Speaker 1: Welcome in Wins and Lost his podcast. I'm Clay Travis,
Speaker 1: appreciate all of you hanging out with us. Excited to
Speaker 1: bring in Will Kine now, who is now I think
Speaker 1: officially a part of Fox News. Prior to that, he
Speaker 1: was with ESPN for several years. Will, thanks for joining us,
Speaker 1: my man. I've been watching you for for years and
Speaker 1: been impressed with your radio show UH and UH and
Speaker 1: your career in general. How excited are you to be
Speaker 1: going back to the future, I guess a little bit
Speaker 1: and going back into the political realm a little bit
Speaker 1: more than the sports realm. We'll get to both, but
Speaker 1: tell everybody what your newest gig is going to be.
Speaker 1: I am only a little more excited to be joining
Speaker 1: Fox News than I am to be talking to you
Speaker 1: Clay Travis today. You and I have known each other,
Speaker 1: talked offline, met in person, want and I have certainly
Speaker 1: read your stuff, watched your material, listen to your radio
Speaker 1: show over the years. I think you do an awesome job.
Speaker 1: You're one of the few rational people in media, and
Speaker 1: I'm excited, I think, for the first time, for you
Speaker 1: and I to ever be talking on the air. But
Speaker 1: just a little bit more excited than that I am
Speaker 1: joining Fox News. I will be the new weekend co
Speaker 1: host of Fox and Friends on Saturday and Sunday mornings
Speaker 1: six at ten am Eastern Time. So that is awesome. Um,
Speaker 1: And obviously for people out there who know, that's been
Speaker 1: a prominent launching ground. Right, So you've got a great
Speaker 1: gig now, and I'm sure you're gonna do an incredible job,
Speaker 1: and I think you're gonna be very good at it.
Speaker 1: But when you're part of that family, there are other
Speaker 1: opportunities that could arise. So I'm sure you'll be used
Speaker 1: and utilized in a wide variety of ways across all
Speaker 1: of Fox News at different times. Right. That may be,
Speaker 1: but I will say claim my priority walking through that
Speaker 1: door is to continue to make Fox and Friends one
Speaker 1: of the best shows in cable news. I know you
Speaker 1: saw this because it's a fascinating stat a resounding win.
Speaker 1: But Fox News primetime opinion shows eight to eleven are
Speaker 1: not just beating their quote unquote competitors at CNN and MSNBC,
Speaker 1: not just the most watched television shows in cable news,
Speaker 1: but now they are beating network prime time shows on
Speaker 1: the ABC in CBS. It shouldn't happen, Clay, It's beyond well.
Speaker 1: It simply should not be happening because you and I
Speaker 1: both know network television is distributed to more homes than
Speaker 1: cable television. My goal is to make that same thing
Speaker 1: happen for Fox and Friends on the weekend, may get
Speaker 1: the most watch program in all of television. That's an
Speaker 1: amazing goal, and it's one that a lot of people
Speaker 1: would have said was crazy when Fox News was founded
Speaker 1: so many years ago. We'll get to your current gig
Speaker 1: and how you got there, but on wins and losses,
Speaker 1: I like to talk with people about where they started
Speaker 1: and how they ended up where they are. So let's
Speaker 1: go back in time two years and years ago. You
Speaker 1: were born in the state of Texas. What was your
Speaker 1: growing up experience like there and how important was sports
Speaker 1: to your overall development into what you became. I grew
Speaker 1: up in a small town outside of Dallas, Sherman, Texas.
Speaker 1: It's a town of about thirty five thousand people. It's
Speaker 1: not a suburb of Dallas. It is a standalone rural
Speaker 1: community about sixties sixty five miles north of Dallas. I
Speaker 1: loved the way I grew up. It was one town
Speaker 1: with one high school, with one middle school, and everybody
Speaker 1: was integrated. When I grew up Clay that basically meant
Speaker 1: black and white. We all went to school together. My
Speaker 1: dad was an attorney. He was a plaintiffs lawyer. He
Speaker 1: essentially then worked on contingency fiezas entire life. I told
Speaker 1: your colleague Bobby Burak, this, that means if you win,
Speaker 1: you make money, and if you leave, you make nothing more.
Speaker 1: So that built me. That framed me when I made
Speaker 1: my career choices. I knew that I wanted to hit
Speaker 1: home runs. Everything I thought about when it came to
Speaker 1: my career was if there is a ceiling. I'm not
Speaker 1: that interested. Now We'll tell you as I've gotten older
Speaker 1: and I've learned from others successes, and the truth is,
Speaker 1: I think it's a big part of your success story.
Speaker 1: Singles and doubles stacked up over time are the real
Speaker 1: secret to success. Yes, people hit it over the fence. Yes,
Speaker 1: people create Internet startups that they flip for billions of
Speaker 1: dollars overnight or in six months. But most of the
Speaker 1: time success is built the way Tom Brady built it.
Speaker 1: It's built the way where Warren Buffett built it, and
Speaker 1: I've come to appreciate that that's how my career will
Speaker 1: be as well, because this has been a long time
Speaker 1: in the making. It has been working for free on
Speaker 1: numerous occasions. It's been working for less than my market
Speaker 1: rate for most of my career. And those sacrifices are
Speaker 1: essentially the singles I'm stacking up at some point for
Speaker 1: what I hope adds up to a big run on
Speaker 1: the scoreboard. Yeah, you know what, it's It's an interesting
Speaker 1: part and I want to unpack that a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the things I love about these conversations and
Speaker 1: wins and losses is there's a lot of young people
Speaker 1: who listen, right because a lot of people look at
Speaker 1: the final destination and say, oh, I want to go there,
Speaker 1: but they don't necessarily look at all of the steps
Speaker 1: along the way to the final destination. And uh. And
Speaker 1: I always like to ask people where they got their start.
Speaker 1: What was the first media job you had? And do
Speaker 1: you remember what you got paid to do it? So
Speaker 1: you used two words, and I'm gonna have to answer
Speaker 1: the question two ways because of the use of those
Speaker 1: two words. You said media and job. I didn't have
Speaker 1: a job for quite some time, but I was in
Speaker 1: media for quite some time. So the first thing I
Speaker 1: did out of law school, Clay is I wanted to
Speaker 1: get involved in media, but at that time it meant
Speaker 1: write a book. So the first thing I did after
Speaker 1: my formal education is I set out to write the
Speaker 1: Great American novel. Yeah, I can spare you it was crap.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Great American. So that was fascinating. So where
Speaker 1: did you What was your day to day like? So
Speaker 1: when you graduate, let me go back for a minute,
Speaker 1: because I want to circle bling around to the American novel.
Speaker 1: So you went to if I'm correct, you went to Pepperdine.
Speaker 1: So you talked about growing up in in this kind
Speaker 1: of not a big city in Texas. That's a big trip.
Speaker 1: What was your experience like, because I'll tell you mine.
Speaker 1: I grew up in Nashville, which is, you know, a
Speaker 1: decent sized city, but I went away to college at
Speaker 1: George Washington, d C. It was a total culture shock.
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine for you what going from Texas
Speaker 1: to Pepperdine for people who don't know out in Malibu
Speaker 1: must have been like for a Texas kid to find
Speaker 1: himself in l a it was total culture shock. You know,
Speaker 1: I later in life and we'll get there if we
Speaker 1: need to move to New York City with my wife.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't half the culture shock of an eighteen
Speaker 1: year old movement from Sherman, Texas to southern California. And
Speaker 1: here's why it was such a shock. Um College for
Speaker 1: me was about athletics and it was about friendship. Eventually,
Speaker 1: all my buddies went to Baylor in Texas and Texas
Speaker 1: A and M, and they were doing the fraternity and
Speaker 1: college football thing, and I felt like I was missing
Speaker 1: out incredibly. On top of that, I was playing water
Speaker 1: polo at Pepperdine and it was an absolute exercise over
Speaker 1: four years in humility. Bottom line, man, I just wasn't
Speaker 1: very good. I walked on and I'm proud of myself
Speaker 1: for sticking through it and never quitting. But every day
Speaker 1: it practiced. It was ego crushing humility, which is an
Speaker 1: awesome life lesson. But in the beginning it was really
Speaker 1: hard for me. After a year of being with my
Speaker 1: teammates and making friends and relationships and putting in the
Speaker 1: application to transfer to the University of Texas or s
Speaker 1: m U, I decided I'm gonna stick this out. I
Speaker 1: have the relationships I want to be on the team.
Speaker 1: So I stayed at Pepperdine and I do think it
Speaker 1: was personally a growth moment. But I would encourage anybody
Speaker 1: out there, whatever your final education destination is, be it
Speaker 1: medical school, law school, college, high school, make that be
Speaker 1: in the place that you want to live. You should
Speaker 1: finish your education where you want to start your career.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. So it's interesting you said that about your
Speaker 1: sort of cultural disconnect and how tough it was. I
Speaker 1: felt the same way. I put in applications after my
Speaker 1: first year at George Washington. I was like, man, I
Speaker 1: don't like this. Uh it's very East Coast um. People
Speaker 1: are kind of assholes. It's very different than what I
Speaker 1: was used to in the South. And I think in
Speaker 1: retrospect also, I was soft, right, I mean I was.
Speaker 1: I think like a lot of eighteen year old kids,
Speaker 1: you think you're tough, you think you're smart, but then
Speaker 1: you kind of get punched in the face a little
Speaker 1: bit with the reality of life, and not that the
Speaker 1: reality of life necessarily is reflected on a college campus
Speaker 1: where you're still in a little bit of a cocoon,
Speaker 1: but I was I'll be straightforward, I think I was
Speaker 1: kind of a pussy at eighteen and nineteen years old
Speaker 1: and being in a city setting and having to grow
Speaker 1: up a little bit at least, and living in a
Speaker 1: in a decent sized East Coast city. I came to
Speaker 1: love Washington, d C. But I almost came back South
Speaker 1: after my freshman year because I was like, this just
Speaker 1: isn't a traditional college experience. And I've always been glad
Speaker 1: that I was tough enough to stick it out and
Speaker 1: that I didn't bail and transfer somewhere else. Not to
Speaker 1: say that everybody out there who thinks about transferring it's
Speaker 1: the wrong decision, but it sounds like for you and
Speaker 1: for me, there was a there was a positive in
Speaker 1: sticking it out and being tough enough, even if it
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily the same perfect experience that maybe we saw
Speaker 1: others seem to be having. I love one thing you said.
Speaker 1: You indicted yourself you were soft, and I felt the
Speaker 1: same way, and that's guided me through a lot of
Speaker 1: decisions I've made later in life. I just believe in
Speaker 1: challenging yourself. I believe in being challenged intellectually in debate,
Speaker 1: physically moving around, being around people are different than you.
Speaker 1: That's why I went to California the first place. It's
Speaker 1: why I moved to New York. It's why I send
Speaker 1: my sons to school in Harlem. I think life should
Speaker 1: be fairly hard. I think you should be put in
Speaker 1: uncomfortable positions. I think you should be challenged, and I
Speaker 1: think you should learn to grow through that. This is
Speaker 1: probably why you and I agree on so many things
Speaker 1: happening in this country. Where everybody protects themselves not just
Speaker 1: from uncomfortable, unchallenging concepts, but from disagreement. We're creating generations,
Speaker 1: and I use plural, generations of soft people unprepared for
Speaker 1: the real world. Yeah, and look, and it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: those people's fault either. Because you mentioned the parenting decision,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into stead. There's all sorts of fascinating
Speaker 1: decisions there for how you raise your kids. But I
Speaker 1: think so much of our culture is about safety, is
Speaker 1: m and bubble wrapping kids, and certainly the coronavirus is
Speaker 1: this story in many ways writ large, what is like
Speaker 1: I jotted down, uh, yesterday I was talking about in
Speaker 1: my radio show, and I kind of keep notes you know,
Speaker 1: one of the most essential questions that seems to come
Speaker 1: up over and over again with the coronavirus is what
Speaker 1: is acceptable risk and who gets to determine what that
Speaker 1: acceptable risk is because you and I may feel, hey,
Speaker 1: we're willing to take risk. I said this, Uh, you
Speaker 1: know earlier today I took my kindergartener and walked him
Speaker 1: to school. Physically in school. I think it's important for
Speaker 1: my kids to be physically president school. I think it's
Speaker 1: important for college football to be happening. But more important
Speaker 1: than that, I think kids in college need to be
Speaker 1: in school. They need to learn how to handle risk
Speaker 1: and assess it and not constantly like be told that
Speaker 1: it's brave to quit right like. That troubles me when
Speaker 1: I hear people say, oh, it's so brave of the
Speaker 1: Big Ten and the Pact twelve to quit and not
Speaker 1: play sports this fall. Well, when did we start definding
Speaker 1: bravery as the absence of something as opposed to the
Speaker 1: action of something? Right? Um, So that that troubles me.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let you kind of get into this too,
Speaker 1: But I think that's where we have very many agreements on. Now,
Speaker 1: you went to law school, you came back to Texas.
Speaker 1: I came back home and went to UH, went to Vanderbilt,
Speaker 1: so we're somewhat similar in that respect. How did the
Speaker 1: law school help you? How did it challenge you? How
Speaker 1: did it help you to grow in UH? In your career?
Speaker 1: Would you advise kids who are probably a lot of
Speaker 1: them listening to us out there? Like I get this
Speaker 1: ask question all the time. I bet you two as well.
Speaker 1: Would you go to law school? I say yes because
Speaker 1: of how much I learned? What about you? So this
Speaker 1: conversation is awesome because we're bouncing all over the place
Speaker 1: and following our curiosity. I'm afraid I'm leaving questions unanswered.
Speaker 1: I never want to do that. You asked about my
Speaker 1: career path, I'm always happy to return to it, but
Speaker 1: this one is something I'm also very interested in your response.
Speaker 1: So I have become very pessimistic on the future of
Speaker 1: higher education. Clay, I am all talk right now because
Speaker 1: my oldest son is twelve. I still have six years
Speaker 1: to figure out if I'm going to commit to paying
Speaker 1: for college, but right now I have serious, grave doubts
Speaker 1: about paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year or
Speaker 1: seeing my son's going to debt at the levels of
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to go to
Speaker 1: an institution that brainwashes them into ideas that I do
Speaker 1: not believe. And I don't care, as I've stated, if
Speaker 1: they're exposed to ideas that I disagree with. What I
Speaker 1: care about is whether or not they're getting to be
Speaker 1: exposed to any form of disagreement, because that's out college
Speaker 1: is turned into a place of one sidedness and safe
Speaker 1: spaces and protection from any form of disagreement. So I'm
Speaker 1: generally pessimistic about higher education in the United States. But
Speaker 1: that being said, Man law school was invaluable. It helps
Speaker 1: me and everything I do. I know it does the
Speaker 1: same for you because I listened to you, and I
Speaker 1: hear how you think through things and how you frame conversations.
Speaker 1: Law school simply organized my thoughts. I had a lot
Speaker 1: of different thoughts going in different directions when I came
Speaker 1: out of college. I kind of thought I knew what
Speaker 1: I thought about certain issues, but I never had them
Speaker 1: nailed down, and I never understood how they connected to
Speaker 1: each other, if I was being inconsistent or hypocritical, or
Speaker 1: if I was contradicting myself. Law school helped me build
Speaker 1: a framework, both an obvious one when I learned constitutional
Speaker 1: law and the founding principles and documents of this country,
Speaker 1: but also just philosophically what makes sense, like what values
Speaker 1: connect with each other and which ones undercut the others.
Speaker 1: Law school, to me, absolutely informs everything I do on television,
Speaker 1: everything I do behind the scenes, and how I've organized
Speaker 1: my career when I've been entrepreneurial. Yeah. Look, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you just nailed it on so many different levels.
Speaker 1: What I would say about law school is I think,
Speaker 1: and I bet you kind of in many ways to
Speaker 1: do as well. A good judge knows that he has
Speaker 1: to decide the case in front of him, but he
Speaker 1: also has to think about the precedent that he's setting.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people in our industry of
Speaker 1: sports media, and I know you're you can also broaden it,
Speaker 1: and you're in the audience of media as well, but
Speaker 1: a lot of people solve the case in front of
Speaker 1: them right now, and they don't think about the precedent
Speaker 1: that they are setting going forward. So what I always
Speaker 1: think about is if you listen to my radio show,
Speaker 1: or you read out kick, or you listen to my
Speaker 1: opinions or any of those things, there is a line
Speaker 1: of consistency that runs through them, much like occurs with
Speaker 1: a good judge, whether you're a liberal leaning judge, conservative
Speaker 1: leaning judge, more down the middle, whatever it is, you
Speaker 1: understand that if you're gonna make this argument about this
Speaker 1: athlete on Monday, that on a year from now, the
Speaker 1: logic still needs to be the same and the way
Speaker 1: I picked up on it in my career. And I'm
Speaker 1: curious if there was an AHA moment for you when
Speaker 1: I started doing sports talk radio, I realized that most
Speaker 1: people are such homers for their team that they can't
Speaker 1: take it outside of what their team is doing and
Speaker 1: be logical. And I'll give you an example. I started
Speaker 1: doing sports talk radio in Nashville, Heartbeat of the SEC.
Speaker 1: Here everybody has favorite teams and there's always an n
Speaker 1: C double a infraction, or always a player getting in
Speaker 1: trouble or a coach of foul of some form or fashion.
Speaker 1: And I'd go on the radio and I'd be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's what I think. And you know, Tennessee fans will
Speaker 1: be upset, or Florida fans or Alabama fans, And I said, hey,
Speaker 1: why can't you guys just pretend that this act, instead
Speaker 1: of being done by the team that you root for,
Speaker 1: was done by the team that you hate the most.
Speaker 1: If your response to what should happen to them from
Speaker 1: a consequence show basis is different whether it's a Tennessee
Speaker 1: guy or an Alabama guy. That's the very definition of bias,
Speaker 1: and to me, it's such an instructive lesson to apply
Speaker 1: everywhere else. If I'm thinking differently about someone or something
Speaker 1: or some situation, then I would be if somebody was
Speaker 1: on quote unquote my team. That's a bias, and I
Speaker 1: try to avoid it like the plague and sports isn't
Speaker 1: interesting to me metaphor to use that. If you hate
Speaker 1: a rival and arrival did something bad and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you gotta throw that guy can never play in this
Speaker 1: league again, and you wouldn't say the same thing about
Speaker 1: your team, that's bias in its essence. That I had
Speaker 1: that kind of crystal ball moment at eight years old
Speaker 1: doing television, and that's been one of the guiding ethos
Speaker 1: is behind basically every opinion I have is I have
Speaker 1: to be consistent like a judge. I can't show bias.
Speaker 1: So you're touching on one of my favorite things about
Speaker 1: being a sports fan. Certainly with big issues, issues that
Speaker 1: involve criminality, or issues that involved deep societal issues, you
Speaker 1: want to accomplish that consistency regardless of your fandom. But
Speaker 1: I love narrow minded tribalism and blind fandom in sports.
Speaker 1: Yes it is. Here's the thing. Human beings are inherently tribal.
Speaker 1: We are, and it's an ugly side of our nature
Speaker 1: most of the time. It is something that you have
Speaker 1: to overcome, and you do it. I believe through the
Speaker 1: principles you and I are alluding to, you overcome racial tribalism,
Speaker 1: gender tribalism, religious tribalism, and geographic tribalism by being a
Speaker 1: man of principle. But sports man that's exempt from all
Speaker 1: of it. I can think that Dallas Cowboys can do
Speaker 1: no wrong, and I can see you all day long.
Speaker 1: The Texas Longhorns should be and it's a travity. They
Speaker 1: aren't a top tier program in the United States. Over
Speaker 1: and overtime blue in the face because the truth is,
Speaker 1: it's a harmless area of our culture and our society
Speaker 1: where we can just be blind fans just have base allegiances.
Speaker 1: I love that about sports. I think it's fun. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's ugly. I love busting balls with somebody
Speaker 1: over their team versus my team. It's really one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things about sports. Be sure to catch live
Speaker 1: editions about Kicked the Coverage with Clay Travis week days
Speaker 1: at six am Eastern three am Pacific. We're talking to
Speaker 1: Will Kaine. This is the Wins and Losses Podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Clay Travis. One of the great things about sports, I
Speaker 1: think probably the greatest thing is what you just hit on.
Speaker 1: It unites us. Right, we all have different tribes. But
Speaker 1: what I always like to say is, whether you're a
Speaker 1: janitor or a neurosurgeon, if you're at the hospital break room,
Speaker 1: you can sit down and talk about what happened with
Speaker 1: the local team, and you're on an equal footing with
Speaker 1: each other. Right, are we giving that up by this
Speaker 1: is a big question, but by allowing politics basically two
Speaker 1: in many ways infect our fandom. Depends on who you
Speaker 1: mean by we. I don't think the average American and
Speaker 1: the average fan is giving that up by looking at
Speaker 1: their fellow fans and saying, I wonder what his politics are.
Speaker 1: But I think most in sports media are doing that,
Speaker 1: they're totally incapable of extricating from each other whatever political
Speaker 1: disagreements they might have, and enjoying this unifying section of
Speaker 1: our culture that is sports. It's a truly massive miscalculation
Speaker 1: by the sports media industry, and it's sad because culturally,
Speaker 1: sports is a massive part of our society. That's what's
Speaker 1: so sad about college football being canceled. Clay or at
Speaker 1: least the Big Ten in Pact twelve. We have no
Speaker 1: idea yet what we've lost. And I don't just mean economically,
Speaker 1: because those that might disagree with you or me would
Speaker 1: say your habit is sacrificed to others for your dollars.
Speaker 1: I mean in terms of mental health. I mean in
Speaker 1: terms of the future prospects in these athletes careers. I
Speaker 1: mean in terms of our ability to have these space
Speaker 1: where we can be unified and come together and have fun.
Speaker 1: I don't think we fully know the cost of canceling
Speaker 1: college football. It's going to be huge. I don't disagree
Speaker 1: at all. We both went to law school, and I
Speaker 1: think one thing that that you learn in law school
Speaker 1: is certainly how to make an argument. What I love
Speaker 1: about being in sports media is unlike when I was
Speaker 1: a practicing attorney, which I didn't like very much. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if you practiced at all. Uh, And
Speaker 1: I'm curious on that. But you have to argue whatever
Speaker 1: side is paying you. And sometimes you're on the wrong
Speaker 1: side of an argument, and you're like, about halfway through
Speaker 1: you know the case, or halfway through the argument, you're like, man,
Speaker 1: I'd a lot rather be on the other guy's side.
Speaker 1: I can pick which sides of arguments I want to
Speaker 1: be on. Did you practice and how much do you
Speaker 1: think in terms of arguing about sports, your legal training
Speaker 1: has been invaluable. You know, it's funny you bring that up,
Speaker 1: because I am the same as you. I don't ever
Speaker 1: have to compromise what I believe for my argument. Nobody
Speaker 1: is paying me to say anything in nor what you
Speaker 1: take I don't belief. But you know, if I had
Speaker 1: gone on to be a lawyer and I didn't practice
Speaker 1: either very much either. Um, my father died when I
Speaker 1: was twenty five, and I went to wind up his
Speaker 1: practice and I clerked in law school for a criminal
Speaker 1: defense firm, I would have wanted to be a trial lawyer.
Speaker 1: And you and I aren't that far apart in age.
Speaker 1: The day in the age of the civil trial lawyer
Speaker 1: is almost gone. So that would have meant be a
Speaker 1: criminal lawyer, which would have meant being a prosecutor or.
Speaker 1: If you want to make some money in life, go
Speaker 1: be a criminal defense attorney, in which case I really
Speaker 1: would have had to take money and defend people when
Speaker 1: I really would have rather not. Now I have buddies
Speaker 1: who do this, and I think it is truly noble.
Speaker 1: You have to fall back on the principle that the
Speaker 1: United States is a country where there is a burden
Speaker 1: of proof. The Constitution affords everyone representation, and you are
Speaker 1: truly doing a service by giving them the best representation
Speaker 1: that you can. The federal government or the state government
Speaker 1: or their county government has a ton of resources at
Speaker 1: its disposal, and they should be able to prove their
Speaker 1: case if it's coming to trial. I would have probably
Speaker 1: told myself all that. I gotta tell you, Clay, I'm
Speaker 1: a little happy I never had to make that that decision.
Speaker 1: So you I want to circle back around now, and
Speaker 1: I know I try to move in a linear fashion,
Speaker 1: but time sometimes like things stand out. You said you
Speaker 1: started to write a novel, So what happened with the
Speaker 1: novel writing? How long did you commit to it and
Speaker 1: when did you think, Man, I'm not very good at this,
Speaker 1: and where did that lead you next? So when I
Speaker 1: graduated law school, I decided I was going to write
Speaker 1: this novel, and if I was going to do so,
Speaker 1: I was going to move somewhere, live somewhere that it
Speaker 1: always wanted to be. It basically came down to two
Speaker 1: different places for me, Hawaii or Montana. I chose to
Speaker 1: go to Montana. I drove with my dog up north
Speaker 1: with no real destination. I got to western Montana. I
Speaker 1: didn't know a guy in the area. He put me
Speaker 1: up for a couple of days and I started looking
Speaker 1: in the paper for a cabin to rent. I rented
Speaker 1: this cabin and the I think then seventy five year
Speaker 1: old lady said do you know horses? Do you need
Speaker 1: a job? And I said, I know a little bit,
Speaker 1: and I do need a job. So she put me
Speaker 1: in touch with her son who had a ranch in
Speaker 1: the area. He was a hunting outfitter in Montana. He
Speaker 1: took tourists or hunters on big elk and ram and
Speaker 1: moose hunts up in the mountains of Montana. I worked
Speaker 1: for him for a year and spent my off time
Speaker 1: writing this horrendous novels. I did finish it, not unlike
Speaker 1: what we were talking about earlier. I committed myself to
Speaker 1: the project. And then, as I mentioned, after my dad
Speaker 1: died and I moved back on the oldest of four
Speaker 1: my youngest brothers, ten years younger than me, I wanted
Speaker 1: to be around as he was graduating from high school.
Speaker 1: I went ahead and finished that novel. But in that process,
Speaker 1: Clay not only that I realized my novel was crap,
Speaker 1: but I also realized this is a really terrible way
Speaker 1: to make a living. But I had also started to
Speaker 1: develop this entrepreneurial bug. So I wanted to marry writing
Speaker 1: and media and business together, and that meant for me.
Speaker 1: In the beginning newspapers. I didn't come from the kind
Speaker 1: of money will you go say, I'm going to buy
Speaker 1: a radio station, But I was capable of learning the
Speaker 1: business and scrapping together enough money to buy small town
Speaker 1: weekly newspapers in Texas. And I started to do that
Speaker 1: and built a little business of three, four five community
Speaker 1: newspapers that I eventually sold to a conglomerate. All Right,
Speaker 1: I want to get back to that. But I'm fascinated
Speaker 1: by the Montana experience because this is like yellow Stone
Speaker 1: writ large. I've never been to Montana. I've never been
Speaker 1: to what I would call the real West uh and,
Speaker 1: and I mean, you know, outside of California, Washington, Vegas,
Speaker 1: you know that area, even Colorado. I really want to
Speaker 1: get up there. What what time of year did you
Speaker 1: go to Montana? What was it like? You lived in
Speaker 1: a cabin by yourself, writing writing a novel? Like did
Speaker 1: you know anybody? Did you make any friends? Like? What
Speaker 1: kind of social interactions did you have there? So I
Speaker 1: took the bar, which, as you know, was probably in
Speaker 1: about July. I went home and hung out my buddies
Speaker 1: for the month of August, or at least part of
Speaker 1: that month, and I moved to Montana in August early September,
Speaker 1: and I lived there for a year. My friend was
Speaker 1: the rancher that I worked for, a year old cowboy.
Speaker 1: I had another buddy who was his nephew, and I
Speaker 1: hung out with his son some. But the truth is,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty comfortable spending time on my own. You know.
Speaker 1: I look back sometimes Clay at my twenties and I go, Wow,
Speaker 1: what if you'd been in New York City? Then what
Speaker 1: if you had been in Los Angeles at that time?
Speaker 1: Might have had some fun. And so I do look
Speaker 1: back hunting go well. I made some choices to be
Speaker 1: alone and work on a ranch, but I honestly I
Speaker 1: wouldn't trade it for that that that momentary. What did
Speaker 1: you do on the ranch? Like? Were you riding a
Speaker 1: horse around like a cowboy? Like? What was your day
Speaker 1: to day when you were living in Montana? Build fences, um,
Speaker 1: throw bales of hay, stack him in the barn. And
Speaker 1: then we were shoe horses, and then we were a
Speaker 1: hunting outfitter. So in Montana and supposed to growing up
Speaker 1: in Texas the way deer hunting was, and I don't
Speaker 1: know what it's like in Tennessee, probably the same as Texas.
Speaker 1: It's pretty small land. It's often a feeder. You sit
Speaker 1: in a box of blinds and wait for the deer
Speaker 1: to come. In Montana, you ride back into government land.
Speaker 1: I believe the land in Montana is government land. You ride,
Speaker 1: in our case, thirteen miles back into a camp. We
Speaker 1: had you stay back in there a week and my
Speaker 1: job was to pack the mules, take everything on and off.
Speaker 1: Learn how to saddle everybody's horse, put it together. Learn
Speaker 1: how to pack a mule, bring him into camp, stay
Speaker 1: for four or five days, take him out of camp.
Speaker 1: I wasn't a hunting guid. I didn't know the area
Speaker 1: well enough to be that. But I was essentially like
Speaker 1: the low man on the totem pole. Hey, get the horses,
Speaker 1: saddle the horses, pack the mules. Do you ever have
Speaker 1: any grizzly bear experiences? Man, I have never seen a
Speaker 1: grizzly bear. And I just did this trip fifteen states,
Speaker 1: seven thousand miles, hit every state in the West, including Yellowstone,
Speaker 1: and I've never seen a grizzly So I mean, was
Speaker 1: that a fear when you guys were taking people into
Speaker 1: the into the camping area where you cognizant of the
Speaker 1: danger of grizzly bears? Was that talked about at all?
Speaker 1: It was definitely talked about. I don't know that it
Speaker 1: was a fear. I remember when I moved to Montana.
Speaker 1: I was talking this old guy and I have a
Speaker 1: three seven. I have a lot of guns, not in
Speaker 1: New York, but I had at seven and I carried
Speaker 1: up there to kind of have his my side arm.
Speaker 1: Should we go out into the mountains. And this whole
Speaker 1: guy said to me, you know what you can do
Speaker 1: with this gun? Will I was like, what, you need
Speaker 1: to file the sights off so that you can get
Speaker 1: a bear. It's useful with a bear because it file
Speaker 1: the sights off. Why would I do that? He said,
Speaker 1: So when that grizzly takes it to you and takes
Speaker 1: it from me and shoves up your butt, it won't
Speaker 1: hurt of that. That's pretty fantastic, all right. So I'm
Speaker 1: fascinated by the entire like the Montana experience, because I
Speaker 1: graduated from law school and moved to the Caribbean, which
Speaker 1: is obviously a different experience. But you said you talked
Speaker 1: about Hawaii potentially. I got married, took the bar, we
Speaker 1: moved to the Caribbean. I spent a couple of years
Speaker 1: down there in the US Verse in Islands as an attorney.
Speaker 1: I'm still licensed down there. And that was a crazy
Speaker 1: unique life experience that my wife and I had. We
Speaker 1: didn't have kids yet, all those things. So you come
Speaker 1: back and how successful is this business to start to
Speaker 1: buy small newspapers because this is before the internet was
Speaker 1: taken off. But did you start to look around and say, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe the print paper business is not necessarily the wave
Speaker 1: of the future. Yeah. So I picked two niches that
Speaker 1: I thought insulated me from circulation to claim. So the
Speaker 1: first was I wanted to buy community newspapers in the
Speaker 1: growth path of Dallas. Dallas is an absolutely booming metropolis
Speaker 1: to this day and has been for about twenty years.
Speaker 1: I mean, fortune companies situating their headquarters in suburbs north
Speaker 1: of Dallas, Homes going up everywhere. I mean, by default, Clay,
Speaker 1: my circulation should go up because thousands of people are
Speaker 1: moving in on a monthly basis. So I picked suburban
Speaker 1: growth path cities to buy newspapers to insulate myself from
Speaker 1: circulation decline. And in the other niche I was interested
Speaker 1: in was the Latino market because it was also a
Speaker 1: demographic that was absolutely booming. So, knowing that print was declining,
Speaker 1: I wanted to find some demographics and markets that were
Speaker 1: growing to offset that. How many business how many employees
Speaker 1: did you have? How would you assess the overall success
Speaker 1: of the business. Because you're a young guy to be
Speaker 1: doing this, Yeah, I mean I had I think, uh,
Speaker 1: probably at most somewhere around ten a dozen employees. It
Speaker 1: was definitely a small business, but it was an absolute success.
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't get generationally wealthy or set myself
Speaker 1: up for life, but you know, I quadrupled my money
Speaker 1: and quadrupled my investment on the in and out over
Speaker 1: a three year period. It was it was a good idea. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you finded your quadruple your money, You've done a
Speaker 1: small business, you've graduated from law school. What then? So
Speaker 1: I had made some money and I was entrepreneurly inclined.
Speaker 1: So then that brings me to the Latino market. The
Speaker 1: other market I wanted to be involved in was the
Speaker 1: Hispanic market. Actually switched terms there for a reason. So
Speaker 1: the word Hispanic is a government since this created term,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean a lot. It actually masks over the
Speaker 1: differences of people from Chile to Puerto Rico, Mexico to
Speaker 1: Argentina and pretend that they're all the same. What more,
Speaker 1: it treats everybody who is a first generation immigrant to
Speaker 1: a third generation immigrant exactly as they are the same.
Speaker 1: So I had to find something what is truly applicable
Speaker 1: appealing to everybody in the quote unquote Hispanic market, and
Speaker 1: sports doesn't even actually qualify because Caribbean nations are more
Speaker 1: into baseball where Latin American nations are more into soccer.
Speaker 1: So what could I find? It truly appealed to everyone.
Speaker 1: My wife is from West Texas. In West Texas there's
Speaker 1: much bigger Latino population there is where I grew up,
Speaker 1: at least at that time. Now most of Texas has
Speaker 1: a very large Latino population. So one of the few
Speaker 1: things that everybody from Mexico to Puerto Rico, or actually
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico's to one outlier, but Mexico to Cuba to
Speaker 1: South America do is when a young girl turns fifteen,
Speaker 1: she has the Kington era. It's a big coming of
Speaker 1: age party. It's like a bot mitzvah if you're Jewish,
Speaker 1: or a debutante ball if you're from the South. It
Speaker 1: looks like a wedding. It's a huge consumer event. It's
Speaker 1: massively important. And at that time, or just prior to that,
Speaker 1: I had gotten married. My wife brought home The Knot.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the Not? The magazine and website that
Speaker 1: helps you play it's a great business. And I used
Speaker 1: to see that she brought home that magazine. I was like,
Speaker 1: look at this thing. It's at the editorial content is
Speaker 1: the advertisements they're getting paid to fill out their home pages.
Speaker 1: So I modeled the business on the knot and started
Speaker 1: this magazine, website and event company to help young Latina
Speaker 1: girls plan their Kensan era. How about that? That is amazing?
Speaker 1: So how successful were you as a Keen signior And
Speaker 1: was this around the time that wasn't there a MTV
Speaker 1: show like the Keenson Era like concept? Was this before
Speaker 1: that or around the same time? I think I was
Speaker 1: a little before that, and then you were like a
Speaker 1: kes era. Uh so, how I mean? It sounds like
Speaker 1: it's a crazy idea, but also one that was likely
Speaker 1: to work. Did it work? So here's this business story.
Speaker 1: I raised outside financing from this from a hedge fund,
Speaker 1: some guys that I truly respect. The business got off
Speaker 1: to a great start. We got it off the ground,
Speaker 1: quickly acquired a place in the market with the consumer
Speaker 1: and the advertisers. I made plenty of my own entrepreneurial mistakes,
Speaker 1: and I believe any entrepreneur has to own their own failures.
Speaker 1: Two thousand nine happens a recession, and when you were
Speaker 1: playing in a tight niche, you don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of room for a market downturn. So at that time
Speaker 1: advertising drives up, the business gets tougher, and I have
Speaker 1: to make a decision do you go back to the
Speaker 1: well and raise more money? And then, as anybody who
Speaker 1: starts a business like this, ask yourself, what's the exit potential?
Speaker 1: Is it worth it on the back end for the
Speaker 1: money I'd have to raise two hopefully cash in on
Speaker 1: the exit. And we decided it was not. It was
Speaker 1: a failure. I failed. Yeah, I always supportant about that,
Speaker 1: Clay go ahead. I'm sorry, No, No, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: what did you learn? Because that's that's I think the
Speaker 1: biggest question that comes. I mean, this is wins and losses,
Speaker 1: and everybody wants to win, but I think oftentimes you
Speaker 1: can learn more losing way more than anything I ever
Speaker 1: learned from winning way more so. The biggest thing I
Speaker 1: learned is this, I know how to make money. I
Speaker 1: know how to succeed. What I need to be cognizant
Speaker 1: of is I need to be passionate every day about
Speaker 1: the actual content that I am putting out, about the
Speaker 1: actual business that I'm engaged in. And for better or worse,
Speaker 1: King Sanerra's and the passions of fifteen year old Latino
Speaker 1: girls were not my passion and I made which, by
Speaker 1: the way, would be a lot creepier if it was
Speaker 1: if you were like, yeah, you know, if I were,
Speaker 1: if you're like, you know what I'm really passionate about
Speaker 1: as a you know, thirty five year old grown man
Speaker 1: fifteen year old girl parties, you'd be like, I don't
Speaker 1: know about that, dude. You might get rich, but you
Speaker 1: might also go to jail. Um. That's exactly the lesson
Speaker 1: I learned. And then I said to myself, Okay, whatever
Speaker 1: you do next, just really care. And from growing up
Speaker 1: at the dinner table debating with my dad to law
Speaker 1: school in the Socratic method, in the topics that I
Speaker 1: cared about, I always cared about debate, ideas, conversation, and
Speaker 1: I just decided at that time, whatever I do next,
Speaker 1: I'm going to care about it. And this is kind
Speaker 1: of what I care about. I care about debating the
Speaker 1: most important ideas in society. So from there you go,
Speaker 1: what's the next step. So this is around two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten eleven. What's the year and what's the next step?
Speaker 1: So the next step is I start Because I don't
Speaker 1: ever been an entrepreneur and never had a job. As
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, I started with a television pilot. I
Speaker 1: produced a TV pilot. I decided everything on TV was
Speaker 1: not worthy of the national moment. It was Obama McCain,
Speaker 1: or maybe it was Obama Romney, I can't remember the moment,
Speaker 1: but it was important, and I created television pilot. It
Speaker 1: really didn't go anywhere because, as you know at that time,
Speaker 1: networks like Fox or CNN or ESPN for that matter,
Speaker 1: don't really buy outside programming. They do it themselves. But
Speaker 1: what it did do is it led a relationship. Led
Speaker 1: to a relationship for me with National Review, which is
Speaker 1: a conservative political magazine. And I am conservative with a
Speaker 1: libertarian bent in my political ideology. So I started doing
Speaker 1: stuff for National Review for free. This gets to the
Speaker 1: first question you asked me. I was always doing stuff
Speaker 1: for free, always doing stuff below market, whether or not
Speaker 1: it was going to work for small town newspapers in
Speaker 1: Central Texas when I had a law degree and my
Speaker 1: buddies were making a d twenty thousand dollars a year
Speaker 1: out of law school and I would make nineteen dollars
Speaker 1: writing articles on the school board in Atlanto, Texas or
Speaker 1: working for free at National Review. I told them I'll
Speaker 1: do this, but in exchange, I want you to introduce
Speaker 1: me to everybody you know in television. And the first
Speaker 1: relationship that really sent me to was Fox News and
Speaker 1: so I started doing stuff for Fox News for free again.
Speaker 1: And then one night, after I built up enough television appearances,
Speaker 1: I guessed at the email address of the president of
Speaker 1: CNN that time. His name was John Klein, and I
Speaker 1: guessed it was first name dot last name at Turner
Speaker 1: dot com or something, and I sent him an email
Speaker 1: and said, you really need somebody like me at CNN.
Speaker 1: Here's a clip, and he responded within fifteen minutes. You're right,
Speaker 1: come on in, let's talk. That's amazing. And so what
Speaker 1: did you do at CNN? So, by the way, what
Speaker 1: was the first time you were on air ever? Do
Speaker 1: you remember what you were talking about? I don't remember
Speaker 1: when exactly it was, but it would have probably been
Speaker 1: on Fox News dot com. They used to have a
Speaker 1: show called the Strategy Room, And I have no idea
Speaker 1: what I was talking about, but that our first time
Speaker 1: on bombitcare? Now that did you go back and watch?
Speaker 1: The reason why I ask is did you go back
Speaker 1: and watch yourself on television because one of the things
Speaker 1: that I think is fascinating is, um, you're coming from
Speaker 1: the writing side, and uh, you know, I started writing
Speaker 1: that I did a radio, that I did TV. I
Speaker 1: liked you the first time I ever did television. You
Speaker 1: have to learn how to do television right. You could
Speaker 1: be there as some people who are better at it
Speaker 1: like anything else, Like right, there's some people who step
Speaker 1: on a basketball court and the first time they shoot
Speaker 1: a basketball, they look natural doing it. But there are
Speaker 1: other people who have to work at it a little bit.
Speaker 1: And the example I like to use is you have
Speaker 1: to stare right at the television camera or it looks weird, right.
Speaker 1: And that's something that people have never been on television
Speaker 1: don't understand. But if you have a normal conversation with
Speaker 1: somebody and you stare at them the whole time, that
Speaker 1: looks super weird. So automatically, just by being on tell vision,
Speaker 1: you have to do something that is counter to whatever
Speaker 1: you would do in a normal relationship. And the reason
Speaker 1: why I bring it up is the first time I
Speaker 1: ever went on television, I went back and watched and
Speaker 1: somebody kept saying, Man, what were you seeing out of
Speaker 1: the corner of your eye. It was because I was
Speaker 1: averting my gaze right Like I wasn't staring at the
Speaker 1: camera because I was treating the camera like it was
Speaker 1: someone else's eyes. But on television, if somebody's not looking
Speaker 1: directly at you, you're like, oh, that person is shifting.
Speaker 1: You can't trust them, And it would be the exact
Speaker 1: opposite and an in person relationship. So that's why I asked, like,
Speaker 1: the first time that you go on, did you go
Speaker 1: back and like sort of scout yourself and be like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I did well there. I moved too much there, Like
Speaker 1: how did you self assess? Because you're good at television,
Speaker 1: how did you self scout to get better? Was there
Speaker 1: any sort of epiphany you had as you were doing television?
Speaker 1: So I have a couple of things to say on that.
Speaker 1: When you first started asking me the question, I almost
Speaker 1: dismissed it internally because I was like, just be yourself,
Speaker 1: be second nature, be smart. And I do think that's
Speaker 1: where you get Eventually, a guy like you, Clay, who
Speaker 1: is smart, You're gonna go in. You're gonna have unique thoughts,
Speaker 1: You're gonna be brave enough to share them. Television dynamics
Speaker 1: be damned. All of that is small fries compared to
Speaker 1: actually giving people good, intelligent, unique content. That being said,
Speaker 1: as you were talking about the question, I did remember
Speaker 1: that my first real big boy television appearance was on
Speaker 1: Fox and Friends, and it was in the studio. And
Speaker 1: not only is it unnatural to stare into a black box,
Speaker 1: as you said, but there's all these other external input.
Speaker 1: Two or three people usher you to a chair very quickly.
Speaker 1: They put this thing in your ear that you've never
Speaker 1: had before, and all of a sudden you hear things
Speaker 1: that are distracting you from what you're thinking about. They
Speaker 1: clip a mic on and out the corner of your
Speaker 1: eye you see the other people in the studio, which
Speaker 1: normal circumstances you would be talking directly to talking to
Speaker 1: another black box. And then these lights flashed down in
Speaker 1: your face, and everything is distracting you from exactly what
Speaker 1: it is you want to say and be natural and
Speaker 1: be smart, but you get conditioned to it. I mean,
Speaker 1: if somebody gives you the opportunity, and that's key, if
Speaker 1: they give you the opportunity to actually take some balls,
Speaker 1: take some strikes, take some cuts to plate, then you
Speaker 1: will get used to all of that. I'll tell you this, man,
Speaker 1: I don't go back and watch myself now, and I
Speaker 1: don't know. I might be a mistake. I really probably should,
Speaker 1: but I can barely stand to watch myself, much like
Speaker 1: I don't watch. I don't watch now. I thought early on,
Speaker 1: because it's a new discipline. I wanted to know what
Speaker 1: what I looked like to other people. Um And now
Speaker 1: I never go back and watch, and I don't go
Speaker 1: back and listen very much to radio anymore. But early
Speaker 1: on in radio, I noticed that I had ticks right.
Speaker 1: I would say, there would be words that are unnecessary
Speaker 1: that I would use, and I tried to knock it out, like,
Speaker 1: for instance, I remember the first time I went on
Speaker 1: starting to go on as a guest, I said, you
Speaker 1: know all the time, and and somebody like somebody reached
Speaker 1: out and they said, did you realize that during the
Speaker 1: course of that fifteen minute interview you said, you know
Speaker 1: seventy eight times? So I no way. And you go
Speaker 1: back and you listen, and you realize we all have
Speaker 1: speech patterns, and maybe you're a little bit more nervous,
Speaker 1: and so you tend to feel like you need to
Speaker 1: fill that silence and so you learn how to do
Speaker 1: it better. But I think you can overtrain right and uh,
Speaker 1: but I think early on there are important lessons that
Speaker 1: you can pick up because doing television well require some
Speaker 1: unnatural reactions in order to look natural, if that makes sense. Well,
Speaker 1: talking about those verbal ticks, there's a contagion at places
Speaker 1: like MSNBC. It's not just that you have to wear eyeglasses,
Speaker 1: but that you say the word right at the end
Speaker 1: of every sentence, so that that's forced the listener to
Speaker 1: agree with every point you're making. Right. And so I
Speaker 1: have another really intelligent point that I'm gonna need to
Speaker 1: put these glasses on four and you're gonna like it right.
Speaker 1: And I can't stand that verbal tick that is seemingly
Speaker 1: contagious at MSNBC. Um, you don't win. There's something you
Speaker 1: and I agree on, and that is the best mechanism
Speaker 1: for developing your thoughts. And the best medium out there
Speaker 1: is absolutely radio. You talked about honing your craft and
Speaker 1: how you talk. Radio teaches you, I think the right
Speaker 1: way to do it, because you first of all have
Speaker 1: a big runway, you have elbow room. You can actually
Speaker 1: explain your thoughts. You can connect with the listener in
Speaker 1: a way then no other platform really can connect. But
Speaker 1: you shouldn't take that for granted. And I think most
Speaker 1: people who in radio do take it for granted. They think,
Speaker 1: turn the blue light on, start talking, and I will
Speaker 1: be interesting enough, And it's not true. So what you
Speaker 1: learn to hone is the order of your thoughts. Tell
Speaker 1: the audience what you're talking about, tell them what your
Speaker 1: point of view is, give them almost your conclusion to start,
Speaker 1: and then back it up after so they know what
Speaker 1: the hell we're talking about. You do continue throughout your
Speaker 1: career to learn how to hone your message in a
Speaker 1: way that makes people want to listen. And I think
Speaker 1: radio is absolutely the best mechanism learning that. How did
Speaker 1: you go from CNN to ESPN? So that in my career,
Speaker 1: art to me is the least interesting part of my
Speaker 1: career because at that point it becomes more traditional. So
Speaker 1: at some point at CNN and then there was a
Speaker 1: little stretch Clay where I had some appearances on the
Speaker 1: view and there was the potential for me to become
Speaker 1: one of the first male hosts. Yeah yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: I got to know Whoopi Goldberg during that time, went
Speaker 1: out to her house asked her for career advice. But
Speaker 1: throughout that process, I decided that the career wasn't going
Speaker 1: where I wanted to go. So I switched agents. I
Speaker 1: switched to C A A, which I know you're there.
Speaker 1: I'm no longer at A, but I switched to C
Speaker 1: A A. I switched to Nick con and Nick has
Speaker 1: deep relationships in sports. Um he knew that I had
Speaker 1: deep interest in sports, and he started to guide me
Speaker 1: towards the ESPN. I developed relationships with some people. There's
Speaker 1: some very good people there, like Rob Savanelli invested in me,
Speaker 1: who understands what it is to think outside the box.
Speaker 1: And it actually took a couple of years for those
Speaker 1: relationships to coalesce into hiring me at ESPN. But it really,
Speaker 1: honestly is a more traditional hiring process than sending a
Speaker 1: dude an email in the middle of the night. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about ESPN and some of the ways that
Speaker 1: sports media covers sports in general. You obviously had a
Speaker 1: lot of success at ESPN. You mentioned your radio show.
Speaker 1: You mentioned you didn't mention it, but you were on
Speaker 1: first take. Did you feel comfortable sharing what you actually
Speaker 1: thought initially at ESPN and why do you think it
Speaker 1: is in sports media. We talked a lot about political
Speaker 1: bias that exists in the media at large, but I
Speaker 1: would argue that there is more of a self selecting
Speaker 1: bias almost in sports than in the political arena at all.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is. There's a couple of
Speaker 1: broad questions, but I'm just kind of curious what your
Speaker 1: experience was there. When I first joined the ESPN, I
Speaker 1: first got a little more invested in the sports media world,
Speaker 1: and I should say in the sports media world, because
Speaker 1: you asked me earlier, was I always invested in sports?
Speaker 1: My first real memory is NFC Championship game. It's versus
Speaker 1: the Cowboys and Joe Montana throwing up a prayer that
Speaker 1: Dwight Clark brings down and catch him on his fingers
Speaker 1: and make six year old Will cry. I have loved
Speaker 1: sports since I was a kid, deeply and paid attention
Speaker 1: at every step. But when I really joined the espiis
Speaker 1: when I started paying attention to sports media. And I
Speaker 1: came across you, and one of the things you said
Speaker 1: at that time was sports media is even more insular
Speaker 1: and more monolithic in terms of point of view than
Speaker 1: political media. And you were absolutely right. It is further
Speaker 1: left and more monolithically left than any other news media,
Speaker 1: and that is saying something because the rest of news
Speaker 1: is also incredibly biased and leaning left. Um, why does
Speaker 1: that happen? So there's a self selection mechanism, like you
Speaker 1: talked about, of people who choose to go into media.
Speaker 1: I think, just like most people in the oil industry
Speaker 1: tend to be conservative, the people that choose to go
Speaker 1: into media tend to be on the left. But that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's exclusive. There are people who share my
Speaker 1: points of view, and this now brings in the other
Speaker 1: self selection mechanism. What you bring up is whether or
Speaker 1: not you want to share those out loud. It wasn't
Speaker 1: hard for me at all. Man. I had come from
Speaker 1: politics that was much more rough and tumble, and I
Speaker 1: was maybe even naive that my point of view would
Speaker 1: be so out of the ordinary in sports. So I
Speaker 1: never thought twice. I never thought about the cost, not
Speaker 1: that I would have changed anyway, because I don't really
Speaker 1: think I have that capability, but it's only increased. And
Speaker 1: you know that everyone listening knows that. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you share a point of view that the guardians of
Speaker 1: sports media, whether or not. Those are the critics, the loggers,
Speaker 1: the on air talentcy executives, whoever it may be, don't
Speaker 1: like you are absolutely at risk of being branded a racist.
Speaker 1: You're at risk of being branded someone on the wrong
Speaker 1: side of history and that moral and you really should,
Speaker 1: in their estimation, have your platform taken away? Has that
Speaker 1: gotten worse every year as you were at ESPN And
Speaker 1: do you attribute that to social media? Do you attributed
Speaker 1: to Donald Trump? I think everything you said is true.
Speaker 1: Why did it continue to grow? It seems like to
Speaker 1: me because you talked about earlier in our conversation the
Speaker 1: fact that you got a twelve year old and you're
Speaker 1: not sure if college is the right idea for him,
Speaker 1: because college used to be, in a traditional sense, a
Speaker 1: place where people went to challenge their mind. You may
Speaker 1: not be a communist, but you learn about communism. You
Speaker 1: may not be a hard core capitalist, but you learn
Speaker 1: about capitalism. Right. You challenge your mind so that you're
Speaker 1: more comfortable and aware of the world. You expand your
Speaker 1: universe of comprehension. It seems to me now that so
Speaker 1: much of what goes on is sideloed and you're only
Speaker 1: allowed to have one idea I've seen it just grow
Speaker 1: at an exponential rate. Since all the Corona bros out
Speaker 1: there are worried about exponential growth, what I have seen
Speaker 1: to actually grow exponentially is in my career. So I
Speaker 1: started out kicking two thousand eleven. Um. You know, we
Speaker 1: were a zany kind of fun, college football centered sports
Speaker 1: site for several years, and then along the way, I
Speaker 1: was like, wait a minute, Suddenly there's only one opinion
Speaker 1: that you can have, and it seems like it's just
Speaker 1: accelerated to such an extent where here as we set
Speaker 1: having this conversation in it feels almost like the McCarthy era.
Speaker 1: Obviously we're super young, but we study history where there's
Speaker 1: only one right answer for things. How did you see
Speaker 1: that evolve inside of ESPN and also just in the
Speaker 1: larger sports media. She's had a couple of things there
Speaker 1: I want to respond to. Let's start with college and
Speaker 1: then we'll get to sports media and ESPN. I've been
Speaker 1: having this conversation with myself as drove around the country.
Speaker 1: You talked about the role of college in the traditional
Speaker 1: success path of the American dream. It's absolutely true. You
Speaker 1: can see the stats were at large if a child
Speaker 1: goes to college, the likelihood he makes X dollars is
Speaker 1: multiplied exponentially. The likelihood he's going to be a success
Speaker 1: goes remarkably up. And we should therefore obviously focus on
Speaker 1: education higher education. But I've been thinking about that more
Speaker 1: and more. What does that require? What does that mean?
Speaker 1: And what it means is you're going to go to
Speaker 1: an institution where they are going to require you to
Speaker 1: fall into lockstep with their point of view. And even
Speaker 1: if you were okay with that in exchange for being
Speaker 1: a success in life, I would ask you what is
Speaker 1: success in It's going into corporate America and then falling
Speaker 1: into other institutions which are shown to be some of
Speaker 1: the most spineless leaders in American history, who will say
Speaker 1: if you don't fall inline, not only were not going
Speaker 1: to promote you, if you don't submit to the majority
Speaker 1: point of view, or rather, i'm sorry, the minority ex
Speaker 1: dreamly loud point of view, then we're going to potentially
Speaker 1: fire you. I started thinking about who I want my
Speaker 1: sons to be. I'm like, is being rich that important?
Speaker 1: Is being quote unquote successful so important that you have
Speaker 1: to sell out your principles, your values, your manhood, that
Speaker 1: you have to just fall in line, that you have
Speaker 1: to agree or be fired, that you tuck your tail
Speaker 1: between your legs and you went for your way to
Speaker 1: your golden handcuffs. I don't want that for my kids.
Speaker 1: Don't want them to be men and if college and
Speaker 1: that traditional success path to find that's the kind of
Speaker 1: person they're gonna be. I have real doubts and concerns
Speaker 1: about it. I'd rather them go be a man in
Speaker 1: Montana and learn how to make a living on his
Speaker 1: own and live by his own principles. That's what I
Speaker 1: am right now. But again, I'm all talked. I got
Speaker 1: six years to figure this out. That's fantastic. And then
Speaker 1: the other part of that, because that was such an
Speaker 1: interesting answer, like the evolution at your time at ESPN,
Speaker 1: did you see a sort of what I would say
Speaker 1: is shrinking of the the universe of acceptable opinion? To
Speaker 1: kind of sum it up, like it seems as if
Speaker 1: with social media and sports media in particular, that the
Speaker 1: number of opinions that someone is allowed to have the
Speaker 1: space for those opinions has increasingly shrunk. Would you agree
Speaker 1: with that and did you notice it? And how would
Speaker 1: you attribute that to occurring? Why did it occur? So
Speaker 1: let's talk about ESPN and the sports media and why occurred.
Speaker 1: So I will say this, no one in five years
Speaker 1: at ESPN ever told me what to say or what
Speaker 1: I could not say. No one at ESPN made me
Speaker 1: feel unwanted. The executives there, I truly believe wanted most
Speaker 1: of the time me on the network. There might have
Speaker 1: been times when they thought I'm not right for a
Speaker 1: certain show or a certain audience. They might have had
Speaker 1: their doubts about me personally. I'll never know because they
Speaker 1: didn't share it. But I felt fairly comfortable at ESPN
Speaker 1: in terms of support. But I was an outlier. Everybody
Speaker 1: knows that. You know that my opinion was in the
Speaker 1: minority there. In two thousand sixteen, you really saw this
Speaker 1: stuff take off, right Colin Kaepernick Niels and we begin
Speaker 1: to have these conversations around race. They weren't exclusively around race.
Speaker 1: There was trans issues, There was issues about sexual assault charges.
Speaker 1: We talked about principles earlier. Clay, I'm a big believer
Speaker 1: in reasonable doubt, in burden of proof. Almost every accusation
Speaker 1: against an athlete, be they black, white, man, or woman.
Speaker 1: I just want you to make your case before you
Speaker 1: brand and and totally condemned them as guilty. So all
Speaker 1: of these issues are sensitive, and it starts to really
Speaker 1: peak more than two thousand sixteen, and I do think
Speaker 1: it goes away in sevent nine. And then the answer
Speaker 1: your question, I don't think this is unique to ESPN.
Speaker 1: I think it's in sports media writ large, and I
Speaker 1: think it's in media at large. Over the last six months,
Speaker 1: this idea that you can only have one a point
Speaker 1: of view has absolutely had rocket boosters on it. Again,
Speaker 1: it did never manifest in we don't want will on air.
Speaker 1: ESPN supported me, they wanted me, they wanted me to
Speaker 1: stay at ESPN. My contract was up and we were negotiating.
Speaker 1: But I think the role of social media, the role
Speaker 1: of blogs and critics, the role of like mindedness and
Speaker 1: media has really forced everything to become monolithically one point
Speaker 1: of view. How does it change fracturization. Honestly, it changes
Speaker 1: with probably institutions like OutKick. It changes because media will
Speaker 1: continue to be made up of smaller, more independent, more
Speaker 1: independently minded organizations. From you and Jason and Bobby and
Speaker 1: Ryan and all the guys over there to OutKick and
Speaker 1: what you're doing to Portnoy and Big Cat and what
Speaker 1: those guys are doing at barstool, guys like Ben Shapiro.
Speaker 1: I think kata fracture up and that's where independence will
Speaker 1: be earned. How much does creative freedom matter to you?
Speaker 1: Being able to say exactly what you think and not
Speaker 1: have to war worry about it costing you your job? Incredibly?
Speaker 1: I loved the Will Kaine Show. I mean, Clay, you
Speaker 1: do radio. I think you can probably identify with this.
Speaker 1: I love the idea that there was three hours of
Speaker 1: blank space every day and I pretty much could talk
Speaker 1: about whatever I want. However I wanted to shape those
Speaker 1: three hours meant the world to me. I just indicted
Speaker 1: mainstream media and big media companies writ large. I will
Speaker 1: say this to you, and I'm not saying it because
Speaker 1: I'm being a good soldier. It was one of the
Speaker 1: decisions that led me to joining them. But Fox News
Speaker 1: is an institution that has shown backbone and leadership and
Speaker 1: willingness to stand up against online mobs and cancel culture
Speaker 1: and embrace I truly believe this embrace differing viewpoints on
Speaker 1: their airwaves. I would there is no mainstream media, big
Speaker 1: media company that I would rather work for. Than Fox News.
Speaker 1: Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
Speaker 1: the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox Sports
Speaker 1: Radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio app.
Speaker 1: Search f s R to listen live. We're talking to
Speaker 1: Will Kaine Wins and Losses. I'm Clay Travis. Um. Why
Speaker 1: do you think? So? Let me take a step back.
Speaker 1: Did you feel as if you were disliked internally at
Speaker 1: ESPN by other people on air because of your opinions
Speaker 1: or did you have really good relationships with people behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, even if publicly sometimes they disagreed with you.
Speaker 1: How would you assess your overall experience with co workers
Speaker 1: at ESPN given the fact that you were outspoken and
Speaker 1: frankly sometimes uh not supported by a lot of other people,
Speaker 1: at least publicly in what you were saying, The vast
Speaker 1: majority relationships were really good. I mean that really good.
Speaker 1: I hope they were all authentic. Um. I really think
Speaker 1: that they did appreciate me, did like me, did take
Speaker 1: the time to invest and understand who I am, why
Speaker 1: I think what I think. I'm sure there are some
Speaker 1: who didn't like me. The truth is about those that
Speaker 1: didn't like me, we probably didn't interact a whole lot.
Speaker 1: They probably didn't give me a shot, didn't really invest
Speaker 1: in understanding who I was. But for the vast majority
Speaker 1: of relationships whennot they were Stephen A. Smith or Marcus
Speaker 1: Spears or Damie al Woody or Dan Orlovsky or Tim Hasselbeck,
Speaker 1: there were good relationships that I sincerely hope to maintain.
Speaker 1: How often would people come up to you at ESPN
Speaker 1: and say, I don't want people to know it, but
Speaker 1: I agree with a huge percentage of what you say,
Speaker 1: keep doing it. It happened. It definitely happened. And you know, Clay,
Speaker 1: I heard you talk about that because I remember you
Speaker 1: talk about people that would send you messages behind I
Speaker 1: I have a just so you know, and I'm this
Speaker 1: is not going to shock you. There are I have
Speaker 1: a lot of really good friends at ESPN. People are like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't look I I have a lot
Speaker 1: of really people that I considered to be good friends
Speaker 1: and also good professional friends. And many of those people
Speaker 1: reach out to me regularly and they say, man, I
Speaker 1: love out kick, I love what you're doing. Keep doing it.
Speaker 1: H You're right in a lot of the criticisms that
Speaker 1: you levy about sports media and ESPN is obviously the
Speaker 1: biggest mirror to reflect sports media. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: an ESPN exclusive issue. I think they just are bigger,
Speaker 1: so they magnify sometimes more. Uh So, I know there
Speaker 1: is a deep well of people at ESPN with a
Speaker 1: strong belief system in uh in things that might seem counterintuitive.
Speaker 1: And Jason Whitlock, I thought recently said uh that that
Speaker 1: he thinks that it goes on in sports media too,
Speaker 1: where there's a lot of guys making seventy five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year out there and they got to take
Speaker 1: care of their family, and they're like, man, I can
Speaker 1: say what I actually think on social media, but if
Speaker 1: I do, I might lose my job, and then it's
Speaker 1: not easy for me to go get another seventy five
Speaker 1: or a hundred thousand dollar job. I'm fifty six years old.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to play out the thread on my career.
Speaker 1: I think there's a huge number of people out there
Speaker 1: like that. But I'm curious whether they come up to
Speaker 1: you internally and whether you had some of those conversations
Speaker 1: as well. I did, And I would say three things
Speaker 1: in response to that. I think the number of people
Speaker 1: who agree with what I have to say is actually growing.
Speaker 1: I think as the points of view have gotten more extreme.
Speaker 1: I'm not just talking about ESPN. I'm talking about in
Speaker 1: the nation as a whole, but particularly in the media
Speaker 1: as a whole, and the need even more particularly in
Speaker 1: sports media, has gotten more extreme. I think more people
Speaker 1: are um gravitating to my positions once they see grounded
Speaker 1: in reason and rationality, and they're starting to see the
Speaker 1: cost of some of these extreme points of view. Trust me,
Speaker 1: I live in New York City. I can tell you firsthand.
Speaker 1: I have seen the cost of these kind of ideas implemented.
Speaker 1: Number two, Um, I can't help it, and I would
Speaker 1: tell my friends this. I am a little disappointed sometimes
Speaker 1: that they feel this way privately but don't say it publicly.
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes it can be even as as an
Speaker 1: oxuous is saying I think wil Kaine is good or
Speaker 1: Wilkaine is right, or you know, one of those statements
Speaker 1: that somehow ends up being controversial. I do wish a
Speaker 1: little bit people were more forthcoming with their points of view.
Speaker 1: But then my third point is I understand, just like
Speaker 1: you said with Whitlock, I understand it's a very rational
Speaker 1: choice to make to be quiet. Your job will probably
Speaker 1: be threatened, your reputation will most definitely be threatened, And
Speaker 1: so I understand why people would make those very rational
Speaker 1: self preservationist um choices. How often have you written a
Speaker 1: tweet and deleted it before you sent it? Um? This
Speaker 1: is a real weakness in my game. I don't love Twitter.
Speaker 1: I don't love social media. You're really good at it,
Speaker 1: you truly are. I don't tweet a ton. You probably
Speaker 1: know that, and it's good for your career. You as
Speaker 1: in the proverbial you everyone because you have to be heard.
Speaker 1: I just think it's a really crap platform, Clay. I
Speaker 1: just don't think it lends itself to any sort of
Speaker 1: really interesting thoughts. It doesn't lend itself to back and force.
Speaker 1: It's extremely negative, and I actually think, like your colleague
Speaker 1: Jason has said inny Times, I actually think it's a
Speaker 1: really big contributors to the negativity going on in society.
Speaker 1: So I don't really tweet delete, tweet delete, I just
Speaker 1: honestly don't tweet that much. I need to, I need
Speaker 1: to tweet more. I know it's good for my career,
Speaker 1: and I get all myself about it. I just don't
Speaker 1: like the platform. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I I
Speaker 1: totally understand that that perspective, and I feel like Twitter
Speaker 1: has been great for me personally and awful for the
Speaker 1: country as a whole. And that dichotomy that I feel is,
Speaker 1: I do think it. It has helped to elevate what
Speaker 1: we do at out kick, It's helped to distribute our
Speaker 1: ideas to a larger audience. But I also think that
Speaker 1: the overall tone of Twitter is so negative. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what I've done, and and this has been really
Speaker 1: in the last couple of years. I rarely read mentions, right,
Speaker 1: other than the people that I follow, Like I'll go
Speaker 1: and see what they're tweeting about and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I enjoy it, and certainly I enjoy it for news,
Speaker 1: but it's it's interesting, Like as a writer, I learned
Speaker 1: years and years ago never read the mentions to what
Speaker 1: people write but below your article, and I would never
Speaker 1: do it. But there's something seductive, and certainly our industry
Speaker 1: creates a lot of narcissists, right, I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: a surprise that if you decide you want to be
Speaker 1: on television or you want people to pay attention to you,
Speaker 1: that you may well have narcissistic tendencies. And what Twitter creates,
Speaker 1: I believe, is the idea that everybody cares about everything
Speaker 1: that you think because there's one or two people constantly
Speaker 1: in your mentioned saying it. And I think the mentions
Speaker 1: are actually more troubling and problematic than the actual megaphone
Speaker 1: of Twitter. And so what I've found is it's like
Speaker 1: every YouTube comment threat eventually ends in a fight. If
Speaker 1: you're a sports fan and you go on any sports
Speaker 1: message board, people start off talking about whether the backup
Speaker 1: quarterbacks should be starting or not, and eventually it ends
Speaker 1: up in an attack between two different people over something
Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with it. Most of what
Speaker 1: people say on Twitter, even the mentions underneath what I
Speaker 1: have said or what you have said, I have found
Speaker 1: is about them, not about you. And it's not that
Speaker 1: efficient or effective of a use of time. It's a megaphone,
Speaker 1: not a conversational device. And once I kind of got
Speaker 1: that idea around it and stopped caring about what people
Speaker 1: say in response, I think that has been a more
Speaker 1: effective tool for me to use to go out. Well
Speaker 1: a couple of things. I think that's really disciplined. That
Speaker 1: shows a lot of disciplines, and I look at your mentions.
Speaker 1: It's the right choice. But it's also actually a pretty
Speaker 1: difficult thing to do because everyone's instinct is what are
Speaker 1: people saying about what I just said said, which is why,
Speaker 1: which is why, which is why the app works. Right.
Speaker 1: It goes right into our primal instinct to see what
Speaker 1: other people think about us, whether they like it, whether
Speaker 1: they retweet it, whether they hate us like it's a
Speaker 1: It goes to the primal instincts. I understand why it works,
Speaker 1: and yes, it is fascinating. Yeah, you brought up narcissism,
Speaker 1: and you're absolutely right about the people that choose to
Speaker 1: go into media are largely narcissistic in some way. Now,
Speaker 1: what is narcissism. It is not confidence, but it's insecurity.
Speaker 1: It's a need for an ego feed and it's the
Speaker 1: opposite of how I like to engage. I just sung
Speaker 1: the praises of the platform of radio to you just
Speaker 1: a moment ago, but I treated radio as an open forum.
Speaker 1: If you disagreed with me, I wanted you to call in.
Speaker 1: I know you've done the same thing because all the time, yes,
Speaker 1: I want to hear you, I want you to challenge
Speaker 1: my ideas. Where Twitter is full of that insecurity. See,
Speaker 1: that's how a man handles his business. In my mind,
Speaker 1: that is confidence, that is quote unquote face to face
Speaker 1: right where Twitter, I feel, is full of even more
Speaker 1: insecurity and more little backstabby, back and forth fight. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give you an example that this isn't about you, Okay.
Speaker 1: I haven't agreed with everything you had to say on coronavirus. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I think you're probably right on coronavirus. But that's higher
Speaker 1: percentage that my wife believes, by the way, so I'll
Speaker 1: take it. Well. I think you were, especially in the beginning.
Speaker 1: I think you were a little too dismissive of coronavirus.
Speaker 1: I think you're having totally totally wrong. I got the
Speaker 1: I believe the China numbers, which was a failure. I
Speaker 1: trusted the WHO. Yeah, like it's right. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I try to get my facts right, and when I
Speaker 1: base an opinion on a failed fact factual model, I
Speaker 1: mean that's what actually makes me feel sick to my stomach.
Speaker 1: Not being wrong about who's gonna win a game? Right,
Speaker 1: like whatever you can, but when your facts are wrong,
Speaker 1: it leads you to the wrong destination, and that's one
Speaker 1: of the big problems with Twitter. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: factual and accuracies in general. But yes, sorry to cut
Speaker 1: you off. Yes that is I'll take that's higher than
Speaker 1: my wife. Um. By the way, I do that with everybody,
Speaker 1: and it's a sign of respect. I think to sell
Speaker 1: someone where I think they were wrong, I don't like
Speaker 1: the oh you're always right stuff. Yeah, Um, I think
Speaker 1: you were also wrong on Greg Siano. For what it's worth,
Speaker 1: I don't think what you did at University of Tennessee
Speaker 1: was a good thing. I thought you didn't give him
Speaker 1: the benefit of the doubt, as we talked about burden
Speaker 1: of proof earlier. But all I'm doing by that, it's
Speaker 1: not rehashing those debates with you. I'm telling you like
Speaker 1: I'm willing to tell everyone where I think they're wrong.
Speaker 1: And I don't see it as a sign of disrespect.
Speaker 1: I see it as the opposite, a sign kind of respect.
Speaker 1: And now to take this back to full circle, by
Speaker 1: the way, you're right on almost everything. Otherwise, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're right we should play college football. You're right on
Speaker 1: on on a lot of these things. But I saw
Speaker 1: that back and forth with Revel and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: you know, I can have a conversation with Clay about
Speaker 1: coronavirus for a while. It may not be that interesting
Speaker 1: because we might mostly agree. But whatever is going on
Speaker 1: with Rebel and Clay right now, it's probably entertaining for
Speaker 1: a lot of people, But like you know, it's not productive.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not working to help solve the issue.
Speaker 1: It's it's just you guys going back and forth at
Speaker 1: each other and really extending no goodwill to each other.
Speaker 1: By the way, Clay, I don't think you're wrong on
Speaker 1: that side of the debate. I think Darren is wrong.
Speaker 1: I think Darren is like all these guys you call
Speaker 1: Corona Bros. And caving into I guess the new normal,
Speaker 1: which has not been the curve but zero percent transmission
Speaker 1: rate and peddling in fear. I think Darren is doing
Speaker 1: all of those things. But I just don't feel personally
Speaker 1: compelled to go to Twitter and have that fight with him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting boy. I like Darren. You know, I
Speaker 1: consider Darren to be a friend. He may be that
Speaker 1: with me now, and this kind of goes to, uh,
Speaker 1: the way I live life in general. It's really hard
Speaker 1: to offend me and what And I'm curious if you've
Speaker 1: found this. I mean, I think you may well be
Speaker 1: similar in that respect. If somebody disagrees with me, I
Speaker 1: take my opinion seriously, but I don't take myself very seriously.
Speaker 1: And so if somebody's like, hey, you're an idiot for
Speaker 1: that opinion, I'm wide open to the idea that I
Speaker 1: might be wrong, right, it doesn't bother me. And maybe
Speaker 1: that's the lawyer as well, where you're used to having
Speaker 1: to make opinions and sometimes the judge comes down or
Speaker 1: the court comes down, or whoever. The deciding factor is
Speaker 1: if you're in law school, mood court, mock trial, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, somebody comes down and says, hey, this side
Speaker 1: with a better argument. And so that's kind of how
Speaker 1: the law works. One side wins, one side loses. It's
Speaker 1: adversarial and system kind of like sports. And so I
Speaker 1: don't get upset, and I have short memories even for
Speaker 1: people who attack me. And I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: a character benefit or a character flaw. Is what my
Speaker 1: wife says is you're the guy if if people say
Speaker 1: ten negatives and one person says a positive, you remember
Speaker 1: the positive and and and it is true, like that
Speaker 1: helps you on Twitter. That's that's true. So I I
Speaker 1: have a psychology where I don't get that worked up
Speaker 1: by people being disagreeing with me. Does that makes sense?
Speaker 1: Like it? It doesn't really kind of, And I don't
Speaker 1: know what that is about my psychology. I think I
Speaker 1: know what it is. Would ane it? Well? I think
Speaker 1: you're confident in who you are. It's it's you know.
Speaker 1: Somebody asked me for radio advice this morning, and I
Speaker 1: told him exactly what you just said. Take what you
Speaker 1: say very seriously. Do not take yourself seriously. But the
Speaker 1: corollary to that is if you're confident enough about who
Speaker 1: you are, not just being told you're wrong. But in
Speaker 1: the case of my radio show, I allowed people in
Speaker 1: the air to say you are a racist to me
Speaker 1: on air. I required them to back it up, and
Speaker 1: I sometimes got mad, but I usually got over it
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. I do have a hot temper, but I
Speaker 1: get over it pretty quickly, and I will let that
Speaker 1: person come back on my radio show. But the end
Speaker 1: underlying factor is I know who I am and they
Speaker 1: get to define it. I define who I am. I
Speaker 1: imagine you feel somewhat the same way. So I don't
Speaker 1: hold really big grudges, but I don't get that mad
Speaker 1: when somebody tells me I'm wrong. Yeah, I'm very confident
Speaker 1: in what I believe and if I were. What I
Speaker 1: always say is the people you have to watch out
Speaker 1: for are the people that are trying too hard to
Speaker 1: tell you what they are. And what I mean by
Speaker 1: that is I've just seen it happen in social media
Speaker 1: so many times. Like, the guys who are the biggest
Speaker 1: creeps are not the people who are out there, uh,
Speaker 1: They're the people that are out there going way over
Speaker 1: the top with stuff, right Like, time after time after time,
Speaker 1: they're trying to cover up for something. I'll give you
Speaker 1: an easy example, the people who are fundamentally like opposed
Speaker 1: to gay people. It's amazing how often those people are
Speaker 1: actually gay. What they're actually combating is their internal interest
Speaker 1: in the same sex, and so they are tacking it
Speaker 1: way over the top aggressive right. For me, I always
Speaker 1: even back at seventeen or eighteen years old, I grew
Speaker 1: up in Nashville. I didn't know any gay people really
Speaker 1: very much growing up, but we went away to college
Speaker 1: there was a lot of gw My first thought as
Speaker 1: an eighteen year old was I love gay dudes. That's
Speaker 1: a lot less competition for girls, Like I still don't
Speaker 1: understand why, guys, that isn't the number one reaction when
Speaker 1: you're an eighteen year old college kid and the campus
Speaker 1: is swarming with girls like GW had a huge gay population,
Speaker 1: and I was like, man, this is awesome for me.
Speaker 1: There's a lot better options that I'm gonna have because
Speaker 1: those good looking dudes are gay and they're not interested
Speaker 1: in girls at all. Right, Like, maybe that it's self interested,
Speaker 1: but I don't care very much about what other people
Speaker 1: think or do. And I heard you say your libertarian
Speaker 1: bent earlier, like I want for like I believe in
Speaker 1: capitalism and I believe in free speech. And I obviously
Speaker 1: got in trouble on CNN c ann perspective for saying
Speaker 1: I believe in the First Amendment, Boobs. I'm a heterosexual
Speaker 1: guy who likes most things that heterosexual guys like. But
Speaker 1: that does it mean that everybody has to be a
Speaker 1: heterosexual guy. But I also don't think we should apologize
Speaker 1: for our masculinity, which is a big part of I
Speaker 1: think several of your different stories, like we have feminized
Speaker 1: so many things that seems to be in this country
Speaker 1: that men are shrinking from the responsibilities of manhood. And
Speaker 1: you know, like having a disagreement is not a bad thing,
Speaker 1: right uh and and having a face taking along of it.
Speaker 1: Losing is not like losing is not a bad thing.
Speaker 1: That's that's how you grow as an individual. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think I totally agree. There's lots of un fact
Speaker 1: with what you just said. Let me just see if
Speaker 1: I can remember a couple of them. First. I totally
Speaker 1: agree that the people that seeing the loudest about their
Speaker 1: own virtues and cast the most accusations usually are hiding
Speaker 1: something big, bad, and ugly. I think most of the
Speaker 1: people that yell racist at everybody else online make I
Speaker 1: would suspect because I have seen it in my private
Speaker 1: life some of the most racist Amen. Amen, yes, um.
Speaker 1: And it applies across the spectrum um every issue. I
Speaker 1: feel like the ones that preached the loudest and cast
Speaker 1: the biggest accusations are really talking about themselves in some way. Um,
Speaker 1: what else did you talk about? I said I was
Speaker 1: going to remember, but I'm masculinity. I think you probably
Speaker 1: agree in many ways with Like I have three boys,
Speaker 1: do you have four? To us by the way, I
Speaker 1: wish i'd had one more. I would keep going, I
Speaker 1: would have a fourth. My wife is tap has has
Speaker 1: said that you can't, we can't have any more kids.
Speaker 1: But I've got three boys. I try to think about
Speaker 1: the world in which I want to raise them. And
Speaker 1: it's okay to be in touch with your emotions. I'm
Speaker 1: fine with that, but when your emotions tip over into fear,
Speaker 1: I don't want to raise children who are afraid of
Speaker 1: the world. And I used that earlier as example. I
Speaker 1: said this today, I took my kindergartener to school. All
Speaker 1: my kids are gonna be going to in person school.
Speaker 1: I think it's important. I've talked to my kids about
Speaker 1: the coronavirus the same way eight percent of the times correct,
Speaker 1: as you said, But I've tried to talk to them
Speaker 1: as adults to understand that you can't allow fear to
Speaker 1: dictate all the choices that you make. And it seems
Speaker 1: to me that as a society, we are treating fear
Speaker 1: as if it is something to be avoided, as opposed
Speaker 1: to something that is to be accepted and understood as
Speaker 1: a part of adulthood, and that troubles me in many ways.
Speaker 1: And so I think about that from the parenting perspective.
Speaker 1: What am I trying to instill in my kids? We
Speaker 1: talked about when you and I both went away to college,
Speaker 1: maybe we were a little bit uh soft, right, um?
Speaker 1: And I think the world creates a lot of soft people,
Speaker 1: and when hard times come, I'm not sure that soft
Speaker 1: people can cope. Does that make sense? Man? You are
Speaker 1: singing my song, Fear is winning the day in the world.
Speaker 1: I've been saying this on some of this media tour
Speaker 1: that I've been going through. I think corporate leadership is
Speaker 1: absolutely beholden to fear. Right now, you can go read
Speaker 1: my interview with Bobby Burrack at OutKick dot com see
Speaker 1: what I had to say about that. But I want
Speaker 1: to say something different about what you just said about
Speaker 1: raising boys and racing fear. I have sat at the
Speaker 1: top of a cliff with my youngest son, who was
Speaker 1: a little more less of a daredevil than my oldest son,
Speaker 1: and said, we're going to jump. We're going to jump
Speaker 1: into this ocean. We're gonna take this jump. And he's afraid,
Speaker 1: and I said to him, fear is rational, Fear is fine.
Speaker 1: Don't be embarrassed about fear. Fear is absolutely part of life.
Speaker 1: The only question is what do you do with fear?
Speaker 1: Do you let it win? Do you let it dictate
Speaker 1: your next action. You should feel fear. It's rational. It's
Speaker 1: telling you by the way that bear is big, I
Speaker 1: want to run. But if it's a black bear, you
Speaker 1: should not run. You should stand tall, you should act big,
Speaker 1: you should be loud, you should back down the bear.
Speaker 1: The fear is okay, but what you do with the
Speaker 1: fear is what's important. I don't care much about skateboarding Clay,
Speaker 1: but I got both of my boys into skateboarding when
Speaker 1: they were young, and I got him into it for
Speaker 1: that reason. I wanted him to learn to drop in,
Speaker 1: to crash on concrete, to over um their fear. I
Speaker 1: never wanted them to be protected from fear. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to learn how to overcome fear. It's it's so
Speaker 1: well said, and I think that's honestly. What's so important
Speaker 1: about sports is because sports teaches you how to put
Speaker 1: everything you have into trying to win, regardless of how
Speaker 1: good you are, and sometimes you're still gonna fail, and
Speaker 1: understanding how to deal, which is why this podcast is
Speaker 1: called Wins and Losses understanding how to learn from your
Speaker 1: losses that ultimately you've gotta keep getting back up right,
Speaker 1: and everybody is going to get knocked down. And my
Speaker 1: concern is so many people now today are afraid of
Speaker 1: getting knocked down. They're not even getting knocked down will
Speaker 1: They're afraid of getting knocked down, and so they never
Speaker 1: actually take any risk or actually experience any significant success
Speaker 1: because they're so worried about the possibility of getting knocked
Speaker 1: down that they don't do what they really should. And
Speaker 1: you've talked about challenges earlier and everything else, like we interviewed,
Speaker 1: I got to interview that the president a couple of
Speaker 1: days ago. I want to feel, yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: fill that that nervousness in the pit of my stomach
Speaker 1: a lot of times every year to find some new
Speaker 1: challenge to embrace, because if you're not doing that, you're
Speaker 1: not growing in any way. I totally agree, man, and
Speaker 1: raising boys is one of the most clarifying factors on this.
Speaker 1: I wanted them to not make the travel team from
Speaker 1: time to time. I wanted them to not get off
Speaker 1: the bench and realize that that stinks. Okay, what are
Speaker 1: we gonna do to to fix that issue? I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go to the coach and telling you should
Speaker 1: be playing. What are you gonna do to fix that situation.
Speaker 1: You've got to deal with failures, You've gotta deal with loss.
Speaker 1: You could give your kids if you could adopt one
Speaker 1: trait for yourself in life, it would be resilience. My
Speaker 1: only pessimistic thought in response to that is, you know,
Speaker 1: I said it to you earlier in the show. I said,
Speaker 1: we're raising generations of people who are unprepared for the
Speaker 1: real world. All these safe spaces is protection from fair
Speaker 1: They're unprepared for the real world right now. And this
Speaker 1: is a pessimistic point of view. They are shaping the
Speaker 1: real world. The real world is not shaping them. They've
Speaker 1: imported the safe spaces from college into the corporate chain
Speaker 1: of America. They have turned the entire country into a
Speaker 1: place where we will not withstand this agreement. We will
Speaker 1: not let you fail. We will not let anything negative
Speaker 1: happen to you in your life. I don't think it's sustainable.
Speaker 1: I think they will ultimately fail, but make no mistake.
Speaker 1: In the short term. Right now, I think they're winning
Speaker 1: the culture war well, and that's my biggest concern. Um
Speaker 1: and Frankly, I've said this before. I want to make
Speaker 1: you know, certainly, OutKick. The thing that I like is
Speaker 1: we have a voice in a big way I think
Speaker 1: without Kick, and you certainly have a big voice with
Speaker 1: Fox News. But imagine if Fox News didn't exist, Imagine
Speaker 1: if out Kick didn't exist. In sports media, what's scary
Speaker 1: to me is we don't really have a marketplace of
Speaker 1: ideas now. I love seeing Fox News rewarded for the
Speaker 1: marketplace that they share. And maybe you can argue if
Speaker 1: Fox News didn't exist, somebody else would come along and
Speaker 1: fill that vacuum. But I think the number of people
Speaker 1: who are like the Murdocks, that are willing to be
Speaker 1: involved in the marketplace of ideas and and and be
Speaker 1: willing to accept the side I right, like the society
Speaker 1: people who are gonna say like, oh, you know, that's
Speaker 1: uh that those are those uh, those rebel murdocks and stuff.
Speaker 1: I think that that is a rare thing, certainly in
Speaker 1: the media, and so I wonder I think, you know,
Speaker 1: in sports media there's almost no marketplace of ideas. That's
Speaker 1: what scares me, right, is that the marketplace of ideas
Speaker 1: is going to continue to constrict. I love what you
Speaker 1: said about all the different people who are, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of creating their own lane, so to speak. But
Speaker 1: that still is scary. And I'm glad that we're involved
Speaker 1: in the fight. But if I wasn't involved in the fight,
Speaker 1: I'd be sitting on the sidelines as a sports fan
Speaker 1: and as a as an as an American and somebody
Speaker 1: who's proud uh to to be a to be living
Speaker 1: in America, and feel like our entire lifestyle is under assault.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. The culture war is not being
Speaker 1: lost to a massive ship in the majority opinion of
Speaker 1: the country. The decisions of corporate leaders are not being
Speaker 1: made because their consumer base has changed. The decisions by
Speaker 1: advertisers are not because their consumers are telling them place
Speaker 1: your ads here or do not place your ads here.
Speaker 1: What is happening is a small, loud, extreme minority is
Speaker 1: scaring the hell out of everybody, and they don't have
Speaker 1: I guess, the spying to stand up to even protect
Speaker 1: their own bottom line, to protect their own shareholders, to
Speaker 1: protect their own ratings. I'm telling you, it is a
Speaker 1: suicidal agreement that they're making. These companies that make this
Speaker 1: bargain to give into the fear they will fail. It
Speaker 1: may take some time because glaciers melt slowly, but they
Speaker 1: will fail. And in the meantime, there is a massive
Speaker 1: market opening. And I think this applies to everything. Media
Speaker 1: choices like out Kicking, Fox News Present and both of
Speaker 1: whom success show there is a massive market for this.
Speaker 1: But also beyond that, there will have to be some
Speaker 1: edic factional choices. There will have to be some career
Speaker 1: path choices. Like I talked about earlier, with my kids,
Speaker 1: It's not gonna be that people are can continue to
Speaker 1: send their children off to these factories of indoctrinated thought.
Speaker 1: They're not going to say, go make a hundred fifty
Speaker 1: dollars working for this corporation that has told you you
Speaker 1: are born inherently evil and racist. They're not going to
Speaker 1: continue to do this. Media, sports, media, that's just the start.
Speaker 1: People are gonna have to make choices, and I do
Speaker 1: believe for the entrepreneurs and the business owners and the
Speaker 1: media personalities that choose to do so, they're walking into
Speaker 1: a massive market a majority opinion. Be sure to catch
Speaker 1: live editions about Kicked the coverage with Clay Travis weekdays
Speaker 1: at six am Eastern three am Pacific Man, this has
Speaker 1: been a fascinating conversation. Tell people again, I'm Clay Travis
Speaker 1: Wins and Losses with Will Caine. You can follow Will.
Speaker 1: I think it's just simple at Will Kine. But where
Speaker 1: can people watch you and starting win? I start this
Speaker 1: Saturday on Box and Friends Weekend with my friends Pete
Speaker 1: Hexeth and Jedediah Beela. You'll be six to ten Eastern
Speaker 1: every Saturday morning and Sunday morning on Fox News, and
Speaker 1: then as time allows. I am not walking away from sports.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stay involved in the sports world. I love sports.
Speaker 1: You couldn't keep me out of it if I want.
Speaker 1: I consider this a new opening door from my career,
Speaker 1: not closing any So I'd love it, man, I'd love
Speaker 1: it if your listeners, your readers, your fans, all um,
Speaker 1: come join us over and I hope you and I
Speaker 1: keep talking. Man, there's been a long time into making
Speaker 1: and um, and I appreciate what you guys are doing. No, look,
Speaker 1: I love to get you on the radio show regularly. Um.
Speaker 1: We need to talk about that offline at some point,
Speaker 1: but I think our listeners would love hearing from you
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. I think we'd have a lot
Speaker 1: of fascinating conversations, and I don't want you to leave
Speaker 1: completely the world of sports either. This has been awesome, man.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the time. I know how busy you are
Speaker 1: getting ready for that new show to launch. Encourage everybody
Speaker 1: to go watch it. Fox and Friends on the Weekend
Speaker 1: with Will Caine. Go follow him on Twitter telling me
Speaker 1: enjoyed the conversation and if you enjoyed this and go
Speaker 1: check out some of our other long form conversations. Thanks
Speaker 1: my man, I'm rooting for you. It's great to get
Speaker 1: to spend as much time talking as we just did. Thanks, Clay,
Speaker 1: keep up the good work, man, appreciate it. That's Will Kaine.
Speaker 1: I'm Clay Travis. This is Wins and Losses. Go subscribe
Speaker 1: thirty whatever the number is. Long form conversations, hardly any commercials.
Speaker 1: You're gonna love it. Look forward to it. Thanks again
Speaker 1: to Will Kine, and thanks to you guys.