Speaker 1: The volume.
Speaker 2: Our conversation is presented by uber eats. You know, I
Speaker 2: love them. Get gamed ay deals all season long on
Speaker 2: uber eats. Okay, you know he's one of my favorite people.
Speaker 2: His name is Ethan Strauss, and he used to be
Speaker 2: part of the traditional media and he kicked that dead
Speaker 2: end profession of the curve and now he is a
Speaker 2: sub stack Maven. He is a podcasting whiz. House of
Speaker 2: Strauss to me is my podcast listen of choice, especially
Speaker 2: on long walks. I want to talk about the Warriors.
Speaker 2: You covered for years, So I looked Sportico had a
Speaker 2: list today of the five most valuable franchises in the
Speaker 2: United States. Three of them are NBA franchises and one
Speaker 2: was the Warriors. Now, if I would have told you
Speaker 2: twenty years ago it's going to go Cowboys and Golden
Speaker 2: State Warriors, you anybody would have thought, what the hell happened?
Speaker 2: They were a mess for twenty years. I mean I
Speaker 2: grew up with them with Rick Berry in the seventies.
Speaker 2: You know, they had some interesting teams Tim Hardaway, but
Speaker 2: it was just kind of a dead brand, which the
Speaker 2: Yankees were, by the way, in the eighties. The Don
Speaker 2: Mattingly years it was a dead brand. You can look
Speaker 2: back and there's a lot of people that can take credit.
Speaker 2: But I've thought about this. The Lakers were very big
Speaker 2: pre Lebron, and the Cowboys were big before Dak and
Speaker 2: most of these organizations that are listed the Celtics have
Speaker 2: been big since Bill Russell. Yeah, but you look at
Speaker 2: the Warriors and as somebody that covered them, can you
Speaker 2: make an argument if they're a eight billion dollar franchise
Speaker 2: that seven and a half of that have been driven
Speaker 2: by Steph Curry.
Speaker 1: I know it's the number of a B. I'll say
Speaker 1: that much about it, whatever it is. I feel like
Speaker 1: Logan Roy, the Logan Roy line where nobody wanted to
Speaker 1: watch the Warriors, but then we got Steph Curry and
Speaker 1: we got some draft picks, and look at them. It's
Speaker 1: amazing how forgotten it is, how irrelevant they were. And
Speaker 1: I remember being in those locker rooms where a tumblewee
Speaker 1: could have blown through because there's no media at all.
Speaker 1: That's all I got to covering them, Colin, is that
Speaker 1: I was just blogging about them as a fan on
Speaker 1: a fan site, Warriors World, back in the day, and
Speaker 1: I had other jobs that I was doing, and the
Speaker 1: guy running the blog said, you know, we can get
Speaker 1: a credential, and I said really, he says, yeah, nobody's
Speaker 1: going to these games. Like they're desperate for somebody to
Speaker 1: go to one of these games because they've got the
Speaker 1: beat writer and then they've got the other beat writer.
Speaker 1: Half the time, those two beat writers are talking to
Speaker 1: each other and they're saying, hey, if you don't show
Speaker 1: up to practice, I won't show up to practice, and
Speaker 1: then we both get the day off like that was
Speaker 1: happening back then, and nobody would show up to practice
Speaker 1: and get any kind of story. It's been driven by Steph.
Speaker 1: It's been driven by more than Steph. I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit defensive on behalf of your guy, Draymond Green's legacy.
Speaker 1: I know he can annoy people, but I think because
Speaker 1: he annoys people, they start rewriting history. I see people say,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Drayamon was drafted into the perfect situation.
Speaker 1: Nobody has been drafted into a more perfect situation. And
Speaker 1: I go when he showed up, there was no situation.
Speaker 1: There was no situation to speak of. Nobody cared about
Speaker 1: this team, nobody cared about this franchise, Nobody expected anything
Speaker 1: good on twenty twelve draft night, and that guy was
Speaker 1: a second round pick, no guaranteed spot, and he had
Speaker 1: to scrape claw wrench jobs away from guys getting paid
Speaker 1: a lot more money with a lot more organizational investment.
Speaker 1: He became the best defensive player of his generation, which
Speaker 1: then merged with Steph Curry being the best offensive player
Speaker 1: of his generation. And a lot of other things have
Speaker 1: gone right in between some other things going wrong. But
Speaker 1: it's a crazy, just miracle of a story. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're right to hit on it that we
Speaker 1: almost take it for granted. We almost act as though
Speaker 1: this has always been a glamour franchise, they've always been here.
Speaker 1: It was not that way. They were Clippers North. It
Speaker 1: was different.
Speaker 2: Time to look at this week's Tastiest Matchup, brought to
Speaker 2: you by Uber Eats. I think there's an argument to
Speaker 2: be made and I haven't given it that much thought
Speaker 2: that Steph Curry, more than any basketball player, football player, golfer,
Speaker 2: tennis player, or hockey player, changed his individual sport more.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's ever been a player in the
Speaker 2: I mean, oh, Tawny's great, but we had Babe Ruth.
Speaker 2: He pitched and batted too. You look at the great
Speaker 2: football players, Well, Mahomes was great, so was John Elway
Speaker 2: and Dan Marino and Brett farre and and they're there.
Speaker 2: I think you're I mean, Philadelphia has a push push.
Speaker 2: People are a little uncomfortable with it. Outside of Philadelphia.
Speaker 2: It's not changing football. It's just a really good fourth
Speaker 2: down play. Steph Curry has changed every single level of basketball.
Speaker 2: Everything he's changed. I mean, I just I look at
Speaker 2: the shots being taken now, and like anything else, any
Speaker 2: cultural change, is that at some point they all go south.
Speaker 2: Like analytics for baseball, You're like, yeah, the game is
Speaker 2: more efficient. Oh wait, now it's more boring. Oh wait,
Speaker 2: three pointers the math are better than two pointers. Oh wait,
Speaker 2: now it's boring. That's the way analytics all work is
Speaker 2: that these are TV products, and initially they make the
Speaker 2: game more efficient, and they work on a volume scale
Speaker 2: regular season, but ultimately analytics don't generally work in any
Speaker 2: sport quite as effectively in postseasons, and they generally aren't
Speaker 2: good for television. And so Steph, now there's there's a
Speaker 2: little bit of a Okay, we all fell in love
Speaker 2: with small ball and Steph, but now it's been copied
Speaker 2: so often, and people do it at such a much
Speaker 2: more a poor level. They don't. I mean, Houston can't
Speaker 2: shoot and there I mean we got Wemby and guys
Speaker 2: shooting too many threes. Joel Embiid's never shot more threes.
Speaker 2: He shoots twenty nine percent. So but I do think Steph,
Speaker 2: more than any athlete of my lifetime, literally changed Muhammad
Speaker 2: Ali personality driven athlete. I think I think he was
Speaker 2: for a long time all Lee was what people looked
Speaker 2: at and went, oh my god, look how big you
Speaker 2: get if you let your personality out. But I mean
Speaker 2: that's just my take that Steph Curry is probably one
Speaker 2: of one in a cultural it's changing of sports, esthetic
Speaker 2: and style of play.
Speaker 1: You said a lot there. I love this topic is
Speaker 1: a great topic. I totally agree, and I think what's
Speaker 1: remarkable about Steph and we need to add it when
Speaker 1: we say nobody has changed their sport more. When that happens,
Speaker 1: people can become a victim of their own influence. Mike
Speaker 1: D'Antoni revolutionizes basketball, but then he's almost a less He's
Speaker 1: almost a less effective coach because all these other people
Speaker 1: learn how to do it and maybe even refine it
Speaker 1: and maybe even do it better, and he gets overrun
Speaker 1: and he doesn't actually become a championship winning coach. The
Speaker 1: crazy thing about Steph is that he's been doing it
Speaker 1: for over ten years and he has revolutionized the NBA,
Speaker 1: and he's still the best at doing it. He showed
Speaker 1: people the way it could be done, he gave them
Speaker 1: the recipe, and he's still the best chef cooking it.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to make a chef curry joke right there,
Speaker 1: but you see what I'm saying. That's unbelievable to do that,
Speaker 1: to be so influential and yet remain the best at
Speaker 1: what you're doing. Now, the other part of it that
Speaker 1: you've said, the malign in influence on the sport with analytics,
Speaker 1: the optimization problem, I think that's real. There are these
Speaker 1: strange things where sometimes we like something when one person
Speaker 1: does it, but we don't like when a bunch of
Speaker 1: other people are doing it. I felt that way about
Speaker 1: Zachlow's writing. Zach Low probably the greatest NBA writer of
Speaker 1: all time. He had a very particular sort of style
Speaker 1: that was highly informational and could be a little bit quirky,
Speaker 1: but was fairly dry. But the way he did it
Speaker 1: was great. But so many younger writers coming up and
Speaker 1: bloggers coming up, they wanted to be like Zach Low
Speaker 1: because Zach was the man. And I looked at what
Speaker 1: they were doing and I went, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I like you doing this. It doesn't work when you
Speaker 1: do it. This isn't a recipe that works when somebody
Speaker 1: else does it. It would have been better if you
Speaker 1: went with something else. And maybe even a generation before that,
Speaker 1: Bill Simmons might have been that guy. Or I loved
Speaker 1: Bill Simmons columns. But then I'm watching people try to
Speaker 1: be a reverent and funny in the way Bill did it,
Speaker 1: and it's just this doesn't scale. This isn't what I want.
Speaker 1: This isn't what I want. I just want Bill doing it.
Speaker 1: That's what it feels a little bit like right now.
Speaker 1: In the NBA, where a lot of people loved watching
Speaker 1: those Warriors in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, not everybody loved
Speaker 1: watching these teams that emulated the three point shooting. As
Speaker 1: optimization takes over and now most of the shots are
Speaker 1: going to be three pointers.
Speaker 2: That was this week's Tastiest matchup, brought to you by
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Speaker 2: of the NFL. I use it every week during the
Speaker 2: football season. Uber Eats best game Day deals all season long,
Speaker 2: order now for game day. You know what I thought
Speaker 2: was really interesting because I thought Caitlyn Clark I was
Speaker 2: really disappointed in the WNBA is that I thought Caitlin
Speaker 2: Clark's appeal was very simple. Holy shit, we found that
Speaker 2: female Steph Curry. She's taking shots women don't take. I
Speaker 2: didn't think there was anything to it, and when and
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden and she has this Angel Reese.
Speaker 2: You know, competition in college like Magic and Bird, it
Speaker 2: pivots to the professional league and it's fascinating. And Angel Reese,
Speaker 2: I think her success helps Caitlin Clark. I think it
Speaker 2: feels Bird Magic, although I don't think Angel is close
Speaker 2: to Kaylin as an influencer. Bird and Magic both had
Speaker 2: they kind of ended up in the perfect cities. Bird
Speaker 2: in kind of tough guy Boston and Magic and you know,
Speaker 2: showy Los Angeles. But it was funny because with male sports,
Speaker 2: I feel sometimes I feel bad for Caitlin Clark in
Speaker 2: the WNBA that people are trying to explain her popularity
Speaker 2: nobody ever had to explain Steph Curry. It was just
Speaker 2: did he just shoot from thirty four feet off balance
Speaker 2: and make three in a row? And there's part of
Speaker 2: me that feels sympathetic to the WNBA and part of
Speaker 2: me that doesn't. First of all, I feel like when
Speaker 2: you're young, when Bryce Harper came into baseball, he went
Speaker 2: through an Andy duframe tunnel for about three years because
Speaker 2: he was flashy, right, and baseball doesn't like flashy. So
Speaker 2: Caitlin's not the first athlete the deal with this. Tiger
Speaker 2: Woods had the deal with a lot of comments and
Speaker 2: a lot of traditionalists pushing back, and the network only
Speaker 2: shows Tiger, So Caitlin's not the first to go through it.
Speaker 2: But I do think the WNBA has gotten to a
Speaker 2: point where I want to say, girls, girls, she's the
Speaker 2: female staff just embraced the hell out of her. You're
Speaker 2: getting on private jets. So I tried to be I
Speaker 2: tried to defend the WNBA initially, But how does that
Speaker 2: land for you? Because I think they've gotten to a
Speaker 2: point where I'm finding it hard now, Like, if the
Speaker 2: chippy play continues, you may just lose me as a viewer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it reminds me of they say
Speaker 1: about academia that the fights are so vicious because the
Speaker 1: stakes are so small and the WNBA there wasn't money
Speaker 1: to be made, and so attention is the money. And
Speaker 1: suddenly this player comes in and is getting all the attention.
Speaker 1: And this is the primary thing that you care about
Speaker 1: if you're not getting any sort of pay in accordance
Speaker 1: with what you think your value is. And there was
Speaker 1: a ton of resentment towards her, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people in that league seem to get caught up on
Speaker 1: this whole versus is problem. You know, there are people
Speaker 1: that can really grapple with what is, and there are
Speaker 1: people who get really stuck on how it ought to
Speaker 1: be and they're just fixated on it. It ought to be.
Speaker 1: It ought to be Asia Wilson ought to be a
Speaker 1: huge superstar. Asia Wilson ought to be the person Nike
Speaker 1: is promoting because she's the best player in the league,
Speaker 1: and she is the best player in the league. But
Speaker 1: that's just not what it is. People are interested in
Speaker 1: Kaitlyn Clark. They like watching Caitlin Clark Asia Wilson's game.
Speaker 1: It's more analogous to a Tim Duncan. People are not
Speaker 1: as interested in that. You can say there's a racial
Speaker 1: element of that. Okay, I don't know what to do
Speaker 1: with that. We can't just replace Caitlin Clark with somebody else.
Speaker 1: She's the person who showed up for this particular job
Speaker 1: of being Caitlin Clark. She's the one who's resonating. And
Speaker 1: we can either benefit from what it is, or we
Speaker 1: can tear apart everybody who's into it and make everybody
Speaker 1: feel bad about it and try to stop it from happening.
Speaker 1: That ladder move seems completely insane to me, and yet
Speaker 1: it's entirely infected a lot of the coverage of the
Speaker 1: WNBA from people who support the league at least support it,
Speaker 1: you know, in quotations, because they're not helping it when
Speaker 1: they go about it that way. And even the Time
Speaker 1: magazine and even some of these publications that covered it's
Speaker 1: like they're scared, they're worried if they're not giving enough
Speaker 1: attention to the other players.
Speaker 2: Look at the history of basketball. Kareem Yannis Jokic did
Speaker 2: not move the ratings needle. Yeah, Steph Michael, smaller players did.
Speaker 2: This is the history of basketball. Is that my son's
Speaker 2: not a sports fan. He likes Steph Curry because he
Speaker 2: feels like, oh, I could do that. I'm not that huge.
Speaker 2: Steve Nash had a wildly entertaining game. He wasn't a
Speaker 2: dunk machine. I didn't think as a kid growing up,
Speaker 2: Bob Lanier was fascinating. This game didn't work for me.
Speaker 2: So the truth is basketball's history. The WNBA should take
Speaker 2: a deep breath and realize Basketball's history is best score.
Speaker 2: Alex English led the eighties in scoring in the NBA.
Speaker 2: Alex English. There have been so many players Kiki Vandaway
Speaker 2: I don't remember a basket he just never missed. But
Speaker 2: there are players that are just aunt is dynamic and fascinating.
Speaker 2: Kobe was fascinating, but a lot of the bigs like
Speaker 2: and that's something we just have to be honest about.
Speaker 2: Russell Wes Westbrook's game. I've said this before. In his
Speaker 2: prime had of pay to watch him play. He couldn't shoot.
Speaker 2: I didn't love his handles, But sweet mother, a vertical
Speaker 2: jump the guy was like it was popcorn in a
Speaker 2: hot skillet. He was flying through the air. So the
Speaker 2: NBA is so caught up on well, she's the leading
Speaker 2: score people like different and no other woman shot thirty
Speaker 2: three footers. It's that simple.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they like what they like. Not even Logan Roy
Speaker 1: could make Asia Wilson the biggest sneaker saleswoman in basketball,
Speaker 1: and it's no distraction from her game. She's excellent, But
Speaker 1: she's somebody, especially in the time story when she did
Speaker 1: an event with the two K video game, who's just
Speaker 1: complaining about the lack of attention she's gotten and how
Speaker 1: it's not in accordance and it's not at the level
Speaker 1: it should be at, and it's look, life to a
Speaker 1: certain degree is not fair, and and that's actually what
Speaker 1: makes basketball sort of fascinating to me. That's why I
Speaker 1: wrote the Steph Curry article in twenty sixteen. There's this
Speaker 1: ineffable charisma of stardom, of superstardom, that you just know
Speaker 1: it when you see it, and we're not always sure
Speaker 1: about all the elements you need for it to happen
Speaker 1: and for you to really pop in the way that
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan did, in the way that Alan Iverson did,
Speaker 1: in a totally different way, in the way that Steph
Speaker 1: Curry did. And the people who do it are worth
Speaker 1: billions of dollars to the league and to these sneaker companies.
Speaker 1: And then there are players who are effectively at the
Speaker 1: same tier or level that just can't and just don't,
Speaker 1: and there's just something human about it, and it just
Speaker 1: is what it is, and you're just going to make
Speaker 1: yourself miserable trying to figure out how it ought to
Speaker 1: be and change reality.
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Speaker 2: I think you have either an intuitive sense with business,
Speaker 2: either that or an acumen. Sometimes people just have a feel.
Speaker 2: But I think I've watched you build your business, and
Speaker 2: I think you've done a really good job of compartmentalizing
Speaker 2: things being being unique but yet predictable enough that I
Speaker 2: get into patterns of listening to you. So I as
Speaker 2: I watch you, it's not about your ideology it's always
Speaker 2: about your content. But the way you've built is the
Speaker 2: way I would have built if I was a writer
Speaker 2: and want into sub stack in podcasting. So you're a
Speaker 2: network executive, you get to pick five, either events or sports,
Speaker 2: to have huge contracts with everything going forward in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five, you can consider everything like the NFL you're
Speaker 2: gonna have to pay a fortune for. So you get five.
Speaker 2: Now you can include events every four year, events, you
Speaker 2: can include leagues, whatever you want. You get five. Put
Speaker 2: them in order of what you Ethan Strauss, the new
Speaker 2: head of programming for Blank, would do, Oh my.
Speaker 1: God, Colin, I think I'm a good content guy. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I have that kind of business acumen.
Speaker 1: I think you think a little bit. You think a
Speaker 1: little bit more in terms of business. I don't know
Speaker 1: how I would rank any of that because it's it's
Speaker 1: you've also got the problem of what they're worth, right.
Speaker 1: I think that women's college basketball, speaking of women's basketball,
Speaker 1: is an interesting sort of by low proposition where it
Speaker 1: started to make some inroads. If you gave me, if
Speaker 1: you let me be a dictator to run NCAA men's basketball,
Speaker 1: oh I would be very intrigued with that. If I
Speaker 1: could change it and do it in accordance to what
Speaker 1: I thought would make money and grab the culture I
Speaker 1: happen to believe. And this might be sacrilegious. The tournament's
Speaker 1: too big. I think it's too big a tournament. I think.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people would say that's why
Speaker 1: I like it, and it's what the gambling is about.
Speaker 1: But it's devalued the NCAA regular season. I might pair
Speaker 1: it back to thirty two teams. I might make it
Speaker 1: a little bit less. I'd make the season try to
Speaker 1: matter more. I'd try to make those events ten pole events.
Speaker 1: Because college football has done really well over the last decade.
Speaker 1: I know there's been a little bit of slippage in
Speaker 1: the ratings. Maybe they I don't know, oversaturated a bit
Speaker 1: with the expanded playoff, but they've done really well. College
Speaker 1: basketball hasn't. I want to make college basketball more event
Speaker 1: and less inventory. I think that's where it can really
Speaker 1: make some hay and be a counterpoint to the NBA,
Speaker 1: which is just too games. How do I make what
Speaker 1: we're doing big events that cut through the noise. It's
Speaker 1: hard because it's like hurting cats with all these different conferences.
Speaker 1: But if you made me dictator and gave me the
Speaker 1: rights and the ability to completely control the schedule and
Speaker 1: how it goes, I think that's one that's a little
Speaker 1: bit dormant, where there's an appetite for it, but it's
Speaker 1: just got a little too much NBA disease of too
Speaker 1: many games and your regular season doesn't matter when you've
Speaker 1: got this big, single elimination tournament that I know we
Speaker 1: love and I know it's called March Madness. I want
Speaker 1: a way to preserve March Madness as a thing well
Speaker 1: making those regular season games matter. So that's the dream
Speaker 1: property for me. I'm sorry I couldn't rank them off
Speaker 1: the top of my head, but that's one where I've
Speaker 1: looked at it and I'd said, man, if they could
Speaker 1: just do it different, they could really make this an
Speaker 1: even bigger thing in the culture. Because as much as
Speaker 1: we love March Madness, college basketball has never mattered less
Speaker 1: in my lifetime than right now. And that's a and
Speaker 1: it doesn't need to be that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's this year. I watched the WNBA Draft and
Speaker 2: knew the top seven players, and I did not know
Speaker 2: the top seven players in the NBA Draft I'd never
Speaker 2: seen them play, and it was like, wow, that's a problem,
Speaker 2: Like that is a major problem. So I think one
Speaker 2: of your points there that's really a station is that
Speaker 2: women's college basketball. Because the players stay for four years.
Speaker 2: There are more recognizable names in women's college basketball than men's. Now.
Speaker 2: I do think the NIL is going to keep maybe
Speaker 2: not Cooper Flag, but it's going to keep like mid
Speaker 2: late first round guys in college for a year. So
Speaker 2: I actually think that's highly beneficial for the NBA and
Speaker 2: college basketball. Stay with tom Izzo for one more year,
Speaker 2: then leave after your sophomore year. So the you know,
Speaker 2: the NIL gets a lot of pushback, but my take
Speaker 2: is it's actually going to be good for college basketball,
Speaker 2: and I think and and in turn good for the NBA,
Speaker 2: who doesn't have to be abysit every player that comes in.
Speaker 2: I mean half these guys come in. They can't even
Speaker 2: drink at the Rich Carlton Bar, Like it's ridiculous. They're
Speaker 2: just kids that forget learning basketball. There EQ isn't close
Speaker 2: to being ready to travel with drown men. So I
Speaker 2: think women's college basketball, if all these were stocks, is
Speaker 2: one of the biggest buys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's it's undervalued. I think they haven't been
Speaker 1: promoting Hannah Hidalgo enough out of notre game. I think
Speaker 1: she's fantastic to watch and a smaller player who just
Speaker 1: makes incredible things happen out there. But to what you're saying,
Speaker 1: the thing, if I was dictator of NCAA men's basketball,
Speaker 1: I need the rules to be more in alignment with
Speaker 1: the NBA. We can keep the forty minutes, but other
Speaker 1: things need to be in alignment because that's what's getting
Speaker 1: in the way of the development and making it less
Speaker 1: of a reliable pipeline to NBA superstardom. If we can
Speaker 1: get these guys playing the same sport that they're going
Speaker 1: to be playing at the next level, I think that
Speaker 1: helps everybody on both sides of it. So that's that's
Speaker 1: one of the other things it comes to revitalizing the
Speaker 1: men's side.
Speaker 2: Okay, I want to talk about it looks like World
Speaker 2: War three and I don't understand it. And I've talked
Speaker 2: about this on a previous podcast with John Middlcoff. So
Speaker 2: outside of the NFL, which has been sort of in
Speaker 2: a growth trajectory since I was like twelve, every other
Speaker 2: sport is cyclical boxing died because of its greed, and
Speaker 2: UFC horse racing because of several factors, of one of
Speaker 2: which is this controversy with horses dying and drugs. It's
Speaker 2: just a mess. Nobody wants to touch it. Soccer, the
Speaker 2: World Cup, now globalization takes place, has never been more popular.
Speaker 2: We become more of an event culture. But things are
Speaker 2: cyclical and so right now. In my opinion, baseball speeds
Speaker 2: up the game. Defensive shift is gone Otani to the Dodgers,
Speaker 2: Harper Phillies, Soto, Mets, Judge, Yankees, Ronald Lacuna, Braves. All
Speaker 2: the best players and most interesting players are all in
Speaker 2: the right markets. ESBN a couple of years ago, signed
Speaker 2: a seven billion dollar deal. I think it was it
Speaker 2: was around there or it was seven years, three billion
Speaker 2: dollar deal with TNT. For hockey, there's not a single
Speaker 2: iconic hockey franchise in America. Maybe the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Speaker 2: In North America. There's not a single recognizable superstar hockey player.
Speaker 2: You don't have to love the Knicks, Warrior, Celtics, Lakers,
Speaker 2: Lebron Steph these are household names. I do not understand it.
Speaker 2: I think Jimmy Pataro or whoever is in this process
Speaker 2: has made a big mistake, stiff arming major League Baseball. Like, guys,
Speaker 2: it is significantly more relevant than hockey.
Speaker 1: What say you, I wonder I'm sure the analysis they
Speaker 1: did was deeper, but everybody's informed by their biases and
Speaker 1: the people around them. I wonder if certain decisions are
Speaker 1: informed by sitting in the middle of Connecticut versus your
Speaker 1: self column where you're doing a lot of your show
Speaker 1: out of la I know you're moving to Chicago. There
Speaker 1: are parts of this country or the NHL just does
Speaker 1: not exist. It doesn't. It's not my assessment of how
Speaker 1: good a sport it is. It's just a reality that
Speaker 1: there are certain parts of the country where hockey seems
Speaker 1: very very relevant, and there are certain parts of the
Speaker 1: country where you will go years between anybody mentioning the
Speaker 1: sport in your midst. I like what baseball has been doing.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit to bring it back to the
Speaker 1: Bezos thing. I don't know if everything they're doing is
Speaker 1: gonna work, but it's hard to hit a target without
Speaker 1: aiming for it. And when they go, we're speeding up
Speaker 1: the game, We're making the bases bigger, We're doing this.
Speaker 1: We're doing that. It's at least a concession that we
Speaker 1: have a problem, we're trying to solve it. We care
Speaker 1: about you as the fan, we want your business. And
Speaker 1: they did some great advertising for it with Brian Cranston's
Speaker 1: narration and now they've got the box office stars and
Speaker 1: they've got the Otani thing going. Look, it's strange to me.
Speaker 1: I think baseball gets culturally short shrift. It's not as
Speaker 1: glamorous as basketball is. But people will say things about
Speaker 1: basketball that are just as true of baseball, and they
Speaker 1: won't say it about baseball, like, oh, basketball so international,
Speaker 1: so global? They go, okay, what about baseball? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: Well wait a second, is Japan, Korea? These aren't other
Speaker 1: countries far away Latin America. I mean, baseball is still
Speaker 1: very popular. I think we just have it locked in
Speaker 1: our heads that baseball is the aging grain. Dyings sports
Speaker 1: agree and these other sports are on the come up,
Speaker 1: when in reality, all the inventory sports I would call them,
Speaker 1: have basically the same issue. You know, there are events
Speaker 1: sports like football, where they're very rare when you know
Speaker 1: when they're going to happen, and they cut through all
Speaker 1: the noise in the culture their events, and then there
Speaker 1: are inventory sports that made a ton of money in
Speaker 1: the cable television years still make a ton of money
Speaker 1: but might not be as relevant to that end of
Speaker 1: the business now where there are so many games that
Speaker 1: you have them on the background of your life. And
Speaker 1: that's baseball, that is hockey, that's basketball. They're all facing
Speaker 1: the same issue. And I think baseball became almost the
Speaker 1: archetype or the example of decline in that respect that
Speaker 1: was afflicting the other major sports that had the same issue,
Speaker 1: and it's caused some people to overlook some of what
Speaker 1: baseball has going for it. How Yeah, the World Series
Speaker 1: recently have been more watched than the NBA Finals. I
Speaker 1: think that would surprise some people.
Speaker 2: But it's true. Yeah. No, I think to your point,
Speaker 2: is baseball, hockey in the NBA are all more international.
Speaker 2: But I would say with Luca going to the Lakers
Speaker 2: and Jimmy Butler to the Warriors, and the Knicks and
Speaker 2: the Celtics, current relevancy the NBA and baseball actually, as
Speaker 2: of this week, the NBA and baseball have their stars
Speaker 2: in the right cities and they're both buys going forward. Now,
Speaker 2: this is not an anti hockey take but it's expensive.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: There was no ice hockey rink where I grew up,
Speaker 2: and in warmer climates, it's just not a thing. You
Speaker 2: don't have hockey teams. In high school. We all played basketball,
Speaker 2: we all played Little league baseball. So it's really interesting. Again,
Speaker 2: this goes back to everything, but the NFL is cyclical.
Speaker 2: If you go look at college football Ethan, after the
Speaker 2: kind of the USC Texas National Championship, the sport for
Speaker 2: about fifteen eighteen years got really southern and really regional Georgia, LSU, Bama, Clemson.
Speaker 2: The numbers and the attendance went down. Alabama had an
Speaker 2: attendance problem with Nick Saban. Now Fox and the ESPN
Speaker 2: step in and say we're financially going to control the sport.
Speaker 2: College football is now a buy Baseball today is a
Speaker 2: buye and I think it's a huge misstep by ESPN
Speaker 2: to break off talks. I just I can't believe what
Speaker 2: I'm watching.
Speaker 1: Man. I wish I could re capitulate what Logan Roy
Speaker 1: in Succession said in the first episode. There was this
Speaker 1: amazing scene where Ken his son, did you watch Succession?
Speaker 1: How much exposition should I? I watched probably four or
Speaker 1: five episodes. Yes, okay, that's good enough, that's good enough.
Speaker 1: The Logan Roy, his son, is saying, it's all getting faster,
Speaker 1: it's all getting different. It's so different. Now we've got
Speaker 1: to buy the equivalent of whatever Gaker was in that show.
Speaker 1: I think they called it Volter, And Logan Roy does
Speaker 1: this speech saying, oh, it's all so different. You know.
Speaker 1: You know in the past they said people didn't want
Speaker 1: to go to the movies, but we built up the
Speaker 1: movie theaters and it turns out they do. And he
Speaker 1: goes through this whole speech and basically the idea of
Speaker 1: the speech is that it's not all about trends. Trends
Speaker 1: are part of it, but sometimes it's just somebody with
Speaker 1: a vision saying this is what we're going to do.
Speaker 1: This is what we're going to be doing. I have
Speaker 1: the money, I can see it. I'm putting all my
Speaker 1: life force behind it.
Speaker 2: I don't know if.
Speaker 1: That's going to be enough to make baseball as popular
Speaker 1: as it was in the nineteen eighties. Indeed, I doubt it.
Speaker 1: But there's just something to this idea of the leadership
Speaker 1: matters these sports. They're not just determined by these other factors.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the people running these sports, the people televising these sports,
Speaker 1: they have the capacity to step in like a Dana White.
Speaker 1: I don't think it was just natural for UFC to
Speaker 1: become the big property it was. There had to be
Speaker 1: a guy who saw it, who knew it could be.
Speaker 1: So that's how I feel about it. And I think
Speaker 1: there's some potential there with baseball, and hell, there could
Speaker 1: be some potential there with hockey if they do it right.
Speaker 1: If they say let's start building rinks in the suburbs
Speaker 1: of southern California and Florida. Who knows, but you've got
Speaker 1: to try, You got to aim for that target.
Speaker 2: I think you made a really interesting comment at the
Speaker 2: beginning of that discussion on where ESPN is located may
Speaker 2: be a factor in what sports they like. Let me
Speaker 2: give you a story. I'm not sure if I've told
Speaker 2: this before. He was one of my favorite people at ESPN,
Speaker 2: John Walsh, kind of the Spengali of the company, very smart,
Speaker 2: and I went upstairs. He was on like the fourth
Speaker 2: or fifth floor, which I tried to avoid. It was
Speaker 2: all the bosses, you know, And I would go see
Speaker 2: him about once a month, and if there was a
Speaker 2: good new Yorker magazine. He was very well read, very
Speaker 2: learned guy, and I just I thought he was fascinating
Speaker 2: and we would go up and talk. And I remember
Speaker 2: going to him and saying, John, there is this sport
Speaker 2: UFC and it's big in Vegas in LA I think
Speaker 2: you guys should buy it. I said. It is more
Speaker 2: organized than boxing. They've gotten rid of some of the
Speaker 2: eye gouging and some of the real brutal techniques involved.
Speaker 2: They've cleaned it up. It's more corporate. And it's again,
Speaker 2: it's not a pit bull against the beach ball. It's
Speaker 2: like boxing. It's got you know, weight classes and size
Speaker 2: dimensions where you get even fights. And I said, John,
Speaker 2: I think this thing. I think this thing is huge.
Speaker 2: And the takeaway from John and many at ESPN is
Speaker 2: it's too brutal. It's too raw. There's too much blood.
Speaker 2: Let's talk Red Sox baseball. And I remember when I
Speaker 2: was I'm not picking on anybody, but I can remember
Speaker 2: there was a commercial one time. I was driving to
Speaker 2: work at the other place and they were talking about
Speaker 2: Florida playing Florida State and the commercial red at that
Speaker 2: company and the Gators from Tallahassee and the seminoles from Gainesville,
Speaker 2: and I literally called the Boston went guys, you sound
Speaker 2: completely tone deaf to southern college football fans. You don't
Speaker 2: even know where they play. And so I think your point.
Speaker 2: And by the way, I'm not saying Fox or other
Speaker 2: networks haven't made mistakes. I'm not picking on anybody. But
Speaker 2: I do think when you grow up in the Northeast
Speaker 2: is that you don't follow college football. You didn't initially
Speaker 2: get UFC. It was I can remember having bosses that
Speaker 2: like that, that really considered college football niche and baseball everything.
Speaker 2: And I do think I argue this for years with friends.
Speaker 2: I said, my negotiations with Fox have always been pretty easy,
Speaker 2: and I said one of the reasons is they're near Hollywood,
Speaker 2: and they're what they would call talent friendly because this
Speaker 2: is the world they live in, and they you know,
Speaker 2: they live in southern California. This is the home of
Speaker 2: entertainment and stars. So they're really good at negotiating with
Speaker 2: on air people that it feels like family. It never
Speaker 2: gets personal, you don't always get what you want, but
Speaker 2: it does feel different, whereas a lot of sports companies
Speaker 2: in the Northeast feel like sports factories. You go to work,
Speaker 2: you punch a clock, you put in over time. Here's
Speaker 2: management and down there is the workforce. And it doesn't
Speaker 2: feel like that for southern California. It doesn't feel like
Speaker 2: that for maybe Netflix based in California, it doesn't feel
Speaker 2: like that for Fox. So I do think where a
Speaker 2: company is located has an influence on the culture within
Speaker 2: the company, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: No, I have a story that's similar. I think it's
Speaker 1: less about the location, but it's just more about these
Speaker 1: companies that get locked into a certain way of doing things.
Speaker 1: And it's natural for us to project our sensibility on
Speaker 1: the public and to make what we think is popular
Speaker 1: to us popular for everybody. I think we all do that,
Speaker 1: and I had an experience. It's a self serving example,
Speaker 1: and forgive me for it, But in twenty sixteen, I
Speaker 1: was reporting this story for ESPN, the magazine, and it
Speaker 1: was back when magazines, I think, had a bit of
Speaker 1: a higher status. And what's in the ESPN the magazine's
Speaker 1: a big deal, and it was a big deal to me,
Speaker 1: so I wanted to do my best story. I had
Speaker 1: a story about how Nike had screwed up the contract
Speaker 1: for Steph Curry and Steph Curry had wound up with
Speaker 1: Under Armour. Great story, and Nico Harrison how up to
Speaker 1: be Steph Curry's handler during that time and was in
Speaker 1: this infamous meeting where everything went wrong. Somebody else called
Speaker 1: it Steph Stephan. Somebody else put up a PowerPoint. It
Speaker 1: was repurposed materials from the Kevin Durant pitch meeting. It
Speaker 1: was a disaster. And so I had this story and
Speaker 1: I was telling them. I was saying, the sneaker industry,
Speaker 1: it's a big deal. People are really into the sneaker
Speaker 1: culture and these guys make billions of dollars. And it's
Speaker 1: not just about Michael Jordan. This is a big thing.
Speaker 1: And the people at he has been the magazine were
Speaker 1: very smart and they handled me wonderfully. I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to criticize them, but I'm saying that I was younger
Speaker 1: back then. They were a little older than I was,
Speaker 1: and they had this idea of this is how we
Speaker 1: cover basketball, this is how we cover the NBA, which
Speaker 1: you're doing right here. I don't know what to do
Speaker 1: with it. It's about the sneaker business. That's not what
Speaker 1: we do here in Connecticut at ESPN and they cut
Speaker 1: the story from the physical magazine and then they put
Speaker 1: the link up there and it became and I know
Speaker 1: it's self serving, but it became the most read English
Speaker 1: speaking sports story of the year because it connected and
Speaker 1: there were a bunch of people who do care about
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. People are fascinated by business. People
Speaker 1: were really into sneaker culture. It just wasn't the sort
Speaker 1: of stuff that people in Bristol were focusing on every day,
Speaker 1: and so they missed it as a relevant story. I
Speaker 1: think that happens all the time. I'm sure I do it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I miss really big resonant things just because
Speaker 1: I'm one person and I'm going to see the world
Speaker 1: through my own taste.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I've noticed this. One of the reasons
Speaker 2: I love every four years are elections is not because
Speaker 2: I'm right. It's because of how wrong I am. Yes,
Speaker 2: and issues that I view as niche issues, the transgender issue,
Speaker 2: which I viewed as niche, didn't affect me. I think
Speaker 2: it became a real touchstone for people in this country.
Speaker 2: I had I was asked about it and my take was, ohays,
Speaker 2: it's such a small number. It feels clicky well, I
Speaker 2: was wrong. It had a touchedn't feel like immigration was
Speaker 2: obviously a massive issue. Inflation was a massive issue. But
Speaker 2: I think that is something I think about this all
Speaker 2: the time, and I tell my staff this all the time.
Speaker 2: Let's try to avoid confirmation bias, just because I want
Speaker 2: something to happen. Like Sam Darnold, I loved his season,
Speaker 2: but I kept saying on the air, I can't unsee
Speaker 2: for interception games, the New England disasters, it's ill rear
Speaker 2: its head, and eventually it did so. So that's something
Speaker 2: I fight, but I'm guilty of it constantly. Do you
Speaker 2: do you find yourself like the transgender issue. For me,
Speaker 2: I just I never thought it would have that impact.
Speaker 2: I remember being in a discussion though. I went and
Speaker 2: had a beer with some friends. There's a place in
Speaker 2: Manhattan Beach called the nine hundred Club. It's kind of
Speaker 2: a private club, really neat, cozy, almost feels like a
Speaker 2: ski lodge. And it was about a month out or
Speaker 2: two months out from the election, and you know, guys
Speaker 2: were talking about stuff and I was kind of eavesdropping,
Speaker 2: but half watching, you know, an NFL highlights and half listening,
Speaker 2: and I couldn't believe they had kids. I couldn't believe
Speaker 2: how passionate they were. And these this is southern California,
Speaker 2: these are not like These are not like Midwest alt
Speaker 2: right conservatives. It's not the crowd. And I remember walking
Speaker 2: out that night and thinking, man, I am just detached
Speaker 2: from this. Have you had something like that?
Speaker 1: Wow? I think I was surprised by the Democratic overperformance
Speaker 1: in the twenty twenty two midterms. So that was a
Speaker 1: situation where yes, where I went, Oh, I thought there
Speaker 1: would be more of a reaction. Things seem to have
Speaker 1: gone not great with all the inflation, and there are
Speaker 1: some of the these other topics, and people were talking
Speaker 1: about a red wave, and so I was very surprised
Speaker 1: by how the Democrats overperformed in that election. And so
Speaker 1: as I share your exact sensibility where I'm endlessly curious
Speaker 1: about the public because I can't predict where they're going
Speaker 1: to go. I live in the Bay Area. How would
Speaker 1: I know what normal people are into and what's going
Speaker 1: to be motivating to them. And I don't look at
Speaker 1: them in a condescending way when I learn it either,
Speaker 1: I just go, Okay, well, this is what's motivating to people?
Speaker 1: This is what they care about. I do not believe
Speaker 1: you'll hear people use that term voting against your own interest.
Speaker 1: I don't believe that's a thing. I think your interest
Speaker 1: is what you're voting on. If you're more interested in
Speaker 1: culture than you are in economics, you're not voting against
Speaker 1: your own interest. If you're voting against something that would
Speaker 1: help you economically. Your interest is culture, and that's relevant
Speaker 1: to what you care about. I respect that, I understand that.
Speaker 1: So I think that was one where where I was
Speaker 1: I was surprised, and then you try to learn more
Speaker 1: and try to see about, Okay, why why did that happen?
Speaker 1: Why are people maybe a little wigged out still about
Speaker 1: the January sixth stuff At that particular time, I think
Speaker 1: that was motivating. And I also think obviously the Dobbs
Speaker 1: decision and abortion that happened a few months before that election,
Speaker 1: and that seemed to be galvanizing. And so you learn
Speaker 1: a little bit and I think that that's healthy. But people,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, do not approach it that way. Often
Speaker 1: they approach it like, well, the public, I either completely
Speaker 1: know what they're going to do, They're going to do
Speaker 1: what I want them to do, and then when it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen, they're idiots and they're bad and this country
Speaker 1: is bad. I don't like that reaction. I much prefer
Speaker 1: I much prefer going, Okay, what's going on? Why did
Speaker 1: you people feel that way? And where are you feeling it.
Speaker 1: I'm really curious about the different parts of the country.
Speaker 1: It's amazing to me that the county that's to the
Speaker 1: east of the county I grew up in, to the
Speaker 1: east of California. I think it's Imperial County. I should
Speaker 1: know that because I grew up there, But it's I
Speaker 1: think something like eighty five percent Hispanic on the border,
Speaker 1: and it made this massive shift towards Trump. Nobody would
Speaker 1: have predicted that, nobody. So the elections are just this
Speaker 1: real object lesson in understanding attitudes out there that.
Speaker 2: We probably wouldn't even be aware of. So, yeah, you're
Speaker 2: not beholden to being right, You're beholden to getting smarter.
Speaker 2: And that's why I think I like your podcast is
Speaker 2: that I again, this is a criticism of the mainstream media.
Speaker 2: They are paralyzed by being right, never acknowledged when they're wrong,
Speaker 2: and lack a certain ability to just say shit, I
Speaker 2: whiffed on that, and I am fascinated. I remember when
Speaker 2: emails were a thing to radio shows, and I would
Speaker 2: read them almost obsessively. I remember I was listening to
Speaker 2: Tim Cook, a CEO of Apple, saying the first thing
Speaker 2: he does for an hour every day is read emails
Speaker 2: from people about his products, good or bad. I used
Speaker 2: to love emails, and I couldn't tell you how many
Speaker 2: times I would use an email, and I would use
Speaker 2: it either as a topic or as a reminder of
Speaker 2: what people cared about. So I think there is I
Speaker 2: think I don't. I am fascinated. That's I've said before.
Speaker 2: There's three days every four years. I'm jealous of political
Speaker 2: talk show hosts the day before an election, the day
Speaker 2: of the election, the day after the election. I wish
Speaker 2: I was doing their job, not mine, because it's just
Speaker 2: fascinating to watch the American public and what matters to them.
Speaker 2: And sometimes I'm detached. I remember years ago, I had
Speaker 2: this driver that occasionally a company paid for when I
Speaker 2: went to Chicago, and he had been Bernie max Driver,
Speaker 2: the legendary comedian, one of the funniest people ever would
Speaker 2: and I was just fascinated. And I think Ocean's eleven
Speaker 2: had been out, and I just would ask him endless
Speaker 2: questions about Bernie and just how fascinating he was. But
Speaker 2: I found that this driver, I guess, I guess you
Speaker 2: call him a personal driver show for whatever you want
Speaker 2: to call him. It was suv how in tune he
Speaker 2: was to the economy by being a driver. And he
Speaker 2: would talk about, oh, oh, traffic is brutal, economy's great.
Speaker 2: And I'd never thought about the economy, but his belief
Speaker 2: based on what time was the traffic, what days were slow,
Speaker 2: what days were busy, what was the activity at the airport.
Speaker 2: And he'd been doing this for thirty years. He was
Speaker 2: an older guy, and he was like you, he goes,
Speaker 2: I could tell you without looking at the stock market,
Speaker 2: without looking at the housing market, I can tell you
Speaker 2: how the economy is by traffic flow. And it really
Speaker 2: I must have had three or four long conversations with
Speaker 2: this gentleman, and it really it was like, man, people
Speaker 2: like you have such a heartbeat of how this company
Speaker 2: is moving. And I find those people fascinating. I think
Speaker 2: they're in every neighborhood in this country. They generally aren't
Speaker 2: going to Twitter, they don't need to get clicks, but
Speaker 2: these people that drive people around, These people that work
Speaker 2: in restaurants, the lady at the diner, what are the tips, Like,
Speaker 2: are people buying the more expensive thing? I mean, these
Speaker 2: people that work at restaurants, these people that work at
Speaker 2: movie theaters. They know what's happening with the economy. You know,
Speaker 2: there are boots on the ground people, And I think
Speaker 2: sometimes we overlook those kind of people.
Speaker 1: Well, I remember Tom Friedman the New York Times off
Speaker 1: every would get mocked. He would get mocked for doing
Speaker 1: these sorts of columns where he would have a cab
Speaker 1: driver and there'd be some primary out in some state.
Speaker 1: And I look back on it and I go, some
Speaker 1: of you cool kid media people need to get in
Speaker 1: some cabs and some ubers, because I don't know if
Speaker 1: Tom Friedman was wrong and using that approach, It's amazing
Speaker 1: what you can learn talking to people, especially if you're
Speaker 1: traversing the country. I felt like I understood the country
Speaker 1: better when I was a beat writer covering the Warriors,
Speaker 1: just because I'd be in random towns, random overs, random cabs,
Speaker 1: a lot of people listening to Rogan. That's all. I
Speaker 1: got a sense of how big Rogan was. A lot
Speaker 1: of people listening to you. I'm not trying to flatter you, Colin,
Speaker 1: but I did remember going, man, a lot of them
Speaker 1: are listening, listening to the herd out here, and you
Speaker 1: get a sense of people because I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't even understand the bubble that they're in.
Speaker 1: And understanding it, I think is important to being open minded.
Speaker 1: We're all in it. I'm in it, you're in it,
Speaker 1: but you have to know that you're in it to
Speaker 1: start questioning things and start wondering about some things. And
Speaker 1: it's one of the reasons why I've really enjoyed I'll
Speaker 1: give a shout out to Mark Halprin's YouTube show two Way,
Speaker 1: where yeah, he'll have opposing perspectives and he'll have Spicer
Speaker 1: from the Republican side and I'm drawing a blank on
Speaker 1: the guy from the Democratic side, and they'll talk about
Speaker 1: the news of the day. But what's really crazy is
Speaker 1: he'll bring up just random people to the floor and
Speaker 1: you'll have random viewers of his debate something political. I
Speaker 1: saw a debate happening between somebody whose perspective was that
Speaker 1: Trump couldn't be elected heus of January sixth, and somebody's
Speaker 1: saying that the media was over hyping it, and at
Speaker 1: some point Mark broke in and he said, look, we're
Speaker 1: not going to settle this today, but we're going to
Speaker 1: stay on this because this is the only place in
Speaker 1: America where this is happening, at least in a way
Speaker 1: that everybody can see it and regular people have unpredictable
Speaker 1: political opinions. That's the crazy thing when I watch where
Speaker 1: somebody will have two right wing opinions and one left
Speaker 1: or vice versa. It's just hard to imagine because I
Speaker 1: think in media especially, we're all talking to each other
Speaker 1: and we're all seeing what we say, and we're just
Speaker 1: forming this consensus like that, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: aren't plugged in online, they don't go about it that way,
Speaker 1: and they often have more idiosyncratic viewpoints because of it.
Speaker 2: And now for our segment, Hot Off the Press, presented
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Speaker 2: just the right amount of heat. I use it on
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Speaker 2: it on my pizzas. I love that. So I'm gonna
Speaker 2: throw something out there because you have a great sense
Speaker 2: of media and you've created your own media position. So
Speaker 2: Jeff Bezos, you know, the founder of Amazon, who, by
Speaker 2: the way, there's an old story in Seattle where I'm from,
Speaker 2: that years ago when Jeff Bezos was pitching Amazon to
Speaker 2: the top names at Microsoft, that the Microsoft guys came
Speaker 2: out of the meeting and said, we just met the
Speaker 2: smartest person we've ever met. Like he was. Jeff was,
Speaker 2: really he was a next level thinker. And so he
Speaker 2: buys the Washington Post and the business is broken. And
Speaker 2: the most important part of media to me has always
Speaker 2: been not resources, but trust, and the newspaper industry especially
Speaker 2: has lost trust. So he comes out and he says,
Speaker 2: you know what, We're going to change things at this company.
Speaker 2: He says, We're going to embrace in our op ed section,
Speaker 2: personal liberties and free markets, and of course the predictably
Speaker 2: precious media. People at the Post are outraged. The business
Speaker 2: is dying. It's been dying for twenty years. When a
Speaker 2: business is dying, you have to change things. My takeaway is, well, guys,
Speaker 2: what you're doing is not working. You were given the
Speaker 2: keys to the kingdom and you lost the try the
Speaker 2: American public. And here's a businessman saying, well, we can
Speaker 2: go belly up or we can do it my way.
Speaker 2: So I defend Bezos. Here your thoughts on what he
Speaker 2: said and what transpired.
Speaker 1: Man, there's so many directions to take this. I don't
Speaker 1: necessarily know if this loadstart is going to work, but
Speaker 1: I completely agree with you about where they were at.
Speaker 1: And I think to have an honest conversation in media
Speaker 1: about what's happening, we need to at least acknowledge that
Speaker 1: you see a lot of people in legacy journalism, formerly
Speaker 1: at the Washington Post, even a guy currently at the
Speaker 1: Washington Post lashing out, And I go, can we admit
Speaker 1: there was a problem? Can we at least admit that much?
Speaker 1: And then maybe you can disagree with Bezos's approach and
Speaker 1: say making the Washington Post like the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: won't work or it's self serving or whatever. I want
Speaker 1: to just give people an object example of what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. Because everybody is accusing everybody of bias and
Speaker 1: political bias all the time. There's this critique of the
Speaker 1: Washington Post that they were biased for the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: But I really don't think people understand the extent of
Speaker 1: what we mean. I'm gonna I wrote this article about
Speaker 1: the Post. I've been criticizing the Post for a while.
Speaker 1: I draw a distinction by the way, I think The
Speaker 1: New York Times has been a very useful paper, whatever
Speaker 1: people think of its biases. I would not say that
Speaker 1: about the Washington Post, even if some people. They're certainly talented,
Speaker 1: and people have gotten angry at me for that. But
Speaker 1: here's an example of what I mean. The day after
Speaker 1: the Biden debate debacle that ultimately got him shoved out
Speaker 1: of the presidential race, right that was the biggest news
Speaker 1: day of the year, and I remember it. I remember
Speaker 1: going to the Washington Post and going, well, I want
Speaker 1: to know what the insider gossip is. This is the
Speaker 1: Washington paper of record. What is going on? I took
Speaker 1: a screenshot of the front page of the Washington Post
Speaker 1: the day after this debate, where Biden's meltdown was the
Speaker 1: biggest news story of the year. The top story on
Speaker 1: the front page is justices strike down obstruction charge used
Speaker 1: for hundreds of January sixth rioters. Latest from the Post
Speaker 1: what Trump said with his very fine people comments versus
Speaker 1: what he meant. There's something about how elephants have been
Speaker 1: orphaned as babies and returned to the wild, and there's
Speaker 1: something about Baltimore's revived Redline will be the light rail system.
Speaker 1: More says those are the top headlines. That's crazy, that's insane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there were left leaning or Democrat leaning publications that
Speaker 1: actually covered the news. If you don't do your job,
Speaker 1: somebody is going to do it for you. That's the
Speaker 1: lesson I take from it. The people at the paper
Speaker 1: were not doing their job. They had such a group
Speaker 1: thing going on there where everything was about Trump, and
Speaker 1: everything was about all pulling in the same direction to
Speaker 1: defend the party to the extent when the party actually
Speaker 1: fractured and Biden totally collapses, they can't even cover the story.
Speaker 1: So if you're not covering the story and I can't
Speaker 1: rely on you to do that, then what are we
Speaker 1: really doing here? And Bezos realized he was running that
Speaker 1: kind of operation that just couldn't tell people what they
Speaker 1: wanted to know, and he obviously wants to change things.
Speaker 1: So that's what drives me crazy about how this is
Speaker 1: all played out, how we can't even discuss that this
Speaker 1: you know, this publication was just in a really bad way,
Speaker 1: and now you've got you know, you're kind of subject
Speaker 1: to a lot of journalists thinking that, you know, people
Speaker 1: who aren't the show, who've been propped up by the show,
Speaker 1: the Bezos, Billions, assuming that they are the show, and
Speaker 1: you're not the show. You're not and you're certainly not
Speaker 1: the show if you're not going to do what people
Speaker 1: want you to do.
Speaker 2: So that's my background take on it. You know, I
Speaker 2: was saying this about JJ Reddick the Lakers today. I
Speaker 2: don't mind arrogance as long as it's accompanied by self
Speaker 2: awareness and humility when you're wrong, and I think Jay
Speaker 2: Reddick possesses those. I think he has self awareness and
Speaker 2: he's not somebody that is unwilling to move off things
Speaker 2: if he's wrong. So I think you have to be
Speaker 2: somewhat arrogant to manage the Yankees, to coach the Cowboys,
Speaker 2: and to coach the Lakers. It's a big brand there's
Speaker 2: a lot of opinions, and I think the lack of
Speaker 2: self awareness among the print media especially and traditional media
Speaker 2: is really out of whack. Bill Maher often says this,
Speaker 2: the idea that you could not discuss the concerns about
Speaker 2: the wu Han lab, the idea that Joe Rogan was
Speaker 2: taken to the woodshed because he suggested what we were
Speaker 2: all seeing during the election, that Joe Biden has a
Speaker 2: significant cognitive decline and it's oatmeal and it's getting worse
Speaker 2: every six months. And then then Jake Tapper's now writing
Speaker 2: a book acknowledging, oh there was a cover up. Well,
Speaker 2: I mean it was if you discuss that in the
Speaker 2: first two years of the presidency, it was considered mean
Speaker 2: spirited and it was a wacky conspiracy theory. And the
Speaker 2: lack of self awareness between the traditional you know media
Speaker 2: that guys, we're watching things happen. You know, there's that
Speaker 2: kind of a now iconic piece of John Stewart going
Speaker 2: on Stephen Colbert, and Colbert just can't just lacks complete
Speaker 2: self awareness, just can't embrace it. And so and I'm
Speaker 2: no a fan of Trump, but you know, I I've
Speaker 2: kind of come to terms with I get Trump voters.
Speaker 2: I completely, absolutely get it. And when Bezos makes this move,
Speaker 2: it's like, guys, the business is broken. Yeah, it's over.
Speaker 1: Well, And you could criticize Trump within the context of
Speaker 1: what Bezos is saying. If you're in favor of free markets.
Speaker 1: Trump is very much pro tariffs, which doesn't really seem
Speaker 1: to be in accordance with free market. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily read that this means that you need to lockstep
Speaker 1: cheer on everything Trump is doing. But I think what
Speaker 1: people want ultimately, they want authentic. They don't want you
Speaker 1: to be right all the time. It's impossible you do
Speaker 1: the you know where Colin was right, where Colin was wrong.
Speaker 1: People don't love Charles Barkley because everything he says is true.
Speaker 1: They love Charles Barkley because they know that everything Charles
Speaker 1: Barkley says is what he's thinking.
Speaker 2: And by the way, and Barkley admits when he's wrong,
Speaker 2: and this is what I've said before, Nobody in politics
Speaker 2: will admit they're wrong. Nobody in traditional media goes, hey,
Speaker 2: I whiffed on this until election night and then they're
Speaker 2: all all unravels because the wrong guy want in their eyes.
Speaker 2: And you know this is just something that I and
Speaker 2: I grew up with somebody. I don't have a problem
Speaker 2: by the way, with our government funding the Associated press,
Speaker 2: I really don't. Or but I do think you look
Speaker 2: at NPR and I listened occasionally to NPR. Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: there's no question where it's leaning, there's no question where
Speaker 2: it's coming from. And I'm a subscriber to the New
Speaker 2: York Times of the Wall Street Journal. I love media.
Speaker 2: I can read Anne Culture, I can read Ben Shapiro,
Speaker 2: I can read Bill Maher. I go all over the map.
Speaker 2: I just I'm curious. I want all sorts of media.
Speaker 2: But the inability for kind of these mainstream media is
Speaker 2: to acknowledge they are completely out of whack, like even
Speaker 2: like right now, even with Trump and Elon Musk doing
Speaker 2: all these moves, well the truth. And I was thinking
Speaker 2: about this the other day. I'll throw this a Yeah,
Speaker 2: obviously I don't want to get over my skis too much.
Speaker 2: But if you look at Europe and what has happened
Speaker 2: to their economy, it's bloated, heavy bureaucracy. I mean, you
Speaker 2: can go read about the last ten years of Germany's economy.
Speaker 2: Too many regulations, too much bureaucracy and now it's stuck
Speaker 2: in the mud. It used to be a powerful, a
Speaker 2: more powerful force. And so I think what Trump is
Speaker 2: saying is what we don't want to do in this country,
Speaker 2: and I got about six months to turn this stuff around,
Speaker 2: is we don't want to be Europe. We're going to
Speaker 2: cut bureaucracy, We're going to cut spending. We want to
Speaker 2: be nimble and twitchier. So I kind of I'm interested
Speaker 2: to see how it plays out. I don't agree with
Speaker 2: all the moves. The media is just has come on
Speaker 2: the side of this is ending democracy, and my take
Speaker 2: is there are too many smart people that don't agree
Speaker 2: with that. Where are you on the Trump musk? Rapid change?
Speaker 2: Rapid changes that are happening very quickly. Okay, Okay, so
Speaker 2: you said a lot right there. One thing is I
Speaker 2: think it's important to admit what you don't know. I
Speaker 2: think if people get so invested in trying to show
Speaker 2: that I have the best take on politics, I'm so
Speaker 2: smart that they pretend to know things they do. I
Speaker 2: do not know how our vast federal bureaucracies function. A
Speaker 2: lot of them I don't, And right now there's a
Speaker 2: fog of war quality to everything happening. Every story is
Speaker 2: like that story where from the musk side, it's Politico
Speaker 2: is getting paid a gazillion dollars by the government, and
Speaker 2: then it's, well, no, they're not really, but there's some
Speaker 2: function called political pro and they've got a subscription and
Speaker 2: it adds up, and maybe it's a little loosey goosey.
Speaker 2: There's this fog of war where it's really hard for
Speaker 2: me to track what's happening.
Speaker 1: I'm intrigued by it. I also have concerns about how
Speaker 1: you might not know what we rely on until it
Speaker 1: suddenly gets broken in this move fast and break things
Speaker 1: sort of ethos that Elon seems to be operating under.
Speaker 1: But my critique of the democratic side on this and
Speaker 1: the media side on this is this I could accept.
Speaker 1: Let's say they're right about every single criticism they have
Speaker 1: right now of what Trump and Elon are doing in
Speaker 1: taking a machete to the bureaucracy and the way that
Speaker 1: they're doing it. That it's illegal, that it's misguided, that
Speaker 1: it's going to end bad. Okay, let's just accept that premise. Hypothetically.
Speaker 1: What is your alternative plan? Because I don't think anybody
Speaker 1: believes that our federal government, which just to service it,
Speaker 1: we're paying unbelievable amounts in just the interest on the
Speaker 1: debt in order to get it functioning. Nobody believes that
Speaker 1: it's completely efficiently run and all the money is being
Speaker 1: spent efficiently. Nobody believes this. Nobody literally believes this. So
Speaker 1: tell me what should be cut. If you think they're
Speaker 1: doing it wrong, then tell me how it should be
Speaker 1: done right. What you know, what aspects shouldn't get as
Speaker 1: much money? Where could we become more efficient? If that's happening,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it, or at least I haven't seen
Speaker 1: it at scale. And I think that that speaks to
Speaker 1: the problem and the predicament much of the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: and the media that the sympathetic to them are incurrently, which
Speaker 1: is this ability to criticize, but not an ability to
Speaker 1: present an alternative vision. This ability to say that this
Speaker 1: Trump issue set is bad or appeals to our basis instincts,
Speaker 1: but no ability to say, this is what the country
Speaker 1: should be, this is how we're going to thrive, this
Speaker 1: is how we will be great or great again.
Speaker 2: As Trump to say, we're increasingly a bloated bureaucracy and
Speaker 2: what he's trying to do I think is in the
Speaker 2: six months, get as much done as he can. And
Speaker 2: if he takes a machete to some things, he probably shouldn't.
Speaker 2: It's just part of It's the reality of anybody that
Speaker 2: buys a new company and tries to create efficiency. You
Speaker 2: may cut too deeply, but you have also made the
Speaker 2: company more nimble. You know, you've made the company more efficient,
Speaker 2: and sometimes you just chop or lop off too much.
Speaker 2: I can live with a little bit of that because
Speaker 2: you can always remember, you can recalibrate. You lose it
Speaker 2: to midterms. I mean, this thing's not going to last forever.
Speaker 2: Trump's polarizing, so he's going to lose people along the way.
Speaker 2: But my take is, not only is there no plan,
Speaker 2: but there is. Once again, it's this almost derangement syndrome
Speaker 2: where there's nothing that he's doing that works, and I
Speaker 2: don't believe that to be true, and that's what the
Speaker 2: media is feeding me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I completely agree. I think there are a
Speaker 1: lot of issues like this. I think Trump's number one
Speaker 1: issue in the first election, maybe the second election, was immigration,
Speaker 1: and you could say that he was cruel or wrongheaded,
Speaker 1: but then I would ask friends in my life. I'm
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area effectively, you know, ninety percent of
Speaker 1: my friends are liberal vote Democrat, and I would go, Okay,
Speaker 1: what should our immigration policy be? Who? How many from where?
Speaker 1: And it would be crickets. And I think one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that that side of things has fallen into
Speaker 1: this this sort of paralysis of never needing to articulate
Speaker 1: a vision is I think they had a significant advantage.
Speaker 1: I think that they did have a near monopoly on media,
Speaker 1: certainly legacy media. Yes, Twitter was on their side. Twitter
Speaker 1: was run by like minded people and it was this
Speaker 1: messaging apparatus, so if they had a problem with what
Speaker 1: the other side was doing, they would just mirror what
Speaker 1: each other was saying and it would be very effective
Speaker 1: messaging wise, we're in a new reality. Love him or
Speaker 1: hate him. Musk has this powerful network in Twitter x
Speaker 1: as he calls it. He's in government, so he can
Speaker 1: message what he's doing and get his version of it
Speaker 1: out there. You can say that there's a conflict of
Speaker 1: interest there, you can say that's a dystopia, you can
Speaker 1: say all these different things about it. But it's powerful
Speaker 1: and you're going to do You're gonna have to do more.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to do better than just saying he's bad,
Speaker 1: he's a Nazi, or Trump is a Nazi or a fascist,
Speaker 1: or any of the sort of messaging that might have
Speaker 1: worked in twenty seventeen. But we're in a new reality.
Speaker 1: Demographics are shifting. The Democrats are losing young men to
Speaker 1: a crazy degree. I'm sure you've noticed this because even
Speaker 1: in our business, Colin, it's not necessarily politics. Purely, the
Speaker 1: customers people care about are young men, and they're going
Speaker 1: the other direction. I just don't think it's good enough
Speaker 1: to sit back and criticize. I think you need to
Speaker 1: have something of your own to sell.
Speaker 2: Ethan Strauss his podcast is House of Strauss. He's got
Speaker 2: a wide variety of guests. He is a podcaster with dexterity.
Speaker 2: He can talk business, he can talk sports, he can
Speaker 2: talk media. You and Glass Piegle get all you know.
Speaker 2: It's one of my favorite You guys get into the
Speaker 2: weeds on stuff, which I'm completely fascinated by, and you
Speaker 2: do all this amazing homework, and I just want you
Speaker 2: to know. I don't know the download numbers, but all
Speaker 2: that wonky media stuff for a guy that's been in
Speaker 2: at probably too long. I find fascinating body.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate that, and thanks so much for all
Speaker 1: the kind words, and this has been fantastic. Thanks so much, Colin.
Speaker 1: The volume