Speaker 1: This is Wins and Losses with Clay Trevis, play talks
Speaker 1: with the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business.
Speaker 1: Now here's Clay Travis. Welcome into my new long form
Speaker 1: interview podcast called Wins and Losses. I am utterly intrigued
Speaker 1: by the degree to which a lot of times in
Speaker 1: this country today we focus only on the end product,
Speaker 1: how did somebody end up being successful? We only focus
Speaker 1: on the success. We don't focus on the journey. Uh.
Speaker 1: To steal a line from Nick Saban, the process is
Speaker 1: often more important than the result. And I don't feel
Speaker 1: like we spend much time on the process, on the
Speaker 1: journey between wins and losses, and also on how frequently
Speaker 1: wins are also accompanied by losses. Very often we only
Speaker 1: end with the result. And I feel like in a
Speaker 1: social media age where we've got Instagram and we've got
Speaker 1: cure rated Twitter feeds and Facebook feeds, where people only
Speaker 1: show the good things in life, I feel like the
Speaker 1: struggles in life are oftentimes and much more entertaining and
Speaker 1: much more illuminating and trying to give us a sense
Speaker 1: of how we ended up where we did. And So
Speaker 1: today's guest, A guy's a good friend of mine and uh,
Speaker 1: I am utterly fascinated to hear his full story here
Speaker 1: Jason Whitlock. You can find him on Twitter at whitlock
Speaker 1: Jason Jason. I feel like we start these episodes with
Speaker 1: people who maybe a lot of people know who you are,
Speaker 1: maybe they don't. I feel like a huge percentage will.
Speaker 1: But for those who are listening to this right now
Speaker 1: and don't have any idea, what do you do now? Uh?
Speaker 1: And what's your day to day existence? As part of
Speaker 1: that job? What I do now is I host a
Speaker 1: television show on Fox Sports one called Speak for Yourself.
Speaker 1: It's a ninety minutes show airs every day and live
Speaker 1: at noon Pacific three Eastern. I do it in conjunction
Speaker 1: with Marcelis Wiley. Uh. You know, we try to have
Speaker 1: the most authentic, most non PC conversation that you can
Speaker 1: have in sports. We try to keep our viewers ahead
Speaker 1: of the conversation with big ideas and the analysis of
Speaker 1: sports in the sports world that you won't get any
Speaker 1: place else. Uh. And so you know, my day UH
Speaker 1: typically starts around four am. That's what I wake up
Speaker 1: and start preparing for the show. We have a conference
Speaker 1: call at six am where we started laying out the
Speaker 1: ideas for the show. Between six and nine, I started
Speaker 1: writing my scripts or the monologues I do on the show.
Speaker 1: Try to get to work about nine am, meet with
Speaker 1: you know, the producers on on the team, and then
Speaker 1: we do the show at noon and it's over at
Speaker 1: one thirty, and just start my day all over again.
Speaker 1: All right. I'm gonna circle back around to this because
Speaker 1: I do find the production of television and all the
Speaker 1: work that goes into it fascinating myself, and I think
Speaker 1: a lot of our listeners will as well. So eventually
Speaker 1: we will get back to how you ended up doing
Speaker 1: what you do. But before that, I want to go
Speaker 1: back in time. So where were you born. I was
Speaker 1: born in Indianapolis, Indiana. Uh. Just a good old Midwest kid. Uh.
Speaker 1: And brothers and sisters. What kind of you know when
Speaker 1: you were a kid, what kind of lifestyle did you
Speaker 1: would you say you had started out? You know, my
Speaker 1: parents and me and my brother My parents got divorced.
Speaker 1: I'm the baby of the family. My brothers three years
Speaker 1: older than me. Parents got divorced when I was about
Speaker 1: five or six years old, and my dad remarried and I, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, me and my brother stayed with my mom,
Speaker 1: but I became close to my dad's second family. And
Speaker 1: I have a step sister who I'm very very close to.
Speaker 1: Don't consider a step sister, just a sister, Yealanda. And
Speaker 1: I also have a stepbrother from that relationship, not as
Speaker 1: close to him, but you know, a lot of affinity,
Speaker 1: but just not as close to him. But so, you know,
Speaker 1: I basically consider you know, me, my brother, my sister. Uh.
Speaker 1: My dad has since passed away, my mom still alive.
Speaker 1: But U you know, when my parents got divorced, you know,
Speaker 1: me and my mom and my brother lived in you know,
Speaker 1: in a little bit small apartment in the hood. Uh.
Speaker 1: My mother eventually took a second job and and moved
Speaker 1: us into a working class neighborhood. And that's why I
Speaker 1: mostly grew up until my mother moved. Her job got
Speaker 1: transferred to Kansas City, and she moved to Kansas City,
Speaker 1: and my senior high school, I moved in with my dad. Alright,
Speaker 1: So when you were a kid growing up, what kind
Speaker 1: of student were you in school? Uh? Underachieving one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was more of a social animal. I was more
Speaker 1: of the class clown, popular guy uh that you know,
Speaker 1: flirted with a B minus average C plus average in school.
Speaker 1: I just it's one of my regrets in life, not
Speaker 1: taking school as seriously as I should have. What did
Speaker 1: your mom and do You said your mom moved. What
Speaker 1: did your mom and dad do for a living when
Speaker 1: you were growing up? My mother was a factory worker
Speaker 1: for Western Electric that they made phones. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: she was high school educated for a factory worker. My
Speaker 1: dad did not finish high school. Uh. Joined the military,
Speaker 1: got drafted into the army. Uh. Did that for two years,
Speaker 1: then came home, started working for the Chrysler UH automotive company,
Speaker 1: and eventually stopped working there and started his own business,
Speaker 1: a small bar business in the Inner City. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so my dad was a small business person throughout most
Speaker 1: of my life and relatively successful. Ran into some problems
Speaker 1: with the I R s that you know when when
Speaker 1: So when I moved in with him my senior high school, Uh,
Speaker 1: he was on his ass. The I R S had
Speaker 1: taken his business and everything from him. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: that was not the best time. But he eventually got
Speaker 1: another bar later in life, and you know, the last
Speaker 1: five years of his life. You know, it was a
Speaker 1: successful small businessman in the Inner city, you said inner city.
Speaker 1: So how much interaction, if at all, did you have
Speaker 1: with people of other races. Was your upbringing almost exclusively
Speaker 1: surrounded in a black neighborhood, black schools or were you
Speaker 1: schools in Indianapolis? What was your situa ation like as
Speaker 1: a kid, you know, as a small kid, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was all black. When my mother moved us out to
Speaker 1: a working class suburb, the school was predominantly white. And
Speaker 1: then in eighth grade, uh, black kids from basically my
Speaker 1: old neighborhood got bust out to my high school. And
Speaker 1: so I would say by the time, you know, in
Speaker 1: eighth grade, I think we were probably around thirty black
Speaker 1: my my junior high in high school. When did you
Speaker 1: start playing sports? Oh? I think fourth grade? Fourth grade?
Speaker 1: I started playing football organized football. I mean I played
Speaker 1: sports my entire life, so as I could hold a basketball, baseball,
Speaker 1: or football, but I didn't play or I played organized
Speaker 1: football in fourth grade and immediately started playing with the
Speaker 1: fifth and sixth graders. I played a league up because
Speaker 1: I was I was honestly, I was just too big
Speaker 1: and too good for kids my eye, so automatically, almost
Speaker 1: when you started playing football, you were good at it.
Speaker 1: I mean relative to other kids your age. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: in in fourth grade, I was probably as good as
Speaker 1: any fourth grader could possibly be. I think I peaked
Speaker 1: as an athlete, to be honest with you, in eighth grade,
Speaker 1: you are dominating grader. Yeah, five star. I was as
Speaker 1: good as anybody. And then it was just all downhill
Speaker 1: from there and ended up just you know, being a
Speaker 1: mid major college football player. Why do you think you
Speaker 1: went downhill that you've gotten fully? Like, are you the
Speaker 1: eighth grader with the mustache? Like you were dominant because
Speaker 1: you didn't have a mustache. But you know, I was
Speaker 1: six ft two hundred and two hundred thirty pounds in
Speaker 1: eighth grade, ran on the four by one hundred relay team,
Speaker 1: played middle linebacker and some running back, and just played everywhere. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then I just never got any taller. And uh,
Speaker 1: I just I and not back then, and you know
Speaker 1: yet I'm fifty two. Back then, I didn't I didn't
Speaker 1: realize all the extra things you had to do, particularly
Speaker 1: if you weren't going to be six ft four six
Speaker 1: ft three. I didn't realize all that. And I worked
Speaker 1: very hard. I was a captain of my high school team.
Speaker 1: But I didn't work nearly hard enough, it wasn't nearly
Speaker 1: discible enough, and so eventually I think more than my
Speaker 1: biggest grads, Like, damn, if I had corrected my diet
Speaker 1: when I was younger, I could have maxed out as
Speaker 1: an athlete. So did you expect then your eighth grade,
Speaker 1: your dominant Did you think, oh, I'm gonna play in
Speaker 1: the NFL, like there's no doubt in your mind? Were
Speaker 1: you thinking that at the time. I wouldn't say there
Speaker 1: was no doubt in my mind, but I definitely thought
Speaker 1: I was an NFL player. And I used to practice
Speaker 1: my Hall of Fame speech as a kid. I used
Speaker 1: to tell it to my mom. I was, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm t I was obsessed with football. I used to
Speaker 1: record the Pro Bowl on audio. You had those little
Speaker 1: tape recorders or whatever. I would tape recorded and then
Speaker 1: listen to it back. I would take people's Hall of
Speaker 1: Fame speeches and listen to it back and practice, you know,
Speaker 1: because I think back then, they just show you the highlights,
Speaker 1: like Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football or whatever, show
Speaker 1: you the highlights of people's Hall of Fame speeches. And
Speaker 1: I was obsessed with football. And fault. Yeah, I'm as
Speaker 1: good as anybody, and I'm gonna go to the University
Speaker 1: of Michigan or I'm the Purdue or wherever, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be this dominant NFL football player. And so you
Speaker 1: go into high school, your captain and your high school team.
Speaker 1: You had some really talented guys on that high school team, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had. We had some really you know. Obviously Jeff
Speaker 1: George was the quarterback of my team, and he went
Speaker 1: on to be a Number One draft pick. But you know,
Speaker 1: I played with a lot of Division one players and
Speaker 1: we were the first, uh to win a state championship
Speaker 1: in my high school. And my high school has since
Speaker 1: gone on to become like a really national powerhouse. Every
Speaker 1: year we're pretty much nastally ranked and some years will
Speaker 1: have as many as eight Division one players on our team. UH.
Speaker 1: But we were the first. I we were the alpha.
Speaker 1: We kind of got the ball rolling on turning my
Speaker 1: high school into a football powerhouse. And that high school Indianapolis,
Speaker 1: what's the name of it for people out there, like
Speaker 1: Warren Central High School, the Warren Central Warriors, the home
Speaker 1: David Bell four star recruise headed to produe this year
Speaker 1: how undefeated state champions and I know you're still you
Speaker 1: feel really connected to your high school. I mean you
Speaker 1: watch and pay attention to their games when you can still, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I watched games online. I went back for the state
Speaker 1: championship game. I'm connected to a lot of the kids
Speaker 1: back there at the high school. You know, the high school.
Speaker 1: The football team now is you know, overwhelmingly black, and
Speaker 1: it's It's funny. When I was growing up, it was
Speaker 1: conslidered a working class neighborhood, when now my high school
Speaker 1: is kind of on it's just the hood and you
Speaker 1: know it's it's a black powerhouse athletically, uh, in football
Speaker 1: and basketball. And yeah, I stay in touch with those kids,
Speaker 1: try to help him as best that I can. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like the kid Darnell Smith that works
Speaker 1: on my television show now does our social media segment.
Speaker 1: He's a kid that grew up in my neighborhood, played
Speaker 1: football at my high school and played football ball stage
Speaker 1: just like me. That you know. I've tracked Darnell ever
Speaker 1: since high school. So this is, uh, this is fascinating.
Speaker 1: So you said your your mom moved to Kansas City.
Speaker 1: You're living with your dad in a one bedroom apartment
Speaker 1: when you're a senior in high school. Yeah, what at
Speaker 1: that point in time were your dreams or aspirations? Oh man,
Speaker 1: that's interesting of you know, because by that this is
Speaker 1: my senior year of high school, I've kind of figured out, well, damn,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be this bush or not knocking
Speaker 1: on your door, begging you, not knocking on my door,
Speaker 1: not knocking on tru I'm tested about it at this time,
Speaker 1: but it's it's becoming a reality to me that Okay,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be a pro football player. You're a
Speaker 1: shade over six ft and you're an offensive lineman. You're
Speaker 1: gonna go play offensive guard somewhere in the Mid American Conference. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so I didn't know a lot about college. I
Speaker 1: don't say this to embarrass my family, but my legitimate
Speaker 1: impression of college at that time was the movie Animal House,
Speaker 1: and I just thought, well, hell, I'm about to go
Speaker 1: off to college and have the greatest time in my life.
Speaker 1: I'll study something, I don't know what, I'll study to something,
Speaker 1: I'll play a little football, and then I'll get on
Speaker 1: with the rest of my life. And so my original
Speaker 1: major in college was accounting. And that's because I had
Speaker 1: overheard my dad say, when you know, when his bar
Speaker 1: business going well, that you know, I got to pay
Speaker 1: my accountant X number of dollars for blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And so I said, oh, I'll be an accountant. Uh.
Speaker 1: I went off to college and then I got in
Speaker 1: the math class at Ball State and I was like,
Speaker 1: I won't be an accountant. How long did that did
Speaker 1: that revelation take? Uh? Literally, it took one math class
Speaker 1: at Ball State for me to say and then for
Speaker 1: it really be like, well, hold on, my dad's account
Speaker 1: was so great, while the hell of the r s
Speaker 1: have us living in a one bedroom apartment in the hood.
Speaker 1: But it just I just figured out, like, man, this
Speaker 1: account sol that's not for me. That doesn't fit my personality.
Speaker 1: I got way too much of a personality to be
Speaker 1: an accountant. And so one of my best friends from
Speaker 1: high school, uh was also I think two years ahead
Speaker 1: of me at Ball State, and he was a journalism
Speaker 1: major at Ball State. And he said to me and
Speaker 1: goes like, dude, man, you read the newspaper every day,
Speaker 1: you love sports, you should be a sportswriter. Switch your
Speaker 1: major to journalism. Guy's named Sean for brush and I
Speaker 1: immediately switched my major to journalism. And so at eighteen
Speaker 1: and a half, nineteen years old, I was like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: Mike Royko. Mike Royko was a columnist in Chicago that
Speaker 1: at one Peep with Surprises. I started reading him. Uh,
Speaker 1: probably when I was in fourth or fifth grade, And
Speaker 1: so as soon as I switched my major journalism, and
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, I'm to be the sportswriting version
Speaker 1: of Mike Royko. Now I was also a newspaper reader.
Speaker 1: And for a lot of people out there, that's gonna
Speaker 1: be like, who are younger? They're gonna be like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, you know sports Pacer. Sports newspaper writing is
Speaker 1: so outdated in many ways. But even now I get
Speaker 1: the New York Times in the Wall Street Journal delivered
Speaker 1: to my house. I enjoy reading both every day. How
Speaker 1: did you come to start reading the newspaper in fourth
Speaker 1: or fifth grade? What connected you to it? Uh? The
Speaker 1: Indiana Pacers. H It was. I was a huge Pacer fan.
Speaker 1: My dad took me and my brother the Pacer games.
Speaker 1: That was our way of bonding and My dad is
Speaker 1: a huge newspaper reader, and so the only way I
Speaker 1: could follow the Pacers was in the inn Appa Star,
Speaker 1: in in Appa's News, and so that's what I did.
Speaker 1: You know, they're particularly they play those late night West
Speaker 1: Coast games or whatever, and you wake up the next
Speaker 1: morning and read about it in the paper to trying
Speaker 1: to get up to speed. But it was my love
Speaker 1: of the paces that made me read the local newspaper.
Speaker 1: And again for people out there listening, this is how
Speaker 1: I got into the newspaper too. I was a huge
Speaker 1: Cincinnati Reds fan, and they would oftentimes play on those
Speaker 1: West Coast games against the Dodgers, the Giants, whatever. It
Speaker 1: was too late for a young kid to watch, and
Speaker 1: so I would get up in the morning and devour
Speaker 1: the devour the box score, right like what happened? Who
Speaker 1: got hits? I was a huge Eric Davis fan. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, he was trying to get forty forty home
Speaker 1: runs still forty bases in the same season, and I
Speaker 1: was obsessed with it. So so that was how I
Speaker 1: really kind of got into reading newspapers, was seeing my
Speaker 1: dad read the sports section and wanting to actually see
Speaker 1: the box scores. So you're you're reading then, and I
Speaker 1: mean it's kind of a window to the world as
Speaker 1: you expand beyond the sports page sometimes, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: accidentally probably read a different section of the paper, uh,
Speaker 1: and stumbled across Mike Royko and so he syndicated all
Speaker 1: over the countries based in Chicago. And my mother again,
Speaker 1: because I love to read about the Pacers and a
Speaker 1: lot of times back in those days and they pay
Speaker 1: all play on the West Coast, the morning paper didn't
Speaker 1: have the story and it would be the afternoon paper
Speaker 1: that would have the story of the nights before game.
Speaker 1: So my mother started getting the afternoon paper because she
Speaker 1: I was obsessed with the Pacers and reading. And so
Speaker 1: in the Indianapolis News, they used to run Mike roy
Speaker 1: Coast columns in the A section of their paper like
Speaker 1: three times a week. I don't know what made me
Speaker 1: open up the A section, the non sports section part
Speaker 1: of the paper, but but I did. Right across some
Speaker 1: column he wrote that I think upset me. I think
Speaker 1: I've disagreed with But I just started looking for this
Speaker 1: guy's work because he was fast, senating, he was entertaining.
Speaker 1: Its hell, he wasn't pc Uh, he really stuck it
Speaker 1: to politicians, uh and so, and he just had this
Speaker 1: common sense view. And so half the time I fault, man,
Speaker 1: it's the greatest thing I've ever read. The other half
Speaker 1: I kind of disagreed with and thought, man, I can't
Speaker 1: believe micro ray Coo said this. But the dude just
Speaker 1: struck me as honest and authentic and real. And he
Speaker 1: reminded me to be honest. And I didn't know this
Speaker 1: at the time, but later I found I was true.
Speaker 1: He reminded me of the kind of people that hung
Speaker 1: out of my dad's bar in the inner city. And
Speaker 1: it's funny because Mike Royko some you know, middle aged
Speaker 1: white dude. But I come to find out later in life, like, oh,
Speaker 1: Mike roykos family owned a bar in a in a
Speaker 1: Polish neighborhood, working class neighborhood, and uh, he just like me.
Speaker 1: He used to sit on his dad's bar stool and
Speaker 1: just talk to the working class mail man, factory workers
Speaker 1: or whatever. And so it started to make sense like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, even though there's thirty years different problems between
Speaker 1: me and Mike Royko, our perspective was kind of the same.
Speaker 1: We both grew up sitting in our dad's bar, talking
Speaker 1: to working class people, me talking to working class black people,
Speaker 1: him talking to working class white people. But a lot
Speaker 1: of our perspective and just authenticity came from the same place.
Speaker 1: How much time do you spending your dad's bar and
Speaker 1: starting at what ages? Uh? I mean, we me and
Speaker 1: my brother as just little kids, because my dad had
Speaker 1: a bar called Jimmy's Jay Bar j that was pretty nice.
Speaker 1: My dad built it, him and his brother and a
Speaker 1: couple other guys. They built it by hand themselves, and
Speaker 1: so that's what on weekends when my dad would come
Speaker 1: get us, we would, as little kids, go help them
Speaker 1: build the bar, and you know by help me, go
Speaker 1: get me there, go get me that, you know, turn
Speaker 1: that music down. Whatever. It was just a way of
Speaker 1: hanging around with my dad and being around him and
Speaker 1: so uh once it was built. Uh, during the daytime,
Speaker 1: any weekend we were with my dad. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we hung out at his bar. Uh and sometimes even
Speaker 1: at night, but he put us back in his office
Speaker 1: at night and we wouldn't get to actually hang out,
Speaker 1: you know, at night. But during the day we said,
Speaker 1: right on the bar stool and all day from you know,
Speaker 1: he'd get there at eleven and would open a noon
Speaker 1: and we might leave at six o'clock. Uh and and
Speaker 1: so that was a lot of my weekend as a kid. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I idolized my dad. My dad was spectacularly dressed,
Speaker 1: good looking, Billy Dee Williams knockoff. He was kind of
Speaker 1: my idol and you know, hanging out at his bar
Speaker 1: was one of the greatest things that I got to
Speaker 1: do as a kid. How many hours would your dad
Speaker 1: work a week? Uh? You know, in the bar business,
Speaker 1: if you're not there counting the money, trust me, somebody
Speaker 1: else is taken it. So he would get there at
Speaker 1: eleven and he would get home about three thirty a
Speaker 1: m uh And again, I want to keep it all
Speaker 1: the way. Really, a lot of that was business, but
Speaker 1: a lot of that, again was my dad was a
Speaker 1: good looking Billy Dee Williams ladies man, and he enjoyed
Speaker 1: on on the bar. He loved it. And so but
Speaker 1: but yeah, my dad worked six days a week, uh
Speaker 1: at his bar for every day that, you know, except
Speaker 1: you know, get he win a couple of years where
Speaker 1: he was really on his ass, except for those two
Speaker 1: years where he didn't on a bar. But again, at
Speaker 1: that time. He then he worked for someone else that
Speaker 1: was that did on a bar. But my dad, as
Speaker 1: far as long as I know, it worked six days
Speaker 1: a week and he pretty much worked from eleven am
Speaker 1: till close. So in some way, growing up with somebody
Speaker 1: like your dad who had an entrepreneurial spirit and also
Speaker 1: worked hard, I mean that's a work ethic that you
Speaker 1: kind of pick up on, right. I mean you said
Speaker 1: now with starting off the interview, you work a lot
Speaker 1: of hours too at what you do. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: that that's both my parents. You know. My mother was
Speaker 1: again was a factory worker. Took a second job to
Speaker 1: get me and my brother, uh up out of the hood.
Speaker 1: I don't really remember either one of my parents ever
Speaker 1: missing work. Uh, you know, and it's working and you know,
Speaker 1: taking care of yourself. Providing for yourself was a big
Speaker 1: part of both of their identities. You know. After my
Speaker 1: parents got divorced, my mother was determined, uh, she was
Speaker 1: never going to be dependent upon anybody ever again. Remarry No, Uh,
Speaker 1: she did not remarry, and partially just out of her
Speaker 1: fears independence and she didn't want to make any compromised
Speaker 1: decisions about her son. My dad was irate with my
Speaker 1: This is after they divorced. She was irate with my
Speaker 1: mother about moving us out to uh this working class,
Speaker 1: uh predominantly white neighborhood and school system. My mom my
Speaker 1: dad was you know, very very pro black lived, like
Speaker 1: living in all black environments, like working in all black environments.
Speaker 1: He thought my mother made a us mistake moving us
Speaker 1: out to Warren Central High School. But my mother's was like, look, man,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna have my kids. Me and my kids
Speaker 1: are gonna live in some neighborhood where we don't feel safe,
Speaker 1: and so I gotta feel safe. I'm divorced. I don't
Speaker 1: want my kids in this neighborhood by themselves while I'm
Speaker 1: out working. And I mean, look, it turned out to
Speaker 1: be a spectacular decision, and my father apologized for later
Speaker 1: in life because that was one of their biggest disagreements
Speaker 1: in divorce where me and my brother lived. Uh, and
Speaker 1: you know, it turned into a spectaculars and particularly my
Speaker 1: father got more comfortable once they started busting in. The
Speaker 1: school was more even racially. But uh, you know that
Speaker 1: both of my parents fiercely independent, fiercely hard working, UH
Speaker 1: just didn't want to ask anybody for anything. I grew
Speaker 1: up in Indianapolis, move out to the new school. Did
Speaker 1: you ravel very much as a kid? Did you get
Speaker 1: did you get to go anywhere on vacation? Do you
Speaker 1: remember anything where you were exposed to other than maybe
Speaker 1: the newspaper, television obviously different parts of the country outside
Speaker 1: of the Midwest. Outside of the Midwest. Not a great deal,
Speaker 1: but we did. My mother again a hustler to the end. Uh.
Speaker 1: She took me and my brother to Disney World, probably
Speaker 1: when I was in second or third grade. Uh. She
Speaker 1: saved up a bunch of money the first time I
Speaker 1: ever flew. But we flew down to Disney World in
Speaker 1: Florida and Orlando, Florida for a vacation. Probably spent five
Speaker 1: days at disney World. Uh, most amazing experience. I remember.
Speaker 1: I was so afraid to fly. My grandmother gave me
Speaker 1: a Bible to hold in my lap uh as we
Speaker 1: flew down to Florida, and I retrolled onto that Bible
Speaker 1: because I was scared to death to fly and I
Speaker 1: thought we were gonna crash. Uh. That's the biggest vacation
Speaker 1: I can remember. But I can also remember, Uh, my
Speaker 1: mother was friends with a guy that had a limousine service.
Speaker 1: And he loaned my mother one of his limousines, and
Speaker 1: my mother piled up her kids, her sister's kids, and
Speaker 1: her sister, and I said also maybe, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: maybe her brother's kids as well. We all hopped in
Speaker 1: this limousine, probably fifteen of us, and drove the four
Speaker 1: hours to St. Louis and stay with the Six Flags,
Speaker 1: uh for like two days a theme park there, and
Speaker 1: I can remember we all went to some fancy steak restaurant. Uh.
Speaker 1: So those are the two big vacations that I can
Speaker 1: remember growing up. But that was about it. Other than that,
Speaker 1: I don't remember leaving Iniapolus too much. Mom drove the
Speaker 1: limo herself. Yes, that's awesome. Now, when you're at Disney World,
Speaker 1: you haven't been outside of Indianapolis very much. You suddenly
Speaker 1: walk into the happiest place on Earth. You said, you
Speaker 1: remember it still well to this day. Did it seem
Speaker 1: like such a culture shock? You're on that airplane, you
Speaker 1: got the Bible, You're afraid you're gonna crash. You land
Speaker 1: in Orlando, Florida had to seem like a crazy place
Speaker 1: compared to in general, you know, Indianapolis, Indiana, just the
Speaker 1: colors and the vibrancy and everything else associated with it.
Speaker 1: I mean that had to be still an eye opening experience, right.
Speaker 1: It was, But I don't know if I had experienced
Speaker 1: it in that way as an eye open I just
Speaker 1: experienced it like this is incredible. I get to get
Speaker 1: on rides every day. At night, my mother would give
Speaker 1: me and my brother five dollars a piece and we
Speaker 1: go to a game room because we stayed at the
Speaker 1: actual theme park and they had some game room, and
Speaker 1: we take those five dollars twenty quarters and that right
Speaker 1: for twenty quarters and just go to that game room
Speaker 1: and have fun every night. We got to go swimming
Speaker 1: every day. I just remember thinking it was the funnest
Speaker 1: four or five days I've ever had my life. And
Speaker 1: it you know, here I am Versuly forty five, forty
Speaker 1: six years later, and I can still remember. Be sure
Speaker 1: to catch live editions if I would kicked the coverage
Speaker 1: with Clay Travis week days at six am Eastern, three
Speaker 1: am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I this is Wins and Losses with Clay Trevis. Here's
Speaker 1: more from his conversation with Jason Whitlock. Okay, so we
Speaker 1: circled around there. But I want to go back to you.
Speaker 1: At you at Ball State. You walk onto that campus
Speaker 1: in Muncy, Indiana, you start off as an accountant, you
Speaker 1: decide you're gonna be a journalism major instead on the
Speaker 1: football field. Were you a disinterested athlete? Were you? They're
Speaker 1: almost aware, Hey, I want to get an education. Now?
Speaker 1: What was your thought process at nineteen years old at
Speaker 1: Ball State? As I said, my Ball process was, I'm
Speaker 1: about to have the Animal House movie experience. And so
Speaker 1: I just remember the first weekend there to be quite
Speaker 1: just getting drunk as hell long and Little King's beers
Speaker 1: and thinking that, Wow, this is amazing. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: remember not being nearly as committed to football as I
Speaker 1: should be. Uh. I came with just the absolute wrong attitude.
Speaker 1: My high school football team was a powerhouse. We were
Speaker 1: nationally ranked and in some ways we had better facilities
Speaker 1: than even Ball State. And I came with an attitude
Speaker 1: that I was better than this place. I should have
Speaker 1: been in some Big ten school. And my attitude was
Speaker 1: just all wrong. I came in out of shape and
Speaker 1: just had a terrible fresh spend year, but had the
Speaker 1: time of my life on campus. Uh. Got a one
Speaker 1: point oh my first semester in college because I barely
Speaker 1: attended classes because I was quite frankly, just hungover and
Speaker 1: disinterested in the whole thing. And just my freshman year
Speaker 1: was just kind of a blur. I was in constant
Speaker 1: trouble with the football coaches and scrambling to try to
Speaker 1: make up for a horrible, horribly bad first semester of
Speaker 1: academics of ball State. But I was just making friends
Speaker 1: and just having the time of my life. When does
Speaker 1: that start to shift? Did you ever commit yourself to
Speaker 1: football at all? Or was it just kind of a
Speaker 1: one ft in process throughout UH Me and the offensive
Speaker 1: line coach at that time started a very hateful relationship.
Speaker 1: I couldn't stand the guy. And keep in mind, and
Speaker 1: this is what I was there. I was probably their
Speaker 1: top recruit coming in. They had high expectations for me.
Speaker 1: Great kid captured this nationally ranked football team, and I
Speaker 1: was a major disappointment. And so for two years, ME
Speaker 1: and the offensive line coach just went to war. He
Speaker 1: left took another job someplace else, and so in my
Speaker 1: third year as a Red Church sophomore, I got a
Speaker 1: new offensive line coach, and I just took on a
Speaker 1: whole new attitude. Now, trust before this guy left. I
Speaker 1: tried to quit the football team my second year and
Speaker 1: I called my parents. I called my mom first and
Speaker 1: and told her I was going to quit, and she
Speaker 1: said she was living in Kansas City. She said, well,
Speaker 1: good luck with your dad, because you're sure as hell
Speaker 1: can't come here if you quit that football scholarship. I
Speaker 1: called my dad and looked, there, you know, I can
Speaker 1: come work for you at your bar, and he goes, man,
Speaker 1: you take you. I asked the kids the city, because
Speaker 1: you can't come here if you quit that football scholarship.
Speaker 1: And so that was kind of my wake up moment.
Speaker 1: And shortly after trying to quit and my parents not
Speaker 1: allowing it, UH, the offensive line coach left and I
Speaker 1: got a new offensive line coach, a guy that name
Speaker 1: of Lawrence Cooley, and my whole attitude and approach changed,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, a guy that was playing in front
Speaker 1: of me he quit the team, and the next thing
Speaker 1: you know, I was in the playing rotation and the
Speaker 1: next year I was a full time starter, and you know,
Speaker 1: football kind of took off for me for two years.
Speaker 1: Having said that, I played my fourth year with a
Speaker 1: torn a c l UH. That was misdiagnosed by the doctors.
Speaker 1: Was just stretched blah blah blah. Uh, and so I
Speaker 1: ended up my fifth year not playing. One of the
Speaker 1: one of my other biggest regrets of life was not
Speaker 1: playing my fifth year of college because I was just
Speaker 1: I was just tapped out on football and I shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been, and I wanted to focus on journalism and
Speaker 1: preparing for the rest of my life. It's a decision
Speaker 1: I regret, but it's a decision and paid major dividends
Speaker 1: for me. My fifth year school, I was an actual student.
Speaker 1: I started writing for the school newspaper. My grades skyrocketed. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's the It's the only real preparation I did for
Speaker 1: my career was working for the school newspaper. Because again,
Speaker 1: back in those days, all the journalists they'd start taking
Speaker 1: internships as freshman, sophomores, and juniors, and really they would
Speaker 1: have worked for the school newspaper for three and four years.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I had that fifth year school where
Speaker 1: I could do the at and and start get my
Speaker 1: journalism career on track and get it started. But I
Speaker 1: really regret not playing that fifth year of football. Uh,
Speaker 1: because once I got away from football, I realized exactly
Speaker 1: how much I loved it and missed it. And but
Speaker 1: but it worked out for me career wise. I don't
Speaker 1: I think if I had played football my fifth year
Speaker 1: in college, I'm not sure I would have made it
Speaker 1: as a journalist. What if your mom or dad had
Speaker 1: allowed you to quit football, what would you be doing now? Oh?
Speaker 1: I probably would have went back to Indianapolis and started
Speaker 1: working for my dad in the bar business. And I
Speaker 1: probably would own my dad's bar, the Masterpiece Lounge, and
Speaker 1: in the inner city of Indianapolis. And my dad, you know,
Speaker 1: my dad's passed on and so I I'd probably still
Speaker 1: be running a Masterpiece Lounge, all right, So you have that.
Speaker 1: Uh And and by the way, do you think that
Speaker 1: would have been a happy life? Do you think you
Speaker 1: would have had regrets? I mean, what, that's a big
Speaker 1: difference between having your own television show as you do
Speaker 1: now on national television and and running a bar in Indianapolis.
Speaker 1: But do you think you would be sitting at the
Speaker 1: bar like questioning your decision making or do you think
Speaker 1: you would have ended up happy as a bar owner too?
Speaker 1: That that's a that's that's tough. But my dad would
Speaker 1: probably say, I would be miserable because he would say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: he that I wasn't really built to run his bar,
Speaker 1: and and and because and I really was. My bad
Speaker 1: is one of the toughest human beings I know. And
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna say a couple of things that some
Speaker 1: of your listeners probably won't understand. But if you know
Speaker 1: anything about the inner city, and you know anything about
Speaker 1: the kind of bar are my dad ran, you had
Speaker 1: to be tough. People had to be afraid of you,
Speaker 1: and in order to survive or they were in the
Speaker 1: inner city where my dad's bar, people are gonna take
Speaker 1: advantage of you if you were not willing to pull
Speaker 1: out your thirty eight Revolver with the intent of using
Speaker 1: it if someone got out of hand. And my dad
Speaker 1: was that kind of tough and unafraid. I've never I
Speaker 1: my dad carried his third a revolver every day that
Speaker 1: I knew it, I wouldn't want. I don't think I
Speaker 1: was built to be that person to carry a gun
Speaker 1: every day and know that, you know, things could get
Speaker 1: out of hand. And again, I don't want to paint
Speaker 1: the Masteries Lounge to something where something happened all the time,
Speaker 1: because it didn't the bars open three hundred days a
Speaker 1: year or three hundred days of a year. You know,
Speaker 1: some thing may happen once or twice a year, but
Speaker 1: you always gotta be prepared for those one or two times.
Speaker 1: And I'll never forget the my when my dad passed away,
Speaker 1: I threw a big party at the Masterpiece Loue. It
Speaker 1: was the last day that the Witlocks owned and operated
Speaker 1: the Masterpiece Louge. It was all illegal. I'm sure if
Speaker 1: the government's listening, we probably get sued. Because my dad
Speaker 1: was dead, we didn't have the liquor lis. But anyway,
Speaker 1: we threw this big party, uh for all. And I
Speaker 1: can remember when I closed up, when we closed up
Speaker 1: the bar at three am, in the back behind my
Speaker 1: dad's bar, right outside in the back, there were like
Speaker 1: three guys just beating the dog shit out of somebody.
Speaker 1: We just as I'm about to lock up in the back,
Speaker 1: I'm just looking at these three guys beat the ship
Speaker 1: out of this dude. And I can remember a lock
Speaker 1: up the place and saying myself, yeah, I couldn't deal
Speaker 1: with this. This is not the life that I was
Speaker 1: built for. Um. And so you know what, I've been happy,
Speaker 1: probably not what I found some contentment, probably, but I
Speaker 1: don't think running the Masterpiece Lounge was what I was
Speaker 1: meant to do in this life. You graduate from Ball State,
Speaker 1: it's you got that journalism degree. How did you get
Speaker 1: your first job and what did it pay? I got
Speaker 1: my first job basically from begging every newspaper in the
Speaker 1: country to even consider hiring me. How, as I said,
Speaker 1: sending out letters like to the newspapers letters, yeah there were,
Speaker 1: I don't there was no email in and so you're
Speaker 1: writing letters to damn me, every newspaper in the country,
Speaker 1: reece your resume. Here's examples of my clips. And basically
Speaker 1: everybody told me you're not qualified, and they were absolutely right.
Speaker 1: I had spent one year working for the school newspaper.
Speaker 1: All of my peers at the newspaper had spent three
Speaker 1: or four years. They had done internships with major newspapers
Speaker 1: or local newspapers. I hadn't done any of those things,
Speaker 1: and so I just kept writing newspapers. And finally the
Speaker 1: Bloomington Herald Times in Bloomington, Indiana looked at my resume
Speaker 1: and said, oh man, this guy's a former college football
Speaker 1: player and all that, and and the blooms In Here
Speaker 1: Old Times. Their writers remembered me from high school because
Speaker 1: I was such a dominant high school player. The bloom
Speaker 1: Canerild Times ran the most prestigious all state team, the
Speaker 1: Bloomin Herold Top thirty three, and I had been named
Speaker 1: to that and again we were this nasty ran team
Speaker 1: was a couple of sports like, oh man, that's at
Speaker 1: Jason Black and blah blah blah. I wonder we should
Speaker 1: take a flyer on him. And so they offered me
Speaker 1: a part time job at five dollars and twenty five
Speaker 1: cent an hour for twenty thirty hours worth of work
Speaker 1: a week. So you moved to Bloomington, Indiana. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: for twenty or thirty hours a week? Where do you live?
Speaker 1: I lived in a one room efficiency, probably two miles
Speaker 1: from the office, but you know it's blooming because where
Speaker 1: Indian University is, And so I just lived like a
Speaker 1: very poor college student, uh, in a one room efficiency
Speaker 1: that you know, it was equipped with roaches and everything.
Speaker 1: I shared it with a few roaches or whatever. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's down the street from the newspaper in a one
Speaker 1: room efficiency. And you do that for how long? I
Speaker 1: did it for eleven months, and uh, the you know,
Speaker 1: they were right in terms of my qualifications for a
Speaker 1: full time job. Uh, but they were also right that
Speaker 1: I had a work ethic that was going to help
Speaker 1: me improve rather quickly. And so Bob Hammel, Bobby Knight's
Speaker 1: best friend, was the sports editor at the time, and
Speaker 1: I basically just one. I lived in one room efficiency,
Speaker 1: so I just lived at the office. I chewed up
Speaker 1: at the office at eight in the morning, and i'd
Speaker 1: leave at midnight, and you know, i'd go out and
Speaker 1: do my assignments, and they would mark it all up
Speaker 1: and heavily at it and try try to teach me,
Speaker 1: you know, to catch up with everybody else. And I
Speaker 1: did a lot of work on my own. And uh
Speaker 1: so they I did a great job there. I had
Speaker 1: a great work ethic, I had dramatic improvement. Uh. They
Speaker 1: all loved me, but there was no room for me
Speaker 1: to be a full time or triter there. And so
Speaker 1: I the whole time I'm there, I'm writing other newspapers,
Speaker 1: continuing to beg for a full time job or ask
Speaker 1: for a bang. It's not the right word. And eventually
Speaker 1: the Charlotte Observer, because because of I wrote this very
Speaker 1: impressive autobiography about myself. They asked me to write a
Speaker 1: story about myself and I did, and that made the
Speaker 1: Charlotte Observer take a chance on me and offer me
Speaker 1: a chance to try out for two weeks for a
Speaker 1: full time job at the Charlotte Observer. So you've never
Speaker 1: been to Charlotte. Before you get into a car, you
Speaker 1: get onto an airplane, how do you get to Charlotte
Speaker 1: and what did you think when you arrived in that city.
Speaker 1: I flew to Charlotte because it's a two week trial
Speaker 1: and it's the first time they've ever done a trial.
Speaker 1: But they said that this autobiore if I wrote was
Speaker 1: so impressive, and they put me in a little hotel
Speaker 1: like a Red ruffin for for two weeks, and I
Speaker 1: worked at the Charlotte Observer and they had with a
Speaker 1: bureau and Rockhill, South Carolina covering high school sports. And
Speaker 1: I did a try out there for two weeks and
Speaker 1: at the end of the trial, they offered me a
Speaker 1: full time job at four hundred three dollars a week.
Speaker 1: Four hundred and three dollars a week. So when you
Speaker 1: tell your parents about you know, your job status, what's
Speaker 1: dad and Mom's response when you say you're moving to Charlotte,
Speaker 1: because that's a lot different than you. They're ecstatic. They
Speaker 1: were proud of you. Oh yeah, this is it's the
Speaker 1: Charlotte Observer. Back then, you know, the Charotte Reserver had
Speaker 1: a great reputation. And when you're making five dollars and
Speaker 1: five cents an hour and your parents are still sending
Speaker 1: your little spirit change, you know, four hundred three dollars
Speaker 1: a week, and and what that sounded like a ship
Speaker 1: ton of money to me and them. All right, so
Speaker 1: you do that? How long do you what? What kind
Speaker 1: of work did you do at the Charlotte Observer. I
Speaker 1: covered high school sports and little league sports. And then
Speaker 1: because I was a hustler, I recognized that, you know,
Speaker 1: I can cover these high school sports, and that's one thing.
Speaker 1: But if I really want to move ahead, I got
Speaker 1: to find the niche here that's not being covered there
Speaker 1: will get me some attention. Because when you worked in
Speaker 1: one of those bureaus, they had their own little section
Speaker 1: of the paper, like called the rock Hill Observer or
Speaker 1: something of the York Observers called a local news section
Speaker 1: that's a supplement to the regular paper. Yes, and the
Speaker 1: only way to get any attention was to get into
Speaker 1: the regular newspaper. So what I did is I got there.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, hold on, man, at this time,
Speaker 1: rap music is becoming a big deal in American politics.
Speaker 1: And it's like Sister Soldier at that time got into
Speaker 1: it where Bill Clinton was talking about her. And then
Speaker 1: at that time, all black kids, including myself, we're wearing
Speaker 1: those Malcolm X hats with the X on the hat.
Speaker 1: And so I started pitching stories to the main newspaper about, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you should let me write a piece about what does
Speaker 1: it mean to wear these X hats? Two kids even
Speaker 1: recognize the significance of the do they know? Is it
Speaker 1: just a fad or do they really know? And they
Speaker 1: I started pitching basically black ideas to the Charlotte Observer.
Speaker 1: They didn't have anybody to execute them, or no one
Speaker 1: even thought this way, and so I did a story
Speaker 1: about kids wearing Malcolm X hats. The singing group Jodice
Speaker 1: was from Charlotte, North Carolina, and they became a big
Speaker 1: deal when I was there. They didn't have anybody to
Speaker 1: write about. Jody See this R and B group. I
Speaker 1: wrote a story about. I got Jody See on the phone,
Speaker 1: interviewed and wrote a story about him. UH wrote a
Speaker 1: story about sister soldier Uh Luke, the rapper Luke became
Speaker 1: a big deal. He did a concert in UH in
Speaker 1: North Carolina. I went and interviewed him, wrote a story
Speaker 1: about him. I just started just pitching the main newspaper
Speaker 1: these ideas that no one else would think of. And
Speaker 1: it got me a lot of attention. And it it,
Speaker 1: you know, made me a young star at the Charlotte Observer,
Speaker 1: and that got me a job in ann Arbor, Michigan, UH,
Speaker 1: covering the Fab five for the ann Arbor News. And
Speaker 1: so I was only in Charlotte for like fourteen months.
Speaker 1: Did the news find you or did you find them?
Speaker 1: The ann Arbor News contact at me. They they had
Speaker 1: some editor there I think named ed Petti kevit Uh
Speaker 1: that had heard about me and the things that I
Speaker 1: was doing in Charlotte, and so they reached out to me.
Speaker 1: And so you did you immediately know yes, I want
Speaker 1: this job? Did you see the Fab five coming? Uh? What? How?
Speaker 1: How did you make the decision to move from because
Speaker 1: I'm assuming Charlotte's a young, rapidly growing city. You've obviously
Speaker 1: got the voice or the ear of of editors there.
Speaker 1: You're writing interesting stories that no one else is writing.
Speaker 1: Was that a difficult decision? How did you make the
Speaker 1: decision to go to ann Arbor? It's very easy decision
Speaker 1: because and I don't want to exaggerate this, but this
Speaker 1: is just facts. No young person ever came to Charlotte
Speaker 1: and did what I did in fourteen months, and I
Speaker 1: would say hidden months. And it was like, holy cow,
Speaker 1: this guy's amazing because I came there not a great writer,
Speaker 1: but they had an editor there and an editing system
Speaker 1: that taught me and really accelerated my writing ability. Guy
Speaker 1: named Bill O'Connor. Got to give him credit. He was
Speaker 1: a hard ass, but he's great editor. My writing accelerated
Speaker 1: really quickly. I did all these interesting stories. I crushed it.
Speaker 1: And so after a year of just crushing it, I
Speaker 1: think they offered me a thirty dollar a week raise.
Speaker 1: And I remember what I said. It at me. I go, man,
Speaker 1: you're crazy after what I just did, You're gonna give
Speaker 1: me a thirty dollar a week raise? And and I
Speaker 1: remember they were so upset. They were telling what a
Speaker 1: percentage raised this was, and that I was crazy for
Speaker 1: my reaction, and uh, and then like two months later,
Speaker 1: the ann Arbor News offered me the job that they
Speaker 1: did and it was for thirty five thousand dollars a year,
Speaker 1: which was I think I was making twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in Charlotte. And when the ant Arvor News offered
Speaker 1: me that job and it was covering the Fat Five,
Speaker 1: I was still covering My main job was still covering
Speaker 1: high school sports. When I was in Charlotte. I had
Speaker 1: done all this other work, but there was no real
Speaker 1: promotion and it was just and I can't remember. There
Speaker 1: was a guy and this guy can't stand because I
Speaker 1: tell this story all the time. Rich Apple was the
Speaker 1: editor of the Charlotte Observer at the time, and he
Speaker 1: remember he hunted me down in the main news room
Speaker 1: to tell me what a gigantic mistake I was making
Speaker 1: leaving for the ann Harbor News. And I remember just
Speaker 1: laughing and leaving. But dude, it was covering the Fat Five,
Speaker 1: the Fat Five. This I covered them their sophomore years,
Speaker 1: so they were already this huge, storious freshman and then
Speaker 1: this like bamn, and I get to go to and
Speaker 1: up and covered these guys. This is my rocket ship
Speaker 1: to the moon. All right, let me hit here, because
Speaker 1: I do think this is instructive. We're talking to Jason Wentlock.
Speaker 1: Appreciate everybody listening. I think this is instructive for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, because I always say this, Looking for
Speaker 1: other jobs if you're happy is an interesting decision, but
Speaker 1: finding out how your current job values you is often
Speaker 1: instructive in terms of where you can go going forward. Right,
Speaker 1: And I've been through this situation. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are listening to us have as well.
Speaker 1: That raise that they offered you was indicative that they
Speaker 1: may be thought your ceiling was not as high as
Speaker 1: you thought it was, right, And so finding out how
Speaker 1: you're valued by your employer, even if you don't like
Speaker 1: the dollar figure, is oftentimes very helpful in allowing you
Speaker 1: to make decisions about what to do and where to
Speaker 1: go forward. Right. I mean, because that is I think
Speaker 1: something that everybody in their life, at some point in time,
Speaker 1: you will think you're worth a lot more money than
Speaker 1: you're offered, and you'll have a choice, do I can
Speaker 1: up and take less, or do I potentially go elsewhere.
Speaker 1: My advice a lot of times is when somebody undervalues you,
Speaker 1: that's a sign of where they think you can go.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's not a bad move to then start looking around,
Speaker 1: because going back to you, if the Charlotte Observer had
Speaker 1: doubled your salary, you probably would have stated Charlotte right,
Speaker 1: probably and probably, but maybe not, because again, me and
Speaker 1: the Charlotte Observer had a couple of little just disagreements
Speaker 1: because here they come in with the thirty dollar raise
Speaker 1: and I get it in newspaper and based on percentage,
Speaker 1: this is an amazing blah blah blah. But to me,
Speaker 1: the way I interpreted was, y'all won't come off this
Speaker 1: narrative that you're doing me a favor. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what work I put in. And because again they made me.
Speaker 1: Never in the history of the newspaper had they made
Speaker 1: someone come in and do a two week trial, and
Speaker 1: so that that was already and so I have no problem.
Speaker 1: I'll come in. I got no problem, and I knock
Speaker 1: it out of the park during those two weeks when
Speaker 1: they sent me down to offer me the full time job.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say the lady's name because she's not
Speaker 1: a bad person and I'm not saying this to embarrassing,
Speaker 1: but she tries, she tells me in that meeting. You're
Speaker 1: an Affirmative Action higher and you know, we really feel
Speaker 1: good about what we're doing here, and and and literally
Speaker 1: I'm not making this stuff. I go, hey, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm not all affirmative Action higher. I just did a
Speaker 1: two week trial where I just showed you what I
Speaker 1: can do. So either you're hiring me because I just
Speaker 1: showed you what I could do, but you're not hiring
Speaker 1: me because you're doing me a favor and you're meeting
Speaker 1: some affirmative action quota. And she got all taken aback,
Speaker 1: no one. And here I was, this four year old
Speaker 1: in need of a for talk job, talking to her
Speaker 1: this way, and and she got taken aback and and
Speaker 1: and pushed back, and I pushed back even stronger. I
Speaker 1: was like, don't give me no job out of a favor.
Speaker 1: I just came in here and kicked ask for two weeks.
Speaker 1: She basically just we agreed to disagree. She gave me
Speaker 1: the job, and that's what motivated me. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: they think they're doing me a favor. I'm gonna come
Speaker 1: in here and destroy this place and destroy it with
Speaker 1: my work ethic, not in a bad way, not called
Speaker 1: see anybody problems. But they put it after my first
Speaker 1: year there, they put it in my written evaluation, Jason
Speaker 1: works too much. He needs to do other things besides work.
Speaker 1: But I was so instant that they thought they were
Speaker 1: doing me a favor. I was like, I'm gonna destroy everybody,
Speaker 1: and that's what I did. And no one can deny
Speaker 1: it because they've never seen anybody come in one year
Speaker 1: that inexperience and do the kind of work get all
Speaker 1: the a one stories they had people working in the
Speaker 1: main knit newsroom that might get one story on the
Speaker 1: front page of the Charlotte Observer a year. I did
Speaker 1: it like five times in a six month period on
Speaker 1: my as a side job. And so when they come
Speaker 1: with the thirty dollar raise after I just put on
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan's displayed for a year, I'm even further piss
Speaker 1: because I'm like, Oh, they won't come off this original
Speaker 1: narrative that they're doing me a favor, and they have
Speaker 1: some little glass ceiling that they have for me, and
Speaker 1: so I was like, Oh, I can't wait to get
Speaker 1: up out of here. I'm gonna show these people. You
Speaker 1: go to the news, a smaller newspaper, right, but you
Speaker 1: think because of what the Fab five has meant to
Speaker 1: the culture and the stories of sports in year one,
Speaker 1: that that's an incredible story to step into for year two.
Speaker 1: So you walk in to cover Michigan in the middle
Speaker 1: of the Fab five era, and you walk in and
Speaker 1: how many beat writers are covering the University of Michigan
Speaker 1: at the time. Um, I would say day to day
Speaker 1: five or six. You know, you certainly have the Detroit
Speaker 1: Free Press and let Detroit News News, the ad Arbor News,
Speaker 1: and a couple of the other little surrounding newspapers. I
Speaker 1: would say, covered up on a day to day basis.
Speaker 1: Are you the only black guy who's covering him on
Speaker 1: a day to day basis? Uh? Yes, be sure to
Speaker 1: catch live editions if I would kicked the coverage with
Speaker 1: Clay Travis weekdays at six am Eastern, three am Pacific,
Speaker 1: Clay Travis dives deep with Jason Whitlock on the Wins
Speaker 1: and Losses podcast. So, and you're also young in addition
Speaker 1: to being black. You're like two years old at this point.
Speaker 1: So you're not that much older than Chris Webber, than
Speaker 1: Juwan Howard, than Jalen Rose, all those guys, right, You
Speaker 1: not at all. So, just from a youth and also
Speaker 1: from a culture perspective, you probably connect better with those
Speaker 1: guys than most of the people who are covering them.
Speaker 1: That'd be fair to say, no question. I certainly the
Speaker 1: advantage I had is I could hear things others couldn't,
Speaker 1: you know, in term, there was no slang they could use,
Speaker 1: any coded language they could use that I couldn't pick
Speaker 1: up on. There was no body language that I couldn't read.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I could read those kids. I felt
Speaker 1: better than my competition. What was your relationship like with them? Uh?
Speaker 1: Pretty good? Uh, you know, because it was more of
Speaker 1: a sparring relationship because I certainly have my point of view,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, not all of it did they
Speaker 1: agree with. Because I remember I wrote a colin It
Speaker 1: was very popular there. The Malcolm X movie I think,
Speaker 1: came out during that time when I was there, and
Speaker 1: I wrote a column what would Malcolm X think about
Speaker 1: the Fab five? And it wasn't probably the most positive
Speaker 1: thing you could write. Uh, But those guys didn't mind
Speaker 1: sparring with me. They were young and had their own
Speaker 1: thoughts and so, uh, you know. Jalen Rose and uh
Speaker 1: was certainly a guy that's not afraid to speak his
Speaker 1: opinion or whatever. But I gotta I remember what I
Speaker 1: got along pretty well, because I can remember. I wrote
Speaker 1: a story where I went and played video games at
Speaker 1: Chris Webber's apartment. I went and played video games with
Speaker 1: him and his apartment uh in ann Arbor, and wrote
Speaker 1: a first person story about that of Juwan Howard and
Speaker 1: I out along pretty well. He had a friend named
Speaker 1: Juice that I was very tight with. Uh. Probably Ray
Speaker 1: Jackson as the guy got along with the best. Jimmy
Speaker 1: King was pretty distant. Uh. But it was a good experience.
Speaker 1: But you know, even more than that, or even in
Speaker 1: addition to that, my football coach at Ball State was
Speaker 1: a long time Bosham Beckler assistant coach, and so my
Speaker 1: whole Ball State's entire football program when I played there
Speaker 1: was based off the Michigan football program, and so that
Speaker 1: gave me tremendous insight also into my coverage of the
Speaker 1: University of Michigan football team, and so I just I
Speaker 1: went gangbusters in a and Harbor covering the fat Fire
Speaker 1: basketball and the University of Michigan football. I had so
Speaker 1: much interesting insight and so many interesting things to say
Speaker 1: that you know because they are where they start letting
Speaker 1: me occasionally write a column and opinion piece in addition
Speaker 1: to covering the teams, and my column there quickly became
Speaker 1: you know, must read and the biggest thing going in
Speaker 1: that area. What video games you play with Chris Webber?
Speaker 1: Do you remember man I meane I techn Mobol. I
Speaker 1: don't think it was. It may have been tech Mobile,
Speaker 1: I I don't remember. I really don't. Do you have
Speaker 1: any kind of relationship with those guys now? No, it's weird.
Speaker 1: I think Chris Webber and I had some disconnect, probably
Speaker 1: because I didn't like the way he handled that Ed
Speaker 1: Martin situation that got him in trouble. And uh, I
Speaker 1: think I wrote some when he was in the NBA
Speaker 1: during his NBA career. I I wrote some things critical.
Speaker 1: But it's like we follow each other over Twitter. But
Speaker 1: I don't communicate with Chris. I do communicate with Jalen Rose.
Speaker 1: I think we have the mutual respected affinity for each other.
Speaker 1: We're both very close to Isaiah Thomas Um and I'm
Speaker 1: a I'm a fan of Jalen's media career. I've supported
Speaker 1: his school to his Detroit Leadership Academy in Detroit. Uh.
Speaker 1: And when I've seen Juwan back during when the when
Speaker 1: he was playing with the Heat, and so was Lebron James.
Speaker 1: We're very cool. His friend Juice passed away and I
Speaker 1: remember talking to him about that, but I can't say
Speaker 1: I'm particularly close to any Hum. How many hours a
Speaker 1: day would you say you were working when you were
Speaker 1: covering the beat for Michigan and Harbor. Uh. That was
Speaker 1: very intense, and so I would say fourteen hours a
Speaker 1: day because that was so intense and so competitive. Uh.
Speaker 1: They the Detroit News had a guy named Jim Spatiford
Speaker 1: that covered the team, who was very good, and for
Speaker 1: some reason, Greg I can't remember Greg's last name, UH
Speaker 1: covered for the Detroit Free Press. Uh. Greg ended up
Speaker 1: being a columnist down in Florida for somebody. I can't
Speaker 1: remember Greg's last Greg Stolda. Uh. Those guys very good,
Speaker 1: very experienced, twenty years older than me, but they were
Speaker 1: very good, had connections which matter in the beat now.
Speaker 1: In those days. Two, for people out there who may
Speaker 1: not be aware, you would wake up every morning, look
Speaker 1: the newspapers of your competitors as well as your own,
Speaker 1: and be like man, I hope I didn't get scooped
Speaker 1: because the internet doesn't exist, right, and you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: know what those guys are writing. Yeah, you got those
Speaker 1: new papers delivered to your home, or you r into
Speaker 1: the mailbox first thing every morning to make sure you
Speaker 1: didn't get your brains beat in the day before. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you remember a time when one of those guys
Speaker 1: had a story and you were like, odd day, I
Speaker 1: can't believe that. You know, it had to happen right
Speaker 1: over a couple of years. Yeah, listen, the biggest one.
Speaker 1: I remember that, and I remember not sleeping for like
Speaker 1: twenty four hours. Or Jalen Rose got bleusted at a
Speaker 1: crack house and I think Grigg Stoder broke that story
Speaker 1: and I had to chase that story for the next
Speaker 1: twenty four hours. Uh, yeah, that's that's one I remember
Speaker 1: very distinctly. So you're there two years, I think, right,
Speaker 1: So you're there and you said you sometimes got to
Speaker 1: write opinion columns. Did you recognize that your opinion columns
Speaker 1: were a strength of yours, like you're obviously the goal
Speaker 1: at that point in time for people who aren't familiar
Speaker 1: with the the newspaper kind of pecking order. The beat
Speaker 1: writers all want to be in the opinion business, right,
Speaker 1: and you have to work your way up too deep
Speaker 1: all but a lot of them, a lot of them do, uh,
Speaker 1: And you have to work your way up typically to
Speaker 1: the opinion business. There's a seniority scale things like that.
Speaker 1: Was that a goal and aspiration of yours pretty concretely
Speaker 1: at that point in time? Yea. As soon as I
Speaker 1: switched my major to journalism of ball State again, I
Speaker 1: wanted to be the micro roy Co of sports, and
Speaker 1: so that meant having a column and writing opinion pieces.
Speaker 1: And yes, as soon as the first column I wrote
Speaker 1: in Aunt Harbor was uh, Elvis Grback had gotten heard
Speaker 1: at quarterback at Michigan and he had been replaced by
Speaker 1: Todd Collins, who played very well. And I wrote a
Speaker 1: column saying that Todd Collins should remain michigan starting quarterback.
Speaker 1: And as you got to remember the time, as mundane
Speaker 1: as that opinion sounds today, that's sounded like the hottest take,
Speaker 1: the most daring thing you could ever write in the
Speaker 1: history of newspapers. For someone to write that Todd Collins
Speaker 1: should replace Elvis go Back as the full top starter
Speaker 1: in Michigan, that was a really big deal. And that
Speaker 1: made the people in Ann Harbor have a big appetite
Speaker 1: for my column, and my column actually became like the steroid,
Speaker 1: the great equalizer. That's what made me competitive with the
Speaker 1: other beat writers is that one they didn't have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to write opinions, and two my opinions were really
Speaker 1: provocative and different than Mitch. Album was the king of
Speaker 1: colin writing, not just in Michigan but across the country
Speaker 1: at that time. And Mitch didn't really delve into opinions.
Speaker 1: He wrote very flowery game stories that tried to evoke
Speaker 1: emotion or tried to reset the scene of what transpired.
Speaker 1: There was nobody really writing strong opinions and that market
Speaker 1: at that time, and that, um, you know, put med
Speaker 1: on equal footing with guys with far more experience in me.
Speaker 1: I should asked this question earlier. Do you remember the
Speaker 1: first time somebody came up to you and recognized you
Speaker 1: for something you wrote? Uh, that wouldn't have known you before, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously in the newspaper office they can say, hey,
Speaker 1: that's a great piece of work or whatever. But at
Speaker 1: what point do you remember or at what point did
Speaker 1: it begin to occur where people might come up to
Speaker 1: you and say, hey, I read what you wrote and
Speaker 1: have an opinion on it one way or the other.
Speaker 1: I I don't the strongest memory I have of that
Speaker 1: isn't a direct answer to your question. When I was
Speaker 1: in Charlotte, I wrote one opinion piece and it was
Speaker 1: mc hammer was coming to town and he was the
Speaker 1: biggest deal in rap music at that time, and I
Speaker 1: wrote as I wrote a column saying mc hammer was
Speaker 1: a terrible rapper and started talking about all the rappers
Speaker 1: who were better than him, and the local radio station
Speaker 1: in Charlotte nearly had a heart attack and called me
Speaker 1: and had me on to interview me about the piece.
Speaker 1: And they just thought that I was a shiny Martian
Speaker 1: from out of town. I can't believe this guy wrote
Speaker 1: this blah blah blah, And so that I remember that
Speaker 1: more so than anyone ever stopping me on the street
Speaker 1: and saying anything. What was the reaction that the first
Speaker 1: time you really went on the interview for an opinion
Speaker 1: piece that you had given the m C. That's actually
Speaker 1: really interesting. MC hammer is a bad rapper, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, you were correct. I don't think people right
Speaker 1: now are like, hey, who were the greatest rappers of
Speaker 1: all time. I don't think there's ever been anybody who's like,
Speaker 1: I think it's mc hammer. It's just amazing that. Again,
Speaker 1: in newspapers back during that time, they had no one
Speaker 1: to write that, and that created such an opportunity for me,
Speaker 1: because rap was this really big gun. They had no
Speaker 1: one on staff who could even remotely cover it. And
Speaker 1: so I can remember that just the reaction at the
Speaker 1: newspaper and people calling in the newspaper upset or like, man,
Speaker 1: I can't believe this guy wrote this, and then for
Speaker 1: the radio station to call me an interview with me.
Speaker 1: It was. It was an amazing time to be a
Speaker 1: black journalist with balls back then. All right, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna circle back around to this, but the Elvis Grback
Speaker 1: versus I think it was Todd Collins. I can't even
Speaker 1: remember that that debate. After you write that column, you
Speaker 1: walk into the Michigan Football Complex the next time after
Speaker 1: you've done it, could you feel the attention being different
Speaker 1: than for other things that you had written before that,
Speaker 1: No question, I was radioactive, and it's like, again, people
Speaker 1: didn't do that at that time. I mean, that was
Speaker 1: just like people who don't understand this is still a
Speaker 1: big deal. But like, you don't question in the hometown
Speaker 1: of the newspaper that aggressive very often, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: you say like the beat writer has golden handcuffs, like yes,
Speaker 1: you're there, but you can't really go that far because
Speaker 1: you've got to show up every day and ask questions
Speaker 1: and and your job is in some way predicated on
Speaker 1: access right, no question. But I've never been an access
Speaker 1: to journalist, even even though I would create something and
Speaker 1: again I went to Chris Webber's apartment Man Harbor and
Speaker 1: had the ultimate access. But I've just never been that guy.
Speaker 1: And and that's from it goes all the way back
Speaker 1: to my days as a kid Readeem Apple Star. I
Speaker 1: used to always be upset with the writers because I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, these guys are writing these stories for
Speaker 1: the coaches and the players. They're not writing them for me,
Speaker 1: the reader. And that was one of the things that
Speaker 1: when so as I switched my major to journalism, other
Speaker 1: than thinking about Mike Royko, was I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm always going to write for the reader. Screw the
Speaker 1: athletes and screw the coaches. And so you know, I
Speaker 1: can't remember all the things that I wrote that but
Speaker 1: Steve Fisher, the head coach of the Michigan basketball team.
Speaker 1: This dude couldn't stand the sight of me mad, So,
Speaker 1: I mean, he tried to manipulate everybody to dislike me
Speaker 1: and be afraid of me. Investment. So just imagine Steve
Speaker 1: Fisher whitlock is it Chris Webber's house playing video games?
Speaker 1: And I hate this guy, But those guys had to
Speaker 1: also trust you to bring you into the house and
Speaker 1: let you play video games with him, right, I mean
Speaker 1: on some level, at least back in that time, in
Speaker 1: or whatever year that was, Chris Webber is not having
Speaker 1: a lot of other reporters. I bet over to play
Speaker 1: video games at his place. Yeah, No, he definitely trusted
Speaker 1: me and definitely moved that. I didn't care that his
Speaker 1: he lived in this plush apartment, right, and I certainly
Speaker 1: wasn't there to write about how plush his apartment was
Speaker 1: or whatever. Uh, but yeah, there was a look, man, kids,
Speaker 1: young people are attracted to rebellion, and I was very
Speaker 1: rebellious and I upset, you know, the teachers and the
Speaker 1: head coach, and so that's going to end up making
Speaker 1: me more attractive to the acts to the athlete. There's
Speaker 1: no doubt about that. All right, So you're at You're
Speaker 1: at Michigan for two years, you're having success and your goal,
Speaker 1: as you said, since Mike Royko's columns, you decided when
Speaker 1: you were in college you wanted to do for for
Speaker 1: sports what he did for sort of politics, general interest
Speaker 1: in the city of Chicago. I think it was right
Speaker 1: at the time. Um so how do you end up
Speaker 1: getting that first column? This job, the work that I
Speaker 1: did in Ann Harbor and they reach out to you.
Speaker 1: You start getting requests from other people who are seeing
Speaker 1: your clippings. At that point in time, the Internet doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: so you get picked up in other newspapers. Your name
Speaker 1: kind of starts to grow a little bit circulate in
Speaker 1: journal is m circles, and you start to get inquiries
Speaker 1: from other newspapers. Not I can't look two years is
Speaker 1: particularly back in that era, that's not a long time
Speaker 1: on the radar. Yeah, And so I did do a
Speaker 1: lot of great work that got a lot of attention.
Speaker 1: And again it's like, uh, Dick Bital would reference my
Speaker 1: work while broadcasting a Michigan basketball game. All that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff is big in terms of raising your profile.
Speaker 1: But someone and you can't remember. My mother lived in
Speaker 1: Kansas City for a time being and someone, a friend
Speaker 1: in the newspaper business, said, hey, man, I heard they
Speaker 1: have a columnist opening in Kansas City. You should apply
Speaker 1: for it. And again, because my mother had lived there
Speaker 1: for ten years, I was familiar with Kansas City. I
Speaker 1: applied for the comments job and sending my clips and
Speaker 1: a letter explaining and sure enough, you know the sports
Speaker 1: are the knsee started dale By. He was looking for
Speaker 1: a columnist who would come in and shake things up
Speaker 1: and kind of duplicate what I had done in ann Arbor.
Speaker 1: Just come in and be an outspoken voice and a
Speaker 1: guy that was fearless. Uh. And so I probably sent
Speaker 1: him the letter and heard from him a week later.
Speaker 1: They probably flew me out for an interview a week
Speaker 1: after that, and probably a week after that they offered
Speaker 1: me the job. How did you get the offer? I
Speaker 1: was at my dad's bar, the Masterpiece louds and uh,
Speaker 1: how that I'm trying. I must have picked up a
Speaker 1: voicemail off my home phone because I called dale Because
Speaker 1: I called dale By back from the Masterpiece lounge, and
Speaker 1: he offered me the job sixty five thousand dollars a year,
Speaker 1: and I can remember shouting to my father's daddy, he
Speaker 1: just home for me a job at the Kansas City
Speaker 1: Start and it was I because I'm an asshole like this,
Speaker 1: and this is one of the most exciting days of
Speaker 1: my life because I'm just I am who I am.
Speaker 1: I remember I told dale By Man, I'm not paying
Speaker 1: me enough, but I'm gonna take this job anyway. And
Speaker 1: so you come back out tell your dad and he
Speaker 1: says what we We have a celebratory drink at the
Speaker 1: Masterpiece Loungs and we just we just think I've died
Speaker 1: and gone to heaven. You know, his son is gonna
Speaker 1: be a columnist here you are. My dad's a big
Speaker 1: newspaper read Yeah, so I'm gonna be a columnist at
Speaker 1: seven years old. He's gonna make sixty five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: just doing will never ask me for another dime. I'm happy.
Speaker 1: So at this point in your life, your rise is
Speaker 1: like meteoric, right, because you have gone, in the space
Speaker 1: of roughly four or five years, from part time work
Speaker 1: at the Bloomington, Indiana newspaper to now becoming a columnist
Speaker 1: at a major newspaper in Kansas City. I mean that's
Speaker 1: unheard of. I mean, that is that media. I mean
Speaker 1: for people out there who might not understand that rise,
Speaker 1: how would you classify it? How would you quantify it?
Speaker 1: Because the newspaper business is so much different now, A
Speaker 1: ton of people who are listening to us right now
Speaker 1: might not really understand that trajectory. Clay. In May of
Speaker 1: n I graduated from Ball State and I am legitimately
Speaker 1: unqualified for full time work in the newspaper business. For
Speaker 1: years later, I'm a highly qualified columnist for the Kansas
Speaker 1: City Start. It's you know, it's an unbelievable so many
Speaker 1: people Bob Hammel, Bill O'Connor, uh dale By, you know,
Speaker 1: so many people to think who took a chance on me?
Speaker 1: And I worked really hard? Uh? Why am I thinking
Speaker 1: of Jeff Larkam, the ed pet of cabs. People took
Speaker 1: a chance on me in Ann Harbor, and it's it's incredible.
Speaker 1: In four years again, I put a lot of work
Speaker 1: in and I didn't I don't think I did anything
Speaker 1: for four years other than work. Uh, but you know
Speaker 1: it paid off. And so from May nine to September. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's a hell of a run. And you know, I
Speaker 1: get to Kansas City in It's like I'm going to
Speaker 1: get to live out my dream of being the microy
Speaker 1: Cole Sports A year in is I mean, did you
Speaker 1: think that's like that's like unbelievable money. I thought I
Speaker 1: was under paid, just like I told Bill By so Uh.
Speaker 1: I again, I came there supremely confident. And it's because
Speaker 1: the two years of what I had done in ann Arbor,
Speaker 1: I really know. I just said, Oh, if I just
Speaker 1: do this all over again, I'm going the results are
Speaker 1: going to be incredible and and literally I think so. Yeah. September,
Speaker 1: in April of nine, they called me in at the
Speaker 1: Kansas City Star and said, hey, man, we've made a mistake. Uh,
Speaker 1: we want to pay you a hundred thousand dollars and
Speaker 1: we're gonna pay you a hundred twenty five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in next year and a hundred and fifty year after that,
Speaker 1: and that I didn't ask for it. I didn't know
Speaker 1: they're want to do it. They just brought me into
Speaker 1: the office. But from September until April nine, I just
Speaker 1: I questioned. I mean, I just I just I questioned.
Speaker 1: I set that city on absolute fire, writing about primarily
Speaker 1: the Kansas City Chiefs, the Chiefs, the Royals, the Kansas City, Kent,
Speaker 1: University of Kansas basketball and football, uh, Kansas State, and
Speaker 1: the University of Missouri. So by set it on fire
Speaker 1: for people out there who don't understand, like you're writing
Speaker 1: calling how many days a week that time four or
Speaker 1: five a week and and I mean it's I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's it's like a machine man every day. I'm again,
Speaker 1: you gotta understand how sleepy that market was and just
Speaker 1: how sleepy the newspaper business was for the most part.
Speaker 1: And it just they just hadn't seen anything like that.
Speaker 1: And uh, it was funny stuff, serious stuff, uh, football
Speaker 1: questioning things. Uh it was you know, it's funny. People
Speaker 1: sit up and and say, oh man, you're really hard
Speaker 1: on the Brian James And I just amaged Carl Peterson,
Speaker 1: the general manager of the Cannessee Chiefs. He has to
Speaker 1: be laughing. He's like, because I was so hard on
Speaker 1: this dude and and crushed him just repeatedly. And now
Speaker 1: I would also praise him when good things happen. But
Speaker 1: it's like I laughed at people to think like I'm
Speaker 1: hard and critical of Lebron James. They should go ask
Speaker 1: Carl Peterson, Marty Shot and Hiro what I did to them,
Speaker 1: and it's but and again not in in my view,
Speaker 1: an unfair way, not in a malicious way. I had
Speaker 1: respect for those guys, and they were really good at
Speaker 1: what they were doing. But like everybody, you know, they
Speaker 1: make mistakes and I was there to pound. So you
Speaker 1: are driving, I'm assuming almost entirely at this point in time,
Speaker 1: the conversation among sports fans through your column in the
Speaker 1: Kansas City Star, what is your what? What is your
Speaker 1: approval rating in the city at that time, because a
Speaker 1: lot of times columns, you know, fifty degree disagree. That's
Speaker 1: literally the job, it's to be strongly opinionated. Were people
Speaker 1: favorable in reacting to you in the city of Kansas City?
Speaker 1: What did other people think of you? What was your
Speaker 1: existence like in that city at that time? It was awesome? Uh, look,
Speaker 1: I can't There were a lot of people that had
Speaker 1: strong negative reactions to my opinion, but there were just
Speaker 1: as many people that absolutely loved it. And even the
Speaker 1: people that disagreed with me, I think just enjoyed the process, like,
Speaker 1: holy cow, what's we're not gonna say tomorrow morning? And
Speaker 1: it became an event to go get the newspaper to
Speaker 1: see what you were gonna be talking about at work
Speaker 1: the next day. And particularly like the Chiefs games really
Speaker 1: didn't end until the next morning until you had read
Speaker 1: my column on them. And uh you know, I was
Speaker 1: hugely popular in Kansas City. Uh you know. We started
Speaker 1: having events two for me to meet readers the interact
Speaker 1: with me. Uh you know, me and the Star started
Speaker 1: putting them on where you could win a lunch with Whitlock,
Speaker 1: where I would take thirty forty readers at a time
Speaker 1: out to lunch and just converse with him. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: I was, for lack of a better describe, was a
Speaker 1: rock star in Kansas City. And you know, yes, we're
Speaker 1: there people there that you know couldn't stand me, absolutely,
Speaker 1: particularly if you were someone in power who didn't want
Speaker 1: to be questioned. Yeah, you didn't like me. But if
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of people there, the mayor Manuel
Speaker 1: Cleaver there was awesome to me. Uh mentord me while
Speaker 1: I was there. Ali Gates the Barbecue Barn, mentord me
Speaker 1: while I was there. Uh Buck O'Neill, the Negro Luis
Speaker 1: baseball star mentord me while I was there. And we
Speaker 1: had a new Mayor Kay Barnes, very good friend of mine. Everybody.
Speaker 1: I used to throw a Christmas party every year. I
Speaker 1: bring my mother in and we cooked for everybody. And
Speaker 1: it started out it was in this condo I had,
Speaker 1: and it started out it was like people. By the
Speaker 1: end of it, fifteen years later, it was six hundred
Speaker 1: people at at the eighteenth and Vine Jazz District, at
Speaker 1: some restaurant where I'm feed and drinking. Six hundred people
Speaker 1: at Christmas. It was you know, it was a great time.
Speaker 1: I loved my time in Kansas City. So are you
Speaker 1: going to basically every game? You're going to all the
Speaker 1: Royals games yourself? You're a columnist, Now are you writing
Speaker 1: those columns inside of the inside of the press box?
Speaker 1: Primarily I'm going to every Chiefs game. I'm going to
Speaker 1: twenty Royals games a year. Look, I'm just gonna not
Speaker 1: the most passionate Royals fan or baseball fan. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: And then too, and you would have to have been
Speaker 1: in Kansas City at this time. I was too rough
Speaker 1: for the Kansas City Royals at that time in terms
Speaker 1: of the Kandascy Royals. For about the first ten years
Speaker 1: I was there. Euen Kaufman had passed away and a
Speaker 1: trust fun was running the Kansas City Royals. Didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of money, and my criticism. You almost had
Speaker 1: to treat the Royals like a charity, and they couldn't
Speaker 1: handle my level of criticism. And so I stood back
Speaker 1: and didn't do as much with the Royals as I
Speaker 1: could have. And then after about two years uh me
Speaker 1: being in Kansas City, I think in nine seven or so,
Speaker 1: the Star hired Joe poz Nancy as another columnist, huge
Speaker 1: baseball fan and expert, and I kind of let him
Speaker 1: be the Royals guy. Uh and I would again. But
Speaker 1: my last three or four years in Kansas City, I
Speaker 1: probably went to ten Royals games a year. Uh. But
Speaker 1: you know that I just I stayed. You just couldn't
Speaker 1: be as former world that they were treated like some
Speaker 1: little charity organization. If you said anything too serious, everybody
Speaker 1: go winding and crying to the editor and there's up there.
Speaker 1: But so so what I went to all the Chief's games,
Speaker 1: all the big Kansas basketball games, any of the colleges
Speaker 1: they played. I went to a college football game pretty
Speaker 1: much every weekend. Uh. You know that you went to
Speaker 1: the Chief's practices you know everything face to face. I'm
Speaker 1: curious on the process of writing. You get to go
Speaker 1: on the road, you're everywhere else. Did you have a pager?
Speaker 1: Did you have a beeper? Like? There aren't cell phones
Speaker 1: for the early part of your career, How did you
Speaker 1: get in touch with people? Oh? I think and we
Speaker 1: may have to hop on the internet, but I think
Speaker 1: by ninety four, I do think cell phones are out
Speaker 1: there and available. But when you're covering the the Fab five,
Speaker 1: did they have cell phones? I'm trying to I didn't
Speaker 1: get my first cell phone at all, not the Fab five,
Speaker 1: But I do think by the time I'm in Kansas City, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do think I'm having a cell phone. And you're
Speaker 1: communicating a lot over cell phone, all right, so, uh
Speaker 1: the Internet doesn't still exist. Then. All of this so
Speaker 1: far has been about the impact that you can have
Speaker 1: as a part of the written word, other than the
Speaker 1: MC hammer on the radio rap rap discussion. When did
Speaker 1: you start breaking in with radio? And do you remember
Speaker 1: the first time you did it consistently? And what about TV? Well,
Speaker 1: as soon as I got to Kansas City, Uh, you
Speaker 1: know we had sports talk radio there. Yeah. We had
Speaker 1: some old guy, uh named Don Fortune, who was, you know,
Speaker 1: fit the sleepy town uh as much as the newspaper
Speaker 1: did at that time. And so Don Fortune had an
Speaker 1: instant reaction to me, an instant negative reaction to me.
Speaker 1: And he did the daily sports talk radio show, three
Speaker 1: hour talk show drive time in the afternoon. And it
Speaker 1: was probably the third column I'd written in Kansas cy
Speaker 1: second or third column I'd written in Kansas City, and
Speaker 1: it was it was am a comedic column about mocking
Speaker 1: Kansas and Kandas State football were playing in a ESPN
Speaker 1: football game that was gonna be televised on ESPN and
Speaker 1: Kanada State may have been ranked twenty three four in
Speaker 1: the country or whatever, and this is in this is
Speaker 1: right win Bill Snyder in Kanda State football are really
Speaker 1: starting to elevate their quarterbacks some kid I think the
Speaker 1: named Chad May at the time. And so I wrote
Speaker 1: a piece, uh talking about kind of sarcastically saying what
Speaker 1: a big deal this game is that? Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Kanada State fans are gonna put on their best clothes
Speaker 1: tonight and you know, belt buckles, little be twelve ins.
Speaker 1: It was just something just mocking them as country and
Speaker 1: hill billy and you know, Kansas is kind of the
Speaker 1: elitied school, and it was mocking them as elite and
Speaker 1: the I'm not doing it justice. It was a hysterical piece.
Speaker 1: Don Fortune acted like it was the worst thing in
Speaker 1: the world. And how dare The Kansas City Star published
Speaker 1: this and he called me to have me on his
Speaker 1: no no, no, I was driving to the game. I
Speaker 1: take it back, and I'm listening to this guy on
Speaker 1: radio blast me and I can't believe the Star and
Speaker 1: published this, and so I called into the guy's radio
Speaker 1: show as he's land basting me, and we had a
Speaker 1: big on air argument. Uh uh yeah. And so that
Speaker 1: started a rivalry between me and the Don Fortune guy.
Speaker 1: And then that started some young people and younger people
Speaker 1: in Kansas City to say, man, we need a competing
Speaker 1: radio station to this Don Fortune. And a guy named
Speaker 1: Chad Bolger and Kevin Keatsman, I would say, within a
Speaker 1: year or two launched some little small signal competition to
Speaker 1: this Don Fortune fifth I think it's called a m
Speaker 1: and they started doing an afternoon show to compete against
Speaker 1: Don Fortune, and that I think the next move was
Speaker 1: high me to do a morning show on that station,
Speaker 1: and so we ended up building this fifteen ten into
Speaker 1: a competition for this Don Fortune who worked for Intercom,
Speaker 1: the national syndicate Intercom Radio that's all over the country.
Speaker 1: We started competing against them, and then that turned into
Speaker 1: another station that they acquired, and Kansas City ended up
Speaker 1: being a city that had two competing radio stations, and
Speaker 1: I think eventually they fired the Don Fortune and basically
Speaker 1: and then hired me to go over and compete against
Speaker 1: the station that I had helped create. Uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was a part of the launch of sports talk
Speaker 1: radio in Kansas City. Hopped in it with both feet.
Speaker 1: Continue to write my column do the Radio Deal? How
Speaker 1: how many hours were you on a day on radio?
Speaker 1: When you started? You said you were on in the morning.
Speaker 1: Were you on every day? Yeah, Monday through Friday. It
Speaker 1: was a three hour radio show, six to nine to
Speaker 1: ten or six six to nine him. Were you hosting
Speaker 1: it by yourself? Initially started off doing it with a
Speaker 1: guy named Chad Boger, the guy who helped lost the station,
Speaker 1: and then eventually it turned into Jason Whitlocks neighborhood and
Speaker 1: I hosted it myself. Fox Sports Radio has the best
Speaker 1: sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our
Speaker 1: shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live.
Speaker 1: The Wins and Losses podcast with Clay Travis continues with
Speaker 1: special guest Jason Whitlock. Al Right, so you've never done
Speaker 1: any radio you know that that I'm aware of, at
Speaker 1: least other than being a guest. How much different was
Speaker 1: doing radio? Did it help your column? Hurt it? What
Speaker 1: did you find as you expanded into a new medium? Uh?
Speaker 1: Help her? Hurt my cow them? I think to be
Speaker 1: a thousand for said artists. The only thing I could
Speaker 1: say is that it would hurt my column because again,
Speaker 1: at six to nine in the morning when I started out,
Speaker 1: and I'm still going to sporting events that ended night
Speaker 1: and waking up and so it's just a lot of work. Uh.
Speaker 1: But it did help elevate my profile. People freaking love
Speaker 1: reading my column in the morning and then tune it
Speaker 1: in my radio station the radio show to tell me
Speaker 1: what they thought of my column. And so I think
Speaker 1: it overall helped me and you know, the Jason Whitlock brand, overall,
Speaker 1: I think it was good for that. Uh. But you know,
Speaker 1: and again I did talk radio in Kansas City. I
Speaker 1: think for eight years, and I eventually got out because
Speaker 1: I and I moved to afternoons with was better for
Speaker 1: my life. But I eventually decided that it hurts my
Speaker 1: number one passion and that was sports writing, and I
Speaker 1: felt like if I doubted back and just focus more.
Speaker 1: And you gotta remember, by this time, I think I'm
Speaker 1: writing a column for ESPN dot com, I'm appearing on
Speaker 1: the Sports Reporters, and I just think that local radio, Uh,
Speaker 1: for the amount of money they were paying me, they
Speaker 1: were paying me relatively well. But I just felt like
Speaker 1: if I focused on the writing, I would eventually make
Speaker 1: back up the money. So again, the rise continues to
Speaker 1: be pretty pretty astounding. Um, when did you go on
Speaker 1: television for the first time? So you're good at right?
Speaker 1: First of all, let me just say this. It's rare
Speaker 1: that people who are good at writing are also good
Speaker 1: at radio. And it's rarer still that people who are
Speaker 1: good at writing and good at radio are also good
Speaker 1: at TV. You're good at all three, but you don't
Speaker 1: really know if you're any good at TV until you
Speaker 1: get to do it. When did you start to do television?
Speaker 1: How did you get your first opportunity? I think my
Speaker 1: first opportunity came right there locally in Kansas City. I
Speaker 1: can't remember the year, but the ABC affiliate had me
Speaker 1: come on and do sixty ninety second commentaries. Uh, in
Speaker 1: their sportscast. Why did you write it and then tape it? Like?
Speaker 1: Did you get that? Howe written? I would write it,
Speaker 1: then we tape it, then it would air later that day.
Speaker 1: Did it once a week, Uh, And wasn't very good
Speaker 1: at it, just to be quite honest. Starting out, I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I couldn't master it. But again it was a training ground.
Speaker 1: So I probably did it for a year the station,
Speaker 1: and then I became a bit inconsistent because again I
Speaker 1: was doing radio at the time. I was doing my
Speaker 1: Kndasee Star. I was doing this writing for ESPN dot com,
Speaker 1: and I was appearing on the Sports Reporters, and my
Speaker 1: delivery of it for the local station became inconsistent and
Speaker 1: we just decided to end it. But it did doing that.
Speaker 1: I did that probably for about ten months, right before
Speaker 1: I started appearing on the Sports reporters in two thousands.
Speaker 1: How did you get the invite to do the sports reporters? Uh?
Speaker 1: Jeremy Schap, Dick Shap's son, was a fan of my
Speaker 1: column in Kansas City and told his dad that, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys should have Jason Whitlock on the sports reporters
Speaker 1: UH and so that, and you know, Mike Luprica. I
Speaker 1: think if I didn't say this, will will be upset
Speaker 1: because he likes to take credit. He like to say
Speaker 1: he was the person that UH invited me to come
Speaker 1: on to sports reporters. And I'm sure he had something
Speaker 1: to do and he had to approve everything UH into
Speaker 1: in some capacity because he had that kind of relationship
Speaker 1: with the producer Joe Valerio. But it was Jeremy Shapp
Speaker 1: telling his dad that I would be a good fit
Speaker 1: on the sports reporters for people who aren't familiar. And
Speaker 1: I think there will be a lot of people listening
Speaker 1: right now with the sports reporters. What was it? Why
Speaker 1: was that significant? Well, the sports reporters at that time,
Speaker 1: UH was the premier thing a sportswriter could do. It
Speaker 1: Only the best of the very best got to be
Speaker 1: on the sports reporters at that time. There there weren't
Speaker 1: all these There was no part in the interruption, There
Speaker 1: was no first take, there was no undisputed there was nothing.
Speaker 1: There was the Sports Reporters and Mike Luprica was on it,
Speaker 1: Bob Ryan was on that, Mitch Album was on it. Uh,
Speaker 1: you had Tony corn Hiser, Mike Wilbon. It was the
Speaker 1: place for the premier sports journalists in America to talk
Speaker 1: on TV about sports. If you got invited onto the
Speaker 1: Sports Reporters, that was that was a signal like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this guy is one of the best sports
Speaker 1: writers in the country. And for me in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: or in two thousand, I think I'm thirty years old
Speaker 1: at the time, or uh is everyone around thirty two,
Speaker 1: thirty three years old at the time, And to get
Speaker 1: invited to particularly be from in the city, because everybody
Speaker 1: on that show was from the East Coast basically except
Speaker 1: for Mitch Album, who was at the Detroit Free Press.
Speaker 1: And so for them to get someone from the Midwest
Speaker 1: to come on that show, uh that was a Mitch album.
Speaker 1: It was just a very big deal. Uh Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: You know, when I started out, I was good. Five
Speaker 1: years later I was great. I was. To be honest,
Speaker 1: I was actually too good. And that's what got me
Speaker 1: a cross ways with uh Mike Lupaca and basically got
Speaker 1: me run off the show. It's you know, Mike Luprica
Speaker 1: is the star of that show, or was the star
Speaker 1: of that show, and you know he Mike disagreed with
Speaker 1: my narrative on steroids, and because you know, they wanted
Speaker 1: to demonize Barry. Mike wanted to demonize Barry Bonds as
Speaker 1: if he was the only athlete in the world on
Speaker 1: steroids and if we just routed him out, you know.
Speaker 1: And my narrative was like, no, no, no, no, you
Speaker 1: guys are missed freeding this. If there's money involved, all
Speaker 1: these guys will use steroids. Then it ain't just very
Speaker 1: violnes it's pervasive. And as things started playing out as
Speaker 1: what was the cyclist landing Donovan, No, no, that Lansam
Speaker 1: from the other guys before him, the side before Lance
Speaker 1: Armstrong got busted, there was another guy that got busted.
Speaker 1: I don't even remember that guy. Yeah, even if I'm gonna,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna look it up at as we talked, but
Speaker 1: he got busted. Then it just started becoming all these
Speaker 1: different athletes and other sports and it became crystal clear
Speaker 1: like my narrative was right. That irritated Lupaca and uh,
Speaker 1: we had a big confrontation on my final episode of
Speaker 1: of of the Sports Reporters and this is on air
Speaker 1: your confrontation, and Joe Valerio told me to go f myself.
Speaker 1: Was it on air, the conversation, the blow up, Yes,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, it was everything. It was. It was steroid
Speaker 1: related and Mike said something about, well, it's all just
Speaker 1: the w W E or whatever, and then and I
Speaker 1: was like, hey, man, I said something about, you know,
Speaker 1: the E and ESPN stands for entertainment and so at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, that's all this is. It's
Speaker 1: and again it's it's my narrative hasn't changed. And you know,
Speaker 1: I keep saying on speak for yourself, it's all just
Speaker 1: a television show, and I go, that's what money has
Speaker 1: done to all of these sports, and you're applying all
Speaker 1: of this integrity and all this other thing. It's just
Speaker 1: a television show. But yeah, we had a pretty It
Speaker 1: was a great conversation, to be honest, and it was
Speaker 1: fascinating TV. And I remember the Pete, Jim Cohen and
Speaker 1: other people with ESPN like man, that was one of
Speaker 1: the greatest moments on The Sports Reporters. That was great TV.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, I agree with you, I go,
Speaker 1: but that ain't the way Mike Lubrica and Joe Valerio
Speaker 1: see it. They're done with me. And you know I
Speaker 1: was right again, it just at that time it did
Speaker 1: not pay to uh disagree with Mike Lubrica on TV,
Speaker 1: so they tell you to go fund yourself. Do you
Speaker 1: have any relationship with them at all? Now? No? Uh,
Speaker 1: since that conversation thirteen or fifteen or whatever it was
Speaker 1: years ago, you guys basically just ended your relationship. Yes,
Speaker 1: I've I've certainly. You know, I reached out to Joe
Speaker 1: Valerio at the time and he was all upset and
Speaker 1: never you know, hadn't spoken to me since, and uh,
Speaker 1: Lubrica made it quite clear that you know, I was disloyal.
Speaker 1: And look, I don't want a bad Mountain Mike lub
Speaker 1: because everybody knows what Mike is and what he's been
Speaker 1: and but but I do want to just be facts.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were times on that show. Anybody that's
Speaker 1: been on there could tell you, like, if Mike had
Speaker 1: a segment where he didn't look the best, he would
Speaker 1: just make you redo the segment because the show was taped.
Speaker 1: So I just didn't read all the bad signals in
Speaker 1: terms of and again I was deferential with Mike and
Speaker 1: all these guys that are older than me to a point,
Speaker 1: but I was not going to a being in my
Speaker 1: opinion that hey, look we're making a mistake trying to
Speaker 1: single Barry Bonds out here. This steroid thing goes well
Speaker 1: beyond Barry Bonds. And I just wouldn't back off that point.
Speaker 1: Mike wanted me to. He wanted that to be the
Speaker 1: point of view of the show. And you know that
Speaker 1: cost me my spot on the Sports Reporters And that
Speaker 1: would have been what what year, roughly two thousand five
Speaker 1: over six And that show was once a week on
Speaker 1: a Sunday. Is that right? Once a week on a Sundays.
Speaker 1: And then so it gets uh, you're off television then,
Speaker 1: and you're off radio, I'm assuming by this point too.
Speaker 1: So you just plug yourself back in full time to
Speaker 1: the newspaper writing business in the newspaper. Uh. At that time,
Speaker 1: I'm still doing ESPN dot com. But shortly after my
Speaker 1: blow up with Mike and and those guys is when
Speaker 1: I did the interview with the Big lead that ended
Speaker 1: my initial relationship with ESPN dot com. I'm writing for
Speaker 1: page two and how did you page two? A guy
Speaker 1: named Meal Scarborough was the editor of ESPN dot com
Speaker 1: at that time, and he hired me, uh to write
Speaker 1: for page two. I would say in N. I can't
Speaker 1: remember the exact day, but that's a huge collection of
Speaker 1: talent they have at the time, right because they got
Speaker 1: Hunter S. Thompson, They've got to I mean they had
Speaker 1: a wiley. Yeah. That was that was And that was
Speaker 1: me recognizing that the Internet was going to be a factor.
Speaker 1: Do you remember a time when you recognize suddenly, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, the Internet is gonna matter? Was there, Aha,
Speaker 1: crystal ball moment for you? Not really, I just knew
Speaker 1: that I saw very all men, this pays two things.
Speaker 1: It's kind of cool and if you want to be
Speaker 1: a player, you need to be in that lane. And
Speaker 1: look at the freedom and the ability to talk about
Speaker 1: national issues and blah blah blah. And and already by
Speaker 1: newspaper by then was already doing what newspapers do that
Speaker 1: they just start fighting creativity and just want to be
Speaker 1: safer and safer and safer. And so I could already
Speaker 1: feel at my newspaper they had already I used to
Speaker 1: write these hilarious Sunday NFL Picks columns. It was just
Speaker 1: me making sarcastic jokes and did making a game prediction
Speaker 1: or whatever. And my newspaper took that away from me.
Speaker 1: And so I was like, Oh, if I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: creative and funny, I gotta find a venue for that.
Speaker 1: And that was page two. And so I just wanted
Speaker 1: to be over there just because I could get another
Speaker 1: side of my personality out. And so then you write
Speaker 1: do an interview with the big lead and I remember
Speaker 1: this vaguely. What did you say in that interview that
Speaker 1: was so controversial? I said that Mike Lubrica was a
Speaker 1: mean spirit of mean spirited busybody. And I said that
Speaker 1: Scoop Jackson was bo jangling for dollars or whatever. I
Speaker 1: was critical of Scoop Jackson, who was writing columns for
Speaker 1: ESPN at that time, and they, for lack of a
Speaker 1: better describe, they just worked very well written, they worked
Speaker 1: up to standards or whatever. And he was writing some
Speaker 1: provocative things about race that uh weren't very well thought
Speaker 1: out and it irritated me and I thought it was
Speaker 1: but need the ESPN and and uh, you know, did
Speaker 1: you know? What did you know? What the funt that
Speaker 1: it was? That an email interview? How did you write
Speaker 1: the like to get your It was an email interview
Speaker 1: was going to be provocative at the time, without question,
Speaker 1: and I knew that it was gonna cost me my
Speaker 1: opportunity to write an ESPN at the time. So you
Speaker 1: at that, Yeah, at that time, I was book ahead
Speaker 1: done what he had done to me at the Sports Reporters,
Speaker 1: and ESPN was leaning into the Scoop Jackson deal and
Speaker 1: I was irritated. And there's some really talented qualified uh
Speaker 1: African American journalists that they could have been leaning into
Speaker 1: and uh I was irritated and said what I said
Speaker 1: in the interview, and you know it is what it is.
Speaker 1: Was that the first so your your career from I
Speaker 1: think it was when you start working at the at
Speaker 1: the or nineteen nine nine, sorry the Bloomington News to
Speaker 1: all the way up to that interview with the Big Lead.
Speaker 1: Is basically like if you were charting it, it's like
Speaker 1: a stock. You just keep rising, right, everything is going
Speaker 1: really well. Was that the first time? The concept of
Speaker 1: this interview is wins in Law says, You've had a
Speaker 1: lot of wins at that point. Obviously, didn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: a lot in your athletic career at Ball State, but
Speaker 1: I mean in terms of your professional career, it's all wins.
Speaker 1: Was that the first time you really hit aggressive, you know,
Speaker 1: a situation where you could be described as losing a battle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I certainly lost that battle. Uh, But I'll say that
Speaker 1: it was a battle that I was willing to lose
Speaker 1: because I thought I really just wanted to lean back
Speaker 1: into being a journalist in two thousand and six, two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, and I felt that I was a bit
Speaker 1: stymied at e scre uh and there were other things
Speaker 1: going on politically at ESPN. And when I say politics,
Speaker 1: I don't mean politics, just office politics that we're going
Speaker 1: on that we're limiting me. Uh Neil Scarborough, who had
Speaker 1: hired me, there had been one out of his position.
Speaker 1: And so uh Neil is now by the way at
Speaker 1: Fox right for people who do and you work with
Speaker 1: him and see him on a regular basis at Fox, Yes,
Speaker 1: he had been one out of his position, and so
Speaker 1: there was nobody getting credit for my success. Therefore there
Speaker 1: was no one interested my success. And which is another good,
Speaker 1: by the way, business lesson for everybody out there listening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I needed to take this l and I
Speaker 1: needed to uh find a different avenue to express my
Speaker 1: creative activity and work with people that would get credit
Speaker 1: for my success. And so I had a dispute with
Speaker 1: ESPN about the worth of my column to page two
Speaker 1: because I was getting paid much at the time, I
Speaker 1: was doing it for the access to the platform. And
Speaker 1: so I just I made those decisions, did that of
Speaker 1: here with the big League, knowing that okay, things here
Speaker 1: with the espater over for now. And and I kneel
Speaker 1: at that time had gone over to a O. L
Speaker 1: Sports at that time, and I knew that he understood
Speaker 1: the value of my column because when he saw the clicks,
Speaker 1: he saw the engagement rate and all that other stuff.
Speaker 1: And so I would imagine, I don't remember exactly, but
Speaker 1: he I think he paid me about ten times more
Speaker 1: for my column than he SCN did uh at A O.
Speaker 1: L Sports And uh and so and this had that
Speaker 1: happened around two thousand and six, two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: because it was while I was with A O. L Sports,
Speaker 1: I wrote a column in the Kansas City Start with
Speaker 1: that don I miss Rutgers basketball thing happened and that's probably,
Speaker 1: uh the highlight of the peak of my writing career
Speaker 1: as a journalists. Uh you know that that column. Oprah
Speaker 1: Winfried liked that column where I talked about how uh
Speaker 1: black people needed to be more concerned with what we
Speaker 1: thought about each other, more so than don Imus, the
Speaker 1: guy that we don't really care about or know much about.
Speaker 1: Oprah like the column had me on her show talking
Speaker 1: about that issue for two days, and that column and
Speaker 1: some other ones were packaged together and I want to
Speaker 1: National Journalism Award for Commentary from Scripts Howard that was.
Speaker 1: That was in two thousand seven, and so that was
Speaker 1: the peak of my journalism career. All came within the
Speaker 1: year of me leaving ESP. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: remember this. We didn't know each other at that time,
Speaker 1: but I read that column. If you have, I don't
Speaker 1: even remember what your email address was. I think it
Speaker 1: is an A O L dot com email addressed back
Speaker 1: in the day, but I wrote you an email if
Speaker 1: you still have access to any of your archives before
Speaker 1: we had ever met, saying that I thought it was
Speaker 1: one of the best sports columns I'd ever read. And
Speaker 1: and I think I also said hey, and I enjoy
Speaker 1: I think you were guest hosting every now and then
Speaker 1: for p t I at that time. Yea, and I
Speaker 1: wrote saying I enjoyed when you set in for Krnheiser
Speaker 1: and Wilbon. And you wrote back and said thanks, but
Speaker 1: you probably don't even remember that. But that is before
Speaker 1: we ever had met. I had read that column and
Speaker 1: I'd said, wow, this is a really well done, well
Speaker 1: thought out column. So that's in two thousand seven. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you have now been writing for a long time as
Speaker 1: a daily columnist since and and I think this is
Speaker 1: interesting for people out there listening. At some point you
Speaker 1: kind of hinted at this. You want to get and
Speaker 1: be able to expand your writing universe. It's great to
Speaker 1: be in this same thing for doing local sports talk radio,
Speaker 1: but after a while you feel like you've said everything
Speaker 1: about a local sports market, or at least I did,
Speaker 1: like you can only talk and I didn't local radio
Speaker 1: in Nashville. Eventually you get tired, I think of talking
Speaker 1: about who a certain team is going to take in
Speaker 1: the NFL Draft, which you do for two months on
Speaker 1: the radio, right, I mean, that's just kind of the
Speaker 1: natural outgrowth. So did you feel as if you know
Speaker 1: what I'm ready for a change. How did you come
Speaker 1: to leave Kansas City? No, I did not. I am
Speaker 1: a I love newspapers, yeah, and love feel like newspapers
Speaker 1: back then, and particularly in the nineties two thousand's during
Speaker 1: that time, I felt like it was patriotic to work
Speaker 1: for a newspaper, and I thought it was a contribution
Speaker 1: to the good of the country. And so I and again,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be Mike Royko, who was the voice
Speaker 1: of Chicago for thirty years, and that's what I wanted
Speaker 1: to be in Kansas City. What it ended up happening
Speaker 1: over the next three years from two thousand seven to
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten, is that newspapers just started swinging
Speaker 1: in a direction that didn't feel like what I got
Speaker 1: in it for. And you know, newspapers and particularly the
Speaker 1: Star at that time, we're so concerned about these awards
Speaker 1: and these annual A. P. S. C. Awards and all
Speaker 1: this other stuff, and just didn't seem prepared to transition
Speaker 1: into this new world that we're living in where the
Speaker 1: Internet is king. And I suggested a bunch of ideas
Speaker 1: uh to the Kansas City Star about how we could
Speaker 1: pivot and what we could do on the Internet, and
Speaker 1: they just weren't interested in them, and that made me
Speaker 1: reached the conclusion that there was no future for me
Speaker 1: in newspapers. And that was again. That was a two
Speaker 1: or three year process that ended in two thousand and
Speaker 1: ten when I left the Kansas City Star moved here
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles to work full time for Fox Sports
Speaker 1: dot Com. What'd your mom say when you left Kansas City?
Speaker 1: I think she was disappointed and concerned. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: and keep in mind, by this she had moved back
Speaker 1: to Indianapolis. Wasn't in Kansas City when I was during
Speaker 1: my career, she was back in but she still she
Speaker 1: would come out for events like yeah, for like when
Speaker 1: you had the parties at the end of the year
Speaker 1: and things like that. She loved my life in Kansas City.
Speaker 1: Concerned about me moving to Los Angeles, but uh, you
Speaker 1: know understood, You know that that she understood. I think
Speaker 1: she was concerned. Though. What was the reaction when you
Speaker 1: told him you were leave in the Kansas City Star? Uh? Uh, Well.
Speaker 1: I did a three hour radio television simulcast called The Explanation,
Speaker 1: Explaining My decisions James of you, Yes, explaining my decision
Speaker 1: to leave and Uh, the reaction was, you know, pretty controversial,
Speaker 1: while because of that three hour explanation was pretty controversial.
Speaker 1: While but you know, I think I think the candidacy
Speaker 1: star was ready for me to go in in terms
Speaker 1: of I don't think my point of view at that
Speaker 1: time fit where newspapers were headed. My point of view
Speaker 1: is very independent and outspoken, and American newspapers aren't very
Speaker 1: independent thinking anymore. And I just I just didn't sit.
Speaker 1: Be sure to catch live editions about Kicked the coverage
Speaker 1: with Clay Travis weekdays at six am Eastern three am
Speaker 1: Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: This is Wins and Losses with Clay Trevis. Here's more
Speaker 1: from his conversation with Jason Whitlock. Al Right, so I
Speaker 1: want to ask you this question. We focused almost entirely
Speaker 1: on your professional life so far. You've never been married.
Speaker 1: Did you date, did you have serious girlfriends? Did you
Speaker 1: ever get engaged? Did you ever think like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: ready for a domestic life or were you so committed
Speaker 1: to work and obviously you are working almost full time
Speaker 1: for many of these jobs that you just didn't never
Speaker 1: have any time for that. What was your life like
Speaker 1: in the limited amounts of time that you were not
Speaker 1: spending working. I certainly dated. Uh, I was briefly engaged
Speaker 1: in Kansas City. Uh maybe two weeks? Two weeks did
Speaker 1: get the whole? Uh? Did she call it off? Or
Speaker 1: did you call it off? No? I called it off.
Speaker 1: It was it was a horrible decision. Somebody my family
Speaker 1: and friends liked a lot more than I did, and
Speaker 1: I got talked into it more than I wanted to
Speaker 1: do it. Uh it you know, me and the woman
Speaker 1: probably dated backup forth for ten years. Was a long time,
Speaker 1: and so but you know, it was a bad relationship.
Speaker 1: I should you know, I made some awful decisions relationship
Speaker 1: wise that have haunted me. Uh you know, and because
Speaker 1: who knows. I doubt you'll ever hear this, but who knows?
Speaker 1: But I I missed out on the two women I
Speaker 1: should have married because I was you know, on again
Speaker 1: off her a game relationship with this particular person and
Speaker 1: could never get all in on the two women that
Speaker 1: uh I met in Kansas City that I probably one
Speaker 1: of them I definitely should have married, uh and the
Speaker 1: other one I think I should have but uh, it
Speaker 1: just in Kansas City. Yeah, I certainly had a long
Speaker 1: term relationship that uh wasn't wasn't the healthiest. It's fun, uh,
Speaker 1: but wasn't the healthiest and just wasn't the right fit
Speaker 1: for me. Mom pressure you to get married, she used to, Uh,
Speaker 1: but you know doesn't now. Uh, it's it doesn't now.
Speaker 1: I it's kind I did not realize you're gonna ask
Speaker 1: me to as you and so literally I just had
Speaker 1: a five year relationship just just end over the past week. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so you're you're you're you're catching me at a
Speaker 1: at a at a different time. But my philosophy on
Speaker 1: relationships has it I don't I think been the healthiest.
Speaker 1: I think if I really did an analysis on why
Speaker 1: I didn't consummate or didn't go full steam on the
Speaker 1: two relationships that probably would have ended in marriage. Is
Speaker 1: just I'm so committed to this career that, uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I I don't know if I'm the
Speaker 1: best relationship partner, um for for someone who's right for me.
Speaker 1: And so uh it's something to get you catch me
Speaker 1: on a weekend. What I've been doing a lot of
Speaker 1: introspection and a lot of uh trying to figure out
Speaker 1: why I keep doing the same things over and over again,
Speaker 1: and how I'm not gonna do it again. And there
Speaker 1: are better decisions I want to make. So I just
Speaker 1: my career has been and and an obstacle for me
Speaker 1: relationship wise and my decision making, because I mean, when
Speaker 1: you think you said you wanted to be Mike Royko,
Speaker 1: you've done it. Did you ever think I want to
Speaker 1: get married and have kids? Do you still think at
Speaker 1: some point I'd like to get married and have kids.
Speaker 1: I certainly thought I would have kids by this time. Uh.
Speaker 1: I certainly wanted to have kids, but I think at
Speaker 1: my age now, I'm not sure if that would be
Speaker 1: right for the kids. Uh. And so yeah, I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, if this podcast as wins and lawsuits in
Speaker 1: order for me to win career wise, I think I
Speaker 1: have sacrificing things personally. And you know, I wish that
Speaker 1: I had better balance, and I've been trying to have
Speaker 1: better balance unsuccessfully, uh for the last few years. All right,
Speaker 1: let's go, Um to l A. You moved to l A.
Speaker 1: You start writing at Fox sports dot Com two thousand,
Speaker 1: two thousand ten. Sorry, how did that go? It went
Speaker 1: very well? Um. I work with a guy, uh, Steve
Speaker 1: Miller and Ed Brunnle and two thousand and ten and
Speaker 1: they let me just run wild. David Hill was in
Speaker 1: charge of Fox at the time, and Uh, if you
Speaker 1: know anything about David Hill, he loves to push the envelope.
Speaker 1: And so I was on Fox Sports dot Com pushing
Speaker 1: the envelope in every direction it could be pushed. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it was phenomenal. I you know, I think if
Speaker 1: you look from two thousand and ten to two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: I think I did my best work as a sports columnist.
Speaker 1: Uh it was you know. And again, the stuff I
Speaker 1: did in Kansas City, I think was phenomenal. And you know,
Speaker 1: it was good enough to win me national awards and
Speaker 1: give me on Oprah Winfrey. But in terms of getting
Speaker 1: my full personality on the play, you know, Steve Miller
Speaker 1: and Ed Bottle and the people running Fox Sports at
Speaker 1: dot com at that time, they got the best of
Speaker 1: me for three years. Then ESPN Fox is getting ready
Speaker 1: to launch a new uh, a new network FS one
Speaker 1: Fox Sports one. ESPN and John Skipper decide We're not
Speaker 1: going to allow Fox to get good talent. We're going
Speaker 1: to compete for everybody. And they decide, even though you
Speaker 1: kind of left in not the best terms for me
Speaker 1: ESPN based on that big lead interview. How does that
Speaker 1: process work that they end up bringing you back? Yeah,
Speaker 1: John Skipper wanted to launch The Undefeated or or we
Speaker 1: didn't know it was The Undefeated at that time, but
Speaker 1: wanted to do a vanity website for African American generalists.
Speaker 1: And I think he accurately said, well, I think the
Speaker 1: Black Sports Journal was going to do it, and he
Speaker 1: identified me to do it. Uh, And then I think
Speaker 1: and so he offered me the job in two thousand
Speaker 1: and thirteen. And again, if you understand FS one is
Speaker 1: starting their television network, they don't have at that time
Speaker 1: a full vision for me and what I would do
Speaker 1: at that time. And John Skipper at that time had
Speaker 1: a full vision of what he wanted me to do
Speaker 1: and accomplished and it it played to my strength at
Speaker 1: the time, which is sports writing and writing and starting
Speaker 1: that website. And so I moved back over to ESPN
Speaker 1: to help them formulate and launch, uh, The Undefeated, not
Speaker 1: knowing that I was stepping into a political ship. Store
Speaker 1: all right, So this is like up to that point, Um,
Speaker 1: I think maybe you sent the Jeremy Lynn tweet at
Speaker 1: some point while you were was that When did that happen?
Speaker 1: That was? That? Was that Fox? When I was at
Speaker 1: Fox sports dot Com probably in two thousand nine or
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, two thousand eleven, twelve, somewhere around there. Is
Speaker 1: that up to that point the most controversial thing you
Speaker 1: had found yourself in the middle of. No, the don
Speaker 1: Imus thing was the most constiut But you didn't you didn't.
Speaker 1: You didn't cause the don You just had an opinion
Speaker 1: on the don iMOS thing. Yeah, but it was a
Speaker 1: very controversial opinion that literally, if you really look at
Speaker 1: my ski at my career, uh, that don Imus column
Speaker 1: is the one that marked me as a target of
Speaker 1: the left. But in two thousand seven and they, you know,
Speaker 1: come back came back to haught me in two thousand
Speaker 1: and thirteen. But yeah, the Jeremy Lynn thing was controversial
Speaker 1: and certainly a mistake on my part. All Right, So
Speaker 1: I want to circle back around to the Oprah thing,
Speaker 1: Like you go on Oprah. Oprah and now has become
Speaker 1: super woke, right, but she is a you know, at
Speaker 1: the absolute apex of her powers at the time that
Speaker 1: she has you on to talk about the don Imus controversy,
Speaker 1: and she was in agreeance right with very much of
Speaker 1: the tone of your column. If I remember correctly, then
Speaker 1: am I am I thinking about that wrong? Yeah? Oprah
Speaker 1: basically had me on to represent and again this is
Speaker 1: not what she told me, but it was clear by
Speaker 1: what she did she had me wanted to represent her
Speaker 1: point of view. Again, it's it's one of those the
Speaker 1: Oprah in her spot, she let off signals for years
Speaker 1: that that was her point of view, but to argue
Speaker 1: it in full, in detail, she couldn't do it and
Speaker 1: keep her job and to stay non polarizing, and so
Speaker 1: uh with that Imus thinging hit, it was like, Okay, Whitlock,
Speaker 1: we're representing my point of view and he'll argue my
Speaker 1: my side of it. And I probably I contend she
Speaker 1: still feels the same way. I don't think she's changed
Speaker 1: on that. I do think corporate America and you know,
Speaker 1: what they're willing to support has possibly made Oprah appear
Speaker 1: more woke than what she asked what she actually is.
Speaker 1: Let me say this too, because I bet there's some
Speaker 1: people out there who are listening to us that are young,
Speaker 1: because I forget how old we've become now, who don't
Speaker 1: know anything about the don Imus controversy. So I just
Speaker 1: pulled up on Wikipedia and I'm reading off of this.
Speaker 1: On April four, two thousand seven, during a discussion about
Speaker 1: the n C Double A Women's basketball Championship, I must
Speaker 1: characterize the Rutgers University women's basketball team players as quote
Speaker 1: rough girls commenting on their tattoos. Again, this is Wikipedia
Speaker 1: that I'm reading from. His executive producer responded by referring
Speaker 1: to them as quote hardcore hose. The discussion continued with
Speaker 1: I must describing the women as nappy headed hose. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so that was an immediate outrage, right like um
Speaker 1: and and so that just kind of blew up into
Speaker 1: a massive for people out there who eleven years, twelve
Speaker 1: years after this maybe weren't aware of that story or
Speaker 1: don't even really remember that much about Imus. This turned
Speaker 1: into a huge cultural flashpoint. Yes, and my opinion was
Speaker 1: that he, look, din Imus is an idiot. What he
Speaker 1: said is stupid, but he has no relevance or traction
Speaker 1: in our community, the African Americans community. Most people will
Speaker 1: need to explain to them who died Imus is. And
Speaker 1: I was like, what we need to be concerned about
Speaker 1: is how we feel about each other. And I go.
Speaker 1: You can turn on any rap song and here far
Speaker 1: worse said about African American women than anything don Imus
Speaker 1: just said. That was my opinion, man, is still my
Speaker 1: opinion now, and that was a very controversial view that
Speaker 1: in my view, Oprah agreed with and had me on
Speaker 1: the show to talk about. But you think that opinion,
Speaker 1: which is again the Jeremy Lynn thing, you made a joke.
Speaker 1: It's on Twitter like and you know that can blow up,
Speaker 1: as these Twitter controversies do, but you think that it
Speaker 1: was more than don Imus opinion that really kind of
Speaker 1: put you in the for lack of a better term,
Speaker 1: like in the purview or the target range of left
Speaker 1: wing people in America question and put me in the
Speaker 1: crosshairs of the left wing because I'm someone if you
Speaker 1: look at the national journalism wars I've wanted, if you
Speaker 1: look at again being on the sports reporters out of
Speaker 1: the Midwest and what that conveys at that time, the Clay,
Speaker 1: It's a very short list if there are any any
Speaker 1: sports writers who were ever on the Oprah Winfrey show.
Speaker 1: Maybe Mitch Album promoting one of his Tusie with Marie
Speaker 1: type books. But Oprah Winfrey during her Heyday didn't have
Speaker 1: sportswriters on her show, and so I was being raised
Speaker 1: to a level of importance and had a message that
Speaker 1: the left just doesn't want black people to hear, and
Speaker 1: so something had to be done about it and done
Speaker 1: about me. And so I want to go back to
Speaker 1: Oprah for a minute, because I do think that a
Speaker 1: lot of people are gonna be curious on this. Going
Speaker 1: on Oprah at the time that you went on Oprah
Speaker 1: was like being crowned by you know, like the king
Speaker 1: or Queen of England, right, like being night and you
Speaker 1: were you. I mean, that was like bestowing up on
Speaker 1: you the ultimate and cultural relevance. And you had a
Speaker 1: really good performance on Oprah, right, It wasn't like you
Speaker 1: were Tom Cruise climbing on the couch like losing your mind.
Speaker 1: Like you made a cogent case. It was well received
Speaker 1: and like you said, your profile skyrocketed as a result
Speaker 1: of that. Were you aware of how big that was
Speaker 1: gonna be when you were doing it and and what
Speaker 1: was it like to come out of that Oprah interview
Speaker 1: and suddenly have basically at the time, every woman on
Speaker 1: the planet was watching Oprah Winfrey, right, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: you it was impossible to have almost more of a
Speaker 1: cultural impact on a talk show. Yeah, I knew it
Speaker 1: was a big deal. I was naive about, uh, the ramifications.
Speaker 1: I knew it was a big deal. I was very
Speaker 1: naive about the level of animus that would be directed
Speaker 1: by way out of just pure envy, spite, and fear.
Speaker 1: So you come out, So you go to ESPN. It's
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen. Now you're developing a new website that's
Speaker 1: going to be called The Undefeated, and this it is
Speaker 1: very fascinating. Now you definitely became a target of the
Speaker 1: website dead Spin, which it seems to me decided that
Speaker 1: they wanted to destroy you. I don't, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't think that that's an exaggeration. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: much like later hul Cogan would file a lawsuit against
Speaker 1: Gawker over you know, the publication of their of the
Speaker 1: tape involving Hulk Cogan, it seems to me that the
Speaker 1: people running dead Spin at the time decided, I want
Speaker 1: to destroy Jason Whitlock. I think that was a conscious decision. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that, Uh, they were paid to do just that. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you are the subject now, I don't know how
Speaker 1: many different articles they started to write at dead Spin
Speaker 1: and this for people now who again, it's twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: and we're doing this. You may be listening to this
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five for all I know, because the
Speaker 1: goal with this Wins and Losses podcast is that people
Speaker 1: can listen to this for years and and glean whatever
Speaker 1: lessons or interesting stories might come from it. Dead Spend
Speaker 1: at the time was a very powerful website. Right. This
Speaker 1: is in the wake of their Leni Kakua uh you know,
Speaker 1: sort of coup want probably the biggest uh story by
Speaker 1: far that they ever did. Um. They are a cultural force,
Speaker 1: certainly in the world of sports media, and they trained
Speaker 1: their train their attention onto you as you were going
Speaker 1: through the process of developing this new website for ESPN. Yes,
Speaker 1: they took uh a writer, the Greg Howard guy, who,
Speaker 1: by the way, he has disappeared. Where is Greg Howard? Now?
Speaker 1: Do we know? No, we don't know. Un't. But you
Speaker 1: were at the process, for people who don't know, on
Speaker 1: the Undefeated, you were in the process of recruiting a
Speaker 1: lot of writers to be on this new website. It
Speaker 1: was gonna be similar somewhat to Bill Simmons the Ringer, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, or whatever it was called at the time,
Speaker 1: Grant Lyn Yeah. Um. And so you're out there recruiting,
Speaker 1: trying to find people that you think have the ability
Speaker 1: to write at a high level, uh for this uh,
Speaker 1: this particular website, the The Undefeated, and as part of that,
Speaker 1: you come into contact, obviously with a lot of guys.
Speaker 1: Because I want to say this for people out there listening.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people who put on a big
Speaker 1: show about trying to provide opportunities to young people. And
Speaker 1: you kind of hinted at it a little bit talking
Speaker 1: about your relationship with kids from your high school and
Speaker 1: kids from your college at Ball State, but you actually
Speaker 1: walk the walk like you have surrounded your show now
Speaker 1: uh sports speak for yourself with a lot of young,
Speaker 1: smart kids who, let's be honest, probably would not have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to work on a show like yours without
Speaker 1: your advocating for them. Right. So, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people who talk the talk in the world and
Speaker 1: don't actually follow through it. You have lifted up a
Speaker 1: lot of people over your career and continue to do
Speaker 1: it right now who maybe wouldn't have gotten opportunities without
Speaker 1: your advocacy absolutely, uh. And you also, by the way,
Speaker 1: let me say this, you don't get attention for it
Speaker 1: in the same way that other people who do less
Speaker 1: do I and you don't have to to preach for
Speaker 1: yourself here. But for people out there listening, Uh, this
Speaker 1: is not a great secret internally in the world. But
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who are the wocust
Speaker 1: on Twitter that don't do a lot of work for
Speaker 1: people who might be able to benefit by their quote
Speaker 1: unquote wokenus right, And that's just I mean again, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who talk one way and walk another.
Speaker 1: So you actually follow through on the ability to try
Speaker 1: to lift other people up. Probably and you can speak
Speaker 1: this better than I can, because you feel like there
Speaker 1: weren't a lot of people to lift you up when
Speaker 1: you were necessarily twenty three years old in this industry. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest, there were people who lifted me
Speaker 1: up and who supported me, including you know, Ralph Wilde
Speaker 1: was a good friend of mine. And that is probably
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I bend over backwards, uh,
Speaker 1: trying to help others and and so it's just part
Speaker 1: of my core life philosophy that you know, if you
Speaker 1: if you create a platform or you have success, that
Speaker 1: it's incumbent upon you too. You know, use your power
Speaker 1: in your platform to provide the opportunities for others, uh,
Speaker 1: to elevate themselves and to take advantage of the opportunities
Speaker 1: provided them. And so again, Darnie L. Smith, the kid
Speaker 1: from my high school, uh, you know, has a role
Speaker 1: on my show, and that we got a kid named
Speaker 1: Jay Hawk. I know him as Jay Hawk Mark. His
Speaker 1: real name is Mark Donald's, but I call him jay
Speaker 1: Hawk Mark because when I was in Kansas City and
Speaker 1: had my own radio show, there was a thirteen year
Speaker 1: old kid named Jay Hawk Mark that used to call
Speaker 1: my radio show every day and some little black kid
Speaker 1: and you know, idolized me. Well, now he's seven years old,
Speaker 1: and you know he works for my show out here
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. Uh. And so I just think that
Speaker 1: that's important to provide young people, particularly if they show
Speaker 1: any initiative and good values, provide them an opportunity. Be
Speaker 1: sure to catch live editions of would Kicked the Coverage
Speaker 1: with Clay Travis week days at six am Eastern three
Speaker 1: am Pacific. Clay Travis Dives Deep with Jason Whitlock on
Speaker 1: the Wins and Losses podcast, So we talked about wins
Speaker 1: and losses. You've had a ton of wins up to
Speaker 1: this point. Getting the opportunity for the biggest sports media
Speaker 1: company in the world to build a part of their
Speaker 1: website around your vision is maybe the biggest win of all.
Speaker 1: You had the one loss, but you've now canceled out
Speaker 1: because you got this endorsement. Uh and and obviously there
Speaker 1: are different wins and losses along the way, but now
Speaker 1: you become a target. And I don't know how many
Speaker 1: articles Deadspen was gonna write, but they had people secretly,
Speaker 1: you know, recording you, I think audio wise, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: this was like this was like you had the FBI
Speaker 1: and the c i A and the n s A
Speaker 1: all of a sudden out after you initially, did you
Speaker 1: just brush off the the impact of the coverage or
Speaker 1: when did you start to realize how pernicious it really
Speaker 1: was and maybe that this wasn't just some story, that
Speaker 1: the goal was really legitimately this website trying to destroy you. Now.
Speaker 1: I recognized early on what they were doing and what
Speaker 1: they were up to, but my survival plan was always
Speaker 1: the work that the work would see me through. I've
Speaker 1: always felt like that was my best and only defense
Speaker 1: is to produce great content. There's no other way to survive.
Speaker 1: And so I thought that if I just got to
Speaker 1: produce enough content that that with silence or nullify the critics,
Speaker 1: I actually think it it ended up working in reverse
Speaker 1: because you know, the the there was a lot of
Speaker 1: resistance internally, well beyond dead spend to my hire at ESPN,
Speaker 1: and just the point of view and what I represented
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be uh progressive enough for some people
Speaker 1: who think that the only pro black thing you can
Speaker 1: ever do is be progressive or liberal. I don't happen
Speaker 1: to believe that, and so I recognize that, you know,
Speaker 1: I needed this work. But actually, when we produced some
Speaker 1: great work, and I think if you look at we
Speaker 1: did a profile on Charles Barkley, Jesse Washington did it,
Speaker 1: and it was one of these stories that we were
Speaker 1: putting out there to let everybody know this is the
Speaker 1: level story we want to do and where we want
Speaker 1: to operate at. And that actually worked in reverse because
Speaker 1: that just made my critics double down even further, like
Speaker 1: holy shit, we gotta stop this guy. He's just edited
Speaker 1: helped formulate a story that is one of the most provocative,
Speaker 1: best things, well reported research thing that could ever be done,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't reach the right conclusions. And again people
Speaker 1: think I got an accused of being polemic, that I
Speaker 1: have some point of view that I'm dogmatic about and
Speaker 1: bah blah blah, which is untrue. I went into the
Speaker 1: Charles Barkley story as an editor with a completely different
Speaker 1: narrative about where this story was gonna land. I had
Speaker 1: told Jesse Washington that, yeah, I say, I think Barkley
Speaker 1: it's like he's going down to rush Limball Lane. He's
Speaker 1: just saying wild, crazy stuff to heighten his brand, and baba,
Speaker 1: that's what I thought told Jesse the story was gonna
Speaker 1: be about. But I told Jesse, We're gonna go wherever
Speaker 1: the reporting leads. And so once Jesse got into the
Speaker 1: reporting of it, the story led a completely different direction.
Speaker 1: That Barkley is actually just true to his upbringing in Alabama,
Speaker 1: and that he's actually like a modern day booker T Washington, uh,
Speaker 1: and he's reflecting of the culture from which he grew
Speaker 1: up in the church his grandma, his grandmother and mother
Speaker 1: had him in and blah blah, we explained Charles Barkley
Speaker 1: in a way that had never been done before, and
Speaker 1: it made perfect sense, and it was beautifully written and
Speaker 1: researched and blah blah blah, and people had a ship storm.
Speaker 1: John Skipper loved the story originally, and then he listened
Speaker 1: to all these idiot critics who talked him into, oh,
Speaker 1: the actually the story wasn't that good, and it was
Speaker 1: they screwed up the history, and they just all just
Speaker 1: went batshit crazy trying to beat down this story. And
Speaker 1: and so the actual quality and the high nature quality
Speaker 1: of what we did actually just made my critics double
Speaker 1: down and go after me even harder. And you know,
Speaker 1: eventually they went to even greater lens. As you said,
Speaker 1: was uh, you know that they part time secretary that
Speaker 1: I hired and getting hurd of tape things, and just
Speaker 1: it just it just got crazy. And it just became
Speaker 1: crystal clear that the political left was going to attack
Speaker 1: me and anybody who supported me at the SPN until
Speaker 1: they got rid of me at the STN. And and
Speaker 1: I don't blame John Skipper for giving up on me,
Speaker 1: because from his point of view and what he was
Speaker 1: dealing with internally there at the ESPN, it just did.
Speaker 1: It wasn't worth the sustained fight in his mind. I
Speaker 1: think it's a mistake. I think that the Undefeated is
Speaker 1: you know, was made impotent by my removal. Uh, and
Speaker 1: that you know, it's a site that publishes a lot
Speaker 1: of sidebar stories and doesn't do any real high impact things. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not. It doesn't meet the grand ideas and vision
Speaker 1: that you know, we originally had for it. But on
Speaker 1: the plus side, you know, there's thirty to fifty African
Speaker 1: American journalists that have jobs because the underfeat is there,
Speaker 1: and uh, that is a plus. But I just I
Speaker 1: wish that the site was far more ambitious than what
Speaker 1: it's being allowed to be. How much of your and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get back to Deadspin in a minute, but
Speaker 1: how much of your struggles came from suddenly being a manager?
Speaker 1: I don't think, and again I don't think those were
Speaker 1: my real struggles. It my my struggles, to be quite honestly,
Speaker 1: We're just there were people that just didn't want to
Speaker 1: do the site. And I'm talk about people that mattered
Speaker 1: within the ESPN, and they were out to get you
Speaker 1: from the moment you think that basically you were given
Speaker 1: this job. I didn't. I wasn't allowed to hire anybody
Speaker 1: for a year. I mean, I just that wasn't my choice.
Speaker 1: That wasn't from a lack of people wanting a job.
Speaker 1: That wasn't uh people weren't interested in working with and
Speaker 1: for me, that was I just wasn't allowed to period.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, I could sit here and and
Speaker 1: there is no first time manager of anything who doesn't
Speaker 1: make mistakes and who doesn't need help managing things. Uh,
Speaker 1: So I don't think I was remotely unusual in that aspect.
Speaker 1: The struggle was just like, for a year, you didn't
Speaker 1: allow me to hire anybody. We sat back and played
Speaker 1: the role of hey, dead Spin can say whatever the
Speaker 1: hell they want about you. Our strategies are gonna be
Speaker 1: don't respond and so and if you do respond, it's
Speaker 1: a sign that you're not the right person for the job.
Speaker 1: And so I was silent and then allowed other people
Speaker 1: to take control of a narrative about who that who
Speaker 1: I was, and they ran wild with it, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it was just just running out the clock
Speaker 1: until you had enough excuses, uh to fire me. And
Speaker 1: and they did, and the final piece from dead Spin
Speaker 1: came out on April two thousand and fifteen, which I
Speaker 1: believe is on your birthday. And then the dead Spin
Speaker 1: editor called it a head shot. He went on Twitter
Speaker 1: and called it a head shot. Look, yes, the whole
Speaker 1: thing with dead Spin was very personal for them. Uh.
Speaker 1: And again they had a job to do, destroy me
Speaker 1: and destroy my opportunity to run The Undefeated. And again,
Speaker 1: just if you understand my journalistic perspective, resume brand The
Speaker 1: Undefeated would be far different from what it is today
Speaker 1: if I were running it, and they were not going
Speaker 1: to allow that. There's a there's only one way the
Speaker 1: left wants African Americans to view their situation in America,
Speaker 1: and the only they want everything to be white people
Speaker 1: are in control of your lives and you must fix
Speaker 1: white people for you to have any success in life.
Speaker 1: That's not my view. No, no, and and again it
Speaker 1: goes all the way back to the beginning of my conversation.
Speaker 1: If you know my mother and father, they weren't sitting
Speaker 1: around going, well, let me fix white people and then
Speaker 1: I'm gonna fix my situation. That That's just never been
Speaker 1: their view. I'm gonna go out and get and do
Speaker 1: for me that time, going to fix my problems. When
Speaker 1: my father was on a job at Chrysler and he
Speaker 1: was reading the autobiographer Malcolm X, and the manager complained,
Speaker 1: how come you reading the autobiographer Malcolm X. My father
Speaker 1: made it up in his mind, Oh, anyone gonna tell
Speaker 1: me what book I can read. I'm going to start
Speaker 1: my own business so that no one ever again questions
Speaker 1: me about what I'm doing with my spare time. And
Speaker 1: so that's my mentality. That that's how I was raised.
Speaker 1: My father, it was like the thing you do in
Speaker 1: America is create your own little plot of happiness. And again,
Speaker 1: he liked being in an all black community. Uh built
Speaker 1: a brand new house in the black community, had his
Speaker 1: business in the black community, found contentment and happiness there.
Speaker 1: And again, does does that mean you put up with
Speaker 1: all sorts of abuse and unfairness in the world. Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: But running around doing stories about bs inconveniences, Oh, someone
Speaker 1: did a hand signal behind me at the Cubs game. Therefore,
Speaker 1: let me write two thousand words about it in the
Speaker 1: New York Times. Again, that's the kind of stuff that
Speaker 1: I would have no interest in publishing that the mainstream
Speaker 1: media has an interest in publishing. And I'm talking about
Speaker 1: Doug Glanville, and the PC just wrote in the New
Speaker 1: York Times, uh this week. Uh. That's the kind of
Speaker 1: journalism I don't believe in because I don't think it's
Speaker 1: representative of what poor people, poor Black people. Someone hold
Speaker 1: a little okay thumb hand signal when Doug Glanville is
Speaker 1: doing a TV shot. That's not the issue impacting poor
Speaker 1: black people. That's not the oppression they face. And so
Speaker 1: I don't want to spend any time. I'm certainly not
Speaker 1: giving up two thousand words for anybody to write about that.
Speaker 1: That's a Doug Glanville elitist problem. Someone did a hand
Speaker 1: signal behind Doug Glanville. That's not Black America's problem. And
Speaker 1: so I just I believe America is the land of opportunity.
Speaker 1: I believe America has sinned like every other country and
Speaker 1: every other human being is put on put on the planet.
Speaker 1: But I believe America is the land of opportunity. And
Speaker 1: you have an opportunity in America unlike most other countries
Speaker 1: across the globe. Two fix your problems and build yourself
Speaker 1: some happiness and opportunity in this country. And I want
Speaker 1: to be respectful of that and I just think too
Speaker 1: much of the mainstream media UH takes that opportunities we
Speaker 1: have here. For granted, UH has a very dumb down,
Speaker 1: UH illogical discussion about race, and I would have wanted
Speaker 1: no parts of that. And I think that's what, you know,
Speaker 1: eventually got me removed at The Undefeated. That's a loss.
Speaker 1: A when is where we started with? Which is you
Speaker 1: now have a show an hour and a half every
Speaker 1: day on FS one which debates and discusses these issues
Speaker 1: in a very intelligent fashion, probably for a bigger audience
Speaker 1: than you could have reached at The Undefeated. That show
Speaker 1: is called Speak for Yourself. You Marcellus Wiley and a
Speaker 1: host of regular guests, for ninety minutes every day try
Speaker 1: and advance the conversation. And people don't always agree with
Speaker 1: you on the show. In fact, some of the best
Speaker 1: parts of the show are when people disagree with you. Uh.
Speaker 1: What are you attempting with the show and what have
Speaker 1: you been able to achieve so far with the show? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm certainly trying to show that there is a conversation
Speaker 1: to be had that I think that people are yearning for,
Speaker 1: which is a more authentic, non PC conversation that is
Speaker 1: you know, and again, the decisions aren't based in race.
Speaker 1: But the reality is, I think that there is a
Speaker 1: conversation that black people have about sport. And again, our
Speaker 1: conversation is an exclusive to black people. But Marcel's and
Speaker 1: I certainly are black, Darnell's black, Offle Jimmy's black, a
Speaker 1: lot a lot of the guest athletes we have all
Speaker 1: our black. I'm trying to have the most authentic, real
Speaker 1: conversation you can have about a lot of these issues
Speaker 1: in sports that are fun, that are inclusive. But I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do it from a black point of view
Speaker 1: without being off put into the mainstream audience, because we
Speaker 1: certainly want the mainstream audience to watch us. Uh. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think I'm trying to do a television
Speaker 1: version of what I wanted to do at ESPN with
Speaker 1: The Undefeated, because I think it's a conversation everyone will
Speaker 1: be attracted to. Every One will feel like they're a
Speaker 1: part of. Uh. But you know, I'm trying to do it,
Speaker 1: I guess from a black point of view. I think
Speaker 1: we're you and I aligned, and we align in a
Speaker 1: lot of different places. Is in skepticism of there being
Speaker 1: a right idea and that if you don't have that
Speaker 1: right idea, you shouldn't be able to share it. Uh
Speaker 1: And that may be oversimplifying things a bit, but it
Speaker 1: seems that there is a predominant right idea that is
Speaker 1: allowed to be voiced in the world of sports, and
Speaker 1: that if you stray outside of those lines, there will
Speaker 1: be consequences for you in a way there aren't if
Speaker 1: you have the quote unquote right idea? Are things getting
Speaker 1: better or worse? First do you agree with that concept?
Speaker 1: And second do you think things are getting better or
Speaker 1: worse in terms of the fullness of conversation that is
Speaker 1: allowed as it pertains to sports. Uh and and and
Speaker 1: more of the of the issues in the country than
Speaker 1: just sports. I certainly think that social media, particularly Twitter,
Speaker 1: has demonized certain opinions that are unworthy of being demonized.
Speaker 1: Uh And I think I think that's impacted all of
Speaker 1: the mainstream media. And I think so many executives for
Speaker 1: a time lived in fear of Twitter and these gend
Speaker 1: up managed Twitter controversies, and I think that that has
Speaker 1: dumbed down and censored the American discourse. I think things
Speaker 1: are starting to get better. I think that when someone
Speaker 1: like Bob Iger uh ceo CEO of Disney for people
Speaker 1: who might not know who he is. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: he's critical of Twitter and social media and Silicon Ali
Speaker 1: and and saying that. I think he said that social
Speaker 1: media is a place that Hitler would find uh inviting
Speaker 1: or whatever or good or something like that. When things
Speaker 1: like that are happening, when people like Bob Iger are
Speaker 1: waking up to what social media has done to American discourse, Uh,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good sign. I think that we're
Speaker 1: about a year away, I think from the true breaking
Speaker 1: point where uh people feel completely liberated. Uh. You know.
Speaker 1: And so I think in our lane and the sports
Speaker 1: media lane, to see again, Bob Iger and e SDN
Speaker 1: figure this out. I think it's good for all of us.
Speaker 1: I think that Over at Fox, I think that Rupert
Speaker 1: Murdoch and Eric Shankson figured it out a long time ago. Uh.
Speaker 1: But you know, Fox Sports isn't doesn't have the sway
Speaker 1: of ESPN at the moment, although I think that's starting
Speaker 1: to change. Uh. And so yeah, I do think we're
Speaker 1: headed a better direction. Uh. Jason Whitlock on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Whitlock Jason, We've talked a long time today. Is there
Speaker 1: anything that I have not asked you that you wish
Speaker 1: that I had. You've asked me some things that I
Speaker 1: wish you had not. I think that I was not
Speaker 1: prepared to talk about relationships today. Uh So, but no,
Speaker 1: I I I think we've covered a lot. We did
Speaker 1: cover a lot the goal and I want to give
Speaker 1: you the last word here on the show. The goal
Speaker 1: of this show is to discuss wins and losses as
Speaker 1: people experience them in their career. You've had a lot
Speaker 1: of wins, You've also had a lot of losses. What
Speaker 1: have you learned more from? Uh? Probably the losses, you know.
Speaker 1: I think the experience in ESPR uh sharpen my focus
Speaker 1: and made me more resolute in who I've been raised
Speaker 1: to be and more I wouldn't because I've never been uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: but it just maybe even more comfortable that uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and confident about who I am and what my point
Speaker 1: of view is and what I believe in. And so
Speaker 1: it's it's probably been the losses that have helped me
Speaker 1: the most. Uh. But you know, it feels better to win,
Speaker 1: It's it feels better to be, you know, on a
Speaker 1: TV show that's starting to have some success and starting
Speaker 1: to cut through. Uh. That feels a lot better than
Speaker 1: laying in bed wondering why the world is against you.
Speaker 1: It's been Jason Whitlock at Whitlock Jason, go follow him
Speaker 1: on Twitter. I'm at Clay Travis. If you enjoyed this,
Speaker 1: let us know on social media, And if you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this podcast, share it with other friends. There's gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot more of them coming down the line. Again,
Speaker 1: this is Wins and Losses and I'm Clay Travis. Be
Speaker 1: sure to catch live editions about Kicked the Coverage with
Speaker 1: Clay Travis weekdays at six am Eastern three am Pacific
Speaker 1: on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio I