Speaker 1: This is Wins and Losses with Clay Trevis. Clay talks
Speaker 1: with the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business.
Speaker 1: Now here's Clay Travis. Welcome and Wins and Losses podcast.
Speaker 1: I am Clay Travis. We have got I don't know
Speaker 1: what the number is now, thirty five of these long
Speaker 1: form conversations. If you're new to us, i'd encourage you
Speaker 1: to go check out the entire library. The idea is
Speaker 1: these conversations are just as good in two years or
Speaker 1: three years, or hopefully ten years as they are when
Speaker 1: you are listening to them and the week that they
Speaker 1: are released. The guest this week and or this month
Speaker 1: in October of twenty twenty is legendary sports broadcaster Bob Costas.
Speaker 1: And Bob, I've been watching you literally my entire life,
Speaker 1: and I feel like there are a billion things we
Speaker 1: can get into, but you reached out to me most recently.
Speaker 1: First of all, you participated and I thought a really
Speaker 1: well done piece by Greg Couch about the struggles of
Speaker 1: the n b A when it came to the ratings
Speaker 1: this year, UH and trying to analyze where the league
Speaker 1: goes going forward. And I appreciate you being involved in
Speaker 1: that OutKick article because certainly I watched you for years
Speaker 1: and years be associated with the NBA, and we'll get
Speaker 1: into that in a little bit as well. But in particular,
Speaker 1: I sent out a tweet one of my listener, one
Speaker 1: of my listeners, one of my readers out there, grabbed
Speaker 1: in uh, probably thirty second segment that you had done
Speaker 1: on Don Lemon CNN show dealing with the return of
Speaker 1: college football, and I saw it and what immediately jumped
Speaker 1: out to me was that CNN had mischaracterized the return date.
Speaker 1: They had gotten it wrong. We are actually talking today
Speaker 1: on the day that the Big Ten will return. There's
Speaker 1: a Friday night football game between Illinois and Wisconsin later tonight,
Speaker 1: and uh, but last week's CNN said that the that
Speaker 1: the Big Ten was returning that weekend, and it was
Speaker 1: an interesting conversation, and so I popped it out there,
Speaker 1: and then you reached out to me. We've never talked before.
Speaker 1: We had a good private conversation. You said you'd like
Speaker 1: to come on and do the show. So we've got
Speaker 1: a lot to get into, but we'll start there with
Speaker 1: what you felt. And I think this is a fair
Speaker 1: fair position is at times we live in a social
Speaker 1: media era maybe all the time, where small clips can
Speaker 1: be characterized that are not necessarily representative of the entirety
Speaker 1: of a statement that was made. And that's why I
Speaker 1: like having long form conversations with people here. So welcome
Speaker 1: to the show, and we'll start right there with the
Speaker 1: tweet that I sent and the hit that you did
Speaker 1: on CNN with Don Lemon. Thanks Clay, and I appreciate
Speaker 1: the opportunity to speak here at some lane. First of all, um,
Speaker 1: as you know, I couldn't see the graphic that was incorrect.
Speaker 1: Somebody at the production level at CNN, and it's not
Speaker 1: a sports operation, got that wrong. If I had seen it,
Speaker 1: I would have subtly corrected it. But what I said,
Speaker 1: Don asked me about the return of college football, and
Speaker 1: I made all I think the necessary stipulations. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that they've got all the protocols in place, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But to me, there's something, if you take a step back,
Speaker 1: something about this that exemplifies how big time college sports
Speaker 1: football the most, but college basketball also big time college
Speaker 1: sports has for so long been so out of perspective
Speaker 1: and so out of proportion that the whole thing is
Speaker 1: a sham, And well, I shouldn't say it that way,
Speaker 1: and I didn't say it that way, that it is
Speaker 1: too often a sham. And what I said was in
Speaker 1: light of for example, Dan Mullen, the Florida football coach, saying,
Speaker 1: we need ninety thousand people for our game against l
Speaker 1: s U. We need to have the swamp full. Ironically,
Speaker 1: he's the one who drained the swamp. He tests positive,
Speaker 1: a good portion of his team test positive. And what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is a lot of people are so obsessed
Speaker 1: with football, be at the NFL or college football, they
Speaker 1: just have to have it no matter what. And you
Speaker 1: know as well as I if you could give truth
Speaker 1: serum to many college football fans, especially in certain parts
Speaker 1: of the country, and you gave them the following proposition,
Speaker 1: over the next ten years, your university will more or
Speaker 1: less mirror Stanford. You'll always be competitive, maybe once or
Speaker 1: twice you'll win the national championship or be in contention
Speaker 1: for it. You'll be good across a wide swath of sports,
Speaker 1: and the the compact that should exist between academics and
Speaker 1: athletics will be there. Or you can be in contention
Speaker 1: for the national championship almost every year, And if a
Speaker 1: very large number of your quote student athletes aren't really
Speaker 1: students at all, and if many of them recruited despite
Speaker 1: dubious and sometimes criminal backgrounds, and if many of them
Speaker 1: will in fact misbehave and and bring some rather dubious
Speaker 1: attention to the program, but you'll be in contention for
Speaker 1: the national championship every year. We know damn well which
Speaker 1: of those two choices would be most appealing to a
Speaker 1: huge percentage of college sports fans. And in that sense,
Speaker 1: to me, it's out of whack. And this notion that
Speaker 1: we have to have college football no matter what. We
Speaker 1: gotta travel, we gotta intermingle. We know how large the
Speaker 1: size of the rosters are and all the auxiliary personnel,
Speaker 1: even if life on campus is nothing like normal. The
Speaker 1: one thing that's going to be as close to almost
Speaker 1: we can possibly make its football. So that's what I said.
Speaker 1: I said, I think the exact words were too often,
Speaker 1: not always, too often, football, or in this case, college
Speaker 1: football isn't just pleasing pastime or an interest of some kind.
Speaker 1: It is too often a mindless of obsession. Now people
Speaker 1: object to that, fine, but that's what I said, all right,
Speaker 1: I think so much of what you said is obviously fascinating.
Speaker 1: I have spent a ton of time arguing for the
Speaker 1: return of college football. Uh and everybody out there who
Speaker 1: is listening right now to this program knows that I've
Speaker 1: advocated as aggressively as I can possibly for it. So
Speaker 1: I'm not going to make that argument right here, because
Speaker 1: we've done it a ton about the importance of it.
Speaker 1: What I will say is I agree with your larger
Speaker 1: context that college football fans uniquely and I think it's
Speaker 1: actually the most American of all sports. By the way,
Speaker 1: if you actually strip it back and consider all of
Speaker 1: the different conflicting loyalties and hypocrisies and challenges, and both
Speaker 1: incredible highs and incredible lows, it is in many ways,
Speaker 1: I believe, a metaphor for the larger American experience rich poor,
Speaker 1: the difference between the big schools and the small schools,
Speaker 1: the difference and resources. I mean, there are just so
Speaker 1: many fascinating to me representation of college football that reflects
Speaker 1: both the good and bad of American life in general.
Speaker 1: I do agree with you on the big precept there
Speaker 1: that that basically you dove into, and I've said this
Speaker 1: for a long time college football fans are selective moralist,
Speaker 1: and what I mean by that is they want other
Speaker 1: programs to behave morally, but they will forgive anything that
Speaker 1: their school does if it makes them more likely to
Speaker 1: win a football game. And I didn't really think about this,
Speaker 1: uh Bob a lot, and thanks for being on with
Speaker 1: us here until I started doing local radio. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of the warrior background in me. Is if somebody
Speaker 1: when when you looked at an n C double A violation,
Speaker 1: for example, the first way I would think about it
Speaker 1: is as I analyzed the case, and I make no book,
Speaker 1: bring no bones about it. Right. I I am a
Speaker 1: University of Tennessee fan. My grandfather played for General Neiland.
Speaker 1: I started going to games when I was five years old.
Speaker 1: I'm actually going up to watch Alabama probably absolutely obliterate
Speaker 1: Tennessee this weekend and Kneeland. But what was thinking about
Speaker 1: it was I always say, okay, if my school is
Speaker 1: accused of wrongdoing before I figure out what my opinion is.
Speaker 1: What would my opinion be if it were Alabama or
Speaker 1: Florida or Georgia one of the rival programs that was
Speaker 1: accused of doing the same thing. If my response is
Speaker 1: not the exact same to those accusations. That is a
Speaker 1: way to test my own fan bias. And so what
Speaker 1: I would always say on the radio anytime we had
Speaker 1: a story was I would say, Okay, what would your
Speaker 1: response be if Alabama was accused of this and you're
Speaker 1: a Tennessee fan, Well, Alabama they cheat, you know how
Speaker 1: they are. And I said, okay, but if you're defending
Speaker 1: Tennessee and you believe it immediately if you were Alabama,
Speaker 1: then that's an example of bias. And to me, what
Speaker 1: has happened in a large sense, I'm not surprised about
Speaker 1: any of the arguments I see on social media in
Speaker 1: the country now, because basically the country has become a
Speaker 1: college football fan, right. You will you will defend to
Speaker 1: the end of the earth anything that your school does,
Speaker 1: or your party does, or your guy or girl does.
Speaker 1: But if the other side does it, it's an outrage.
Speaker 1: And so what bothers me in general is not the
Speaker 1: decisions that are made. It's the hypocrisy because, as I
Speaker 1: told you one of our conversation, as my listeners know,
Speaker 1: I kind of consider every opinion that I have to
Speaker 1: be almost the equivalent of a judicial opinion. This is
Speaker 1: the lawyer in me speaking, there has to be a
Speaker 1: precedent that connects my opinions across the board or else.
Speaker 1: I'm guilty of what I accuse others of, which is hypocrisy.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying I'm perfect. Certainly I make mistakes
Speaker 1: in the way that I analyze cases and facts and
Speaker 1: everything else, like any other human out there. But I
Speaker 1: do believe that there is a logical basis behind most
Speaker 1: of my opinions. And if you went back and looked
Speaker 1: at what I wrote in two thousand twelve, it would
Speaker 1: make sense in two thousand twenty. And if you, for instance,
Speaker 1: you know to to bring in multiple conflicting areas, If
Speaker 1: you looked at what I said about Duke Lacrosse and
Speaker 1: you compared it with Brett Kavanaugh, it would cross O right.
Speaker 1: It would make sense logically in the Kavanaugh case the
Speaker 1: same way that it did in the Duke Lacrosse case,
Speaker 1: or in the Ezekiel Elliott case, or the O. J.
Speaker 1: Simpson case, which I know you were involved in a
Speaker 1: big way. There are so many different interesting threads there.
Speaker 1: But that's what jumped out at me about the first
Speaker 1: thing that you said there well as you were presenting
Speaker 1: your argument. In the last couple of minutes, I was
Speaker 1: thinking about something you got to, which is that that
Speaker 1: sort of tunnel vision about college football. Uh, mirrors what
Speaker 1: we see in our politics, where a relative misdemeanor by
Speaker 1: the other side is in fact an outrage but a
Speaker 1: certifiable felony, not a matter of opinion, but it's objectively
Speaker 1: true if our guy or our side did it, either
Speaker 1: it can't be true, or will ignore it, will soft
Speaker 1: pedal it. And this is just one example. I don't
Speaker 1: want to get overly partisan politically here, because I'm much
Speaker 1: less partisan than a portion of your audience likely thinks.
Speaker 1: And we'll get to that later. And I'm sure you
Speaker 1: could find an example of this that is the equivalent
Speaker 1: from the other side. But when Janine Pierro, with a
Speaker 1: straight face, says, by my new book, don't lie to me,
Speaker 1: and all the lives that outrage her, of course come
Speaker 1: from the left or from Democrats, well, if she doesn't
Speaker 1: just defend she venerates Donald Trump, who, regardless of your
Speaker 1: political affiliations, as objectively one of the most dishonest people
Speaker 1: in modern American political history. You can you can barely
Speaker 1: fact check him in real time. He lies so frequently,
Speaker 1: and the irony of that is lost on Sean Hannity,
Speaker 1: are on Janine Pierrou. That's just the world we live in,
Speaker 1: all right. So this is this is fascinating in general. Um,
Speaker 1: and I do think this this goes into my analogy
Speaker 1: that I've been making for a long time. What matters
Speaker 1: to me is whether or not there is a logical
Speaker 1: basis to reach a conclusion. And let me explain what
Speaker 1: I mean for everybody out there who's listening, and I
Speaker 1: think you'll follow along too. And I like to use
Speaker 1: this in all g in sports. Uh. And we're talking
Speaker 1: to Bob Costas. Appreciate him joining us. If I tell you, hey,
Speaker 1: I don't think that Tom Brady is going to win
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl this year. And I said this to
Speaker 1: you in my conversation recently, and I said, you know
Speaker 1: you might listening right now, say, Okay, I agree with you.
Speaker 1: Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Bruce Arians never done it before. NFC
Speaker 1: is gonna be tough, NFC South, you got Drew Brees. Uh,
Speaker 1: You've got a lot of challenges there. But if I've
Speaker 1: said I don't believe Tom Brady is going to win
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl because he's never been there and won
Speaker 1: it before. You might agree with my conclusion, but the
Speaker 1: facts upon which I based that conclusion are completely wrong.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that troubles me most about
Speaker 1: society today is the basis of facts. And I think
Speaker 1: there are lots of politicians of both parties that agree
Speaker 1: with me here, and unfortunately they don't have a prominent
Speaker 1: of a platform in their parties. In general, we can
Speaker 1: disagree about conclusions, which are basically opinions about ways to
Speaker 1: address problems, but when we don't agree on the most
Speaker 1: basic factual level, then we can't in any way have
Speaker 1: a legitimate marketplace of ideas. And worse than that, we
Speaker 1: have people who look at the conclusion and say, oh,
Speaker 1: I agree with where that person he or she got
Speaker 1: from a political purpose, but they don't understand that the
Speaker 1: facts upon which that was based are quicksand and there's
Speaker 1: nothing there and therefore the essence of the argument is
Speaker 1: not legitimate, and that bothers me in a big way
Speaker 1: by by and large, And this is a generalization, and
Speaker 1: it's more true in the social media world than it
Speaker 1: is and what still passes from more traditional forms of media,
Speaker 1: which is anything that aligns with my predispositions and or resentments.
Speaker 1: I'm inclined to believe without skepticism. Anything that challenges that,
Speaker 1: I'm inclined to dismiss. The mainstream media has many flaws
Speaker 1: that should be held to account. But when you've got
Speaker 1: an all purpose intellectual will get out of jail free
Speaker 1: card that says it's all news, which really has come
Speaker 1: to mean anything I don't want to hear, and anything
Speaker 1: that doesn't align with my prejudices, or anything that is
Speaker 1: critical in a responsibly journalistic way of someone I don't
Speaker 1: want to see criticized, I can just immediately dismiss it.
Speaker 1: Never consider it as fake news. Okay, what happens in
Speaker 1: the Twitter world, And that's what started this conversation, and
Speaker 1: I'm glad we're acquainted through it is a fragment that
Speaker 1: misrepresents not only is out there, but you think people,
Speaker 1: no matter what their political affiliation is, no matter what
Speaker 1: the rooting interest is in sports, you would think that
Speaker 1: they had learned, They would have learned by now that
Speaker 1: a lot of what is out there is either untrue, misleading,
Speaker 1: or incomplete. And so you had people responding to what
Speaker 1: you tweeted, Well, what about all the people who rely
Speaker 1: on Saturday college football for the hotels and the restaurants.
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm aware of that of co words, and
Speaker 1: I've stipulated that many times, um this this may seem trivial,
Speaker 1: and it is, except sometimes something that isn't all that important.
Speaker 1: It's like a grain of sand on the beach. A
Speaker 1: geologist can tell you what the beach is like by
Speaker 1: examining that grain of sand. Jason Starr, the acclaimed baseball writer,
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame Baseball writer. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I went to college with him at Syracuse, and he
Speaker 1: wrote something very nice about my induction into the broadcasters
Speaker 1: going in the Hall of Fame a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and he tweeted out, and I'm not much of a
Speaker 1: twitter guy, but some people called it to my attention,
Speaker 1: he tweeted out one line from what he called my
Speaker 1: wonderful speech or something to that effect, and that line
Speaker 1: was that very often the way we recall the most
Speaker 1: memorable moments in sports is dependent upon how they were
Speaker 1: framed by a great writer or by a broadcaster, producer, director.
Speaker 1: And in my Hall of Fame speech, which was about
Speaker 1: people other than myself, I mentioned the Vince Scullies, the
Speaker 1: Jack Box, the Ernie Harwell's and also the producers like
Speaker 1: Um David Neil and Mike Weissman, and a great director
Speaker 1: like Harry Coyle, and how they shaped people's recollections. I
Speaker 1: used Kirk Gibson's Home Run as an example, and Gibson
Speaker 1: himself says he was at the center of it, but
Speaker 1: partly how he remembers it is how you now here
Speaker 1: Vince Scullies call, and the way Harry Coyle directed it.
Speaker 1: It was like a movie, right, So this one line
Speaker 1: is there, and then I shouldn't have done it. You
Speaker 1: should shouldn't waste your time going down these rabbit holes.
Speaker 1: But since someone had called my attention to Jason's article
Speaker 1: and then the tweet that accompanied it, there were a
Speaker 1: bunch of responses. Maney of them are very kind regarding me.
Speaker 1: But somewhere, oh right, Hostess says that the broadcasters are
Speaker 1: more important than the players. Thought about the players, it's
Speaker 1: about him. If you had seen the speech in context,
Speaker 1: it was the exact opposite of that. It was less
Speaker 1: about me than almost anybody I think who has ever
Speaker 1: stood there behind that podium. It was about my love
Speaker 1: of the craft and my love of baseball. But wouldn't
Speaker 1: you think that by now somebody wouldn't think that they
Speaker 1: could go off and voice an opinion based on a
Speaker 1: fragment of something. And yet that is rampant in our
Speaker 1: media culture. So people, including some people of goodwill, believe
Speaker 1: a lot of things that just are not so, are
Speaker 1: not so factually, or are not so about the beliefs
Speaker 1: and motivations of people they either support or opposed. All Right,
Speaker 1: this is fascinating to me what that whole story in general.
Speaker 1: I I have said for a long time that my
Speaker 1: biggest talent to the in that I have one is
Speaker 1: and my wife says this, drives are crazy about me
Speaker 1: one of many things. By the way, we've been married
Speaker 1: sixteen years, so they're basically everything I do. Drives are
Speaker 1: crazy at this point. But yeah, welcome to the club. Indeed,
Speaker 1: be sure to catch live editions about Kicked the coverage
Speaker 1: with Clay Travis week days at six am Eastern, three
Speaker 1: am Pacific. We're talking with Bob Costas. This is the
Speaker 1: Wins and Losses Podcast. I genuinely am not impacted by
Speaker 1: what someone says about me online, positive or negative. I
Speaker 1: don't know why that is. I but I think it's
Speaker 1: been important in allowing me to basically continue to plow
Speaker 1: forward in my career even as social media has become
Speaker 1: more all encompassing. I'm sure I've got my phone sitting
Speaker 1: in front of me right now. If I typed in
Speaker 1: my name, I could go through and there would be
Speaker 1: ten awful things that have been said about me today
Speaker 1: already that I just haven't seen. And so you are
Speaker 1: one of the most accomplished broadcasters in the history of
Speaker 1: sports on television. Kevin Durant, for example, is whatever you
Speaker 1: want to say about him, one of the four or
Speaker 1: five best at his craft of basketball that has played
Speaker 1: in his generation, right, I think that's probably fair to say.
Speaker 1: Yet I do believe that there are many people out
Speaker 1: there who are wildly accomplished like yourself, like Kevin Durant,
Speaker 1: and I'm we're using athletics in particular, but I think
Speaker 1: it could be the president. I think it could be
Speaker 1: other people who are, you know, reading the mentions and
Speaker 1: reading the tweets that are really taking into account what
Speaker 1: other people say. And and my perspective on that is,
Speaker 1: if I'm one of the best in the world at anything,
Speaker 1: I don't care what someone who is not in my
Speaker 1: field thinks about me at all, And I don't know
Speaker 1: why that is. I care about people who know me right,
Speaker 1: people who have interactions. But for you, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Like I told my mom, never read the comments to
Speaker 1: anything that I say. Read it, have your own opinions.
Speaker 1: I almost have never read any comment that people have
Speaker 1: put after my articles in my entire life. Same thing
Speaker 1: is true for Twitter. At this point, I barely read
Speaker 1: the mentions. I share my opinion. What do you think
Speaker 1: it was about that that made you click down below?
Speaker 1: What you said was a nice thing. Jason Stark, who
Speaker 1: is an incredibly accomplished writer, was saying, to see what
Speaker 1: people you didn't know we're saying about what he had
Speaker 1: said about you. You mentioned rabbit holes. To me, that's like,
Speaker 1: that's like going all the way in the rabbit hole
Speaker 1: to China. Like you, you've gone really far at that point.
Speaker 1: And truth, that took about five minutes, and but it
Speaker 1: is fascinating and it's seductive, and I think it speaks
Speaker 1: to social media in general, which is designed to make
Speaker 1: us care what people we don't know think about us
Speaker 1: all day long, whether you're a celebrity like Bob Costas,
Speaker 1: who's one of the best sports journalists of all time,
Speaker 1: or whether you're somebody's grandma who's going on Facebook and
Speaker 1: making a comment and then it goes viral and a
Speaker 1: lot of people she doesn't know suddenly respond to it
Speaker 1: and she feels compelled to read what they say to Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the key here, Clay is I'm trying to
Speaker 1: make a larger point, and you'll have to take me
Speaker 1: at my word here. I am well aware. I hope
Speaker 1: I have enough perspective to be well aware that on
Speaker 1: the worst day of my life, I am more fortunate
Speaker 1: than most people will ever be. And I'm very, very
Speaker 1: appreciative of all the nice things that have been said
Speaker 1: and written about me, and about all the breaks and
Speaker 1: great experiences I've had in my career. I truly feel blessed.
Speaker 1: And so I'm not losing any sleep over this, and
Speaker 1: I'm not spending undo time on it. But where it
Speaker 1: interests me is in the larger point. And sometimes you
Speaker 1: have to use your own experience, because if you're an
Speaker 1: honest person, you're going to be credible about your own experience.
Speaker 1: You're going to know the wise and wherefores of your
Speaker 1: own experience. And if it illustrates something larger, that is
Speaker 1: of some importance beyond yourself, then I think it's legitimate.
Speaker 1: And so we may talk, for example, about the gun
Speaker 1: thing from eight years ago on NBC and how you know.
Speaker 1: I wish it hadn't happened. I wish people didn't have
Speaker 1: a misimpression. I wish I had done a better job
Speaker 1: in that moment. But I also think it illustrates a
Speaker 1: larger point. And that's why we're talking about beyond me
Speaker 1: just muttering to myself. We're talking to Bob Costas. This
Speaker 1: is the Wins and Losses Podcast. I'm Clay Travis. Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to get to the essays and everything else,
Speaker 1: but I want to start here. You have won a
Speaker 1: legendary career as a sports sports broadcaster. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of people out there right now who have experienced
Speaker 1: many of your broadcasts over the years. There are also
Speaker 1: a lot of young people who listen to this podcast
Speaker 1: because one of the goals with the Wins and Losses
Speaker 1: theme is to discuss the best and worst parts potentially
Speaker 1: of one's career and the wins and losses along the way.
Speaker 1: So I want to start here. Take you back to
Speaker 1: when you are in college, if you are able to
Speaker 1: go back and tell twenty year old Bob Costas things
Speaker 1: that you have learned along the way in your career
Speaker 1: that you think would have been very important. There are
Speaker 1: a year olds who would like to be the next
Speaker 1: Bob cost Us listening to this podcast right now. What
Speaker 1: do you think you have learned that you didn't know
Speaker 1: when you were a college kid or maybe a high
Speaker 1: school kid trying to become what you became. I think
Speaker 1: I learned this along the way, and it didn't take
Speaker 1: all that long. No matter how much you would meire someone,
Speaker 1: you can be influenced by them. I was influenced by
Speaker 1: Jim McKay. I was influenced directly by Marty Glickman and
Speaker 1: Marv Albert. I went to Syracuse because they had gone
Speaker 1: to Syracuse, and because Syracuse had early on fifty years ago,
Speaker 1: they had a genuine communications department, not just a print
Speaker 1: journalism department, but a true state of the art communications department.
Speaker 1: Now almost every university does, but Syracuse was ahead of
Speaker 1: the curve, and since I got there, a legion of
Speaker 1: notable sports broadcasters have followed, and some had preceded me.
Speaker 1: Marvin Marty and Dick stocked In and Len Berman and
Speaker 1: a few others, But now it's into dozens and does.
Speaker 1: But no matter who, you were influenced by Jim McKay,
Speaker 1: Vince Scully, Jack Buck. Early in my career I was
Speaker 1: in St. Louis at km O X. One of the
Speaker 1: things I learned was, do not copy them. They're great
Speaker 1: because they are distinctive, because they are not generic, and
Speaker 1: if you try to copy them, you'll only be a
Speaker 1: pale imitation of the master. Early on, it's inevitable you'll
Speaker 1: copy somebody. You've got to have a starting point, but
Speaker 1: eventually you've got to be able to develop your own style,
Speaker 1: otherwise you won't get very far. And the other thing
Speaker 1: I learned early on was that there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as a perfect broadcast, and not even I think Vince
Speaker 1: Scully would tell you the same thing. As close to
Speaker 1: perfection as you could get, maybe have perfect moments. Jim
Speaker 1: McKay was perfect in that moment in munich Ino, Al
Speaker 1: Michaels was perfect with do you believe in miracles? But
Speaker 1: if you are a perfect actionist, that can be a
Speaker 1: good thing because it keeps you working hard and it
Speaker 1: makes you concentrate on the fine points and never be satisfied.
Speaker 1: But it can also cost you sleep unless you get
Speaker 1: a handle on it. Because I used to threat over
Speaker 1: things that other people thought were terrific. Some of the
Speaker 1: things that people mentioned to me as among their favorite
Speaker 1: things I've ever done, somewhere in the back of my
Speaker 1: head is yeah, but if only I'd said that, or
Speaker 1: if only I changed one word, or if only I'd
Speaker 1: remember to include that. And eventually I came to understand,
Speaker 1: on my own peace of mind that sometimes perfect is
Speaker 1: the enemy of the good. A lot of what I've
Speaker 1: done has been pretty damn good, only occasionally if you
Speaker 1: reach perfection. Did you go back early in your career
Speaker 1: and study your broadcast, listen to yourself to pick out
Speaker 1: flaws or so, And how would you do that and
Speaker 1: be effective in being able to analyze yourself? Well? Then
Speaker 1: you know, in the seventies, if you're listening to radio
Speaker 1: broadcast on a cassette recorder, uh, you couldn't get your
Speaker 1: television broadcasts unless you went down to thirty Rock at
Speaker 1: NBC and somebody there, you know, quote it up for you.
Speaker 1: I bought one of the very early VHS machines. Uh,
Speaker 1: three quarter inch tapes an hour at a time, so
Speaker 1: a whole ball of ball game was three tapes. I
Speaker 1: remember the Sandberg game in the legendary Cardinal Cub game,
Speaker 1: where Sandberg get the two home runs of Bruce Suitor
Speaker 1: late in the game, and it was the NBC game
Speaker 1: of the week on a Saturday afternoon, when that meant something.
Speaker 1: It was a really big deal. Sometimes the Saturday afternoon
Speaker 1: game of the week got higher ratings regular season game
Speaker 1: than some World Series games get now. Um, And it's
Speaker 1: probably the signature game of Sandberg's career. It took five tapes,
Speaker 1: um to have that, and I've got those VHS tapes somewhere, um.
Speaker 1: But it was much harder then than it is now.
Speaker 1: Now you can everything at your fingertips and you can
Speaker 1: review it. Uh. Yeah. I used to go back, and
Speaker 1: I remember being discouraged early on the first time I
Speaker 1: heard myself on the air at w A E Er,
Speaker 1: the campus station at Syracuse, and I heard it back
Speaker 1: and there were still vestiges of a New York accent,
Speaker 1: and it was a thin, reedy kind of penny voice.
Speaker 1: And then shortly after that I heard the twenty six
Speaker 1: year old Al Michaels just a year or two after
Speaker 1: that on the radio on the two World Series between
Speaker 1: the Reds and the Age, and I said to myself, damn,
Speaker 1: he's only twenty six. I'll never be that good, at
Speaker 1: least not in the next few years. I'll never be
Speaker 1: that good. Um. And I was discouraged, actually, but things
Speaker 1: turned out all right. I guess I'm along run. So
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Take me through your career path as a
Speaker 1: young guy. You're at Syracuse. How do you get in
Speaker 1: because you've got to the top at NBC at a
Speaker 1: relatively young age. How did you get along that path?
Speaker 1: What happened to allow you to advance the way that
Speaker 1: you did, and where did you start? Very importantly, I
Speaker 1: had a professor at Syracuse who took an active interest
Speaker 1: in me. He would identify a handful of kids each
Speaker 1: year who he thought had the potential to be good
Speaker 1: if they worked at it. And he was a caring
Speaker 1: but merciless critic to the point where and no joke here,
Speaker 1: Clay in the until the mid eighties when I was
Speaker 1: on NBC and pretty successful, I would still hear from
Speaker 1: him after the baseball and football broadcast. That was good,
Speaker 1: but you know, he was still critiquing me, and and
Speaker 1: he helped me with projecting, with with getting my voice
Speaker 1: into better shape. I never took speech classes, but he
Speaker 1: kind of gave me some tips. Um, and he told me,
Speaker 1: you're you're rushing too much here. Ace is important. Try
Speaker 1: to pace yourself. Uh, don't feel like you have to
Speaker 1: use all your preparation early on. It's normal to be
Speaker 1: anxious when you're young, so you come in really well prepared.
Speaker 1: But if you empty the whole bucket in the first
Speaker 1: few innings are in the first period of a hockey
Speaker 1: game or whatever it is, wait till the time where
Speaker 1: it really fits and the audience doesn't know whether you've
Speaker 1: used or a hundred percent of what you came into
Speaker 1: the boothworth as long as what you use was appropriate
Speaker 1: and it was good. So I think that with his
Speaker 1: help and being at w A e R, which is
Speaker 1: a legendary campus radio station, and you're surrounded by like
Speaker 1: minded people, some of whom are really quite talented, and
Speaker 1: we fed off each other's energy, I think I became
Speaker 1: pretty good early. I must have had some precocious level
Speaker 1: of talent, and I worked to refine it. And then
Speaker 1: when I was a senior at Syracuse, I got a
Speaker 1: job broadcasting minor league hockey in the Old Eastern Hockey League,
Speaker 1: the league that the Paul Newman movie Slap Shot is
Speaker 1: based on thirty bucks a game, five dollars a day
Speaker 1: meal money on the road. But that was sort of
Speaker 1: a baptismal um. I wasn't that good at it right away,
Speaker 1: but I came became pretty good at it by by
Speaker 1: mid season, and I thought that I'd come back for
Speaker 1: a second season of that, uh and finish up the
Speaker 1: remaining credits at Syracuse. When I sent a tape to
Speaker 1: k m X and St. Louis on a lark, the
Speaker 1: Carolina Cougars of the Old A B A had become
Speaker 1: the Spirits of St. Louis. They would last only two
Speaker 1: years until the ABA folded and only four of the teams.
Speaker 1: The nets dispersed, the Nuggets and the Pacers got absorbed
Speaker 1: and the Spirits went away. But those two years were
Speaker 1: big for me. Uh. Somehow, some way, Jack Buck, who
Speaker 1: was the sports director of the station, they had some
Speaker 1: two applicants on real to real tapes, and Jack Buck
Speaker 1: liked my tape and I got brought into St. Louis
Speaker 1: for an interview, and perhaps my willingness to work cheap.
Speaker 1: Eleven dollars was my salary for that first year at
Speaker 1: km X, and I would have paid them eleven thousand
Speaker 1: and So I'm at k X, I'm twenty two years old,
Speaker 1: and I'm not a colleague of I wouldn't be so presumptuous.
Speaker 1: But I'm in the same place as Jack Buck and
Speaker 1: Dan Kelly, who until Doc Emer came along, was the
Speaker 1: gold standard of hockey announcers, and everyone was terrific. They're
Speaker 1: both in news and in sports. They were all. They
Speaker 1: could have stopped the network with the quality of the
Speaker 1: talent that was there. And you got to kind of
Speaker 1: pick up your game if you're going to keep pace.
Speaker 1: And I think that accelerated my development as well. And
Speaker 1: I'll try to make this as concise as possible, but
Speaker 1: I've already failed in that regard. People love these stories,
Speaker 1: don't don't worry about that. Km o X was not
Speaker 1: just an affiliate. It was a CBS owned and operated
Speaker 1: station when that really made a difference, powerhouse station and
Speaker 1: many of their announcers Joe Garagiola, Harry Jack Buck, later
Speaker 1: Gary Bender, and Dan deardorfan of course later Joe Buck
Speaker 1: and Dan Kelly on hockey. These guys had gone to
Speaker 1: the network while remaining at km o X, so it
Speaker 1: was kind of a feeder system. So al Michaels is
Speaker 1: at CBS. It's September and he signs with ABC in
Speaker 1: less than a week before the first game of the season,
Speaker 1: and he was supposed to do San Francisco at Green Bay.
Speaker 1: And so the president of CBS Sports calls Bob Highland,
Speaker 1: who ran km OX, and says, we need somebody. Well,
Speaker 1: Buck already had an assignment. Kelly had an assignment. He said,
Speaker 1: we got a kid here. He's twenty four years old.
Speaker 1: He looks like he's four team, but he's pretty good off.
Speaker 1: I go to Green Bay. I had never done, except
Speaker 1: for a half of two football games on the radio.
Speaker 1: I've never done a football game. I go to Green Bay.
Speaker 1: Jay Randall showed me how to make a spotting board.
Speaker 1: I go to Green Bay. I do this game. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it wasn't a game worthy of the time capsule,
Speaker 1: but it was good enough. The They brought me back
Speaker 1: for occasional games, maybe three or four small regional games
Speaker 1: a year in football or backed up basketball games on
Speaker 1: the NBA and Don Olmire at NBC, even though none
Speaker 1: of those games ever went into the big market of
Speaker 1: New York. He became aware of me and he hired
Speaker 1: me when I was twenty seven full time at NBC.
Speaker 1: And after I was there for only a month or so,
Speaker 1: he calls me into his office and he says, you know,
Speaker 1: we really liked to work. We think you have a
Speaker 1: future here. Let me ask me something. How old are you?
Speaker 1: He said? He said, God, damn it, you look like
Speaker 1: your fourth seen that words. He goes, how much older
Speaker 1: do you think you would look if you grew a beard?
Speaker 1: And I set out five years at least, and he
Speaker 1: perks up. He goes, really, I said yeah, because that's
Speaker 1: how long it would take to grow it. So you know, somehow,
Speaker 1: somehow it worked out. Um, even when I was hosting
Speaker 1: the Olympics when I was forty, I'm sure I didn't
Speaker 1: look the part exactly, but people accepted it and and
Speaker 1: it worked out. And I think I think the outom
Speaker 1: line of it is if you have any talent at
Speaker 1: all and you get thrust into situations. Brian Gumbel left
Speaker 1: Sports to go to the Today Show. They didn't have
Speaker 1: anybody in mind to host the football show, and that
Speaker 1: eventually became hosting the NBA on NBC and hosting the Olympics.
Speaker 1: I got thrust into it. I had almost no studio
Speaker 1: hosting the experience at all. The first five years. I've
Speaker 1: never used a telepopter at all. I just ad lived everything.
Speaker 1: But I just found my way, and you become more
Speaker 1: and more comfortable with it. I think of the luck involved.
Speaker 1: NBC hires Ben Scully, Joe garg Joel and Tony Kubec
Speaker 1: had been a legendary pair. They put Joe with them.
Speaker 1: Then has to be on the a game. He is
Speaker 1: the greatest I inherit. Tony Kubeck the backup game becomes
Speaker 1: a much more important thing. And then I started hosting
Speaker 1: the World Series, and in the years where we had
Speaker 1: both lcs is, Tony and I would do the American League.
Speaker 1: That put me on a much bigger stage than I
Speaker 1: would have expected at that point in my career. Now,
Speaker 1: if an opportunity comes along, you have to be able
Speaker 1: to take advantage of that opportunity. Uh. David Letterman starts
Speaker 1: his show at NBC one night. He wants a sportscaster
Speaker 1: and to do mock commentary on elevator racist Mark Albert
Speaker 1: is the guy. He wants Marvis out of town doing
Speaker 1: a nick game. I'm sitting in the office. They go,
Speaker 1: we got this kid here, Bob Costas send them up
Speaker 1: again on the elevator on on the sixth floor. I
Speaker 1: do this thing for David Letterman. He likes it because
Speaker 1: I kind of get where he's coming from and what
Speaker 1: he wants. This mock serious thing. He brings me back
Speaker 1: to sit down next to him. At the end of
Speaker 1: the show, I'd say something that makes him laugh. He says,
Speaker 1: you're really funny. Would you like to do this again?
Speaker 1: Of course I would. You're David Letterman. Even then, he's
Speaker 1: David Letterman. I was probably on two dozen times, and
Speaker 1: those things not only introduced me to a different audience
Speaker 1: in a different way, but early on, when you're trying
Speaker 1: to find your way, you get some laughs there, or
Speaker 1: you get some good notices for what you're doing. In
Speaker 1: the sportscasting world. It increases your confidence and it makes
Speaker 1: you feel like you can be more spontaneous and show
Speaker 1: more of yourself, not just color between the lines, for
Speaker 1: maybe color outside the lines a little bit. Fox Sports
Speaker 1: Radio has the best sports talk lineup in the nation.
Speaker 1: Catch all of our shows at Fox Sports Radio dot
Speaker 1: com and within the I Heart Radio app. Search f
Speaker 1: s R to listen live. We're talking to Bob Costas.
Speaker 1: I'm Clay Travis. We're here with the Wins and Losses Podcast.
Speaker 1: How nervous were you going to Green Bay to call
Speaker 1: that game? At twenty four years old? Shaking like a
Speaker 1: freaking leaf. And the analyst on the game with someone
Speaker 1: that only older listeners would remember firsthand, Hall of Fame
Speaker 1: receiver Tommy McDonald, who had been a big deal at
Speaker 1: Oklahoma and then primarily with the Philadelphia Eagles, one of
Speaker 1: the last to play without forget about a mask, no
Speaker 1: no bar, no bar on, Yeah, that's amazing. And then
Speaker 1: went and then went to the single helmet thing, and
Speaker 1: he was quite a single bar and he was quite
Speaker 1: a character. But however nervous I was, he was a
Speaker 1: hundred times more nervous. He has since passed away. And
Speaker 1: I say this with affection play. He literally froze on
Speaker 1: the on camera open. He couldn't remember what he wanted
Speaker 1: to say. And I'm twenty four years old. Nobody outside St.
Speaker 1: Louis has any damn idea who I am, and so
Speaker 1: I basically I'm doing the whole broadcast by myself. There
Speaker 1: were times when he couldn't complete sentences, and that was
Speaker 1: the last game be he ever did. So I was
Speaker 1: nervous to begin with, and I was damn near panic
Speaker 1: stricken by the second quarter. But but I muddled through.
Speaker 1: They brought me back. So either I was very lucky
Speaker 1: or I was a little bit better than I feared. Okay,
Speaker 1: other question, Don Olmeyer, I know that he was incredibly
Speaker 1: important for a lot of different people in the world
Speaker 1: of sports. What did he mean for you and for
Speaker 1: people who do not know him? Who was he and
Speaker 1: why was he important? Don Oldmeyer was bigger than life.
Speaker 1: He and Dick Ebersol, who was even more important in
Speaker 1: my career, were proteges of run Ledge. Run Ledge is
Speaker 1: of course, still viewed as the single most important person
Speaker 1: in the history of sports television who wasn't on the air,
Speaker 1: although I think Dick Eversol could rival him for that.
Speaker 1: Uh So, first Don and then Dick headed up NBC Sports,
Speaker 1: and they each had a tremendous influence on me. And
Speaker 1: the very fact that they liked me and saw something
Speaker 1: in me that maybe others would not have seen at
Speaker 1: least that quickly that elevated my career. They put me
Speaker 1: in positions to succeed or I guess fail, and luckily
Speaker 1: each of those worked out. In the case of Dick Eversol,
Speaker 1: not only did he elevate me from late night host
Speaker 1: of the Olympics to primetime host. I've been the late
Speaker 1: night host, he made me the primetime host in in Barcelona,
Speaker 1: but he also created a late night talk show for
Speaker 1: me in conjunction with Brandon Tartakoff uh later with Bob Costas,
Speaker 1: followed Johnny Carson and David Letterman in NBC's late night lineup,
Speaker 1: and showed a different side of me because only maybe
Speaker 1: five of it had to do with sports. Most of
Speaker 1: it was other walks of life. So ohmy are at
Speaker 1: the beginning hiring me, having some confidence in me, giving
Speaker 1: me big assiglence. I mean, in the first year I
Speaker 1: was there, when Dick Enberg had an overlap and there
Speaker 1: was a college basketball game and a football game, he'd
Speaker 1: go to the football game and Ollmyer threw me right
Speaker 1: in there with Al McGuire and Billy Packer, a legendary
Speaker 1: combination in college basketball back when a college basketball game
Speaker 1: on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon was a different thing
Speaker 1: than it is now. The media landscape was so different.
Speaker 1: So Don threw me into those things, and basically it
Speaker 1: was sink or swim, and I might have sunk a
Speaker 1: few times, but I made it to the other side
Speaker 1: of the waterway, I guess to strain that metaphor. And
Speaker 1: then when Don went off and eventually became the head
Speaker 1: of entertainment at NBC in the nineties, in the heyday
Speaker 1: of NBC e Er Seinfeld, Uh, Cosby, Show, Um whatever, Friends,
Speaker 1: whatever it might have been, when NBC was the unquestioned
Speaker 1: number one eversol Is running NBC Sports and NBC Sports
Speaker 1: is clearly number one in that area, and all Myer's
Speaker 1: running NBC Entertainment, and luckily I'm their boy. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that I aggravated them. I know I aggravated
Speaker 1: them sometimes because sometimes I have a mind of my own,
Speaker 1: So I may have pissed them off now and then.
Speaker 1: But what they did for me, uh is something I
Speaker 1: can never fully repay. And they were both so charismatic
Speaker 1: and dynamic. They themselves were as big a star, at
Speaker 1: least among those who knew them as any of the
Speaker 1: broadcasters were. They had tremendous presence. When they walked into
Speaker 1: a room, you knew that you better snap to it
Speaker 1: and pay attention because there was just something about them
Speaker 1: something you know, intelligence is one thing, inside is another,
Speaker 1: but presence in charisma, and they had it in space.
Speaker 1: You mentioned going on David Letterman. So as a kid
Speaker 1: growing up in Nashville, I would watch baseball all day long,
Speaker 1: right when I was home in the summers, in particular,
Speaker 1: I'd watch w g N with Harry Carey and Steve Stone.
Speaker 1: In the afternoons, I would watch the late night at
Speaker 1: the time ESPN games. And one of the great things
Speaker 1: about being a kid and being able to stay up late,
Speaker 1: and I've always kind of been a night owl despite
Speaker 1: the fact that I have an early morning show, is
Speaker 1: I would watch David Letterman, and I just found him
Speaker 1: to be an unbelievably compelling television present who, as you
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, broke pretty much every rule that would have
Speaker 1: existed in television. Right if you had gone through and said,
Speaker 1: how would you design a late night show? Uh that
Speaker 1: they came up with basically the everything that they would
Speaker 1: tell you not to do. And it worked flawlessly for Letterman.
Speaker 1: What was working with him? Like you said, you went
Speaker 1: on a show a bunch as well, and you've later
Speaker 1: followed his show. What did you find him to be
Speaker 1: like off the air as opposed to on the air,
Speaker 1: And how would the show be constructed, and what if
Speaker 1: anything could you take from that? Well, David, I didn't
Speaker 1: want anything to be cookie cutter. You go on other shows,
Speaker 1: they do a pre interview and you talk about a
Speaker 1: few areas that you might discuss, and you give them
Speaker 1: a few anecdotes that you have that are sure to
Speaker 1: get laughs and be interesting. And David would have that,
Speaker 1: but he'd depart from it. Jay Leno would pretty much
Speaker 1: stay with it, and Jay was successful for his own reasons.
Speaker 1: But Letterman thought there was an integrity in that. At
Speaker 1: least that was my assumption that if he just painted
Speaker 1: by the numbers, that he couldn't be David Letterman. So
Speaker 1: you never knew. He could get bored with what you
Speaker 1: were saying, or you could want to alan j you
Speaker 1: it could throw something out. So you really had to
Speaker 1: be on your toes when you were on with David Letterman.
Speaker 1: But David was great to me. Um, he was always
Speaker 1: very kind to me, said nice things about me, and
Speaker 1: when he went to CBS UM after he didn't get
Speaker 1: the Tonight show and Jay Leno did. Part of his
Speaker 1: deal was that he controlled the hour after his show,
Speaker 1: and eventually Tom Snyder got that hour and later Craig
Speaker 1: Kilborn and Craig Ferguson. M Snyder was the first month,
Speaker 1: but only after David offered it to me. I was
Speaker 1: very tempted because it was David Letterman, and because it
Speaker 1: was a full hour and it was an hour earlier,
Speaker 1: twelve thirty instead of one thirty. But NBC had the NBA. Uh,
Speaker 1: they still had the NFL, although I was I was
Speaker 1: transitioning out of the NFL, but still that they had it.
Speaker 1: They were reacquiring baseball. I was the host of the Olympics,
Speaker 1: and so if the offer had come at a different time,
Speaker 1: I said, who would have taken it? And I certainly
Speaker 1: appreciated that David thought enough of me to offer it
Speaker 1: to me. Um he remade late night television. You know,
Speaker 1: his his idol was always Johnny Carson, and Johnny was
Speaker 1: magnificent and he had a certain saboaf there that almost
Speaker 1: no one else could match. For his time period. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't mean time period at night, I mean that
Speaker 1: era of television. He was beyond cool. But David actually
Speaker 1: going forward was more influential. Because everybody as wonderful as
Speaker 1: Conan is or or Kimmel or Fallon or Colbert or
Speaker 1: whoever you want to name, they all are influenced by
Speaker 1: David Letterman. Follow them. There's no doubt at all. And
Speaker 1: all of this kind of leads into this question, which
Speaker 1: I think is is important also for people out there listening,
Speaker 1: and I'm Clay Travis. We're talking with Bob Costas on
Speaker 1: The Winds and Lost his podcast. Being able to do
Speaker 1: sports well requires an ability to see sports as part
Speaker 1: of a larger landscape of American and world life, and
Speaker 1: certainly you had to do that at the Olympics. Do
Speaker 1: you believe sometimes that people who do sports get so
Speaker 1: wrapped up into the essence of the sport itself that
Speaker 1: they lack the ability to understand the larger context. And
Speaker 1: how has that mattered and been an asset to you
Speaker 1: in terms of the growth of your career and what
Speaker 1: you were able to do understanding sports. But also just
Speaker 1: based on our conversations, I know that you have a
Speaker 1: lot of interest outside of sports. Sometimes there are guys
Speaker 1: and girls in our field where it's like all they
Speaker 1: know is sports, and I think that can sometimes constrain
Speaker 1: them to a large extent. It's a perceptive question, you know.
Speaker 1: You listen to Vince Scully through all those years and
Speaker 1: then obviously was steeped in baseball history, but he knew
Speaker 1: something about the world beyond that you could gracefully bring
Speaker 1: it in. I knew Jack Buck very well. Jack Buck
Speaker 1: was wounded at the bridge at Remagen during World War Two.
Speaker 1: He got either the Bronze Star or Purple Heart, I
Speaker 1: don't remember which. He had worked on the docks. He
Speaker 1: had grown up relatively poor in Massachusetts, one of six
Speaker 1: or seven kids. He was a Depression era kid um.
Speaker 1: He'd scuffled a little bit. He'd lived the light. He
Speaker 1: was a reader. He was someone that that got out there,
Speaker 1: you know, he was. He lived a textured light, and
Speaker 1: that came across in his broadcast. As great as people
Speaker 1: perceived Jack being from his network broadcast, it was really
Speaker 1: on the Cardinals day in, day out, night and night out,
Speaker 1: where his sly wit and his frame of reference and
Speaker 1: his texture as a person came across, and that's that's
Speaker 1: what you want to emulate. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: ever fully get there, but it's that in your own
Speaker 1: way that you want to do if the circumstances allow it.
Speaker 1: You want the broadcast to be textured. I've always used
Speaker 1: this example. Over time, maybe you can't get it into
Speaker 1: every broadcast, but over time you hope to do what
Speaker 1: a really good um issue of Sports Illustrated does. Some
Speaker 1: of it is a celebration of sports. It's excitement, it's beauty,
Speaker 1: even the poetry of it, great photography, great writing about
Speaker 1: a big event. Some of it's quirky and humorous. Some
Speaker 1: of it's historical and when called for and in proportion,
Speaker 1: there's journalism and there's commentary, and taken all together, it's
Speaker 1: a mosaic. It isn't just one thing, or isn't just
Speaker 1: primary colors. There's different shadings. And I hope that over
Speaker 1: time That's what my career has been and where I
Speaker 1: got frustrated, and it's nobody's fault. NBC does not run
Speaker 1: for my benefit, did not run for my benefit. But
Speaker 1: in the last ten years or so of my career
Speaker 1: there they had lost baseball. They had lost the NBA,
Speaker 1: my two favorite things. I've done a dozen Olympics, and
Speaker 1: the formats became more and more constricting, and so there
Speaker 1: was less of a chance to do the very thing
Speaker 1: that your question implies. And so if you think about
Speaker 1: younger viewers, they may not have the full sense of
Speaker 1: what I might have been about. And I don't think
Speaker 1: it matters all that much. I mean it matters to me.
Speaker 1: No one's going to put it in a time capsule
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, but from the mid eighties too,
Speaker 1: I don't know, early two thousand's the combination of the
Speaker 1: late night show of the n b A, of the
Speaker 1: baseball coverage, of the early hosting of football, of showing
Speaker 1: up on Letterman and Atlano and even Carson on one occasion,
Speaker 1: or Nightline or Meet the Press or Charlie Rose, or
Speaker 1: doing pieces for the NBC news magazines, and then the Olympics,
Speaker 1: of course, and then my spint at HBO. I think
Speaker 1: that almost everything I did that was true to me
Speaker 1: as a broadcaster and as a person. And you know,
Speaker 1: no one's going to be universally popular, but I'll stand
Speaker 1: by that and be comfortable with it because it was
Speaker 1: true to me. I think some of what happened over
Speaker 1: the last decade at NBC didn't perfectly exemplify who I was,
Speaker 1: either personally or professionally. But that's nobody's fault. Just the
Speaker 1: way it goes talking to Bob Costas and I'm fascinated
Speaker 1: by so much of what you just said, and I
Speaker 1: told you this off the air. One reason I think
Speaker 1: I don't care very much what people say about me,
Speaker 1: and this also goes to a larger conversation, is when
Speaker 1: you do daily radio for three hours a day, fifteen
Speaker 1: hours a week, I basically get to have therapy in
Speaker 1: public for anything that bothers me. Right, I get to
Speaker 1: tell you exactly what I think. And it can be
Speaker 1: about being a father of three young boys. It can
Speaker 1: be about being married. It can be about a game
Speaker 1: that didn't go away the way I anticipated, or a
Speaker 1: bet that I lost, or whatever else. I think people
Speaker 1: who listen to my radio show, and it's obviously you
Speaker 1: know this, it's never as many as you want them
Speaker 1: to write. I wish that more people listen to the
Speaker 1: show continues to grow and everything else, But when you're
Speaker 1: in this space, you always want to have more, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's kind of in the universe in which we live.
Speaker 1: If you're ambitious and you want to continue to grow,
Speaker 1: you think you're pretty good and you'd like to have
Speaker 1: as many people paying attention as possible. And we're one
Speaker 1: of the four or five biggest radio shows now, but
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we should be the biggest. And
Speaker 1: the point on a larger scale is though we have
Speaker 1: a big enough audience now where I feel like people
Speaker 1: may not love me all the time, but they know
Speaker 1: me right. I am an authentic person to them on
Speaker 1: many different ways, both good and bad, as the people
Speaker 1: that we all know in our day to day lives are.
Speaker 1: And we have found that I bet you have found too.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes it's not the talents that make people like you,
Speaker 1: it's your flaws, because they humanize you, whether dad, mom, grandma,
Speaker 1: grand paw, aunt, uncle, whatever it might be, you in
Speaker 1: an interesting way. At least in the last you know,
Speaker 1: fifteen twenty years, for many people who are listening to us,
Speaker 1: had a massive audience, the Olympics, big sports, all of those.
Speaker 1: But you're within that television window where the larger context
Speaker 1: is not necessarily known. You don't have you've got the
Speaker 1: massive audience everybody may know you when you walk through
Speaker 1: the airport, but at times you're almost an enigma that
Speaker 1: people can project up on to choose to believe what
Speaker 1: they would like to believe about you. Is that a
Speaker 1: challenge in many ways? I would think it's it's such
Speaker 1: an interest, it's it's it's kind of the opposite of
Speaker 1: what I've got now, where the people who listen, we've
Speaker 1: got a good size audience, but they really feel like
Speaker 1: they know me. Whereas when you're talking to million people
Speaker 1: on television or seventy five million or whatever the biggest
Speaker 1: number was that you ever spoke to, they kind of
Speaker 1: see you and and and and you're a sphinx of sorts.
Speaker 1: They project up on you what they think of you.
Speaker 1: You know, that's so insightful, And it's one of the
Speaker 1: subtexts of this conversation. And as an aside, one of
Speaker 1: the obvious reasons why I've taken advantage of this format
Speaker 1: uh and gone on at greater length that I almost
Speaker 1: ever have a chance to go on on television. And
Speaker 1: going back to the last comment I made, I was
Speaker 1: very comfortable with what I put out there in the eighties,
Speaker 1: nineties and early part of the two thousands, I think
Speaker 1: that those who paid even casual attention had a pretty
Speaker 1: accurate idea of where I was coming from professionally and personally.
Speaker 1: And if in more recent years they had followed me
Speaker 1: on HBO or on the Baseball Network, then that would
Speaker 1: also be true. But on NBC, my role on Sunday
Speaker 1: Night Football, working alongside Al Michaels and Chris Collinsworth, they're
Speaker 1: doing what they were put on Planet Earth to do,
Speaker 1: and Fred Goodelly the producer, and Drew Sakoff the director,
Speaker 1: everybody else what they were put there to do. And
Speaker 1: I was there because I had equity and NBC and
Speaker 1: people associated me with big events on NBC, and I
Speaker 1: don't know that that really uh personified anything that I
Speaker 1: truly cared about. There were moments perhaps that I was
Speaker 1: able to contribute something worthwhile that was um if not
Speaker 1: unique to me, than at least distinctive about me, but
Speaker 1: for the most part it didn't serve that purpose. And
Speaker 1: on the Olympics, the same thing. I think the first
Speaker 1: seven or eight that I did pretty much we're close
Speaker 1: to the bullseye nothing, as we started out this conversation saying,
Speaker 1: is ever truly perfect, but pretty close, And then After that,
Speaker 1: the formats and viewer expectation and everything else um changed
Speaker 1: the role. And I think I still handled it professionally
Speaker 1: and competently, and there were times little windows where maybe
Speaker 1: you could hit a great note, but those windows seemed
Speaker 1: to me to be fewer. And and now you coupled
Speaker 1: that with social media, and that's what brought us together
Speaker 1: here and this point. And again I'm not saying it's
Speaker 1: the end of the world. And I'm one of the
Speaker 1: luckiest guys on the planet, so I'm not complaining. But
Speaker 1: there is a widespread misimpression, perhaps especially among your audience
Speaker 1: or audiences that have a certain predisposition. There is a
Speaker 1: misimpression that I'm somewhere to the left of Bernie Sanders
Speaker 1: or Noam Chomsky. And the truth of the matter is
Speaker 1: that anybody who knows me knows that that isn't even
Speaker 1: close to true. That I'm an ala carte guy, that
Speaker 1: I have many views that could be called old school liberal,
Speaker 1: not progressive or leftist. I have a problem with that.
Speaker 1: I have a problem with cancel culture. I have a
Speaker 1: problem with political wreckness. I have a problem with identity politics.
Speaker 1: If it's blind identity politics. I have a problem with
Speaker 1: what I understand is going on in academia to a
Speaker 1: large extent um. But I have classic liberal views, but
Speaker 1: I also have many views that could be characterized as conservative.
Speaker 1: But a few things kind of hope a bear uh
Speaker 1: in the right wing blog of sphere and Fox News
Speaker 1: or whatever. And it's part of the business model there
Speaker 1: to say to the resentments of the audience, not so
Speaker 1: much the enlightenment of the audience. And so someone like me,
Speaker 1: relatively visible and well known, is useful if you can
Speaker 1: make a straw man out of me. Now I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not as useful as Nancy Pelosi or somebody like that.
Speaker 1: And neither am I aligned necessarily with Nancy Pelosi. But
Speaker 1: but in passing there were times when I served the purpose.
Speaker 1: And the purpose was not let's see what he really
Speaker 1: thinks and let's get into shades of gray and nuanced. No,
Speaker 1: the purpose was he is part of the left wing
Speaker 1: media machine. And it's very hard, as you said, I
Speaker 1: don't have a show like yours. It's very hard to
Speaker 1: answer that you can defend a position you actually hold,
Speaker 1: and you should if you actually hold it, But how
Speaker 1: do you defend or explain a position that's been assigned
Speaker 1: to you, and motivations and a constellation of beliefs that
Speaker 1: people have extrapolated from one thing that they misunderstood to
Speaker 1: begin with. How are you supposed to defend or unravel
Speaker 1: all of that when none of it is true to
Speaker 1: who you are? What I always say on my shows
Speaker 1: is social media creates fifty foot tall caricatures that are
Speaker 1: often one inch one inch deep. Right, you can punch
Speaker 1: right through it, but the caricature itself is so large
Speaker 1: that it isn't in any way representative. And all of
Speaker 1: us out there, regardless of whether you're a Democrat, Republican, independent,
Speaker 1: everybody listening to this right now has beliefs that conflict
Speaker 1: with their party if they are intellectually honest. And I
Speaker 1: always say, if you agree with everything that a political
Speaker 1: candidate is saying, then you aren't listening very hard. And
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure if I were running for president
Speaker 1: or political office that I would agree with everything I say,
Speaker 1: because I'm constantly evolving and recalibrating what I believe on
Speaker 1: a day to day basis. That's what I think intelligent
Speaker 1: people have to do now. A big part of your
Speaker 1: becoming what I think it would be fair to say,
Speaker 1: is a is a figure of of of an easy target. Right,
Speaker 1: Because you work at NBC, you seem like, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got the glasses on, you seem professorial at times.
Speaker 1: You can imagine how you could play the role of
Speaker 1: a feat liberal. Uh, Mom costas right like you. You
Speaker 1: kind of they put up the picture and they can
Speaker 1: kind of take advantage of you. Your global You've been
Speaker 1: doing the Olympics, all these things. A lot of that
Speaker 1: came out of and you can correct me if I'm
Speaker 1: wrong here, But in essay you did about guns on
Speaker 1: NBC J Ring Sunday Night Football, What exactly happened there?
Speaker 1: What was the experience? What would you change if anything,
Speaker 1: about the way that that was presented. First of all, I,
Speaker 1: to some extent fumbled it, and I've always owned up
Speaker 1: to it. Jovan Belcher, linebacker for the Chiefs, murders his
Speaker 1: fiance in front of their two year old child, uh
Speaker 1: and his mother in law, and then goes to the
Speaker 1: Chiefs training center and in front of his coach and
Speaker 1: general manager, commits suicide. All right, I do not think
Speaker 1: that I'm going to be called upon to do anything
Speaker 1: in essay form that Sunday Night. Uh. They had devoted
Speaker 1: almost the entire pregame and halftime to looking at this
Speaker 1: issue still evolving. They had a lot of people from
Speaker 1: the chiefs with poignant commentary. Dan Patrick and Rodney Harrison
Speaker 1: and Tony Dunge were handling it back in the studio.
Speaker 1: UM usually I would my essays sometime after the opening kickoff,
Speaker 1: and I presented to them so that they could put
Speaker 1: some b roll on it with about I don't know,
Speaker 1: seven eight minutes to go in the second quarter. In
Speaker 1: this case, with about three or four minutes to go
Speaker 1: in the second quarter, it's we're gonna need a minute
Speaker 1: to ninety seconds from you and a producer. I take
Speaker 1: responsibility not blaming it on him, because I'm the last
Speaker 1: line of defense. I gotta sign off on it. A
Speaker 1: producer hands me a column written and here's the irony
Speaker 1: written by your colleague and partner, Jason Whitlock, who now
Speaker 1: is seen as although it's a caricature, and I have
Speaker 1: more regard for Jason than to caricature him, but for
Speaker 1: our purposes here is seen as a conservative voice. He's
Speaker 1: on Fox, he's on OutKick. But Malason had written a
Speaker 1: large article about this part of which decried what he
Speaker 1: called the gun culture in sports. And the gun culture
Speaker 1: in sports had been something which had been written about
Speaker 1: and talked about well before the Belcher incident. ESPN had
Speaker 1: done a big thing about it. There has been takeout
Speaker 1: stories in the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and the
Speaker 1: USA Today about a gun culture in sports. And all
Speaker 1: you have to do is google athletes and guns, and
Speaker 1: there's a litany of criminality, tragedy, folly associated with athletes
Speaker 1: and guns. And while certainly it has happened in society,
Speaker 1: it has happened infrequently, if at all, that a prominent athlete,
Speaker 1: by virtue of having a gun, has turned the situation
Speaker 1: around for the better, where any sensible person would say,
Speaker 1: thank goodness, he did that. So there was a gun culture.
Speaker 1: Think Gilbert Arenas pulling a gun on a teammate in
Speaker 1: the Washington Wizard's locker room. Think Ray Caruth, Think Tank Johnson,
Speaker 1: think a long, long list. And that's what That's what
Speaker 1: Jason was concerned about, an attitude towards guns, a misplaced
Speaker 1: notion of street cred or manhood, and the easy accessibility
Speaker 1: to guns which leads very often to tragedy, no one
Speaker 1: in the right mind thinks that that Javon Belchi couldn't
Speaker 1: have strangled his fiancee or beaten her to death or
Speaker 1: stabbed there. But we know that a gun not only
Speaker 1: makes it easier, but that the survival rate with a gun,
Speaker 1: whether it's attempted suicide or attempted murder, is the survival
Speaker 1: rate is less than by other means. And if we're
Speaker 1: also just talking about guns in general, you don't have
Speaker 1: maths instances of people throwing people off the roof or
Speaker 1: up the building, but you do have mass shootings that
Speaker 1: involve guns. So now this producer hands me this article.
Speaker 1: I look at it, and what Jason was saying was
Speaker 1: obvious to me. He was talking about a gun culture,
Speaker 1: out about gun control, out about the Second Amendment. It
Speaker 1: rang true to me, and I thought wrongly that the
Speaker 1: audience would understand the point, so I quoted a portion
Speaker 1: of it because they didn't have time to write my
Speaker 1: own thing. I quoted a portion of it. It was
Speaker 1: misunderstood as a plea for gun control or an anti
Speaker 1: Second Amendment position. That's my fault, And in retrospect, Clay,
Speaker 1: I'm a good enough broadcaster. I knew this an hour
Speaker 1: later when the response started to come in and people
Speaker 1: were outraged that they wanted me fired, and the n
Speaker 1: r A goes nuts and he's anti American, he's anti
Speaker 1: Second Amendment, etcetera, etcetera. I should have off the top
Speaker 1: of my head, I should have said, because this is
Speaker 1: really what I was thinking. Every time a tragedy intersects
Speaker 1: with sports, we hear one of the dumbest cliches in sports. Well,
Speaker 1: that really puts it all in perspective, But in fact,
Speaker 1: that perspective has a very short shelf life because we're
Speaker 1: right back to obsessing about the same sports issues we
Speaker 1: were concerned with fifteen minutes ago. If we're really looking
Speaker 1: for some perspective in the aftermath of this tragedy, then
Speaker 1: a serious conversation should ensued, including but not limited to
Speaker 1: domestic violence and are those who play a violent sport
Speaker 1: more inclined to it than they're athletic peers and contemporaries
Speaker 1: the effects of football itself. We're learning about the long
Speaker 1: range effects of CTE, but we're also beginning to learn
Speaker 1: then in the short term, emotions and impulse control can
Speaker 1: be affected by head trauma, especially when mixed with alcohol.
Speaker 1: Performance enhancing drugs or pain killers, whatever it might be,
Speaker 1: and the whole idea of athletes and guns. And I
Speaker 1: should have said, and would have said, not talking here
Speaker 1: about anyone's responsible, lawful exercise of their legitimate Second Amendment rights,
Speaker 1: but there is an irresponsible attitude toward guns that is
Speaker 1: part of the sports world, and we'd be better off
Speaker 1: taking a serious look at that. If I had said that,
Speaker 1: the n r A types, the absolutists still would have
Speaker 1: come after me, but a larger portion of the audience
Speaker 1: would have understood what I was saying. I clarified it
Speaker 1: after that, almost immediately after that, I went into the Lions.
Speaker 1: Then I went on with Bill O'Reilly. I went on
Speaker 1: with Howard Kurtz. But again, if it's part of the
Speaker 1: business model, no one comes on and says, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: he clarified it, we get it now. No, that wouldn't
Speaker 1: serve their purpose. So somebody on box says, Bob Costas
Speaker 1: is a hypocritical buffoon. He has armed security, but he
Speaker 1: doesn't want you to have it. So I said to
Speaker 1: Howard Kurtz, who's their media reporter, I've never had armed security.
Speaker 1: I've never had personal security in my entire life. Maybe
Speaker 1: I should, especially now, but I never have. I said,
Speaker 1: there's massive security. Of course, at an Olympics, where the
Speaker 1: President of the United States has to go through the
Speaker 1: same security that someone holding a ticket has to go through,
Speaker 1: and there is one security person assigned to NBC something
Speaker 1: I football. Apart from that, I have never had personal
Speaker 1: security a day in my life, on the job or
Speaker 1: going to the restaurant or walking down the street. What
Speaker 1: was the way that was fun? Bob Costa says, because
Speaker 1: I don't personally pay for it, an NBC does. I'm
Speaker 1: not a hypocrite, even though I've got all of this
Speaker 1: personal security. If I could make this any clearer than this,
Speaker 1: I don't know how I could look. When I hear
Speaker 1: about somebody whose home is broken into, they're in some
Speaker 1: kind of danger, and he or she uses a gun
Speaker 1: to defend themselves and their family, I applaud it. I
Speaker 1: applaud it. If someone breaks into your home, you don't
Speaker 1: have time to evaluate what is it here at sixty
Speaker 1: if you're if you're a woman who could be overpowered,
Speaker 1: or you're a guy who calculates the odds, and I
Speaker 1: don't like my chances here in hand to hand combat
Speaker 1: and my kids are asleep upstairs. If there's even a
Speaker 1: five percent chance of one percent chance that you, your wife,
Speaker 1: your kids are in danger, that person who broke into
Speaker 1: your house put him or herself in jeopardy, and whatever happens,
Speaker 1: I'm okay with it. I do not want to see
Speaker 1: the Second Amendment revoked. I think there should be reasonable
Speaker 1: guns safety laws. UM. Looking at rules about cars um
Speaker 1: would be a good template. Uh. Nobody says that because
Speaker 1: or speed limits, and because you have to register your
Speaker 1: car or have a license. Nobody says that means that
Speaker 1: we're going to have to go to Grandma's house and
Speaker 1: a horse and buggy on Thanksgiving because they're going to
Speaker 1: take our cars away. And nobody says also that you,
Speaker 1: um that you should be allowed to drive the same
Speaker 1: car that they use them that they Tonify hundred or
Speaker 1: at Indie on a city street. These are reasonable restrictions
Speaker 1: which don't get in the way of people's basic rights. Um.
Speaker 1: And when someone says they look to take the Second
Speaker 1: Amendment way, they're going to take the Second Amendment away.
Speaker 1: Anyone who could pass a Civics test knows just how
Speaker 1: difficult it is to revoke a constitutional amendment. Exactly one
Speaker 1: has been revoked in the entire history of the country,
Speaker 1: and that was the short lived prohibition against alcohol. The
Speaker 1: steps you'd have to go through to revoke a constitutional
Speaker 1: amendment are so extensive that hill is so high to climb.
Speaker 1: And nobody I know that has any credibility has suggested it.
Speaker 1: Certainly not me, but that kind of paranoia that that
Speaker 1: that's it worked there this, this person who is prominent,
Speaker 1: has said something that perchs your resentment, and it's not
Speaker 1: in our best interests really to clarify it or to
Speaker 1: acknowledge the shades of gray, because this works for us,
Speaker 1: this works in our business model. So once once that
Speaker 1: was in place, and I thank you for giving me
Speaker 1: this much time, Clay, And I also know that no
Speaker 1: matter how carefully I've expressed myself, how truthfully and how
Speaker 1: much nuance, there are some people who just don't want
Speaker 1: to hear it because it doesn't align with what they
Speaker 1: want to believe. Bob Costas here Clay Travis Wins and Losses.
Speaker 1: How much of the reaction do you think had to
Speaker 1: do with your opinion came out during a football game?
Speaker 1: Oh a lot, a lot of it did and in
Speaker 1: other words, if you had gone on meet the press,
Speaker 1: you know, let's say that weekend, because they had wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about violence in football and you had expressed
Speaker 1: the exact same opinions, I don't know that it would
Speaker 1: have been characterized in the same way as it was
Speaker 1: because it occurred at halftime of a football game, and
Speaker 1: whether or not people wanted to see a serious analysis
Speaker 1: of Jovan Belcher in that situation a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and this has been, you know, kind of what I've
Speaker 1: focused on for a long time. I try to think
Speaker 1: about the average guy or girl out there watching a game.
Speaker 1: They just want to have a beer, and they want
Speaker 1: to watch a football game, and they don't really want
Speaker 1: to see or have to confront larger societal issues for
Speaker 1: any reason. And so I think sometimes the juxtaposition of frivolity,
Speaker 1: which is in general football and gun control or racial
Speaker 1: oppression or whatever it is, that is grating too many
Speaker 1: people because this is their escape from the real world.
Speaker 1: So I think that also actored in in a big
Speaker 1: way here, which goes to you having a relatively short
Speaker 1: amount of time to suddenly get thrown into the deep
Speaker 1: end to the pool where you have to address something
Speaker 1: that is freighted with incredible difficulty and complexity in the
Speaker 1: middle of something that's otherwise privilege. They asked me to
Speaker 1: do it, and I should have said I had enough
Speaker 1: standing to say, look, there isn't enough time. It's better
Speaker 1: off being addressed in a larger and different forum. I
Speaker 1: didn't do that. That was my mistake. Look, a guy
Speaker 1: who wins a gold glove can food a routine groundball.
Speaker 1: It happens. This is live television in the heat of
Speaker 1: the moment, and I made a mistake in judgment. But
Speaker 1: that does not mean that my views should be perpetually
Speaker 1: mischaracterized and grotesquely caricatured. But I think if I had
Speaker 1: done what I mentioned a few minutes ago, starting with
Speaker 1: domestic violence and the effects of football, and then framed
Speaker 1: the gun part of it as I just suggest that
Speaker 1: I should have, then it would have been less jarring,
Speaker 1: and it would have been understood that I wasn't doing
Speaker 1: it gratuitously because these issues had intersected with with football
Speaker 1: that weekend, just as when NBC asked me to do
Speaker 1: a commentary on the red Skins team name that had
Speaker 1: become a big issue that week. The President had been
Speaker 1: asked about it. Goodell had been asked about it, Dan
Speaker 1: Snyder had been asked about it, and Washington was playing
Speaker 1: Dallas on our air, and I delivered a very measured
Speaker 1: commentary about it, trying to lay out the distinctions in
Speaker 1: my mind between redskins and names associated with Native Americans
Speaker 1: like chiefs, braves or warriors. By definition every dictionary, by definition,
Speaker 1: redskins is derogatory, pejorative, a slur, an insult. No such
Speaker 1: definition applies to chiefs, braves, warriors. So I'm not a
Speaker 1: political correctness guy, even though it was handy for people
Speaker 1: to luck me in there, because after the gun thing
Speaker 1: then there were poised to believe um that I was
Speaker 1: some sort of crazy leftist. Um. Now, I think some
Speaker 1: people view the Redskins thing differently. Even then, a lot
Speaker 1: of conservatives, including the late Charles Krafhammer, Kathleen Parker, Phil Mushnik,
Speaker 1: who is viewed as being writer center media columnists in
Speaker 1: the New York Post, Tom Cole, a Native American but
Speaker 1: Republican congressman from Oklahoma, a lot of them agreed with
Speaker 1: me at that at that time. But what also came
Speaker 1: out of that play was this this notion, including among
Speaker 1: people who are fans of mine and who might have
Speaker 1: agreed with what I've said, But the notion, well, he
Speaker 1: really leaned into politics. He politicized everything. They were well
Speaker 1: over a hundred of those halftime essays. Two the two
Speaker 1: we've just discussed guns and redskins could even be construed
Speaker 1: as political. Everything else was Tom Brady and Peyton Manning
Speaker 1: or art Model or al Davis dies and you do
Speaker 1: some sort of assessment and a pre creation or what's
Speaker 1: right or wrong about the overtime rules? That's what it was. Herry.
Speaker 1: And if I'm such a left wing guy as opposed
Speaker 1: to the ala carte guy I really am, What would
Speaker 1: it count for? The essay I did about Vladimir Putin
Speaker 1: in Sochi, which was widely viewed as one of the
Speaker 1: toughest ever directed towards the head of state and toward
Speaker 1: a host nation. What would account for me? Asking the
Speaker 1: heads of the IOC repeatedly, what is it with the
Speaker 1: IOC and authoritarian nations like China and Russia? What would
Speaker 1: account for me? Twice in the opening ceremonies and again
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, pointing out that China was positioned,
Speaker 1: had the motivation and the means to replicate the old
Speaker 1: Eastern Bloc sports machine, complete with all the cheating that
Speaker 1: that implies, and pointing out both in an interview with
Speaker 1: President Bush in two thousand eight and another common areas
Speaker 1: small little snippets, judicious small percentage of the overall coverage.
Speaker 1: But look, there's no freedom of speech here. There's a
Speaker 1: firewall on the internet. Yes, China has opened up to
Speaker 1: the world. Yes, the Beijing that I'm visiting in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight is much different than the p King is.
Speaker 1: Most Americans knew it that I first saw in nineteen.
Speaker 1: It's been transformed. It's a modern city, it's there's lots
Speaker 1: of commerce. They're not a communist country by economics anymore,
Speaker 1: but they are still an authoritarian country, often often a
Speaker 1: terribly tunitive totalitarian country. Is that a left wing thing
Speaker 1: to say? Is it a left wing thing to say that?
Speaker 1: The two thousand twelve Olympics in London for anniversary of
Speaker 1: the Munich massacre, when the Israeli delegation came in to
Speaker 1: point out that the IOC, for reasons of its own,
Speaker 1: would not acknowledge this, not commemorate the dark this day
Speaker 1: in Olympic history and here's the key. I wasn't talking
Speaker 1: about Newtown. I wasn't talking about um Sandy Hook. I
Speaker 1: wasn't talking about something that happened outside the context of sports,
Speaker 1: that was relevant in the context of the Olympics and
Speaker 1: on that occasion. And it took about thirty seconds. But
Speaker 1: I don't think many other broadcasters in my position would
Speaker 1: have done it. But it certainly wasn't a left wing position.
Speaker 1: I think I'm a common sense guy who has, as
Speaker 1: I said, all the cart positions, some that could be
Speaker 1: characterized on either side of the central dividing line. Have
Speaker 1: you voted for Republicans for president as well as Democrats
Speaker 1: in your life? Yeah, and you're and you're open to
Speaker 1: doing that in the years ahead. You know, who knows
Speaker 1: who's gonna be running in That might surprise people who
Speaker 1: are convinced that you're a left winger. Right, you're open
Speaker 1: to voting for either side of the political equation. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: Now I want to make it too political, but I'll
Speaker 1: just say this this year, if if a Republican like
Speaker 1: John McCain or John Kasik, or Mitt Romney or or others,
Speaker 1: if Republicans of those of that stripe, we're running this
Speaker 1: year against Joe Biden, who is a decent man, clearly
Speaker 1: a decent man, but has certain deficits. I would seriously
Speaker 1: consider voting Republican. Be sure to catch live editions about
Speaker 1: Kicked the coverage with Clay Travis weekdays at six am Eastern,
Speaker 1: three am Pacific. We're talking to Bob Costas. I'm Clay
Speaker 1: Traviss is the Wins and Losses podcast. This ties in
Speaker 1: a bit with cancel culture, which you said you are
Speaker 1: not a fan of live television or live radio or
Speaker 1: any form of live broadcast. You have done it as
Speaker 1: well or better than almost anyone when you consider the
Speaker 1: number of hours that you're going to do it. Everybody
Speaker 1: out there who listens to the radio show knows it's difficult.
Speaker 1: It's like tap dancing at times above a razor, particularly
Speaker 1: in social media era, what I would say often happens.
Speaker 1: And this is what my position on the n r A.
Speaker 1: I think many people in the n r A are
Speaker 1: terrified that if they've given inch, somebody's gonna take a
Speaker 1: mile right and that uh, and that the perspective on
Speaker 1: you may you may you and I may have different agreements,
Speaker 1: or many people out there may have different agreements on
Speaker 1: what should happen with the statue of Robert E. Lee Right,
Speaker 1: um and uh, And certainly many people could have a
Speaker 1: variety of opinions. I'm a big history buff grew up
Speaker 1: in the South. I abhor the idea of taking down statues.
Speaker 1: I think it's a bad precedent to set. I think
Speaker 1: oftentimes the statues the museums don't want them, which is
Speaker 1: a usual thing to say. But I think most people,
Speaker 1: regardless of where they come down on that issue, would
Speaker 1: say it's crazy to tear down the Washington Monument, or
Speaker 1: to blow up the Lincoln Memorial or the Jefferson Memorial
Speaker 1: or things like that. But to me, the problem with
Speaker 1: cancel culture is it's the progressive tip of the spear.
Speaker 1: They never stop right there. There's never like your point
Speaker 1: on the Redskins name is I think a one. If
Speaker 1: you told me, hey, you can give away the Redskins
Speaker 1: name and we'll never have an argument about the Chiefs
Speaker 1: or the Braves, or the Florida State Seminoles or any
Speaker 1: of those tribes, that's the end of the discussion. Right.
Speaker 1: As a reasonable person, I would say, Okay, I'll give
Speaker 1: you the Redskins. Let's just table all other mascots and
Speaker 1: whether or not they're offensive. I don't want to be Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to go uh full board to try
Speaker 1: to defend the fighting Irish nickname because somebody is upset
Speaker 1: that it's a caricature of an Irish person who has,
Speaker 1: you know, so much too much to drink and wants
Speaker 1: to get into a fight. I'm okay with it, right,
Speaker 1: let's just yes, right. At some point you have to
Speaker 1: just say, in my opinion, okay, we kind of reached
Speaker 1: the logical extension of offense. And the problem with political
Speaker 1: correctness and progressive culture to me in many ways is
Speaker 1: then it can't happen because they wouldn't have a reason
Speaker 1: to exist, right, And so I understand some of the
Speaker 1: pushback on those issues. But as someone who does live
Speaker 1: television as much as you have, and and has done
Speaker 1: as many different live radio events, are you as troubled
Speaker 1: by the obsession with finding the two minutes that somebody
Speaker 1: has that may be the least accurate reflection of their
Speaker 1: career and insisting that we cashier them for it and
Speaker 1: that they can no longer do what they've done for
Speaker 1: so long. Absolutely, um, people who demand respect and compassion
Speaker 1: and rightly so for marginalized groups or historically discriminated against groups.
Speaker 1: Often are not very respectful of the totality of a
Speaker 1: person's life, are very compassionate about a mistake that doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily reflect the depth of someone's feelings. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that we can we can work towards being
Speaker 1: a more tolerant and sensitive society without without needing notches
Speaker 1: on our belt. We canceled this guy, We canceled that
Speaker 1: in stitutional we canceled this, that and the other thing.
Speaker 1: Um with without with failing to recognize that the things
Speaker 1: took place in a different context. The idea that some
Speaker 1: twenty five year old kid is going to stand here
Speaker 1: in and judge something that happened decades and centuries ago.
Speaker 1: Judge the people. Judge the people, not necessarily the attitudes,
Speaker 1: because attitudes evolved, and rightly so, but judge the people
Speaker 1: and what they did and said in the context of
Speaker 1: their time, and and be so unself aware as not
Speaker 1: to realize the generations from now. If this continues, you
Speaker 1: will will be viewed just as harshly and perhaps just
Speaker 1: as unfairly. You think you've reached the endpoint of evolution
Speaker 1: in sensitivity and awareness. But you haven't, Jack, you haven't.
Speaker 1: And if you played this game eternally, eventually it's going
Speaker 1: to come back and and like Frankenstein's Monster, it's gonna,
Speaker 1: it's gonna it's going to kill its career gator. That's
Speaker 1: what history teaches us, and that's why having an understanding
Speaker 1: of the scope of history is so important. I've just
Speaker 1: got a few more questions for you. Uh, the Olympics.
Speaker 1: You've hit on several different times. What is it like
Speaker 1: for people out there who don't know the procedures and
Speaker 1: the processes and what is involved to do in Olympics?
Speaker 1: Is it the hardest thing that you do in live
Speaker 1: sports business? How would you contextualize that? It's it's very difficult.
Speaker 1: But what helped me was the advice that Jim McKay
Speaker 1: gave me and then my own experience, which was that
Speaker 1: the host of the Olympics must be a very good generalist.
Speaker 1: You have to have a very good grasp of the
Speaker 1: history of the Olympics, history and current circumstances of the
Speaker 1: host city and the host nation, and you have to
Speaker 1: know about the handful of events and sports and competitors
Speaker 1: that are likely to be part of the focus of
Speaker 1: prime time coverage. You know that the researchers are so
Speaker 1: good that if somebody or something pops out out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: like I think of Rulan Gardner feeding the seemingly invincible
Speaker 1: correll In, who was so good that that competitors feared
Speaker 1: going in against him. Um he was a mythic figure,
Speaker 1: and Rulan Gardner beat him for the gold medal in
Speaker 1: Sydney in two thousand, even though he was an American competitor.
Speaker 1: I didn't know who the hell Rulan Gardner was until
Speaker 1: this happened, And if it hadn't happened, it wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been on in prime time. But it was such a
Speaker 1: big upset that eventually we throw it on the air
Speaker 1: as quickly as possible, and in the space of about
Speaker 1: five minutes, the researchers give me his bio. And something
Speaker 1: you have to be good at is that you have
Speaker 1: to be able to take a briefing briefly, quickly and
Speaker 1: assimilate the information, understand what's worth emphasizing, see if there's
Speaker 1: a narrative here that makes some sense. But if you
Speaker 1: go into an Olympics thinking you have to know every
Speaker 1: Rulan gardener, and you have to know every platform diver
Speaker 1: from Peru or every crush country skier from Norway. Your
Speaker 1: head will explode. Ken Jennings of Jeopardy fans, the front
Speaker 1: Fame couldn't possibly, you know, hold all of that information.
Speaker 1: At a summer Olympics, you've got two hundred countries and
Speaker 1: over ten thousand athletes. So be a good generalist, be
Speaker 1: able to see the big picture and then be able
Speaker 1: to say, hone in on the particulars, if and when
Speaker 1: they rise to the top. Here's another example, Clay of
Speaker 1: the business model that applies too often, and it applies
Speaker 1: across the political spectrum. But in this case it was
Speaker 1: the right wing that got me in Sochi. NBC put
Speaker 1: together a piece that explained Vladimir Putin's influence in Russia,
Speaker 1: and part of that said that Forbes, not Mother Jones
Speaker 1: of the Nation. Forbes had named Vladimir Putin the year
Speaker 1: before as the world's most influential leader, bumping Barack Obama
Speaker 1: to two. They didn't say was the best. They didn't
Speaker 1: say he was a good guy, most influential. So I
Speaker 1: had said that. Immediately after narrating that piece, there was
Speaker 1: a panel discussion which made it clear that he was
Speaker 1: a former KGB agent, that he was no friend of
Speaker 1: the West, that he was aligned with UH with very
Speaker 1: questionable and that's to be kind policies, that it was
Speaker 1: a repressive regime, etcetera, etcetera. And subsequently I did a
Speaker 1: commentary which talked about all those things and talked about
Speaker 1: how the success of the SoC games on the surface
Speaker 1: might obscure just how problematic and often vicious and criminal
Speaker 1: Blutin's Russia was. Okay, Fox News decides that I have
Speaker 1: praised Vladimir Putin, and they make an issue out of
Speaker 1: it because that moves the needle for their audience. John
Speaker 1: McCain comes on the next day with Neil of Vudo.
Speaker 1: I had known McCain who was a sports fan. I'd
Speaker 1: have friendly relationship with him. I'd interviewed him on a
Speaker 1: couple of occasions. You know more than your audience does, Clay,
Speaker 1: how these things work. They kind of briefed the guests,
Speaker 1: these are the topics, and this is what so and
Speaker 1: so said, and McCain was sometimes shot from the hip, said,
Speaker 1: you know, I really like Bob Costas. I enjoy his
Speaker 1: sports broadcast, but he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Speaker 1: He should stick to sports, okay. Subsequently, the Olympics are
Speaker 1: over with, McCain calls me out of the blue, calls me,
Speaker 1: and before I could even say hello, he says, my friend,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I saw what you said in full context.
Speaker 1: I tweeted out an apology. What you said was contextualized.
Speaker 1: It was all good. Okay. Now I go on Bill O'Reilly,
Speaker 1: and I mentioned this to O'Reilly. Now you would think
Speaker 1: it was important enough for two or three days to
Speaker 1: make an issue out of Bob costas sympathy, as is
Speaker 1: with Vladimir Putin. If it was important enough to make
Speaker 1: an issue out of it, wouldn't it be important enough
Speaker 1: to cite that McCain reversed field. Wouldn't it be important
Speaker 1: enough to note that. Wouldn't it be important enough to say, look,
Speaker 1: if an American broadcaster really praised a foreign adversary, wouldn't
Speaker 1: everybody from the New York Times to the National Review
Speaker 1: take exception to that. Why is it only in these
Speaker 1: little echo chambers that this was mentioned? Maybe because we
Speaker 1: mischaracterized it and made something out of nothing, and now
Speaker 1: we don't feel compelled to correct it. Because that wouldn't
Speaker 1: fit our business model. Um and that that, along with
Speaker 1: other things and coupled with social media, is why some people,
Speaker 1: including some people of goodwill who just don't have the
Speaker 1: media literacy to navigate this think, Yeah, you know Bob
Speaker 1: cost this, I've always liked this sports broadcasting, but he's
Speaker 1: really kind of a political guy and he's really out there.
Speaker 1: Are on the left, not sho. That's fantastic what you
Speaker 1: mentioned starting to cover the Olympics in many of the
Speaker 1: people listening to us crazily are so young they don't
Speaker 1: remember the dream Team. That was for me one of
Speaker 1: the best moments as being an American sports fan was
Speaker 1: the Dream Team. You also covered the m b A
Speaker 1: at a time that the NBA was just stratospheric with
Speaker 1: the Jordan's era, and I think you were featured in
Speaker 1: some of the documentary surrounding the Jordan era and if
Speaker 1: you weren't just watching yeah yeah, the Last Dance. Just
Speaker 1: watching that made me think back to all of the
Speaker 1: games that you had been involved in. What was it
Speaker 1: like to cover Jordan's I don't know what kind of relationship,
Speaker 1: if any, that you had with him, but for people
Speaker 1: out there who now think about the Lebron versus Jordan's debate.
Speaker 1: Jordan was and unbelo He was like the sun in
Speaker 1: my life growing up. You know, it was an inescapable
Speaker 1: object that was almost always present every day. What was
Speaker 1: it like to cover him? I had a good relationship
Speaker 1: with him. He was a magnificent player, but he also
Speaker 1: had all those intangible things. His presence was the presence
Speaker 1: of a star. He was handsome, He carried himself with
Speaker 1: incredible grace. Although he's not a small man, he's six
Speaker 1: ft six, but in the context of basketball, he wasn't
Speaker 1: so big, so overwhelmingly strong as to be unrelatable to
Speaker 1: some portion of the audience. Everything about him was like
Speaker 1: a ten on a ten scale. Plus the era, the
Speaker 1: Dream Team, the NBA factor in my bias. The NBA
Speaker 1: was on NBC, and prior to that in the eighties
Speaker 1: that have been on CBS. Now primarily it's a cable product.
Speaker 1: This is no knock on the quality of the coverage.
Speaker 1: The coverage is great. You know, Ernie and Charles and Shack,
Speaker 1: those guys are great. That's probably the best studio show
Speaker 1: in the history of television sports. And my Breen is
Speaker 1: breaming terrific, and Kevin Harland is exciting to listen to,
Speaker 1: and Marv still does the games, but it isn't as
Speaker 1: much a part of the cultural conversation as it once was.
Speaker 1: The promos for the NBA on NBC, We're on during
Speaker 1: Seinfeld and Carson and Letterman and e r And and
Speaker 1: all the rest um and the games were all the
Speaker 1: playoff games, all the weekend playoff games were on NBC doubleheaders,
Speaker 1: triple headers, primetime games. It was just a whole different thing.
Speaker 1: And even though the Bulls won all those titles, there
Speaker 1: was a constellation of stars. Just think of the roster
Speaker 1: of the Dream Team. It's only Jordan and Pippen from
Speaker 1: the Bulls. Think of the others. Think think of the
Speaker 1: texture and how visible Um Stockton and Malone were, and
Speaker 1: Barkley and Isaiah at the tail end of the Pistons
Speaker 1: run and Clyde Drexler and Patrick Ewing and pat Riley,
Speaker 1: even the coaches. It was a whole group of stars.
Speaker 1: Now Jordan was at the center of it. Here's the
Speaker 1: way I feel about the Lebron Jordan comparison on is
Speaker 1: an all time great And if you want to call
Speaker 1: it a toss up. I put it this way. Let's
Speaker 1: say Lebron is equally excellent, and his prowess is equal
Speaker 1: in its own way to Jordan's basketball prowess. He is
Speaker 1: equally excellent, but not equally great, because Jordan's greatness went
Speaker 1: beyond numbers or even the specific outcomes of games or championships.
Speaker 1: His impact on the league, his global impact. Just what
Speaker 1: mentioning his name conjures up. It's intangible, but you know
Speaker 1: it when you see it and you feel it. So
Speaker 1: Jordan's was greater than Lebron, not necessarily better, although I
Speaker 1: think I still would give him an edge of the
Speaker 1: basketball player. But he was greater than Lebron. It's so
Speaker 1: well said. We're talking to Bob Costas, this is the
Speaker 1: Wins and Lost his podcast. I'm Clay Travis. Charles Barkley.
Speaker 1: You mentioned there, and you mentioned that that NBA Inside
Speaker 1: the NBA Studio show maybe the best that's out there
Speaker 1: right now. Did you foresee Barkley becoming as good of
Speaker 1: a media personality as he has become when he was
Speaker 1: a player. I don't think he could perceive ahead of
Speaker 1: time that it would be this big, but you knew
Speaker 1: that he would be a star on television. Money was
Speaker 1: an active player. We were talking about how we could
Speaker 1: use and Dick Eversoul was talking about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's such an incandescent personality that that part didn't surprise me.
Speaker 1: Because we're running short of time here, and I thank
Speaker 1: you for giving me the platform and for being so
Speaker 1: patient with me while I took advantage of it in
Speaker 1: the way that I did. Um, I actually have to
Speaker 1: run off and do something for the Baseball Network about
Speaker 1: a half hour from now, which means I have to
Speaker 1: change clothes as opposed to what you can do for
Speaker 1: a podcast or or radio. A couple of points that
Speaker 1: I wanted to make. One that relates to one of
Speaker 1: your earlier questions when you're talking about having a sense
Speaker 1: of things beyond stats and numbers. Somebody mentioned to me
Speaker 1: the Mets and would the raise be like the sixty
Speaker 1: nine Mets raise against the Dodgers, Mets against the Mighty
Speaker 1: Baltimore Orioles. And one of the things that came to mind,
Speaker 1: besides the obvious statistical comparisons, um Tyler Glass now and
Speaker 1: Blake Snell have never thrown a complete game. Tom seb
Speaker 1: and Jerry Kuzman through eighteen and sixteen respectively in that season,
Speaker 1: and sever through a tenant in complete game in Game four,
Speaker 1: and Kuzman went all the way in the clincher in
Speaker 1: Game five. But those are just differences in strategy as
Speaker 1: the game evolved. But if I were to answer that question,
Speaker 1: and I think that this is part of what makes
Speaker 1: a good broadcaster, I'd like to think this is what
Speaker 1: Red Barber would say, or whatever it might have been
Speaker 1: that you brought to Jim McKay's attention or Vince Gully,
Speaker 1: it's this. You would have had to have been there.
Speaker 1: The sixty nine Mets came out of nowhere. Not only
Speaker 1: were they never good, they were comically bad. They were
Speaker 1: synonymous with lovable ineptitude, and they've never had a win season.
Speaker 1: Then they go all the way and they win the
Speaker 1: World Series. But it's more than that. The Dodgers and
Speaker 1: Giants were only half a generation removed from being in
Speaker 1: New York, and many of those Dodger and Giant fans
Speaker 1: attached themselves to a National League team because Willie Mays
Speaker 1: and those guys were still coming through New York to
Speaker 1: play the Mets, and so there was a National League
Speaker 1: feel that predated the Mets. People who had rooted for
Speaker 1: Snyder and Newcombe and Campanella and Robinson and Willie Mays,
Speaker 1: they became Met fans. The Yankee dynasty had just ended.
Speaker 1: Mantel retired after the preceding season. Now the town belonged
Speaker 1: not to the Yankees. It belonged to the Mets. And
Speaker 1: not incidentally, I'd make this point. It's not really a
Speaker 1: political point. It's just a fact that factors into the
Speaker 1: texture of it. Mookie Betts happens to be the only
Speaker 1: African American in this year's World Series either team. The
Speaker 1: Arios had Frank Robinson and Don view Heard and Paul
Speaker 1: Blair and el Rod Hendricks. The Mets had ed Charles
Speaker 1: and Cleon Jones and Tommy A. G and Don Clendennon,
Speaker 1: and their manager was Gil Hodges, who was attached to
Speaker 1: Jackie Robinson's Brooklyn Dodgers. There was a texture to it
Speaker 1: and the World Series, even though every game was on
Speaker 1: in the afternoon, every one of those games got a
Speaker 1: higher rating than even a Game seven would get today.
Speaker 1: Leave aside that this is a weird season, sixty games,
Speaker 1: neutral field, almost no fans in the stands. Even if
Speaker 1: this were a normal season, every one of those games
Speaker 1: got a higher rating than a game seven would likely
Speaker 1: get today. I think part of your job as a
Speaker 1: broadcaster isn't just to know what stat cast tells you
Speaker 1: the exit velocity is or what someone's ops is. That's important,
Speaker 1: but if you can't, if you can't capture what the
Speaker 1: weather was, you know, that's kind of a catch all.
Speaker 1: Tell them how the weather was, meaning in the biggest sense,
Speaker 1: what were all the dynamics that were at play here,
Speaker 1: not what it was in raw statistical or objective terms.
Speaker 1: How did it steal? What did it look like, what
Speaker 1: did it steel like? What was the humanity of it
Speaker 1: that was That's a point that I would make if
Speaker 1: someone asked me about the sixty nine Mets. It's different
Speaker 1: than just comparing Tom Sieber's e r A to Charlie
Speaker 1: Morton z r R. That's incredibly well said, and I
Speaker 1: think it is a fantastic way to end. I know
Speaker 1: you have to go get changed for your job on
Speaker 1: the Major League Baseball Network, Bob Costa, this has been
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Are you on Twitter? How can
Speaker 1: people reach out and give you feedback from this podcast
Speaker 1: if they wanted to do so? No, no social media whatsoever.
Speaker 1: I just don't see that much of an upside. Yeah
Speaker 1: for me, I I've had my platforms, and so I
Speaker 1: do what I do as a as a sports broadcaster.
Speaker 1: UM So, so there you have it. That's Bob Costas.
Speaker 1: He just told you. He's not on social media, so
Speaker 1: you can't reach out and let him know what you thought.
Speaker 1: But I think you guys are going to have completely
Speaker 1: you love to this huge roster of great episodes. They
Speaker 1: are timeless. That's the goal of the Wins and Losses Podcast.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this one, it's a really good chance
Speaker 1: you're gonna like a lot more of them. Thirty four,
Speaker 1: thirty five dubb Do you know how many we've totally done.
Speaker 1: I think it's thirty five of these at least an
Speaker 1: hour in length, uh, from a variety of different perspectives.
Speaker 1: I hope you can enjoy and learn from them as
Speaker 1: much as I have. This has been the Wins and
Speaker 1: Losses Podcast. I'm Clay Travis. Check back frequently and in
Speaker 1: the meantime, go check out the archives of our long
Speaker 1: form discussions here. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports
Speaker 1: talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows
Speaker 1: at Fox Sports radio dot com and within the i
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live.