

1424
01:22:19,520 --> 01:22:22,600
Speaker 1: Sydney in two thousand, even though he was an American competitor.

1425
01:22:22,680 --> 01:22:25,439
Speaker 1: I didn't know who the hell Rulan Gardner was until

1426
01:22:25,479 --> 01:22:27,680
Speaker 1: this happened, And if it hadn't happened, it wouldn't have

1427
01:22:27,680 --> 01:22:29,120
Speaker 1: been on in prime time. But it was such a

1428
01:22:29,120 --> 01:22:31,200
Speaker 1: big upset that eventually we throw it on the air

1429
01:22:31,240 --> 01:22:33,400
Speaker 1: as quickly as possible, and in the space of about

1430
01:22:33,439 --> 01:22:37,000
Speaker 1: five minutes, the researchers give me his bio. And something

1431
01:22:37,040 --> 01:22:38,640
Speaker 1: you have to be good at is that you have

1432
01:22:38,680 --> 01:22:41,720
Speaker 1: to be able to take a briefing briefly, quickly and

1433
01:22:41,840 --> 01:22:45,920
Speaker 1: assimilate the information, understand what's worth emphasizing, see if there's

1434
01:22:45,960 --> 01:22:49,000
Speaker 1: a narrative here that makes some sense. But if you

1435
01:22:49,120 --> 01:22:51,479
Speaker 1: go into an Olympics thinking you have to know every

1436
01:22:51,560 --> 01:22:54,479
Speaker 1: Rulan gardener, and you have to know every platform diver

1437
01:22:54,680 --> 01:22:58,880
Speaker 1: from Peru or every crush country skier from Norway. Your

1438
01:22:58,960 --> 01:23:03,639
Speaker 1: head will explode. Ken Jennings of Jeopardy fans, the front

1439
01:23:03,640 --> 01:23:07,120
Speaker 1: Fame couldn't possibly, you know, hold all of that information.

1440
01:23:07,479 --> 01:23:10,360
Speaker 1: At a summer Olympics, you've got two hundred countries and

1441
01:23:10,400 --> 01:23:14,040
Speaker 1: over ten thousand athletes. So be a good generalist, be

1442
01:23:14,160 --> 01:23:16,800
Speaker 1: able to see the big picture and then be able

1443
01:23:16,840 --> 01:23:20,960
Speaker 1: to say, hone in on the particulars, if and when

1444
01:23:21,000 --> 01:23:25,479
Speaker 1: they rise to the top. Here's another example, Clay of

1445
01:23:26,160 --> 01:23:30,040
Speaker 1: the business model that applies too often, and it applies

1446
01:23:30,720 --> 01:23:33,840
Speaker 1: across the political spectrum. But in this case it was

1447
01:23:33,880 --> 01:23:40,800
Speaker 1: the right wing that got me in Sochi. NBC put

1448
01:23:40,840 --> 01:23:46,000
Speaker 1: together a piece that explained Vladimir Putin's influence in Russia,

1449
01:23:46,640 --> 01:23:50,639
Speaker 1: and part of that said that Forbes, not Mother Jones

1450
01:23:50,640 --> 01:23:54,559
Speaker 1: of the Nation. Forbes had named Vladimir Putin the year

1451
01:23:54,560 --> 01:23:59,080
Speaker 1: before as the world's most influential leader, bumping Barack Obama

1452
01:23:59,120 --> 01:24:00,880
Speaker 1: to two. They didn't say was the best. They didn't

1453
01:24:00,880 --> 01:24:04,280
Speaker 1: say he was a good guy, most influential. So I

1454
01:24:04,320 --> 01:24:09,160
Speaker 1: had said that. Immediately after narrating that piece, there was

1455
01:24:09,200 --> 01:24:11,280
Speaker 1: a panel discussion which made it clear that he was

1456
01:24:11,320 --> 01:24:14,160
Speaker 1: a former KGB agent, that he was no friend of

1457
01:24:14,240 --> 01:24:18,559
Speaker 1: the West, that he was aligned with UH with very

1458
01:24:18,640 --> 01:24:22,800
Speaker 1: questionable and that's to be kind policies, that it was

1459
01:24:22,800 --> 01:24:27,920
Speaker 1: a repressive regime, etcetera, etcetera. And subsequently I did a

1460
01:24:27,960 --> 01:24:32,600
Speaker 1: commentary which talked about all those things and talked about

1461
01:24:32,720 --> 01:24:36,120
Speaker 1: how the success of the SoC games on the surface

1462
01:24:36,800 --> 01:24:41,679
Speaker 1: might obscure just how problematic and often vicious and criminal

1463
01:24:42,560 --> 01:24:49,400
Speaker 1: Blutin's Russia was. Okay, Fox News decides that I have

1464
01:24:49,560 --> 01:24:53,000
Speaker 1: praised Vladimir Putin, and they make an issue out of

1465
01:24:53,040 --> 01:24:57,040
Speaker 1: it because that moves the needle for their audience. John

1466
01:24:57,120 --> 01:25:00,439
Speaker 1: McCain comes on the next day with Neil of Vudo.

1467
01:25:01,000 --> 01:25:03,280
Speaker 1: I had known McCain who was a sports fan. I'd

1468
01:25:03,280 --> 01:25:05,840
Speaker 1: have friendly relationship with him. I'd interviewed him on a

1469
01:25:05,880 --> 01:25:09,400
Speaker 1: couple of occasions. You know more than your audience does, Clay,

1470
01:25:09,680 --> 01:25:12,719
Speaker 1: how these things work. They kind of briefed the guests,

1471
01:25:12,760 --> 01:25:15,080
Speaker 1: these are the topics, and this is what so and

1472
01:25:15,120 --> 01:25:18,559
Speaker 1: so said, and McCain was sometimes shot from the hip, said,

1473
01:25:18,640 --> 01:25:21,120
Speaker 1: you know, I really like Bob Costas. I enjoy his

1474
01:25:21,160 --> 01:25:24,000
Speaker 1: sports broadcast, but he doesn't know what he's talking about.

1475
01:25:24,280 --> 01:25:29,479
Speaker 1: He should stick to sports, okay. Subsequently, the Olympics are

1476
01:25:29,520 --> 01:25:34,320
Speaker 1: over with, McCain calls me out of the blue, calls me,

1477
01:25:34,880 --> 01:25:37,400
Speaker 1: and before I could even say hello, he says, my friend,

1478
01:25:37,680 --> 01:25:40,920
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I saw what you said in full context.

1479
01:25:41,360 --> 01:25:45,840
Speaker 1: I tweeted out an apology. What you said was contextualized.

1480
01:25:46,120 --> 01:25:50,280
Speaker 1: It was all good. Okay. Now I go on Bill O'Reilly,

1481
01:25:50,560 --> 01:25:53,759
Speaker 1: and I mentioned this to O'Reilly. Now you would think

1482
01:25:54,360 --> 01:25:56,760
Speaker 1: it was important enough for two or three days to

1483
01:25:56,840 --> 01:26:00,240
Speaker 1: make an issue out of Bob costas sympathy, as is

1484
01:26:00,280 --> 01:26:03,080
Speaker 1: with Vladimir Putin. If it was important enough to make

1485
01:26:03,120 --> 01:26:05,639
Speaker 1: an issue out of it, wouldn't it be important enough

1486
01:26:05,680 --> 01:26:09,439
Speaker 1: to cite that McCain reversed field. Wouldn't it be important

1487
01:26:09,560 --> 01:26:13,679
Speaker 1: enough to note that. Wouldn't it be important enough to say, look,

1488
01:26:14,600 --> 01:26:20,400
Speaker 1: if an American broadcaster really praised a foreign adversary, wouldn't

1489
01:26:20,439 --> 01:26:23,320
Speaker 1: everybody from the New York Times to the National Review

1490
01:26:23,800 --> 01:26:26,960
Speaker 1: take exception to that. Why is it only in these

1491
01:26:27,000 --> 01:26:31,160
Speaker 1: little echo chambers that this was mentioned? Maybe because we

1492
01:26:31,280 --> 01:26:35,479
Speaker 1: mischaracterized it and made something out of nothing, and now

1493
01:26:35,560 --> 01:26:39,320
Speaker 1: we don't feel compelled to correct it. Because that wouldn't

1494
01:26:39,320 --> 01:26:44,360
Speaker 1: fit our business model. Um and that that, along with

1495
01:26:44,439 --> 01:26:48,120
Speaker 1: other things and coupled with social media, is why some people,

1496
01:26:48,280 --> 01:26:50,960
Speaker 1: including some people of goodwill who just don't have the

1497
01:26:51,120 --> 01:26:55,320
Speaker 1: media literacy to navigate this think, Yeah, you know Bob

1498
01:26:55,360 --> 01:26:57,760
Speaker 1: cost this, I've always liked this sports broadcasting, but he's

1499
01:26:57,840 --> 01:27:00,000
Speaker 1: really kind of a political guy and he's really out there.

1500
01:27:00,000 --> 01:27:04,920
Speaker 1: Are on the left, not sho. That's fantastic what you

1501
01:27:05,000 --> 01:27:08,800
Speaker 1: mentioned starting to cover the Olympics in many of the

1502
01:27:08,800 --> 01:27:11,920
Speaker 1: people listening to us crazily are so young they don't

1503
01:27:11,960 --> 01:27:15,479
Speaker 1: remember the dream Team. That was for me one of

1504
01:27:15,520 --> 01:27:18,760
Speaker 1: the best moments as being an American sports fan was

1505
01:27:18,840 --> 01:27:21,920
Speaker 1: the Dream Team. You also covered the m b A

1506
01:27:21,920 --> 01:27:25,720
Speaker 1: at a time that the NBA was just stratospheric with

1507
01:27:25,800 --> 01:27:28,760
Speaker 1: the Jordan's era, and I think you were featured in

1508
01:27:28,840 --> 01:27:32,160
Speaker 1: some of the documentary surrounding the Jordan era and if

1509
01:27:32,160 --> 01:27:35,200
Speaker 1: you weren't just watching yeah yeah, the Last Dance. Just

1510
01:27:35,320 --> 01:27:38,080
Speaker 1: watching that made me think back to all of the

1511
01:27:38,120 --> 01:27:41,120
Speaker 1: games that you had been involved in. What was it

1512
01:27:41,240 --> 01:27:44,760
Speaker 1: like to cover Jordan's I don't know what kind of relationship,

1513
01:27:44,800 --> 01:27:47,439
Speaker 1: if any, that you had with him, but for people

1514
01:27:47,479 --> 01:27:50,839
Speaker 1: out there who now think about the Lebron versus Jordan's debate.

1515
01:27:51,560 --> 01:27:55,120
Speaker 1: Jordan was and unbelo He was like the sun in

1516
01:27:55,479 --> 01:27:58,280
Speaker 1: my life growing up. You know, it was an inescapable

1517
01:27:58,280 --> 01:28:02,240
Speaker 1: object that was almost always present every day. What was

1518
01:28:02,280 --> 01:28:05,040
Speaker 1: it like to cover him? I had a good relationship

1519
01:28:05,120 --> 01:28:08,599
Speaker 1: with him. He was a magnificent player, but he also

1520
01:28:08,680 --> 01:28:13,599
Speaker 1: had all those intangible things. His presence was the presence

1521
01:28:13,600 --> 01:28:17,519
Speaker 1: of a star. He was handsome, He carried himself with

1522
01:28:17,840 --> 01:28:21,880
Speaker 1: incredible grace. Although he's not a small man, he's six

1523
01:28:21,880 --> 01:28:26,120
Speaker 1: ft six, but in the context of basketball, he wasn't

1524
01:28:26,200 --> 01:28:30,720
Speaker 1: so big, so overwhelmingly strong as to be unrelatable to

1525
01:28:30,840 --> 01:28:34,360
Speaker 1: some portion of the audience. Everything about him was like

1526
01:28:34,400 --> 01:28:37,120
Speaker 1: a ten on a ten scale. Plus the era, the

1527
01:28:37,240 --> 01:28:40,639
Speaker 1: Dream Team, the NBA factor in my bias. The NBA

1528
01:28:40,800 --> 01:28:42,759
Speaker 1: was on NBC, and prior to that in the eighties

1529
01:28:42,760 --> 01:28:46,759
Speaker 1: that have been on CBS. Now primarily it's a cable product.

1530
01:28:47,000 --> 01:28:49,200
Speaker 1: This is no knock on the quality of the coverage.

1531
01:28:49,240 --> 01:28:52,519
Speaker 1: The coverage is great. You know, Ernie and Charles and Shack,

1532
01:28:53,040 --> 01:28:55,360
Speaker 1: those guys are great. That's probably the best studio show

1533
01:28:55,640 --> 01:28:58,880
Speaker 1: in the history of television sports. And my Breen is

1534
01:28:59,040 --> 01:29:02,200
Speaker 1: breaming terrific, and Kevin Harland is exciting to listen to,

1535
01:29:02,320 --> 01:29:04,960
Speaker 1: and Marv still does the games, but it isn't as

1536
01:29:05,040 --> 01:29:08,400
Speaker 1: much a part of the cultural conversation as it once was.

1537
01:29:08,720 --> 01:29:11,800
Speaker 1: The promos for the NBA on NBC, We're on during

1538
01:29:11,920 --> 01:29:15,120
Speaker 1: Seinfeld and Carson and Letterman and e r And and

1539
01:29:15,160 --> 01:29:18,400
Speaker 1: all the rest um and the games were all the

1540
01:29:18,400 --> 01:29:22,480
Speaker 1: playoff games, all the weekend playoff games were on NBC doubleheaders,

1541
01:29:22,560 --> 01:29:26,880
Speaker 1: triple headers, primetime games. It was just a whole different thing.

1542
01:29:27,200 --> 01:29:29,640
Speaker 1: And even though the Bulls won all those titles, there

1543
01:29:29,680 --> 01:29:32,360
Speaker 1: was a constellation of stars. Just think of the roster

1544
01:29:32,800 --> 01:29:35,120
Speaker 1: of the Dream Team. It's only Jordan and Pippen from

1545
01:29:35,120 --> 01:29:38,160
Speaker 1: the Bulls. Think of the others. Think think of the

1546
01:29:38,360 --> 01:29:43,280
Speaker 1: texture and how visible Um Stockton and Malone were, and

1547
01:29:43,400 --> 01:29:46,879
Speaker 1: Barkley and Isaiah at the tail end of the Pistons

1548
01:29:46,960 --> 01:29:50,200
Speaker 1: run and Clyde Drexler and Patrick Ewing and pat Riley,

1549
01:29:50,200 --> 01:29:52,960
Speaker 1: even the coaches. It was a whole group of stars.

1550
01:29:53,280 --> 01:29:55,479
Speaker 1: Now Jordan was at the center of it. Here's the

1551
01:29:55,520 --> 01:30:00,519
Speaker 1: way I feel about the Lebron Jordan comparison on is

1552
01:30:00,560 --> 01:30:03,639
Speaker 1: an all time great And if you want to call

1553
01:30:03,680 --> 01:30:06,719
Speaker 1: it a toss up. I put it this way. Let's

1554
01:30:06,720 --> 01:30:12,400
Speaker 1: say Lebron is equally excellent, and his prowess is equal

1555
01:30:12,400 --> 01:30:16,160
Speaker 1: in its own way to Jordan's basketball prowess. He is

1556
01:30:16,200 --> 01:30:21,639
Speaker 1: equally excellent, but not equally great, because Jordan's greatness went

1557
01:30:21,720 --> 01:30:26,480
Speaker 1: beyond numbers or even the specific outcomes of games or championships.

1558
01:30:27,040 --> 01:30:32,160
Speaker 1: His impact on the league, his global impact. Just what

1559
01:30:32,640 --> 01:30:36,960
Speaker 1: mentioning his name conjures up. It's intangible, but you know

1560
01:30:37,040 --> 01:30:39,080
Speaker 1: it when you see it and you feel it. So

1561
01:30:39,240 --> 01:30:43,760
Speaker 1: Jordan's was greater than Lebron, not necessarily better, although I

1562
01:30:43,840 --> 01:30:45,240
Speaker 1: think I still would give him an edge of the

1563
01:30:45,280 --> 01:30:49,960
Speaker 1: basketball player. But he was greater than Lebron. It's so

1564
01:30:50,000 --> 01:30:52,160
Speaker 1: well said. We're talking to Bob Costas, this is the

1565
01:30:52,160 --> 01:30:55,519
Speaker 1: Wins and Lost his podcast. I'm Clay Travis. Charles Barkley.

1566
01:30:55,560 --> 01:30:58,839
Speaker 1: You mentioned there, and you mentioned that that NBA Inside

1567
01:30:58,920 --> 01:31:02,320
Speaker 1: the NBA Studio show maybe the best that's out there

1568
01:31:02,439 --> 01:31:06,040
Speaker 1: right now. Did you foresee Barkley becoming as good of

1569
01:31:06,040 --> 01:31:08,880
Speaker 1: a media personality as he has become when he was

1570
01:31:08,920 --> 01:31:12,560
Speaker 1: a player. I don't think he could perceive ahead of

1571
01:31:12,600 --> 01:31:15,280
Speaker 1: time that it would be this big, but you knew

1572
01:31:15,320 --> 01:31:17,160
Speaker 1: that he would be a star on television. Money was

1573
01:31:17,200 --> 01:31:19,439
Speaker 1: an active player. We were talking about how we could

1574
01:31:19,520 --> 01:31:21,479
Speaker 1: use and Dick Eversoul was talking about it. I mean,

1575
01:31:21,560 --> 01:31:26,240
Speaker 1: he's such an incandescent personality that that part didn't surprise me.

1576
01:31:26,560 --> 01:31:29,200
Speaker 1: Because we're running short of time here, and I thank

1577
01:31:29,240 --> 01:31:31,120
Speaker 1: you for giving me the platform and for being so

1578
01:31:31,200 --> 01:31:33,640
Speaker 1: patient with me while I took advantage of it in

1579
01:31:33,680 --> 01:31:36,000
Speaker 1: the way that I did. Um, I actually have to

1580
01:31:36,040 --> 01:31:38,080
Speaker 1: run off and do something for the Baseball Network about

1581
01:31:38,080 --> 01:31:40,080
Speaker 1: a half hour from now, which means I have to

1582
01:31:40,160 --> 01:31:43,160
Speaker 1: change clothes as opposed to what you can do for

1583
01:31:43,200 --> 01:31:45,920
Speaker 1: a podcast or or radio. A couple of points that

1584
01:31:45,960 --> 01:31:48,800
Speaker 1: I wanted to make. One that relates to one of

1585
01:31:48,800 --> 01:31:51,880
Speaker 1: your earlier questions when you're talking about having a sense

1586
01:31:51,920 --> 01:31:57,040
Speaker 1: of things beyond stats and numbers. Somebody mentioned to me

1587
01:31:57,800 --> 01:32:02,120
Speaker 1: the Mets and would the raise be like the sixty

1588
01:32:02,200 --> 01:32:06,320
Speaker 1: nine Mets raise against the Dodgers, Mets against the Mighty

1589
01:32:06,560 --> 01:32:09,759
Speaker 1: Baltimore Orioles. And one of the things that came to mind,

1590
01:32:10,280 --> 01:32:15,160
Speaker 1: besides the obvious statistical comparisons, um Tyler Glass now and

1591
01:32:15,200 --> 01:32:18,120
Speaker 1: Blake Snell have never thrown a complete game. Tom seb

1592
01:32:18,200 --> 01:32:22,879
Speaker 1: and Jerry Kuzman through eighteen and sixteen respectively in that season,

1593
01:32:23,160 --> 01:32:25,719
Speaker 1: and sever through a tenant in complete game in Game four,

1594
01:32:25,960 --> 01:32:28,640
Speaker 1: and Kuzman went all the way in the clincher in

1595
01:32:28,720 --> 01:32:31,640
Speaker 1: Game five. But those are just differences in strategy as

1596
01:32:31,680 --> 01:32:34,759
Speaker 1: the game evolved. But if I were to answer that question,

1597
01:32:35,439 --> 01:32:37,320
Speaker 1: and I think that this is part of what makes

1598
01:32:37,360 --> 01:32:39,519
Speaker 1: a good broadcaster, I'd like to think this is what

1599
01:32:39,760 --> 01:32:43,720
Speaker 1: Red Barber would say, or whatever it might have been

1600
01:32:43,800 --> 01:32:47,360
Speaker 1: that you brought to Jim McKay's attention or Vince Gully,

1601
01:32:47,400 --> 01:32:50,280
Speaker 1: it's this. You would have had to have been there.

1602
01:32:50,640 --> 01:32:53,439
Speaker 1: The sixty nine Mets came out of nowhere. Not only

1603
01:32:53,479 --> 01:32:56,280
Speaker 1: were they never good, they were comically bad. They were

1604
01:32:56,320 --> 01:33:00,479
Speaker 1: synonymous with lovable ineptitude, and they've never had a win season.

1605
01:33:00,520 --> 01:33:02,320
Speaker 1: Then they go all the way and they win the

1606
01:33:02,360 --> 01:33:06,280
Speaker 1: World Series. But it's more than that. The Dodgers and

1607
01:33:06,360 --> 01:33:10,479
Speaker 1: Giants were only half a generation removed from being in

1608
01:33:10,880 --> 01:33:13,719
Speaker 1: New York, and many of those Dodger and Giant fans

1609
01:33:13,760 --> 01:33:17,920
Speaker 1: attached themselves to a National League team because Willie Mays

1610
01:33:17,920 --> 01:33:20,320
Speaker 1: and those guys were still coming through New York to

1611
01:33:20,439 --> 01:33:22,920
Speaker 1: play the Mets, and so there was a National League

1612
01:33:22,960 --> 01:33:26,400
Speaker 1: feel that predated the Mets. People who had rooted for

1613
01:33:26,479 --> 01:33:31,200
Speaker 1: Snyder and Newcombe and Campanella and Robinson and Willie Mays,

1614
01:33:31,439 --> 01:33:36,120
Speaker 1: they became Met fans. The Yankee dynasty had just ended.

1615
01:33:36,160 --> 01:33:39,880
Speaker 1: Mantel retired after the preceding season. Now the town belonged

1616
01:33:39,920 --> 01:33:43,840
Speaker 1: not to the Yankees. It belonged to the Mets. And

1617
01:33:43,920 --> 01:33:46,720
Speaker 1: not incidentally, I'd make this point. It's not really a

1618
01:33:46,720 --> 01:33:50,720
Speaker 1: political point. It's just a fact that factors into the

1619
01:33:50,760 --> 01:33:53,479
Speaker 1: texture of it. Mookie Betts happens to be the only

1620
01:33:53,520 --> 01:33:57,720
Speaker 1: African American in this year's World Series either team. The

1621
01:33:57,840 --> 01:34:00,599
Speaker 1: Arios had Frank Robinson and Don view Heard and Paul

1622
01:34:00,640 --> 01:34:04,040
Speaker 1: Blair and el Rod Hendricks. The Mets had ed Charles

1623
01:34:04,040 --> 01:34:07,360
Speaker 1: and Cleon Jones and Tommy A. G and Don Clendennon,

1624
01:34:07,880 --> 01:34:10,680
Speaker 1: and their manager was Gil Hodges, who was attached to

1625
01:34:10,760 --> 01:34:15,479
Speaker 1: Jackie Robinson's Brooklyn Dodgers. There was a texture to it

1626
01:34:15,840 --> 01:34:17,720
Speaker 1: and the World Series, even though every game was on

1627
01:34:17,760 --> 01:34:20,800
Speaker 1: in the afternoon, every one of those games got a

1628
01:34:20,880 --> 01:34:24,479
Speaker 1: higher rating than even a Game seven would get today.

1629
01:34:24,720 --> 01:34:27,120
Speaker 1: Leave aside that this is a weird season, sixty games,

1630
01:34:27,160 --> 01:34:30,200
Speaker 1: neutral field, almost no fans in the stands. Even if

1631
01:34:30,200 --> 01:34:32,679
Speaker 1: this were a normal season, every one of those games

1632
01:34:32,880 --> 01:34:35,360
Speaker 1: got a higher rating than a game seven would likely

1633
01:34:35,400 --> 01:34:38,200
Speaker 1: get today. I think part of your job as a

1634
01:34:38,240 --> 01:34:41,760
Speaker 1: broadcaster isn't just to know what stat cast tells you

1635
01:34:41,840 --> 01:34:45,840
Speaker 1: the exit velocity is or what someone's ops is. That's important,

1636
01:34:46,280 --> 01:34:50,120
Speaker 1: but if you can't, if you can't capture what the

1637
01:34:50,200 --> 01:34:52,680
Speaker 1: weather was, you know, that's kind of a catch all.

1638
01:34:52,920 --> 01:34:55,800
Speaker 1: Tell them how the weather was, meaning in the biggest sense,

1639
01:34:56,240 --> 01:34:59,160
Speaker 1: what were all the dynamics that were at play here,

1640
01:34:59,680 --> 01:35:04,800
Speaker 1: not what it was in raw statistical or objective terms.

1641
01:35:05,000 --> 01:35:07,280
Speaker 1: How did it steal? What did it look like, what

1642
01:35:07,360 --> 01:35:10,400
Speaker 1: did it steel like? What was the humanity of it

1643
01:35:11,360 --> 01:35:13,200
Speaker 1: that was That's a point that I would make if

1644
01:35:13,240 --> 01:35:16,679
Speaker 1: someone asked me about the sixty nine Mets. It's different

1645
01:35:16,680 --> 01:35:19,800
Speaker 1: than just comparing Tom Sieber's e r A to Charlie

1646
01:35:19,840 --> 01:35:24,559
Speaker 1: Morton z r R. That's incredibly well said, and I

1647
01:35:24,600 --> 01:35:26,920
Speaker 1: think it is a fantastic way to end. I know

1648
01:35:27,000 --> 01:35:29,120
Speaker 1: you have to go get changed for your job on

1649
01:35:29,200 --> 01:35:32,240
Speaker 1: the Major League Baseball Network, Bob Costa, this has been

1650
01:35:32,280 --> 01:35:33,960
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Are you on Twitter? How can

1651
01:35:34,040 --> 01:35:37,240
Speaker 1: people reach out and give you feedback from this podcast

1652
01:35:37,280 --> 01:35:40,840
Speaker 1: if they wanted to do so? No, no social media whatsoever.

1653
01:35:40,920 --> 01:35:43,280
Speaker 1: I just don't see that much of an upside. Yeah

1654
01:35:43,280 --> 01:35:45,600
Speaker 1: for me, I I've had my platforms, and so I

1655
01:35:45,880 --> 01:35:48,520
Speaker 1: do what I do as a as a sports broadcaster.

1656
01:35:49,160 --> 01:35:52,320
Speaker 1: UM So, so there you have it. That's Bob Costas.

1657
01:35:52,320 --> 01:35:55,000
Speaker 1: He just told you. He's not on social media, so

1658
01:35:55,080 --> 01:35:57,320
Speaker 1: you can't reach out and let him know what you thought.

1659
01:35:57,400 --> 01:36:00,000
Speaker 1: But I think you guys are going to have completely

1660
01:36:00,040 --> 01:36:03,679
Speaker 1: you love to this huge roster of great episodes. They

1661
01:36:03,760 --> 01:36:07,360
Speaker 1: are timeless. That's the goal of the Wins and Losses Podcast.

1662
01:36:07,439 --> 01:36:09,880
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this one, it's a really good chance

1663
01:36:09,920 --> 01:36:12,400
Speaker 1: you're gonna like a lot more of them. Thirty four,

1664
01:36:12,560 --> 01:36:14,720
Speaker 1: thirty five dubb Do you know how many we've totally done.

1665
01:36:14,800 --> 01:36:17,160
Speaker 1: I think it's thirty five of these at least an

1666
01:36:17,160 --> 01:36:20,640
Speaker 1: hour in length, uh, from a variety of different perspectives.

1667
01:36:20,680 --> 01:36:22,840
Speaker 1: I hope you can enjoy and learn from them as

1668
01:36:22,920 --> 01:36:24,880
Speaker 1: much as I have. This has been the Wins and

1669
01:36:24,920 --> 01:36:28,040
Speaker 1: Losses Podcast. I'm Clay Travis. Check back frequently and in

1670
01:36:28,080 --> 01:36:30,400
Speaker 1: the meantime, go check out the archives of our long

1671
01:36:30,439 --> 01:36:34,280
Speaker 1: form discussions here. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports

1672
01:36:34,280 --> 01:36:37,120
Speaker 1: talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows

1673
01:36:37,120 --> 01:36:40,360
Speaker 1: at Fox Sports radio dot com and within the i

1674
01:36:40,439 --> 01:36:43,439
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live.