Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Acquired Podcast on the NFL (with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal)

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (Acquired) are hosts of the critically acclaimed podcast covering business history and strategy. Ben and David join the Armchair Expert on this special Super Bowl episode to discuss the metric of being right more often but having less fun, how the Super Bowl is the best weekend for a wedding, Disneyland, and Costco, and how LA refused to participate in early games due to segregation. David, Ben, and Dax talk about Teddy Roosevelt starting the NCAA in 1905 to prevent football fatalities, JFK passing antitrust legislation for televising football, and how the NFL uniquely collectivizes resources so all teams get equally distributed resources from league-wide television deals. Ben and David explain the breakdown of the gentleman’s agreement between the AFL and NFL to not poach players, how the formation of the NFL compares to the founding of the United States, and why Monday Night Football revolutionized modern television.Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on expert. Hi, Monica. Hi. Hi, Erin Weakley. Hi.

We have a really fun and special episode. We love and you've probably heard us talk many times about Acquired, one of our favorite podcasts. They do these incredible deep dives into different companies, the history of the companies, their finances, everything. And the Super Bowl is upon us. That's right. And so I thought it was your idea. I was about to say you had a great idea. Well, I had the idea to bring them in to do this. You did. And then they had the idea, what about the NFL?

Which, what timing? So we're going to learn the history and the finances of the NFL. And it's, would you, I need you to give me a testimonial. It's so much more interesting than probably anyone would expect, right? It's so interesting. I don't care about NFL.

When they suggested it, I thought, that's a good idea for timing, but I don't, I'm not the, I wanted the row. Sure. But you know what? It was so fantastic. And I was talking about it all night at your party. Acquired is hosted by Ben Gilbert and Dave and Rosenthal.

Please, if you like this, check out Acquired. There is certainly a business that will interest you. Costco. Everyone should listen to the Costco episode and be reminded what a beautifully run business. Very ethical, lots of integrity, and it's such a good company and I'm obsessed with it. I've been in the Costco religion for years.

I know, I'm late. Shot two movies in Costco, yeah. Please enjoy Ben and David on the NFL. He's an up-chair expert. He's an up-chair expert. He's an up-chair expert. He's an up-chair expert an actual man He's an actual man Okay, gentlemen, we are so tickled that you came.

Yes! This is kind of a freebie for us because normally I would have had to do a ton of research and that has now fallen on both of your shoulders. So Ben and David, you guys are the hosts of Acquired. Does it get back to you how much we talk about Acquired? Yes. Oh good! Good, good, good. We never know if we're in a vacuum or not. I know. Even my Hermes hiccup seemed to have made its way back.

Because you liked it so much and you wanted to buy one of the old bags. And I stand by it. I don't think there's anything wrong with liking Hermes. Right? Thank you. It is a truly unique thing in the world and they make it by hand and it's special.

Wait, why'd you get in trouble? I was unrelatable. Too rich. I get it. When I was poor, I hated people like Monica, but now I love people like trouble? I was unrelatable. Ah. Too rich. I get it. When I was poor, I hated people like Monica, but now I love people like Monica. I don't have one. That's the whole point. I just want one.

There's something interesting about what we file offensive or gratuitous, and what we don't, because a piece of art, no one's mad at Picasso's worth $150 million. So, like, that's kind of rad. But for some reason, this is very triggering for people. You're mad at the person who owns it. Well, I think the counterintuitive thing that I didn't realize until we did the episode So like, that's kind of rad. brand when you're buying Hermes as much as you are the product. Yes. Well, I'll tell you, I think it was your Hermes episode that got me interested because our friend Eric, who has zero interest, he was a lawyer who quit and now he just trades stocks.

And he called Monty and he's like, I've got to get some Hermes stuff. This is how it happened. This was so funny. We were at a dinner and we both had these Goyard card case holders, me and this other person and one was a dupe. And so he was looking at both of them and he goes, you know, the saddle stitch is the most impressive stitch. And I was like, excuse me, how do you know that?

And it was because he had just listened to your episode and he got all of us totally in. Yeah, all he knows about is the stock market. He vaguely knows law and he knows peptides. He doesn't know who Natalie Portman is. Soccer team owner, I think. Yeah, exactly. You heard of her. So, at any rate, it's really, really great to have you guys.

A little bit of background on both of you, because this was a question of mine when I started listening. I was like, why is it these guys have such a deep knowledge on all these things? And then as you cover different companies, I would say that Meta episode, which was phenomenal. Thank you. I was like, they had to be programmers or something. For them to understand the tech as well as you guys both did, I'm sure one of you was better than the other.

Ben, you have a computer science degree that makes a little more sense. But I'm just, as I listen as a fan of the show, trying to piece together how it is you guys ended up with this podcast. So let's just start with, it really was just an endeavor for fun, right? You both have your own careers,

you both have different disciplines. So Ben, kick us off with how you came to the podcast. David and I met at a Passover Seder, and we sort of instantly hit it off. You know those friends where you keep thinking, we should do drinks more often, and you try, and then it's like every two or three months, you're like, why don't we see each other more often?

Well, at one of these scheduled drinks that actually happened, I gave David two pitches. One was acquired and the other was a podcast that was a much worse idea. Ooh, I would love to know the worst idea. It was companies that had successfully innovated more than once. And it would have been a very short list.

I was going to say, I can't imagine you get a ton of episodes like that. You might run out. Okay, but you went to Ohio State. I did. Congratulations. Thank you. Did you guys just win?

National champions. Well, I went to UGA, so I also have a national championship background. Just throwing that out there. You and I did a lot. We've done so much. I see you, another fisherman. Now, okay, why did you end up at Ohio State? I grew up in the Cleveland-Acrin area.

I applied to nine colleges, but my entire family went to Ohio State. We were touring and we were opening different gates, walking around the horseshoe and one was open. And so my dad and I walked all the way up to the top of the South stands. We were looking out over all of campus and I'm looking out over the field and realizing I could go to a lot of games if I come here.

I think there's a specialness to being in a place like that and looking around at what your future could be. Yeah. I'm going to keep this really brief because Monica will kill me, but just off the top of your head, what's the greatest amusement park in the history of the world? Cedar Point. Yeah, of course. That's an easy question.

You got that right. Halfway between Cleveland and Detroit. Yeah, Sandusky, Ohio. Every time we have any guest on within the Tri-State area, we'll do 20 minutes on Cedar Point, and she cannot stand it. I hate Cedar Point now. I'll never go. We'll do 20 minutes on Cedar Point and she cannot stand it. I hate Cedar Point now. I'll never go. We should have done it on Cedar Point.

Yeah, Millennium Force, Top Thrill Dragster. Magnum XJ220s, The Gemini, The Demon Drop, The Corkscrew. Oh my God. Yeah. They were just acquired by Six Flags. That's right. You really could do an episode on them. We actually should.

You just turned me on to Defunct Land, this YouTube channel. What's that? Ben, you can tell it better than me, but. You just turned me on to Defunctland, this YouTube channel. What's that? Ben, you can tell it better than me, but it's like acquired episodes of old defunct amusement parks. Oh, that's fun. This could be the first thing that got you interested in Cedar Point if they actually did an acquired on it.

I would. Too successful to do it on. Have you ever heard of Action Park? They just made a documentary about it. No. In New Jersey? Yes. Yes. This was the YouTube channel that popularized people looking back and being like,

that was completely insane that Action Park existed. I forget the stat, but I just read it as well. I wanna say it's in the order of like six trips to the emergency room a day that it was open. Nope, no thank you. It's like a badge of honor. And I think Adventureland, that movie, is based on that. Oh, no way.

Yeah, the writer of that film or director worked there at the nuts one. And people would go upside down and they would come out with lacerations Yeah Okay, so you graduate with a computer science degree and then you end up moving to Silicon Valley, Seattle I was going for a job at Microsoft or Google and I had an offer from Microsoft I made the mistake of saying I also am waiting to hear back from Google and they said when are they gonna tell you and I said the date and they said we are not gonna extend your deadline I'm waiting to hear back from Google.

in Ohio and that was my ticket. And what's your undergrad degree in? French Literature. Oh, you romantic son of a bitch. The long hair and the angular features. Yeah, you want to mix. You're a babe. You must know this, right? I appreciate that. Yeah, what a stud. Ben, you're hot too.

I don't want to leave you out. I grew my hair long during COVID. It didn't play as well as... Yeah, that's an enviable head of hair. So, okay, how do you end up? I always wanted to work in venture capital. Not the easiest thing to do with a French literature degree.

Just sort of randomly I learned about the industry at Princeton actually, and I was like, I would do anything to do this. Sounds like the coolest thing in the world. I got an opportunity a couple years later to join the biggest venture firm in Seattle. I didn't know anybody in Seattle. Head Hunter called me and I was like,

hell yeah, I will move to Seattle. Am I not wrong in that headquarters of venture capitals generally though Silicon Valley? Oh, yeah Yeah, have you read Nate Silver's new book by chance? No, it's about gambling and it's about venture capitalists and it's about risk-taking Friedman Oh Thomas Friedman. No, is that no Sam Sam Altman Friedman Which is also in the book, is open AI. Sam B something. Sam Bankman Fried. Oh my god.

Oh my god. I think this is where they're going. We're gonna keep that in, because of you coming through. He just blew Princeton, Stanford, UCLA, and Georgia out of the water, Ohio State knew it. Okay, so you end up there, and you were employed in that capacity.

That led to the Passover Seder, where Ben and I intersected, and then we were trying to recruit Ben to join us Ohio State knew it. this crazy interview with Dr. Morris Chang, from the drinks where we decided to do acquired. That's awesome. Isn't it crazy where these podcasts can take you? We're in the hotel in Taipei. You texted me, and we're getting ready to go over to his office to interview him. What a way to spend our 10 year anniversary together, halfway around the world.

Yeah, we're interviewing you on our seven year anniversary, and I feel equally. Is it really? No. It'll come out probably. The 14th is our actual anniversary of the first episode out. Our first recording, I don't know.

Okay. I should know this. What gave you guys the idea to do this crazy thing? Ooh, wait, I think I know this. Please, please. If Wikipedia is accurate, you wanted the opportunity for people to experience what an AA meeting is without necessarily having to become an alcoholic first.

Pretty much, yeah. Could we do in public what happens in an AA meeting? There's a lot of explanations. They're all kind of true and there's not one. But probably more accurately is serial the podcast. Because Monica and I were both consuming it. At the time Monica was babysitting and we would fight for hours in the kitchen

about whether Adnan was guilty or not. I'm like, you're not a dude, you don't understand. Dudes do fucking weird stuff. I know kids like, yeah, that's not shocking. We would fight nonstop. So we had a hobby of arguing with one another. Which turned into arguing about just everything. And we thought that's a good engine for a show.

Good grist for the mill. They're gonna know a lot of venture capital terms. Is grist for the mill? Yeah, sure. All right. Oh, I love it, good grist for the mill. Cereal paved the way for this whole industry. Okay, so you guys start doing it and it's just for fun, right?

You don't have any aspirations, I can't imagine, nor did we that it would be a business. And at this point, it's also a nice business that you guys have, I'm imagining. It's our whole thing now. Oh, you're completely retired from all that. We are full-time podcasters. We do some investing as part of Acquired.

Our previous careers, we have Sunset. What year did you guys make that decision and did you guys get together and be like, I think I'm ready. We did it at different times, actually. as part of Acquired. Yeah, but by the time I went full-time on it, it was an extremely good business, very established in the world. It's not like I plopped down my life savings. We accidentally built it on the side. Yes, I'm not qualified to say this, but I do think you're a little bit inoculated from both a plateau and a decline because the folks that are already drawn to it, for me it's like this American life. I'm never gonna not be interested in it. It's not a pop culture phenomenon. You didn't have a guest on who talked about some sexual escapade with someone and that, you know, I think

you have such a solid foundation of a listenership that will only grow as people like us talk non-stop about it. Thank you for doing it. In any given month, a third of all consumption of acquired is episodes older than six months. I believe that for sure because you get brought in for a certain topic you're interested in and you go, oh. I got to every single one of you start shopping as I did exactly. Okay, so because the Super Bowl is upon us. It was Monica's brilliant idea that what if we could do kind of a mini acquired episode about the NFL Oh, no, I'm not gonna take credit for that It was my idea to bring them in to do an episode for us and then they brilliantly came up

Oh, it sounded too smart to be honest for you. How did you? Yeah, it really did. It always was a little suspicious. We workshopped six or seven different ideas before. We did, of course I threw out the row. Let me guess, Taylor Swift's car collection. The row.

The row. This candle company I can't get the candle of. Is Taylor Swift a car collector? No, no, no. No, but you know, they have a great episode on Taylor Swift. I know that. That's why I had to throw in car collector, because they already did Taylor Swift.

And it didn't make any sense, and it's now been revealed. Is there something we didn't find? I bet she has a collection of SUVs she gets driven in, is my guess. That's probably right, as she should. So, what a great time to learn all about the NFL. It'll be very fun for us, and we're very appreciative,

to let you walk us through the history of it, and the economics of it. I was wondering if you were actually going to do this to learn all about the NFL. It'll be very fun for us and we're very appreciative to let you walk us through the history of it and the economics of it. I was wondering if you were actually going to do this or not. I had this feeling it's not actually going to get handed over to us to do. I prepared the script as if it's like, like a live studio audience for an acquired episode. Yeah. I looked at the transcript the first time we did the NFL episode four years ago.

It's 40,000 words. David started the version to send to you, which I think is three or four pages. What is obvious to me is each bullet point is like, the Browns win for a decade, ruining the thing. You're not going to say that sentence, we're not going to hear more about that. This is a very concise bullet pointed outline.

So our recording day typically is an eight to 10 hour day. People say like, why don't you split it over multiple days? But you probably know that you lose the thread in your head. Of course. Yeah. And your voices sound different. So that eight to 10 hour day turns into a three to four hour episode when we cut. Cause we sort of produce for each other too.

I'll be at home in Seattle, David's at home in San Francisco. And we're both saying like, do that again, but shorter. Do that again, but punch up this part. That part's actually not very interesting. You're co-piloting one another. You guys probably have little ego that if you're able to take that from one another. We have large trust with one another.

That's lovely. And we've had good, hard conversations. Okay, so. The NFL. Yeah, the NFL. Here we go. Football is by far America's favorite sport. The Super Bowl is watched by over 100 million viewers every year in approximately two thirds

of America's household. My favorite Super Bowl stat is that the weekend with the fewest weddings per year happens on the Super Bowl weekend. That's wild. You know Seth Green, he's a geek, admittedly. He loves the Super Bowl because he goes to Six Flags because nobody's there.

He's like, he is basically like, renting out the place. Sunday afternoons when in Seattle there's a Seahawks game, it's actually a great time to go to Costco. Oh yeah. Another fantastic episode of yours that really turned me on to Costco. That's my favorite company. My favorite company too. Yeah.

I've shot two movies inside of Costco and I loved it. One was just nights for six weeks. I had a bicycle I rode around. What movies? Employee of the month. I had a little notebook in the back of my pocket and I would find items I wanted when I got home and I just accumulated this list of lots for six weeks.

Well, my favorite thing in your deck was of the hundred most viewed broadcasts of the entire year, 72 of them were NFL football games. Holy shit. And in previous years, it's been higher. It's been closer to 82 to 85. Last year, because of the election, there was things that people watched en masse.

But basically, America watches NFL games, college football games, the Thanksgiving parade, and presidential debates. And other than that... Nothing cracks that. I mean, kind of the punchline of this episode is the NFL props up the media industry. Accepting the streamers, which that's a whole nother conversation about like the economics of that,

but linear television would be deader than a doornail at this point and probably all the other conglomerated media companies, again except for the streaming part of it, there's nothing else that people watch on TV anymore. Yeah, and it has the most coveted audience which is they're watching it live and they're going to sit through the commercials. Exactly. So award shows are not making the list. Award shows do. That is one of the 20 that are not being filled. Got it. Interesting. Also interesting, ESPN was responsible for some enormous percentage overall of Disney as a corporation.

Historically, every year it's a little bit worse. It's getting eroded. But there were moments, right, where that was just the crown jewel in this thing with all the IP. Sports really, in America, means the NFL. It's not baseball anymore. Basketball's a complicated thing, but it's basically just the NFL.

The fact that the NFL is the thing that America watches is extremely intentional and has been finely tuned every year for a hundred years. It's really World War II. The NFL more than anybody else, the teams and the players are different, but the NFL as a collective embraced this is a entertainment product and we need to put the best entertainment product on the field but really on the television screens of America. It is the most incredibly produced content you see.

I mean, the 17 camera production, the whole director, producer, you kind of forget that it's a show while you're watching it. I don't think of it like that. My 10-year-old was watching the Lions game with me a few weeks ago, and she goes, how did they know that was gonna be the score?

And I go, what do you mean? She's talking about the graphic. There's this incredible graphic package that happens instantaneously, and she naturally is assuming, well, someone would have to design that a day or two ago. And I go, no, hon, isn't that incredible that they have these real-time graphic packages

that just emerge? We take all this for granted. The NFL invented that. That didn't exist before Pete Rozell and then the NFL collectively realized that television is this incredibly powerful thing. There's basically two chapters to the rise of the NFL. There's writing the television wave

and then there's writing the fantasy embedding wave. One sort of tapers off right as the other one picks up. So it's this classic stacking S-curves in business parlance. So when is it invented and when does the NFL form? Yeah, let's get back to acquired. Take us to Princeton. Okay. tracking S-curves in business parlance. really until World War II was a college thing. It got very popular around the turn of the 20th century, but it was like an elite Ivy League. This was where the future government and military leaders of America proved their metal,

was on the gridiron of college football. It was amateur, it was sacred. To the extent professional football existed at all, it was like a dirty thing. And shameful that people would be paid to do it. It was profaning this sacred American elite. Collegiate rite of passage for young men. Oh wow.

And in fact, the formation of the NCAA happened because the game was super violent. There was no padding, many, many deaths. Lots of college men died playing this game. From head injury? Before leather helmets. And there was a thing called the wedge formation. There's no forward pass. So this was basically rugby. Oh interesting. People would try to just line up behind one person and all pile on. It was like the extreme push push. And nobody's wearing helmets. It was the

touch push without helmets. They would just make one human the vanguard of the sphere. And people were getting trampled. I can't remember when 11 players was standardized, but for a long time it was like the student body. Everybody who wanted to show up and play. So President Teddy Roosevelt, this was in 1911 I think, his son was at Harvard. 1905. I'm gonna keep that.

Can I have real time back? Yeah, you can have back to your job. You're so cool. Please. What the fuck? His son was at Harvard, got seriously injured playing football, and so he called all the

Ivy League presidents together and was like, y'all need to fix this. We can't have all these serious injuries and deaths among our country's best and brightest here. In response, the Ivy League presidents instituted the NCAA. So it was kind of organized around safety initially? Yeah, by the president of the United States. Wow. Which is wild.

Yeah. That made the game safer. They started introducing some padding. That's when they introduced the forward pass. Neutral zone, wedge formation gets banned. It starts to resemble football like we know it today. Was it hard to get this done? Because I'm thinking about now. People are talking now about trying to put more restrictions on some of these things

because of CTE. Obviously that had to come up. I'm proud you waited that long to say CTE. I bring it up a lot. Old Debbie Downer here. I am conflicted watching football because it's one of the most entertaining things in the world to watch, amazing storylines,

ways to communicate with your family, your reasons to get community together, and it's extremely dangerous, and the NFL knew it for a long time. Right. It's just weird to hear that they all came together and they're like, yes, let's do this, and they were able to do it, and now that feels impossible.

But Monty, it was in the wake of many, many deaths. There are many, many deaths. It was a different time. Instant deaths, not like 30 years later. I would even argue if we had watched two dozen NFL players drop dead. Remember when Damar Hamlin a couple years ago? When he laid there. Yeah.

Very scary. That was a really profound moment, I think. You could also make a case that they were even less safety oriented Maybe a bunch of people died already and keep in mind. There's no money on the line at this point in history That's the big difference. Good point. We're not even talking Ohio State, Michigan here. This is an institution of the elite It's almost like cosplaying European It's the Ivy League's trying to be as cool as the English colleges. They were trying to emulate.

In the late 1800s America still had this little brother syndrome to England. It's a shame Ben's taken. I talk about little brother syndrome. Oh really? Little brother energy. I'm a little brother. I'm done, okay.

Seems like it. You can be a little brother and not have a brother energy. It's very specific, but yes, this is what it sounds like America was doing. So that's the origin of football. The NFL started in Bank and Fact Check, but not ever brought their energy. APFL. I think you could probably say thinly veiled marketing attempt for mostly automobile dealerships. And it was these individual local teams in small markets that were until the APFC. APFC, I messed that up.

Then NFL. It was not an organized league. People would start their own team, call around and say, anybody else want to play some games against us? And maybe some people come watch. It was very loosely organized. And the local car dealership will sponsor the whole thing. In fact, the Chicago Bears.

Were the Decatur Staley's. Yes, because it was in Decatur, Illinois, the Staley what company? Staley Steel. No, but it has a ring to it. Staley Band. They should have done that if they didn't. Cornstarch.

Cornstarch. This is why you have a producer. Yeah, he real times. It's nice. We're flashing forward a little bit to the Decatur's dailies, but this idea that you couldn't really, in good conscience, have a proper professional football team. It had to be, oh, we all work at the same company. Like a company softball team. So there's the Canton team, there's the Columbus Panhandles, there's the Akron Pros. This is the original NFL teams. There's the Columbus Panhandles,

a few of these original APFC teams that survived the Bears, the Cardinals, and the Packers. The Packers are the only legacy of this era. Like, why is there an NFL team in Green Bay? Packers? Was that a nod to Meatpacking? Why was it the Packers? Do we know? Can we get a real-time fact check? The Indian packing company, Meatpackaging. Meatpackaging, okay. I assume it was probably like this daily, it's like whatever the company was that was sponsoring. And the other reason they needed a sponsor

was because it didn't make any money. And so everyone who's doing it sort of for the love of the game, I think they're paying players already, but at the very least, they're employees of the company. Right, there's operational stuff to do to market the team and to get people to come to the game, and so every single team is loss making. And do we have any sense of what the attendance was of these?

Are they playing in high school stadiums? Are they playing in college venues? I think in this time it was sub 10,000, maybe sub 5,000. Right. So this is state of play till World War II. Nobody has ambitions. There's no vision of the NFL as we know it today. So 38 years of that.

1920 was when the NFL started. So 25 years. Okay, great. Then World War II happens, and that leads to a couple things. One, the whole West Coast of America happens. Television. Small market teams can't really survive

because there's so many people that are going to fight in the war. This is when the Staley's moved to Chicago, the Cleveland Rams would eventually move to LA. In World War II, the Steelers and the Eagles actually combined to form the Staley's moved to Chicago. In World War II, the Steelers and the Eagles actually combined to form the Stiegels. Because they could not field a full roster. It's kind of amazing they eventually decoupled and went back to their original teams.

Importantly though, the GIs are not Ivy League educated people. They have no affiliation, they have no reverence for this sacred institution of the elite of the past. Profaning the college game means nothing to them. I'll add, the end of World War II is the birth of the Hells Angels. You also have a lot of young men who are now bored out of their fucking mind. Yeah, even before everything the NFL has done

to make it an entertainment product, you just go see a high school football game. It's entertaining. Yeah, exactly. So after the war, an upstart rival league to the NFL gets started, and that's the AFC. All-American Football Conference. And the centerpiece of that is Paul Brown. Folks may know that name, the legacy of the Browns. The founder of the Cleveland Browns.

I didn't, and I've always wondered why a team would be named the Browns. So finally that's the answer. It's a great color. Yeah, it is a great color. But also it does have poop connotations. The Browns. Yeah, it does. But now we know it's a human name.

Yeah. Not the first thing I would probably pick. Blank slate. I prefer Stiegels. To add even more confusion to this, he would go on later in his career to coach the Bengals and the Bengals stadium was named after him. So Paul Brown Stadium is in Cincinnati, not Cleveland.

Oh, wow. And what was his background? He's I imagine a business owner, got some money. He's a football coach. Oh, okay. He's like the first modern football coach. So he coached the Massillon Tigers high school football. Eventually goes to Ohio State and then Navy, right?

Yes, he's Ohio State's football coach and he's the first one who is deciding, let's watch game film and let's get everyone in a room and let's be analytical. Let's have a full-time built out coaching staff. Yes. Wow. We need a quarterback coach,

we need a defensive coordinator, we need an offensive coordinator. We need to employ these people year round because we need to do recruiting. We need to plan these people year round because we need to do recruiting. We need to plan in the off season. He gave the players written tests. We all know now, it's like, oh, football's a physical game, but it's also a mental game.

Nobody was honing that, which is arguably the more difficult part of the game. Oh, god, yeah. And he's pioneering the earliest stats. You talk to football-obsessed people now, and there's 30 different stat lines that they can quote you. Other than the score and third down conversions or a few primitive stats, they didn't really exist pre-Paul Brown and he's the one coming up with one of the

metrics that we care about to do better in each game. Do you think he is just observing baseball and recognizing the power of them having kept all these stats? That's the other part of the background here is baseball was the national past time. It's not like professional sports writ large weren't big. It's like no professional sports was baseball. Yeah, right, right. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We are supported by Airbnb. If you're planning your next getaway and looking for an authentic and local experience, you need to check out Airbnb. Because some trips are better in an Airbnb. Keep listening

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where former Nazi scientists were brought to America after World War II, not as prisoners, but as assets to advance U.S. intelligence during the Cold War. These aren't just old conspiracy theories. They're thoroughly investigated accounts that reveal the uncomfortable truths still shaping our world today. The stories are real. The secrets are shocking. Follow redacted, Declassified Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Redacted early and ad free right now on Wondery+. What's up, everybody? It's Jason Kelsey, and I'm here with my slightly famous little brother, Travis, aka Big Yeti

Kelsey. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we're here to bring you a next level entertainment experience with our show, New Heights, where the Lum Baby reigns supreme. We're covering all the hardest hitting topics in order of importance. UFO sightings, the ideal PB&J combo, and Trav becoming a big time acting star. Big time is a big stretch. We've got can't miss A-list interviews though. That's right and

of course next level access to life inside the NFL and in the booth. Just because I retired doesn't mean I'm out of the game. Yeah I mean the old dad shoes suggested otherwise but those are the I'm out the game shoes right there. Listen and watch New Heights wherever you get your podcasts and if you want to listen to us first without any interruptions and get bonus content, join One Three Plus in the Wondery App Apple Podcasts or Spotify. So the NFL is resting on their laurels. They're kind of the only big football league and all the little ones that were the barnstorming teams

have kind of fallen by the wayside and there's major market cities that are NFL teams now. But they're classically not seeking to innovate. They're like, this is good enough. There's some interesting parallels here with wrestling. Very much like wrestling. You know, all these regional divisions, they chopped up. Exactly.

You would have TV rights. Yes. And McMahon was smart enough to start trying to accumulate. This is where the McMahon character started to emerge Very much like wrestling. make another professional football league in major markets all across the country, take advantage of television, and our marquee thing is we're going to sign Paul Brown. Our product's going to be significantly better because this person is innovative. And they were so confident, there was already a Cleveland team, the Rams. They start with the new league, they have a Cleveland team for that league too. That's how confident they are that Paul Brown is like a big deal. They're like, that's great you already have the Rams, the NFL, AAFC is going to have the Cleveland Browns.

They build this league, but they haven't discovered all the stuff that we talked about, about making the NFL a show and keeping it really competitive and trying to make sure that the best teams play the best teams and the worst teams play the worst teams. So what happens is Paul Brown goes 47 and four over the first four seasons of the AFC. He wins all four championships,

loses four games in four years. Well, because is he just saying, I want to play this team now? He's just so much better. He's so advanced. So they blow the Rams out of the water in Cleveland. They're getting 10X the attendance. And the money's all in the ticket sales.

TV's not a big thing. Right. The Rams in Cleveland, they're like, we just gotta get out of here. That's when they moved to LA. They get run out of town. Yeah, but LA is all these GIs coming back from the war. It's the beginning of the television industry.

It's automobile. Glitz, glamour, people that understand marketing. Meanwhile, the AAFC is actually a failure because it's not interesting to just watch the Browns run the table over and over again. So the Browns run the table over and over again. Sure some people want to come see Paul Brown,

but they don't want to see their team get decimated. The league actually folds. Brown's 49ers and Colts joined the NFL. There's now two Cleveland teams, that's a big problem. And the San Francisco 49ers are sort of established. There's now this real West Coast presence for the NFL. And it's funny that it wasn't even as if there was a merger or some consideration. Yeah, the NFL got lucky. Yes.

That's nuts. They got to basically buy a company in bankruptcy. Yeah. Right, the AFC had no better option. I keep going back to, we had Kate Maron, she and her sister Rooney Mara, they are the grandchildren of the Steelers owner and the Giants owner.

My assumption is they grew up incredibly wealthy and she's like, yeah, we obviously had a lot of money, but you have to understand, my grandparents, I'm like, yeah, where'd they get the money to buy a team? And she's like, it didn't cost anything. Both of them were bookies. Wow. So back in the day, you were just like a wheeler dealer bookie.

You could own a... Buy a team. Which goes to say, and that was going to be one of my questions, when the entire income of the Endeavor is just the live audience tickets, I can't imagine they were terribly profitable. If you were the Browns and you were selling 60,000, 70,000 tickets. They weren't that big yet. The first Browns game sold 60,000.

So I don't know if every game was, but they were crushing it. And were they playing 12 games a year? I don't know. There were eight teams in the league. Maybe they played each other twice, so that would have been 14 games, I guess. Okay. So I mean, you got an arena, you got a staff, you got a lot of players. So some money, but not...

Some money. I just can't imagine anyone at that point owning the team because they have any sense You got a staff, you got a lot of players. So some money, but not, yeah. Some money, I just can't imagine anyone at that point owning the team because they have any sense it'll be worth billions of dollars or that it's some cash cow. That's still the case at this point in time. I think many of the entrepreneurs who started those AFC teams did it because they wanted a professional football team.

Some of them probably saw television. This might be a way to make some real money here. Yeah, and I don't want to jump ahead or behind, but I feel like this would be a good time for me to learn what the actual Arrangement is between the NFL and the teams they're owned by individuals. They join this league What does that mean to join the league? So until a couple years ago, the NFL was a nonprofit Organization it then switched but it doesn't matter. It's a thin layer on top of the teams. It's not like the commissioner is the boss of the teams.

No, he's an employee. The commissioner works for the owners. So the league exists at the... Pleasure of the owners. Exactly. The real power is the 32 team owners. The NFL is this agreement that they've created with each other that governs how the game is played.

And then they hire the commissioner to represent their interests. But what really matters is, I don't think it's a democracy. I was going to say what the majority of the owners want, what the most powerful owners think is good for the sport. Those early years of the NFL, my assumption then would be that they are just given

a budget that they're going to operate at net zero from these team owners. It's not like that organization itself is going to try to generate money. And it still doesn't. It gets distributed out to the teams. Well, how's Goodell have a 70 million a year contract? He's paid by...

By the team owners. The top level NFL entity, its mission is not to aggregate profits. Let's flash forward to today. Why is the NFL so freaking awesome? On average, 70% of all the revenue for each team comes centralized from the league. The bulk of that is the television deals. So the NFL uniquely, and this is what we're gonna get into, centralizes and collectivizes the television. When you watch football and you're watching it on Fox,

you're watching Monday Night Football on ABC or YouTube TV, any streaming network, all 32 teams collectively as the NFL do those deals and then share that money out to each team. It's not like the Rams are striking their own TV rights with anybody. Until recently with the NBA has now moved to the NFL model. Baseball, like the Yankees have their own broadcast network.

All the other sports, it's all each team for themselves. the NBA has now moved to the NFL model. Baseball, like the Yankees have their own broadcast network. All the other sports, it's all each team for themselves. And that's what the early NFL was too. You asked this, but the perfect point in history, because 1960, the appointment of Pete Rosell as commissioner is what changes everything. for the product on the field when one team has more resources and gets this positive cycle and wins everything. I mean it's almost a miracle this would have ever been agreed to because clearly there are people that were in huge markets that had teams.

They could have taken the lion's share of all TV revenue It's like actors negotiating together. Yeah, that's just what I'd say. It's like the friends deal. Yes. Yes. Going it all together. Which rarely works. And if you actually link arms and you actually hold arms, which almost never happens, at least for a long time, it starts that way and then fracturing.

Exactly, people start saying, well, I'm, the guy who does this is Pete Rizel. The Rams get run out of town in Cleveland by the Browns. They land here in LA. Pete Rizel. He's a PR intern? PR intern, Compton College alumnus.

Wow. Joins the Rams when they come to LA as a intern doing PR and media relations, which meant like newspaper relations. And he's doing stuff like realizing newspapers aren't going to write stories about the teams because no one cares about his league. Baseball is still the dominant sport.

And so he's hiring writers. Well, he does it himself at first. He's like, I'm going to write the stories for you. Just give it to the journalists. I'm going to give them to you. He's trying to get it in the spotlight. He rises through the ranks here at the Rams, becomes GM of the Rams. And then ultimately, at age 33, gets elected commissioner of the NFL,

which also only happens because of a weird standstill. The existing commissioner died unexpectedly. And there's these factions of owners. This faction has their guy, this faction has their guy, they can't agree. It's like the beginning of our country. Yes, totally. Pete Rosell is the least disagreeable candidate. The analogy is perfect. It's like the founding of America. You got all these states that have their own interests and then there's this pressure from the outside from Great Great Britain, and then they got a band together. And then even Washington,

he was the only guy who wasn't outspoken. He said the least, I kind of trust him. Yes. Exactly what happened. And he turns out to be exactly what the league needed at this point in time. A young person who saw the future, who got TV, who got entertainment, comes from LA.

He's able to make an argument to all these old school owners. We've seen what happens when one team gets too dominant. We need to put all sorts of checks and balances in place to ensure the best product on the field, which means competitive parity. The phrase any given Sunday, you guys probably know this. Of course I know it, but I don't know what it means.

Me neither. This is the origin. Oh, and then any given Sunday the team could win. Anything could happen. Any team could beat any other team. The NFL's dream is for every team to go 8-8. Right. And there's so many things they do to make this happen behind the scenes.

Again, it's amazing they got the dominant teams to go along with this strategy. Totally amazing. It seems impossible. So just like last time, the NFL, without a competitive force, couldn't actually come to the conclusion that you're stuck on DAX. There's another new upstart called the AFL, which spoiler alert, becomes the AFC. It becomes a conference within the NFL. Yes, when they eventually merge.

They sign one collective TV deal as their way of coming on the scene. With ABC. Which again, they're in a very vulnerable situation where they probably only have any appeal if they're all one thing. They're probably doing it out of desperation originally. And they need money to sign players. So they go to ABC, NBC and CBS.

They're the legacy, came out of the radio era. ABC was a new television network. And the AFL has eight teams. They secure a five year, eight was a new television network. And the AFL has eight teams. They secure a five-year, eight and a half million dollar deal that is league-wide with the profits from the deal shared equally. And they do that deal with Rune Arledge. So Rune Arledge built ABC Sports. Things like Wide World of Sports, if you guys remember that. That was all him. He was Bob Iger's mentor. No way! Bob Iger came up under Rune Arlige at ABC and then took over Cap Cities, the Disney merger. So he's a visionary.

No Rune Arlige, no Bob Iger. Wow. No Frozen. Don't even think about that! So this was Rune Arlige's big career defining thing was signing this deal in national football. And NFL is already being televised on those other networks at this point? One off local deals. So the owner is going to the local affiliate and saying... Detroit WKBD. Exactly. So the Giants had like a great deal in New York. I think they're making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in TV money.

There was just theirs. And so this is the bargaining chip that Rozelle needs to then go to the owners and say, look, if we don't do the same thing, they're gonna smoke us. This is the right strategy because it will ensure that all of the teams are doing well so they can be the most competitive

and the most entertaining. And we're now starting to talk about real money from this team, like eight and a half million dollars in 1960-ish. That seems like an unsellable proposition. Well, depending on who- It's so impressive that they did it. It's just like the old adage we hear all the time,

the rising tide lifts all boats. It's real. It is, but I imagine the delta between some of these franchises. I'm sure some teams were like 8X. The Green Bay Packers are still in the league. They're not making any money. Right, exactly.

It's like Costco. It's making me feel Costco feelings. I want a shirt that says Costco feelings. Exactly, we can make that happen. It just seems interesting too that a guy that it seems like maybe was allowed to take on this position because he wasn't overtly charismatic and powerful, somehow is secretly quite visionary.

Pete Russel was like the king of soft power. You look up soft power in the dictionary, it should have his photo there. I love soft power. This is so much more interesting than I was expecting to be honest. It always is. I thought I just would like the money,

because I'm a greedy pig, but that's absolutely fascinating. That is kind of the only way that these things get to exist in our world. Nothing started as big money, and most of the things that try to start in a big money way don't end up becoming successful.

They don't build that grassroots, durable, passionate following, and they don't follow an organic path to building something great. Look at the birth of your show. It's not like you launched on some big network that promoted the hell out of it. You made something that, for that moment in time, people really, really wanted it and craved it.

All these stories, the Costco, the Starbucks, the NFL, they always start sort of in obscurity with these passionate visionaries who are trying to will the future into existence. And big money is true too. I think that eight and a half million dollar deal that the AFL had done, the Jets signed Joe Namath. And the Jets are the AFL.

He was the first athlete celebrity. In the original episode, you were like, I know him because he was on the Brady Bunch. Yeah, I watched the Brady Bunch episode to prep for this show. But yeah, he like comes on and throws a football in the backyard. But he's like stylish

and he's photographed at clubs in New York City. Oh yeah, he was killing it. When because of TV, he's getting broadcast all across the country. The country's falling in love with Joe Namath. So that's what's forcing the NFL, the owners were kicking their feet all along, but they're like, all right, well,

you didn't have a million dollars, that's a boatload of money. And look at the publicity that Broadway Joe is bringing to our rival league here. When you think all American, he was born to be on a reality sports. First celebrity athlete, that's wild. Well, football.

I don't know, it might be out of my depth here, but I think it'd be like if Bob Dylan played football. Oh, wow. I have to imagine throughout this story, we're also getting some kind of transition in who's playing the game, whereas it was people who went to elite colleges and learned this thing.

I imagine it's getting more and more democratized as we're going along, and I imagine the racial makeup of these leagues is transitioning. There's some dark stuff in the NFL history. They were segregated. Nobody except white people allowed for most of the 30s. Interestingly, not in the beginning. In the beginning, anybody could play. But then, it's actually the Redskins. It was the Washington team.

They had a big southern fan base. There was some racism at the highest levels of the Redskins. I'm so shocked that the team named the Redskins isn't. Yeah, right, right, right. Makes no sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes no sense. It's on brand. And from the monetary perspective they were incentivized not to change. I think they were the southernmost NFL team. Yeah, if they had a black player there would have been people protesting. It was the LA

Coliseum where the Rams played in LA when they moved out here said we won't let any organization because it's a public facility ply their trade here run business here if there are segregated teams that are visiting. So that's what forced integration. Go LA. Boy, it's interesting how many different forces can work on one thing, how dynamic that is. Oh, they're going to play in a publicly held facility,

and there is the leverage by which that could be proclaimed, otherwise not. But yeah, to your point though about Blacks coming into the league, that's actually good for business too. You got Jim Brown, and the makeup of the league is totally changing at this point name the list of famous players And it's some of the most love J Simpson Well for more than a minute I mean, I think mostly we know the quarterbacks and then outside of that we don't know many white players

Oh, Joe wasn't black. He was OJ That's right. Did you watch the documentary? Yeah, yo, that was so good. Okay, so AFL, how do they absorb them? Do you guys know Al Davis? Owner, GM, and head coach of the Raiders for many years. No. Oh, he's such a gangster. Oh.

I don't know if it still carries any weight, but they were like the pirates. F the law type attitude, that was Al Davis. Oh, that's interesting, because that's carriers to this day. If you want to bet on someone getting knifed in a parking lot, there's only one bet to make. It's a Raiders game.

That's going to be obvious. Totally. So it starts with the original owner. With the original owner. They were in the AFL. It was clear that the AFL wasn't going away. They had this big TV deal. Then the NFL got their TV deals with CBS and NBC.

Interestingly, the CBS deal, the NFL is granted an antitrust exemption. I think that JFK signed into law because what you had is all these teams with their individual TV deals. And then they get together, they collude and they say, we're going to sign one TV deal. And if you're the TV networks, you're like, what the hell? This is illegal. But JFK deemed it in the good of the nation to have this. This is also back to Roselle and soft power. He cultivated the Kennedys. Relationship.

He put a lot of effort into it. Wow. Having the NFL in communities, being broadcast on TV, being a rallying force, loved that. And so they passed an exemption. So there's a federal exemption to antitrust for the NFL from 1961 in order to sign the 1961 CBS TV deal. And I'd imagine that has some collateral impact. And I'm confused.

I don't know which leagues do this, but I think most people just knowing you don't get to pick where you go is already an interesting thing contractually, right? If you're a player that gets drafted. I think it's part of the collective bargaining with the Players Association. It's essentially a unionized trade. It's still interesting contractually. It's essentially a unionized trade. It's still interesting It's really interesting the trade is it's a good enough deal for us to get some stuff in return that yeah We're open to being relocated and it's not really up to us back to the Paul Brown era

And it sucks when one team wins everything there are two things that the NFL didn't response one was the draft So still to this day if you have the worst record in the league you're're getting the first draft pick. That reverse order, that was direct response. And it's because of that to keep the competition going. The other thing they do that still exists to this day that very, very few people know is they give me the schedule. It used to be explicit, I'm now implicit. Goal is that every team should be 500 at the midway point in the season.

So the first half of the schedule, bad teams play bad teams, and good teams play good teams. That's orchestrated. So the Lions are going to have a really tough first half of the year schedule next week. I didn't know that part. Most audience has no idea.

That's not the same with college. No. That's exactly where I was going to go with this. It's fascinating watching this whole playoff system and transfer portal and all these sort of NFL-like things that they're putting into place. Because this is not a goal of collegiate football at all. The goal is for the really good teams,

have a schedule that lets you win out, play just enough hard teams in your conference for people to take you seriously, and then historically have the big bowl game where you're put on a national stage against another good team. But if you're a fan of a good team, like Ohio State, you sort of expect them to go undefeated or near undefeated

It's like the Browns of old Wow You're right And it is near impossible for an NFL team to get a perfect season it's happened once Just Brady did Brady have a perfect season Dan Marino had a perfect season He's my tailor so if you shouldn't even bring him up because I will not be able to get off of him Yeah, I'm on the show. I have yeah. Yeah when you're rooting for Tom Brady, you don't give a fuck how far you're down It doesn't mean anything you go to that fourth quarter like down three touches. You're not even worried Patriots almost did it but lost the Super Bowl. Yeah

Even Tom Brady can't have a perfect season God it's heartbreaking. That's so poetic that the season they went undefeated in the regular season they lost in the Super Bowl. Yeah Yeah, see the NFL storylines. They're so good Yeah, wrestling and not script they kind of are scripting it in a way with the NFL They're planning it and they're like outcome better levers in place They're pulling all the ones they can and after the season. I don't know if it's every year every other year There's something called a competition committee. That is a set of owners that gets together to try and say, okay, what loopholes did people find? How can we make it even more competitive and tweak, tweak, tweak every year?

Wow. So we're like Formula One that way. It's just endless. Yeah, it's just a business. We forget because we just think of it as sport, but it's a real business. I'm really mad. I just learned this term in Bill Gates' new book. It's a Japanese manufacturing principle. It's what Toyota implied, which is every year we must improve our manufacturing process.

And we must improve... Kaizen. Yes! Oh god, you just earned your paycheck. Yes, good job. Wait, what's it called? Kaizen. And the other half of that is reduced waste, right?

We could try to do a little more Kaizen. Heyizen. Kaizen. Kaizen. And the other half of that is reduced waste, right? We could try to do a little more Kaizen. I'm dying. I'm dying. I think you guys are doing just fine. You gotta know your business. You're not in an optimization business. We're trying to ride that line between jazz and classical.

You don't know how much you're supposed to improv and be loose and how much you're supposed to be classical. Tell us about it. I know, you guys are very classical. You're an orchestra. And we've gotten more so over time. I think when we started, because we had nothing to lose. We were more jazz.

And what have you gained and what have you lost from that evolution? We're right more often, but we have less fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we have fun in different ways. We get to go to Taiwan. Well, it's that thing, we talk about it all the time. Once you have something to lose, things get harder,

they get scarier, they get more stressful, there's a little bit less fun, there's more rigidity, it's tricky. Honestly, this is a breath of fresh air. If this were an acquired episode, we would have a 100 page script in front of us. We'd be retaking everything for fear of getting anything wrong.

Well, the person I have felt most guilty interviewing, which we've now done four times, five times, is Malcolm Gladwell. Revisionist history is the most perfectly produced product in the marketplace. And the amount of effort that's put into it, we finish an episode and we're friendly and I'm like, is that not annoying the fuck out of you?

Like we just created two hours of content and it's almost minute for minute real time content. That's it, there's no more work to be done. That's not true. You know. I had to say. Monica's like, you have no idea what I do. It's not like revisionist history.

What we actually put at the top of the script right before we start now, have fun. You need a reminder of just because the stakes are higher and just because all these people are going to listen. The reason people like it is we're having fun. We're doing the thing we love. I have the same resolution, which is yes, getting mired in these very complicated deals

with humongous companies. I had to get to the point, I was like, remember you love talking to people, and somehow you guys have figured out how to get the most interesting people in the world to swing by your house and talk. Fucking stop thinking about anything else. I didn't realize this was your house, by the way.

I kind of walked up and I was like, I'm pretty sure we're just at Dax's house. Indeed you are. By the way, you asked us about our careers earlier. Do you guys consider this your career now? Yeah. 100%. Yeah, especially, we do 152 episodes a year now.

Wow. We have three episodes a week. And we had five episodes a week up until September. So it's more than a full time. Like in general, don't want to act, but if Tarantino for his 10th movie calls me, I'm going to figure it out. But how do we do it at this point?

It would be very hard. I don't know anything else that could speak to the power of podcasting and the rise over the last 10 years. Clearly you've made the decision that this is a better trade for you. I'll admit this out loud, I remember Joe Rogan stating that years ago, like he's done with acting

and hosting, and I was like, I don't buy it, I don't think you're having the opportunities you want, I think this is bullshit, And I was completely wrong. He definitely was just in the position we are now in much earlier. And yeah, it's much more fun to me than acting or anything else. So now the NFL absorbs the AFL.

Yeah, which is fast forwarding for time, but due to basically Al Davis being a gangster. He's like a mafia boss. He directs all the AFL teams to go sign all the NFL teams quarterbacks Just like as a bargaining chip because there's no pre-agency in either league but not between the leagues They could fight as much as they want They had a gentleman's agreement that they wouldn't poach and they had just signed a new big TV deal

So AFL got NBC to pay them thirty seven and a half million over five years and they're like guess what we're gonna do with The cash go take the money and go steal all the quarterbacks This is the Ted Turner-McMahon war section of the story now. Basically as soon as he does that, it's all over and then they merge. It's so crazy they got outperformed twice and still remain the NFL. Exactly.

Yes, so here's the terms of the merger, which is so fascinating. The NFL absorbs all the AFL teams. They're also gonna add additional franchises, so they're trying to cement monopoly. They're basically saying, which is so fascinating. in both of us. before Al Davis kidnapped the quarterbacks. Totally changed the leverage position. It was, yeah, you can all join our league, just pay us 50 million per team as a franchise fee, and you can join the NFL. The actual deal is 18 million, spread over 20 years. Total.

Oh, wow. It was a 900 grand a year for however many teams. And what actually ends up happening is, all of it, or at least half of it, goes to the New York Giants because they're the most harmed from the Jets joining in the same city. Oh, interesting. So they didn't do that evenly? No.

Basically Al Davis is a gangster. Wow. So this is where anyone with less than a 50,000 seat stadium needs to upgrade. They're like, this is the big times now. We're signing these huge TV deals. Once this is in place after the merger, two things happen. One is the Super Bowl, which we can get to in a sec. Arguably the more important one is Monday Night Football.

That starts in 68. Right around there. One of the other just incredible inventions of the NFL was they invent more football. Prior to that, are they only playing on Friday and Sunday? They only play on Sundays. Which is a bad spot. When they originally conceived of this,

it was no one watches TV on Sundays, so where can we get airtime? Cheap real estate. Monday Night Football is the first time there's only one game happening at a time. So there's one nationally televised game. Before it was, other would be like a game of the week that maybe more markets would see than others,

but they're all happening at the same time. They do the deal with Rune Arledge and ABC to create Monday Night Football. That basically invents the modern football telecast. Eight and a half million dollars per year that ABC pays the league for one game per week. So it's $500,000 per game, which today seems like tiny. It's very large relative to the other TV contract.

They're basically saying because it's one game, because it's prime time, this is a really expensive slot. It's very large relative to the other TV contract. They're basically saying, because it's one game, because it's prime time, this is a really expensive slot. Oh, and by the way, when you pay us a lot of money for the rights to broadcast this, we're going to make it a spectacle. Football before this on TV had been referred to as football in a cathedral because it was one camera at the 50 yard line. Up top, just panning back and forth. No field mics, and commentators that would just chime in every once in a while. Oh, that one hurt. Yes, exactly.

They weren't experts at all. So this is the list of things that are introduced at Monday Night Football. They start with nine, and then eventually go all the way up to 17 cameras, including handheld sideline cameras. I'm going to interject movie stuff. So a couple of technical innovations that helped it greatly is the Superfly Cam, which was invented by John Brown, the DP of Without a Paddle's Father,

who had also invented the SteadyCam. So the SteadyCam allows them to run along the side and keep your vision nice and stable. And then the Superfly Cam is a four-point system that'll allow it to go anywhere. So those are huge tech innovations that help. The three-person booth, so you've got three commentators instead of two, the booth guys have personality. This is when Howard Cosell becomes a character in the arc.

In a lot of ways, it's the precursor to podcasts. It's like, oh, Monday night with my friends. Howard and the dudes in the booth. And talk about filling time. You're going to talk for two and a half hours without a script. Yeah, they gotta be interesting. Improv geniuses, really.

Yeah. They've got theme music. Hank Williams. Remember, Are You Ready for Some Football? Yeah, yeah. Remember that before you got canceled? Are you ready for some football? That's the best.

Yeah, that was a good one. Whenever you're watching football, it kind of looks like somehow the camera is at or near the line of scrimmage. Well, when it was at the 50, whenever you'd be starting in the red zone, watching football, it kind of looks like somehow 20 production people, split screen, interviews. They are for the first time showing cheerleaders on television. So there's now some sex appeal to it. They've got green screens and the big, big thing, replays.

Oh, for sure. Okay, so think this through. You now got this Monday night game for the first time before everything else was happening real time on Sunday, all the other games. You don't have the technology to show something from another game. What do you do during halftime of Monday night? All the other games are done. You can't update what's going on real time

with the other games. You gotta fill half an hour in halftime. You show highlights from Sunday. Grade and build anticipation about next week. There's no ESPN yet. This leads to ESPN and sports. And if you're in a market that didn't show these other games, there was no way to possibly see.

You can read about it in the newspaper, but that sucks. What a powerful aspect to build interest in the whole league. Totally. The crazy, crazy thing that is hard to wrap your mind around today because everything is shot in 4K, real time, stored digitally, easily playback. Most television that was broadcast was in poor quality and never recorded.

Or it was in film, 16 millimeter that needs to go get printed. So they start NFL films. There's a whole long backstory that we don't have time for. But they've got these people shooting, I assume 16 millimeter on the sidelines all Sunday at every game.

In parallel to the broadcast. This is not the broadcast. They send teams out to all the games for the Monday night halftime show. So then they've got a 24 hour turnaround to make a 20 minute highlight reel. To a central editing facility. Oh my gosh.

Put a highlight package together. Get that back out to wherever the Monday night game is happening. Yeah, those people all got to work at 8 p.m. on Sunday night and they did not leave till Monday. Howard Cassell is essentially the first SportsCenter anchor. He's narrating the highlight reel,

but the highlight reel's sliding into the tape deck as it's happening. He's never seen it before, so he's improving. I mean, really, it's like the invention of SportsCenter. So it sounds like they were smart and invested virtually every dollar they received from this television contract into the product. I think so.

The original Monday Night Football was so expensive. The owners were also pretty greedy. Like, this is a lot of money. We're talking late 60s, early 70s. I'm just saying 500 grand per game. No, that's just Monday night. So the show that they're gonna put on now with all the extra cameras and all this bells and whistles,

I mean, this is now becoming a bit more expensive to produce. 500 grand per game in meteorite deals. The NFL says, oh, ABC, you produce that. Oh they want 500 grand! Oh they just want 500 and a half. It's just the meteor. Yeah, yeah. ABC is investing way more than they even have a million dollars in this.

This is why the NFL collectively team ownership in aggregate is one of the best businesses ever. They sell the rights, but then they don't have to incur any of the costs of doing the deals with advertisers Oh, it's entirely on the back of the network and then they get them to compete and make the product better Yes, because now Fox is gonna have the blue line on the field They got to have John Madden and Fox is paying John Madden not the NFL. That is incredible You get your customers to make your product better for you Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Hey everyone, it's your girl Kiki Palmer.

Did you know I host a podcast called Baby, This is Kiki Palmer, and you're not going to believe the conversations I've had. Like, is OnlyFans only bad? How has dating changed in the digital age? What's the deal with Disney adults? I've talked to John Stamos, the VP, Kamala Harris, to Jordan Peele, Raven Simone,

and yes, the one and only Jamila Jamil. And just wait until you hear our conversation. We talk Twitter drama, bad dates, and then something. How the hell do you actually get sexy? Like what the hell does that mean? Like I know how to be funny. I know how to be like, you know what I'm saying? Ah!

Like I don't really know how to be like, and take your clothes off. I'm not robbing fucking Givens. You know, it's like, how do people do that? I've been in this situation too many times and not felt any of those things. The girl eyes, the quiet. Like, I've never been quiet a moment in my fucking life. Yes. On Baby, This is Kiki Palmer.

No topic is off limits. Follow Baby, This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast. You can listen early and ad free right now on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Fast forward a couple decades, what do you think NFL Sunday ticket is? the whole rights packages right now. We may as well flash all the way forward to like how much money. This is what I. Yeah, exactly. So Disney slash ABC slash ESPN's package right now is 2.7 billion per year just for Monday Night Football.

Oh my God. So that's what 16 games? Cause there's no Monday night the last week of the season. 17 then? Whatever, it's either 16 or 17 games. That's before the cost to produce it. That's just the right. I did the math, I'll go through all the deals, but across all of them, I think. to be able to bring your production crew there. Are they recouping? I mean, they have to be.

There's an NFC package and an AFC package. The NFC Sunday games go to Fox for $2.2 billion. The AFC Sunday games. You'd rather be Disney because you'd rather only have the cost of producing one game than NBC. They're like, how else can we slice and dice these rights because there's another bidder, so we may as well let them buy something from us too. They invent Sunday Night Football, $2 billion a year. Wait, Sunday Night Football is different than Sunday Football? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, Thursday Night Football. two billion dollars a year. Yeah.

Oh my God. That's what like one six is. Seven ish total. between the NFC and the AFC. Two and a half for Monday, so that's seven and a half. Then they have NFL Sunday Ticket. You're a bar and you want to be able to flip on whatever game your patrons want. You're a big fantasy football player, which fueled the growth of the league, and you want access to all the games

to be able to flip around. Well, you gotta buy NFL Sunday Ticket. The league is like, well, we don't want to be in the business of providing NFL Sunday Ticket. We'll just find a distribution partner, we'll sell the rights to them, and they can figure out how to make it available. That was DirecTV for a long time,

now it is YouTube for the pretty penny of two billion a year for that rights package. For the same footage. Yes, here's the great thing. Nothing new. All the television networks are producing the games. The camera crews, the commentators, everything. NFL Sunday Ticket is reselling on top of

what they've already sold. Well, how does that not violate the rights? Commercials are still the TV networks. And then YouTube's making their money on the subscription model, not the advertising model. Direct TV when they had it, and now with YouTube TV, if you want an NFL Sunday ticket as a consumer, you have to pay an extra, it's like what HBO used to be.

Wow. Wow. They have skinned this cat. There's one more that they came up with five years ago. Do you know about Red Zone? Okay, this is where you're playing four games at one time. So the NFL launches NFL Network. 80 years in, they're like, we should have our own network.

Mostly non-game content, some analysis. And they realize because they're the one dictating terms on all these TV contracts, they can just keep putting in clauses. And this clause that they negotiate in is, you can't watch any game at any time, but if you leave that channel on, on NFL Network, on Sundays, you'll just see the most interesting current moment of football being played.

They're just snapping back and forth to all these different games that are happening. You're just seeing play after play after play. All day! It's called the Red Zone channel because whatever team is in the Red Zone at any game going on at every given point in time is the theory. So the NFL doesn't have to take on the costs of filming this. They have one dude in a studio who just sort of is like, now we're switching to the Lions and Commanders. Yeah, and they licensed it to them,

but now they're licensing their footage for free. Yes. My God, this is incredible. So to your point, do the networks actually make money on this? At this point, it's not totally clear. They certainly used to, but NFL viewership has basically plateaued.

If you look at any metric first game of the year, or the Super Bowl, or the average viewership, it rose for a long time. The last 15 years has basically plateaued. If you look at any metric first game of the year, or the Super Bowl, or the average viewership, it rose for a long time. The last 15 years has been pretty flat. And they're just adding more product because then you have Netflix Christmas Game. Yeah, another 150. Then Peacock has another 110 Madden video games.

That's a lot of money. 300 million a year. Then also you do think about that Christmas Game and Beyonce. I'm surprised that they haven't done that more. It's only the Super Bowl halftime show. They have to be able to top everything you've been seeing all year long

and bring in people who don't generally watch football. So they need something novel. But no, Monica, I think you're right. And doing it on Christmas, they traditionally shied away from Christmas because that was the NBA's holiday. This is more speculation, but the NBA had historically

operated more like baseball with each team had their own TV deals. Baseball still to its great, great detriment. The NBA and Adam Silver realized, hey, the NFL is a better model. So just this past year, I think they renegotiated and centralized their TV contracts. Interestingly now, this is the first year the NFL is like,

oh well Christmas, maybe we're not just gonna let you have that. So Christmas is now a battleground. And how's the Super Bowl work? When the merger happened there was the NFL championship and the AFL championship, which had been sold to different networks of you're showing a championship game. And then they're like, well, now that we're one league,

can't have two champions. So then they invented the Super Bowl. Made the network executives livid because they're champions. So then they invent the Super Bowl. Which made the network executives livid, because they're like, I thought we had the championship game. You're putting one more game after the game? That I got to spend money again. Yeah, it just totally devalued this other thing we sold people.

Totally. But the right to show the Super Bowl is I'm imagining a standalone TV deal. I actually don't have that in the sum of deals. Well, it definitely was in the beginning, because I think it was ABC and NBC a standalone TV deal. Four network rotation starting in 2024. What is the rights to that cost? I think it might be built into the rest of the deals. Okay. I kind of thought they all bid on just that one game. Maybe. So it rotates every year. NBC, CBS.

Fox. What is this year's? It's on Court TV this year, which is a big win for them. NBC gets Winter Olympic years. I'm so glad I don't have the chart in my office trying to keep track of all the shit we've bought when we're airing it. This sounds like the worst. Well, these days, if you're a network executive, you're just a slave to the NFL essentially. Yeah.

If you really follow the logic of the rights packages are getting more expensive, they're keeping basically the same number of commercials over the last 10, 15 years in any given game. That's the only reason you're addicted. And you'll slowly shift it over to us, and you'll be near-zero profit entities that are a part of something else. Wow. But they're also, not to get too in the weeds on it, they're amortizing the cost of that through some value they assign launching television shows on the back of this audience they have.

They have 16 million viewers, they show a 30-second spot on the news. Yeah, it's almost a loss leader. Yeah, it's friends. Which used to work, and especially because in the streaming era, you don't monetize through advertising. So viewership actually doesn't matter as much. I mean, it does, but you guys would know better than me. But yeah, you're getting into this complicated model

of new subscribers. Their only metric is new subscribers. And subscribers that are staying, why are they staying? Are they staying for the new show? Are they staying for this thing we added? Talk about a job that's nebulous that they're trying to figure out best ROI. Who fucking knows why someone sticks around on a streamer?

I think they have good ideas on how to get new subscribers, but I'm not sure they know necessarily. But then there's also a cap on that. Seven billion. Yeah. They've all got a lot of room to go still. Yeah. I guess.

So Super Bowl, what we're ostensibly here for, many, many people would disagree with this. I think basically the NFL, just from a business standpoint, viewed this as more in the NFL films category. Like how do we add Sheen to the league through this? Yes, it's a game. But this is when they introduced Media Week and the halftime show, and famously,

the halftime show, the performers don't get paid. It's a great honor. Yeah, it's a great honor. Yeah, right. Exactly, exactly. Doing someone's live podcast. Right, right, right. It's an honor. the performers don't get paid. winning the Super Bowl is economically suboptimal because you're playing many extra weeks for which you are not making more money. All the revenue gets shared.

All the teams get equal shares. Oh yeah, we should come to the bottom line. It's a $12 billion a year pool of capital that comes from networks that lands in the NFL's pocket to get distributed equally, truly to this day equally. Packers get the same amount as the Niners. That is why the Packers are still up there. Yes.

And that is why Kansas City can win Super Bowls. You would never see that in other sports leagues. That's so true. Wow. Dead equal. So if you, as an individual team, so like I only care about my business as a team, I don't care about the NFL,

if you make the Super Bowl, they'll say you don't get a bye week, so you're not a number one seed, so you're playing the wild card round, the division all round, the championship, the Super Bowl, four extra games. And then especially if you're the Super Bowl, they'll say you don't get a bi-week, so you're not a number one seed. So you're playing the wild card round, the division all around, the championship, the Super Bowl, four extra games. And then especially if you're a lower seed and those are all road games, the range in revenue for an NFL team, a small market team would be 80% of their total revenue is from

the centralized TV stuff from the NFL. 20% is local ticket sales, suites. Merch? Merch is centralized. That was another Pete Rozell thing. No way. There's some merch that's not. But most is. Jersey's all centralized. The reason for that, Rosel was like, we can't have all the teams having different quality levels of merch. We need to make a

promise that if you buy a Packers jersey or a Lions jersey or a Rams to Jolana jersey, it's a quality product. This is the most democratized business. We were researching it. David texted me, this is communist capitalism. Literally. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. One example of communism working like a motherfucker. And it's working. So there's a sub-organization of the NFL

called NFL Enterprises that manages almost all the merch. And then again, all that revenue gets shared out equally to everybody. Yeah, and if I'm a player, I'm pissed. I'm like, bullshit, I'm fucking Tom Brady. 13% of all Jersey sales this entire year were me I'll think about Travis Many

Children now yes because of that you're right now I don't know if on something like a Jersey or it's an individual planning but the player gets a small cut of that But probably the players actually have it pretty great. It took a long time to get here something like a jersey or it's an individual player name, but the player gets a small cut of that, but probably. The players actually have it pretty great. It took a long time to get here. There was a big deal in 93 that enabled free agency and then 2011 and the collective bargaining thing has been renegotiated a few times.

But today, 48 and a half percent of league revenue is the new salary cap. So players are entitled as a whole to almost half, the more money the NFL makes, the more money players will all make. That's pretty high. It's really high. So everyone has an incentive.

Top tier quarterback contracts are 55 to 60 a year, and they're by far the highest paid players. But yeah, some of these are half a billion dollar contracts over a period of time. Now you might say, oh my God, there's so much inequality among players. There is, but it's actually a narrower band than other sports.

The NFL has done a better job at making sure there's a league minimum that's sufficiently high. I'm always thinking about it when you watch that HBO show, Hard Knocks training camp, and you're like, this guy's making 400,000 a year and he's sitting next to a guy who's making 29,000 a year. They're arriving in these dramatically different vehicles.

It's pretty wild. Most coworkers don't experience that. I don't know if you have it off the top of your head what the league minimum is, though, but it's pretty high. Half a million, a million? Rob? 795,000. That's good.

And most are making more than that. Yeah. And they're what, 80 player rosters? Like these are big teams. Right, exactly. Okay, so here's my great question. Is the only way for these networks to fight back is if they themselves Formed a coalition and they collectively said guys

We're not paying more than a billion five for these rights people were concerned about this people were like cord cuttings happening Obviously traditional linear TV is going the way of the dodo is the NFL screwed here. Yeah tech companies It doesn't help networks, but it is a way for the NFL to continue to extract dollars. Thursday Night Football was streamed on Twitter for a year or two, right? Yeah, that was so weird. But again, if you look at it right now,

it's the exact same situation the NFL was in, in 1960 or whatever, because currently Netflix would be heavily disincentivized to enter into a collective buying group because they can outspend everybody. So they are currently someone who would be like, fuck that. But in the long run, they might benefit more from being in bed with some of these other They do have these published goals of wanting to grow revenue. NFL total revenue last year was $20 billion, up from 18 a couple years ago. And as you know, the lion's share of that is the $12 billion from the TV deal. But then there's all this other stuff on top.

I think they want it to be 25 by 2028 or something like that. Yeah, my last question, and this one was really my agent when he found out I was going to talk to you guys, he's obsessed with you as well. He's like, agent when he found out I was going to talk to you guys. He's obsessed with you as well. He's like, you got to figure out what is going on with gambling? What's their participation in this gambling? Because this again is some potentially huge revenue source. So what's their relationship with now this rise of these online gambling platforms?

When we did the episode two years ago, what did we say? 45 million people-ish bet on the NFL. Which was illegal then. It just goes to show prohibition is a goofy concept. Everyone still bet. Except you legalize it and even way more people bet. A lot more people drank alcohol after prohibition. 75 million people bet on the NFL last year.

It's growing 35% year over year. That number's huge in and of itself. Only Americans watch football. If you are going to analyze the NFL and say, what is its one weakness? What have other sports done better? It's internet. Nobody except Americans care.

Have they tried? They have these exhibition games. It's American expats who go to them. Locals don't care. It is curious to me why it holds no interest. I'm not a huge sports person, but I just do think objectively that game has a magic to it. The results would suggest that,

aside from their collective bargaining and all these other things, it's an easy game to jump into really quick in love. I was just about to say, I think Americans are so attached to our teams. I think that's a little bit because we don't have a very long history. So we have to like build our own allegiances and stuff.

And I don't think all these other countries have it, but then I think soccer. Yeah, all the countries. I'm wrong, I'm rough. Yeah, yeah. Like the guys up in the street. Cricket. Yeah, cricket. Yeah, yeah.

Back to betting. So 75 million people bet on the NFL. The total population of people who care about the NFL is only Americans. So what's the denominator? I don't know, 300, 330. That includes children. Right, so probably a third of the country

is betting on the NFL. Wow. So does the NFL, are they licensing anything in that process? Yeah, they've started making money. They wouldn't have let this happen without having some sort of vig in it. There are figures that an industry association puts out

that says they're making $2.3 billion a year from gambling. That's kind of amazing. That's already a sixth of the TV contracts. They're taking credit and double dipping and other pies too. So I'm not sure if there's yet a published number on here's our gambling revenue stream. They don't want to be known as having made money on this. But how crazy is it watching football the last 30 years and there was this puritanical thing where they would never even mention the spread. And now it's all over the place. And it's like, this is the Draft Kings postgame.

Yes. I can't believe it. They did a big old pivot on that. They really did. There was this original fear, of course, that it would somehow corrupt the game and people would throw games. And we did see it in baseball. There's some examples. So I think the ostensible threat always was

it was going to change the outcomes of these games. Is there any proof of that having happened? I'll tell you, in my own personal anecdotal situation, I would have never found a bookie. I stupidly thought that the Jake, Paul, and Tyson fight was real. And so when I heard it was three to one Tyson to knock him out.

You're now convinced it wasn't real? Yeah, yeah. When a man has that much muscle memory with his Bob left everything, and we see him do the entire series and then stop just short of knocking him out, that's a little hard for me to understand. But at any rate, I was stupid enough to believe that that was going to be a real fight. And I'm like, well, that's 3-1 money sitting on the fucking table. Mike Tyson's gonna knock this guy out in two seconds. I could download an app right now and make that. I was like, I gotta get to Vegas. I'm like, no that's three to one money sitting on the fucking table. Mike Tyson's gonna knock this guy out in two seconds.

I can download an app right now and make that. I was like, I gotta get to Vegas. I'm like, no I don't anymore. Now it turns out I would have needed to because in California you still can't do that. Thank you California, you saved me $10,000. It's not legal here yet? I think it has a lot of restrictions.

I think this is part of why there's so many different things you can bet on. Any state that you have a native gaming industry, which California has, you're going to find that we have more restrictive laws. Every time there's an election cycle, you see all these gambling anti and pro funded by different reservations. So I think that's why I wasn't able to bet. So thank you, reservations as well.

Congratulations on your money. So yeah, raises those questions. I guess then you look through another lens of, well, the NFL always explicitly has been, this is an entertainment product. Congratulations on your money. So yeah, raises those questions. This is an entertainment product. We don't want a Paul Brown situation. They're putting their fingers on the scale in every which way. the best teams worse in the back half of the season because they're more beat up. Here's the one thing other than CTE that could start the decline of the league. We are slowly seeing the erosion of the league first mentality of the cooperative capitalism.

It used to be the case that the overwhelming amount of revenue that you produce comes from the league, the national revenue, and still for most teams about two-thirds. But there are more teams finding clever ways to say oh that's actually not part of national revenue that's part of my revenue so when you see a new stadium get built and it has an absurd number of luxury suites luxury suites are different than admission tickets admission tickets have a way in which a lot of the money goes to national revenue oh they have to kick up their own ticket sales? The justification is a visiting team is half the product.

I thought for sure that was all theirs. I think 40 percent. I think it's about a third. And again, it's not just directly to the visiting team. It's up to the national pool, which then gets split evenly. But these luxury suites, for example, that's all local revenue. You get to keep that or other businesses that you start around your stadium. Seat licenses, if you guys have heard of that, of like, That's all local revenue. you have teams like the Cowboys so you do have teams that are making a lot more money as you know, Jerry World, they've managed to build a really profitable local only revenue business.

So you do have teams that are making a lot more money than other teams as more of the cleverness shifts to the local business. And you think that could seed some kind of animosity that could start to erode? Even if not animosity, just some teams are way richer than others. The salary cap still is low enough that you can,

as a small market team, still have parity. Are a lot of the teams not even hitting the cap, would be my guess? Or do they all hit the cap? I think they all hit the cap. They do. But there's all sorts of engineering you can do around the cap. It's a game of chicken between the players and the individual teams and the league of like, well, you're back waiting the contract, how much is guaranteed?

Your margin of safety isn't that much further with the bottom teams making on the order of $50 million in profit a year before. Let's say the next time there's a renegotiation and it goes from 48.5% of the players to let's say it goes up north of 50 or let's say costs go up for everyone. The players from their perspective, they're like, we just want as much money as possible. We want Jerry Jones to be able to pay us more money. Wouldn't that then incentivize teams moving much more? Because if I'm only making $50 million,

I see in Dallas you can make $600. Well, it's already happening. Look at the Raiders, right? Going to Vegas. This is the thing that made the NFL, was it doesn't matter how big of a market you're in. If you have the best team and we create this really even product,

it makes for this really powerful league. They're very aware of this. They're not aware of this. Money talks. we go to a Super Bowl, nobody's the home team. And then you might think like, okay, well, if you get to the Super Bowl, at least you're there, you spend all the money you would want to win. If you win the Super Bowl, you gotta pay for the parade. Oh!

That last line item, the parade. And the parties and all that, so. Well, don't players also have Super Bowl bonuses? Probably the bigger impact is not to Super Bowl bonuses, but what it does for contract negotiations in the coming years, players be like, well, I helped you not to Super Bowl bonuses, National pastime you and I were even much more bullish when we did our NBA episode three years ago That the NBA was gonna eclipse the NFL But this 82 game season where the coaches are incentivized to sit their best players and nothing really matters till the end of the season Anyway, well nothing matters to the fourth quarter then and nothing matters to the season. Yes

I was the biggest NBA fan That was my religion for like eight years and I was watching the Lakers during their run of complete dominance and I remember just going I should really only tune into the fourth quarter that's when they start playing doesn't matter how much they're down and then I was like do I even like this sport if I sit through three quarters that don't matter it's interesting the limits that are just inherently in place like I guess the obvious choice for them would be to add games in the NFL but But it's such a violent sport that there's really kind of a limit, they can't play 82 games a year

in that sport. They're likely going to add another week. Wednesday morning football. Tea time. Breakfast football. That's how they're going to finally get Europe. Exactly, tea time. Oh, well, David and Ben, this has been awesome.

Yeah, thanks for coming. How fun. Thanks for having us. We love your show. Thank you for being such fans. There's not a day that goes by that we don't hear from someone. I heard about you guys on Armchair Express. Oh, good. Thanks so much for coming in. I hope we get to do this again.

Yeah. Maybe another topic will burble up. The Row. And yes, we'll be on your show. We'll be on yours. Oh, yes. Oh, David, were you whispering to Dad? Thanks so much, you guys.

All right, take care. Stay tuned to hear Miss Monica correct all the facts that were wrong. That's okay, though. We all make mistakes. Okay, well. Okay. Hello. If you say so. Now, tell me if you've ever experienced this, okay?

Okay. You get a new scratch. Scratch? Yeah. Yeah. And it turns into a scar. Ooh. Okay. Okay. And then. You with me?

Yeah. You along so far? And then, when you look at your arm or hand, wherever the scratch slash scar is, you don't recognize your own self. Oh, no. Oh, you can't relate. I've not had that experience.

Okay. That's what you're dealing with? Yeah, I have a new scar. Is this the mole you try to pick out or the freckle that you try to dig out? I do often try to remove my own freckles. You're one to talk, okay? I've not tried to remove a freckle you try to do lots of surgeries on yourself true true

But just no freckle removal. I don't know that that's possible. Well, it is I mean, I'm not advising it. Yeah, okay, but I've Successfully completed many and replace it with a scar. No, this is not that okay. This Was a scratch or something. I don't know what happened there. But I guess I must have picked at it. And now it's a scar. Was it a little light white color there? Yeah, do you see it?

Well, now it has a little makeup on it because this is where I put my makeup. Oh, you put makeup. Oh, I thought you were covering up. No, I wasn't. In fact, now it looks like I'm lying. Right. Give yourself a scar. Can you see it?

Yeah, oh my God. I know, it's huge. I can't see it. Really? Yeah, I'm sorry. Well, the brown spot? Yeah. Oh yeah, I see the brown spot. That's him.

There's a liver spot, I think. Don't, that's not what happened. That is not what happened. It was a scratch. It's time to enter our liver spot phase of life. I'm going to try to avoid that. Although it's, look, aging is normal and natural. It's very natural.

If you can do it without liver spots, you'd probably prefer it. Ideally, yeah. But anywho, so now when I'm like typing, it's on my hand, I see it all the time. And I'm like, who is she? Right, whole new hand. That's kind of fun though, I would say.

Yeah, it's an opportunity for reinvention. Yeah, slowing time down. There's a ding ding ding. These novel things slow time down. Yeah, they do. No one, maybe that's why Jan's going so slow. Jan Brady, January. We're calling her Jan Brady now?

Yeah. You gotta catch me up. I'm sorry, I thought I already said that. Yeah, we're gonna develop Jan Brady. Sounds like a Jess. Absolutely. Well, I've been calling her Jan. Okay, right.

And then he added Brady. Well, tomorrow it's over. I know. Yeah. One more day, we can make it through. Well, tomorrow it's over. I know. One more day, we can make it through. Yeah, maybe. We can, no we can. Yeah, I started compulsively cutting my hair today. You know how I like to do that.

Yeah, and it's an indicator. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now I can't blow my nose. Oh, you're replacing. And I think that it's burbling up. Okay, I think you're gonna need a new replacement because soon you're not gonna have any hair. I think I satiated my thing.

It's, what happens is I, I was gonna do a little trim trim, it got bigger and bigger and bigger, and then I thought I had finished in the bathroom, but then I went to work out, and as I told you, I have reverse lighting or back lighting. I know. It exposes all these things.

And then the madness of, I'm just gonna do a trim, I know that's it, I keep scissors now in my gym, which is, yeah. And then I gotta vacuum it up. And then I'm like, that's it, because we can't get the vacuum out again. And I got the vacuum out like five times, I think. Okay.

Yeah, I was lifting weights, cutting hair, vacuuming, lift more weights, see more hair, cut more hair, vacuum. If someone was watching, which someone could, it's very exposed. There's a lot of people in this area. And it's just windows galore. Oh, true. So if someone was interested,

they probably watched the ramblings of a madman. Your hair looks nice though. Okay, good. You did a good job. You see any spots I need to trim? No, I think. I'm not too far from my scissors. They're always within an arm's length. Had a little bit of a gusher, caught my ear a little bit.

Okay. I'm just trying to be accountable. I know, I appreciate it. It's like an A meaning. It just worries me a little. Okay, so maybe with your gusher, you're gonna start understanding what I'm talking about about the scar.

I'll be blessed with the fact that that's very hard for me to see, other than when I saw blood and blood overtook my whole sideburn area. Well, when you get a glance of it, you might be like, whose ear is that? Yeah. Speaking of people watching you do weird things,

yesterday I was at Sunset Tower. That's a very fancy location in this city. Wow, we had overlapping days. Continue. So I went to Sunset Tower and I was working. I just bought this new bracelet. And I love it. It's from Sarah Hendler.

Great. And she put it on me. And so then when I got to Sunset Tower, I was like, oh, I'm gonna try to tighten it a little bit, like move it up a rung. So I took it off, and then I spent, I think like 20 minutes trying to get this bracelet back on my hand. I could not do it.

This is a great way to meet somebody. Ask a stranger. I thought that! Yeah. I'm so sorry, sir. Could you hold my delicate wrist and help me get this? Do you mind helping me with this? I did think it could be a meet-cute situation.

Yeah, for sure. And then the universe is wily, right? Because. Brascally. Yeah, I was thinking about that and meet cutes and Guess who reached back out who? the matchmaker People remember it didn't last time didn't go great and I felt

Bad about yourself. Yeah And This one seems more promising. Okay. Less, less like conducive to me feeling like I hate myself. Okay, great. So we'll see. So Sunset Tower, did you see fancy people?

Since I sat at the bar, I couldn't really look, but I'm sure there's those fancy people there. There always are. So, you know, I had this dinner with Nate and Panay that was a con. It was really a deception so that I could get to my birthday party, but then I really wanted to have dinner with them,

so that was last night. And then Panay was like, where should we go? Like, home base, one of our standards. And I said, I could go to home base, or I could also go see some new hot place. I felt like I wanted to see that. Wow. Boy did he deliver.

We went to, have you heard of Navico? Navico, no. I thought it was Nabokov when I saw it written. I was like, oh, they named a restaurant after Nabokov, the writer. Oh. But it's Navikov. Oh. In Beverly Hills on Canon,

and it was everything I could've hoped for. It's only been open since July, I guess. Mediterranean and Italian. The food was outrageous. Ooh. You know how when you're at Cara, you can pretend you're in Italy? Yeah.

I was like, we're in Miami. Oh, sure. It was Miami. Where people were dressed very sweet. I gotta be careful. Well. I gotta be careful. It's not, it's fine. Almost all the dudes looked exactly the same.

Uh-huh, I can picture it. Five, nine shaved heads, probably on a little too much testosterone, but not working out a lot. With very, very attractive younger women. And were they wearing chains maybe? Yeah, there was a lot, with very, very attractive younger women. And were they wearing chains maybe? Yeah, there was a lot of jewelry, there was a lot of paddock watches.

I mean, it's expensive. Yeah, yeah. I'm watching like- It's kind of like no boo in a way. Yeah, it felt like a throwback to the 80s or 90s, which I enjoy. That's fun. I cannot put it to find a point how good the food was.

It was outrageous. No, I want that. And we pigged out like crazy. A risotto with truffle gluten-free blew my doors off my barn. And then a great steak, a baby chicken. Tiny chicken? They described it as a baby chicken. Not a Cornish hen.

Not a Cornish hen, but an oven-baked tiny baby chicken. They don't need to call it that. That is not as appetizing. Well, I was like, but an oven baked tiny baby chicken. They don't need to call it that. That is not as appetizing. Well, I was like, what, do they mean a chick? Right, exactly. But that wouldn't be enough meat, I don't think. It was delicious and it was very entertaining.

It was, it was. It's fun to do that every now and then and get in the scene. Yes, I loved it. What was the vibe at, I didn't know you're now working at Sunset Tower. Only. That's a far ride to go.

It is, that's why it's not a main stop for me, but I love Sunset Tower. You love it. I only go like once a year, twice a year. You love it for the food, the atmosphere. Atmosphere. And what are you seeing? Also the food is very good.

I had a fried chicken. Ooh. And it was really delicious. They have a great shum krok. Was had a fried chicken. Oh. And it was really delicious. I have a great shrimp crock. Was it a baby chicken? Fried baby chicken? It was full size, I think. Okay, grandpa chicken.

Yeah. It's also such a vibe. It is, for people who don't know, it's a hotel here, Sunset Tower Hotel. Very historic. And then there's a bar and a restaurant. It's very LA, old school LA, old Hollywood vibe. If you will.

It got packed. See, I went at 2.30. So that you'll be still there at happy hour? I didn't mean to, but we left at eight. Okay. So we were there all day. I've been craving it for a while, the energy there. Yeah, similarly.

I was dead, I had ridden my bicycle too far, and I hadn't had caffeine since really early in the day, and I wasn't gonna have any. I was driving there, I was like, oh, a little drowsy for this big outing with the boys. But I did have some DCs at the place, and then the energy really did lift me up. Do you think that maybe now is not the time

for you to be like cutting out caffeine? Well, I think it is in service of making sure I'm getting good night's sleep. Oh, okay. Right, like I think getting the full uninterrupted aid is ideal right now, which I did last night. Yeah, I just, I think taking away things that you like.

Blowing my nose. Exactly. Yeah. It's like maybe now's not the time. Although I have the right mental attitude. I've decided to go like, yeah, this is uncomfortable, but this is you being strong and not escaping and walking through, and it's fine and it'll change. So it's been fine.

Okay. Yeah, just a couple haircuts, a few naps. That's all right. Yeah. Oh, that's fine. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. You're an expert, if you dare. ["The Daily Show Theme"]

Anything thrilling happen since I saw you last? I guess those were big announcements that I already gave. We both went to restaurants. I took a break, right? I took a long time to put my bracelet on. Yeah, did you end up having someone help you? Yeah, when Julia got there, she did it. But not a stranger. No.

I think that's the best move. I know, but it's also so- I'm so sorry, excuse me. I've been trying to get this bracelet on for 20 minutes. Would you mind? I don't have any cooties. Well, I do have cooties. Look how fun this is already.

Playful, dance, dance, dance. Before he even gets the bracelet, you've now talked for 25 minutes. Sure, because he's going to have a hard time too. It's much harder than you'd think. Yeah, and then he's failing and he's laughing. Yeah, that's funny. Oh my God. I'm falling in love just thinking about this.

We had a funny moment last night. Every now and then you'll feel 13, which is really fun, which is George and I went to the bathroom. There was a girl in the cowboy hat he liked. Okay. Sitting at a table and behind them was this cool little display of like the seafood they have. It was like a little mini market set up and they're grabbing stuff from there. It felt like you were invited to peruse this little thing. Okay. So on the way in, George spotted her, and he's like, oh my God, look at that girl in the cowboy hat.

Okay, so when we were coming out, I'm like, oh, let's look at these, let's look at the lobsters. You were wingmanning. Yeah, so now we're like, we are looking, but we're also fake looking. Of course. And we're like looking at the vegetables and the lobster and this and that.

And then as I turned to walk in, well they're all looking at George and I. And then I'm like, and now what? Yeah, he's gonna have to talk. He's gonna have to talk. It's so funny. That part's hard. I felt like I was at the mall,

and we saw some girls at Burger King, and then we acted like we were gonna buy something. Then we were like, you know what, I'm full. And turned around, and it was like, well that was the. And then when I left George, well, I think we got their attention and then I was leaving and George was like, I gotta go back, I gotta go back and see what's happening with the cowboy hat. But us standing there looking at this stuff.

It's so weird to be an adult. Especially 50. Right, yeah. Especially 50. Right. Yeah. I think that's... Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha men, Ben and David. Oh wow, fun, Ben and David. Yeah, they're great. Really, really, really. That was a very fun time. Yes. And now I'm really into the NFL as an institution.

Yeah, as a corporation. Yeah, as a business. As a capitalist communism. Yesterday I bought some vintage clothes and bought an LA Rams, there was an LA Rams vintage shirt. Oh really? And I got that, because now I really like the LA Rams because they were really ahead of their time progressively. Right.

So now you're a huge fan of the Rams. And I live here. You're a Ram fan. Well, let's see. The biggest fact to check, and the most exciting fact to check, is Taylor Swift's car collection. Oh, okay.

Yeah. This is very exciting. Very. Does she have a car collection? I was a definite no. Uh-huh. And I felt very arrogant, in my opinion, because I feel like I know everything about her.

Yeah. Only because I listen to a great podcast, every single album, Shout Out, that breaks down all of her albums and they do other people too and they also just do music industry stuff. The two hosts are really awesome. So I love that and so now I feel like I know everything

because they do deep dive, but I don't think they've talked about her car collection. Right. They skipped that part, so she does have one. This is fantastic. What are her cars? Okay, there are three sections of cars she has. Okay.

Luxury, sports, and practical. Okay. Luxury, Mercedes AMG G63. Oh, what a wonderful sedan. Luxury vehicle. Twin turbo, luxurious. Is that a sedan or a? Yeah, four door sedan. Oh, I thought it was a G wagon.

G wagon is the G63. That's what I said. Oh, I thought you said S. No, G. Oh, wonderful, love those S. No, G. Oh, wonderful. Love those. Yes. Love those.

Eric's even thinking of getting one. Really? Yeah. G wagon. Yeah, they're so good. I would like to have one in my life. You would. At some point.

Yeah, they're great. They're very expensive. Are they me though? But kind of. Every time I see a G-Wagon, it's mostly rich hot women driving G-Wagons in LA. Yeah, it skews female. Really?

She also has Mercedes Benz S-Class. That's what I was referring to, but not the AMG version. Right, then she has a Mercedes Maybach S650. That's fancy. That's like a coach built, Mercedes based, you know, like a private plane for cars. Wow. It's a rolling atelier.

Wow. Then there's the Cadillac Escalade. Standard, you gotta have it for arriving at functions. You're up high, if you're wearing a dress, you can exit the vehicle without your beaver accidentally being exposed. Yeah, special occasions. Okay, now we're into sports cars.

Okay. Audi R8. Okay, yes, yes, very elegant design first. Okay. Not the most performing. Oh, all right. Of super cars. Allegedly. Okay. No, no, objectively, but very elegant looking. It does say right here, a high performance super car.

Yep, and it is. It's got the Lambo V10 or it's got the V8, depending on which. It says V8. Okay, I'm surprised she doesn't have the V10, but when I talk to her, I'll get her to. You'll get her to. Again, that's a very feminine supercar.

Okay, okay. Now she also has a Ferrari 458 Italia. That's a shocker. Yeah. Yeah, that feels, that's interesting. That's when she plays Lavender Hayes, I think. That's her Lavender Hayes car. Is it sexy?

Well, it's just an Italian, I mean it's so. Italian stallion? Yeah, very dude car. Very, very few women go out and buy a 458. Oh wow, yeah, yeah, I'm looking it up. It is, it looks fast. I'm gonna ask Chad if it knows what percentage of Ferrari owners are men.

Oh, that's a great question. Because I bet you it's about as high as any brand. What percentage of Ferrari owners are men? The percentage of Ferrari owners who are men is estimated to be around 90 to 95%. Oh wow. That's really quite high. So she can count herself in the 5%. That's awesome.

Okay, then she has a Porsche 911 Turbo. Perfect car. Very exciting, great taste. Should I see what Chet thinks the percentage of women who own Porsches? Yeah, it needs to be higher if it's not. What percentage of Porsche owners are female? 15 to 20%.

Okay. So that's 4X, the amount that owned 4Rs. Right, and that tracks, I know more women with Porsches. The Cayenne has female ownership estimated between 30 and 40%. Oh, that's the electric one? No. Oh, here we go. The Macan, that's the small SUV.

That one's got 50% of buyers are women. Wow. Yeah. Okay. All right. Practical vehicles. Okay, she has some practical vehicles? She has three.

Okay. She has a Toyota Sequoia. Great, she'll have that until she's dead. It'll run until she's dead. She has a Chevy, which we hope is like 150. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's 150. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll run that long, don't worry.

Chevy Silverado, her first car, which she still keeps. Okay, is it pink? Yeah, it's pink. It's pink. It's like a Mary Kay. And then, the Nissan Quashquai. That's Q-A-S-H-Q-A-I. That's um. She has that.H-Q-A-I.

That's um. She has that. Why does she have that? She has it. Was that given? Well for one it's cute. Does she have a deal with Nissan? Does she have any kind of? No, she just loves it.

She loves it. Okay, but actually according to this other site, her very first car is a pink truck. That's very cute. Another site has a little bit of a different opinion on what she has, but a lot of these are crossing over. So I feel good about that. The Ferrari, the Porsche, they're all on here.

Okay, good. The Sequoia, the AMG, the Nissan Quashquai. The everyday humble. Everyone says the Nissan Quashquai? If we ever interview her, I wanna do 20 minutes on this. I hope she arrives in it. That would be great. And she probably will,

because it says the Everyday Humble Choice. Oh! It's her latest acquisition. She can move her discreetly. Right, so. In London. It says in London specifically. This vehicle is in London, and it's so she can leave an apartment

without anyone thinking it's her. Yeah. Although too late. I know, don't go looking for, I know, don't go looking for her quash quies and try to find her. She's just trying to live. She's just trying to be. She should own a UPS truck and then just deck out the back like a Sprinter van and then get driven around a UPS truck.

You could design something for her. You've been designing cars with AI. I could, and then her driver could wear the UPS truck. No one ever. You can design something for her. You've been designing cars with AI. I could, and then her driver could wear the UPS outfit. That's fun. Or FedEx, I guess if she's in London. It would probably be FedEx. Okay, do players get a cut of their jersey sales? Yes, NFL players receive a cut of their jersey sales.

Players receive royalties based on how many other jerseys have sold. These royalties come from group licensing deals negotiated through the NFL. Okay. So, that's cool. Action Park, I don't believe is the park based on Adventureland because it says Adventureland

is based on the real life Adventureland Park in Farmingdale, New York. Okay. Action Park is in New Jersey. Okay, and there's a doc about it called Class Action Park or something. Oh, five to 10 victims daily. Five to 10 people went in an ambulance away from there.

Emergency room, yeah. Emergency room. While they were keeping probably the town emergency clinic in business. Yeah, maybe that's what it was all about. I wonder if they were giving away like the woman who lost her eyelid on the slide and she got an embroidered sweatshirt or something

from Armchair Anonymous. Yeah, that was a great episode. They should have had a shirt that said, I was sent to the emergency room by Adventure Park. And all I got was this little t-shirt. Is that what it's called? Action, Action Park. No, Action Park, yeah. Well, that's it for Ben and David.

They were awesome. Ah, yeah. Really fun. Yeah, incredible. And I've been talking so much about what I learned. Yeah, me too. I basically repeated the entire episode to my father-in-law on his intent.

Oh, fun. All right, love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you.

Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you.

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