Pablo Torre Finds Out - How Republican Influencers Abandoned Football (and Might Fumble the Election)

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

Donald Trump was at the Alabama-Georgia game. Tim Walz was at The Big House in Ann Arbor, ahead of tonight's VP debate between a high-school coach and an Ohio State grad. College football has always been a passport to America that will never be too woke to go broke, but now the sport itself has become a battleground state. Jane Coaston — Republican whisperer, Michigan fanatic, new host of Crooked Media's "What a Day" podcast — considers whether the presidency might be decided by a disconnect between two formerly allied institutions. And an emerging strain of influencer conservatism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. He is a guy who will show up at the party with a 30 rack. He will make sure that you don't drive home. Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraff Kings Network. It has been very obvious to me that if we're going to do culture war stuff as the main mode of political discourse in America, these days. We should consider, given that framework, what actual culture is in America. And so for people who don't know, and I try to say this as often as I can, college football is in fact the second biggest sport in the United States after the NFL. Oh, yeah.

Look, for me, Jane, you're from Cincinnati. I'm from New York City. New York City, not known as a college football hotbed, but merely covering sports and doing doing sports talk shows in which I talk about college football. It's been my passport to the rest of America. Right. Absolutely. I mean, I think about that all the time. I've lived in Ohio, went to Michigan, lived in Michigan, lives in D.C., within Utah. I've been to a lot of different places. And every single one of those places, football brought people together. About two years ago, I went to the Michigan-Maryland game. So I'm in the parking lot outside the game, pre-gaming, as one does. and there is a car that is covered in Michigan stuff, but also covered in Trump stuff.

And they've got like a big let's go brand and flag, but they also like a ton of Michigan stuff. And they see my Michigan sweatshirt. And they're like, eh, like they offer me a beer and a shot. The moments where I'm at a wedding or I'm at a bar in some state, you know, somewhere random and like rural Utah. And I'm like, hey, did you see the youths game? Like, is Camerizing ever going to play again? Is his hand okay? old is he? People used to joke about like just asking, how's the weather?

College football is the weather. So you may have noticed that there are less than five weeks left before Election Day somehow. And that the vice presidential debate between Ohio Senator J.D. Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is taking place tonight, all of which helps explain why Donald Trump was at Brian Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa on Saturday. There to watch Alabama's enormous 4134 win over Georgia, which was an incredible sight, not least because Trump was there tossing boxes of chicken tenders to fans and also doing a safe space interview with Fox at halftime. Tuesday, J.D. Vance is going to take on Tim Walls in the vice presidential debate.

I don't know if you saw it, but Tim Wall said Democrats have. taken back football from Republicans. This stadium, I saw him put you on the Jumbotron. I would dispute that pretty aggressively. How do you think JD's going to do? And what do you think about the argument from Tim Walls that Democrats are the ones who are football fans? Well, first of all, I don't know if you saw it,

but he was at Michigan today. I did see that. He got booed out of the stadium. Yes. And if you saw the hand that we got, it was a little bit different, wouldn't you say? Tim Walls, just for the record here, was not booed out of the big house in Ann Arbor,

where he was attending Minnesota, Michigan. But watching all of this unfold over the weekend, as it did, made me think about how the Trump and Harris campaigns are both trying to win football, basically, as if the sport itself were a battleground state. And so there was one University of Michigan football apologist, in particular, that I needed to discuss this dynamic with. and her name is Jane Koston.

I am the host of Crooked Media's What a Day. I am also a CNN contributor. I am also a New York Times contributor. I am also an unhinged college football fan. That's actually how I got into this. And this in question, Jane's beat as a writer, is the conservative movement in specific. It's a movement that Jane has taken seriously from the beginning,

studying its history, reporting its evolution, cordially interviewing the likes of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, for instance. Which is to say that conservatives take Jane Koston seriously as well. I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the 1990s. Mark Twain had this famous quote that if the end of the world came, he wanted to go to Cincinnati because he'd have 10 more years. Like, cultural change takes a really long time to get to Cincinnati. And so my parents are big-time Democrats.

Always have been. Be like union Democrats, left-leaning people. We were surrounded entirely by Republicans. I always wanted to know how people thought differently from my parents. My parents, God bless them. They basically went from the, well, we're smart. And these people are idiots' perspective. Which, like, it was not enough for me.

I wanted to know more about how people got to where they And where Jane found herself, personally, was the Libertarian Party, where she was a card-carrying member for years until 2022, when she decided to register as politically independent. But what's really important that you understand about all of those old-school Republicans Jane grew up around in Ohio is that their place on the cultural and political map changed too. The shortest way to put it is that Ronald Reagan is dead and Donald Trump is alive. I think that for such a long time, conservatism, it's a complicated movement like any political movement is. You could easily say something about liberalism or progressivism in which there's

always kind of this, you know, the policing of the edges, when to police, what does purity look like, what is correct within these movements. But I think that the further away we've gotten from Ronald Reagan, who exited the White House when I was two. There are people who are still hawkish on foreign policy, except a lot of those hawks are now like voting for Kamala Harris. There are people who are still very socially conservative, but those people are supportive of Trump largely in kind of a we don't really have anywhere else to go moment.

And you have people who are still economically conservative, and they are mad all the time. But in this new taxonomy of MAGA Republicans, what becomes obvious is that something so many of them have been mad at for several years now is what conservatives of Yore used to love without question. Football. To the point now where this election may well be decided by a disconnect between the two institutions that Jane Koston has devoted herself to studying.

And I think it's important, I am talking about the Republican Party. I am not talking about like every Republican. When I am talking about the Republican Party in football right now, what I mean is kind of like the influencers at the top who are attempting to direct attention to specific things in ways that I personally do not understand at all. We have been talking about this specific episode for so long

that we've seen it unfold in real time before we could actually talk about it in front of microphones. and it went from the Super Bowl and the Taylor Swift's sci-op thing. So when it comes to some people losing their minds over the pop star, Vivek takes the cake. Ramoswamy says that the NFL is rigging the Super Bowl to give Taylor Swift more airtime ahead of her endorsement of Joe Biden. And it went to, of course, what we're now talking about ahead of the vice presidential debate, which is J.D. Vance showing up as a graduate of the Ohio state,

State University, doing all of that. Come on, come on. We've had enough political violence. Let's... And now realizing he is going to run against an actual former high school football coach and Tim Walls. Who is introduced at the DNC as, like, Coach Walls? And they talk about this a lot.

And, you know, you had his speech at the DNC is a football metaphor. It's the fourth quarter. We're down a field goal, but we're on offense and we've got the ball. We're driving down the field. We've got the ball and we're driving. And I'm like, what are the weather, the weather conditions? Now's our quarterback. What happened?

Where are we going? What are we playing? I need to know down and distance. I have a lot of questions because every play call here is very important. Absolutely. It's been funny because this was relevant when we started talking about it, and it's only gotten more relevant. So this is why I brought you here, because we are sports fans, we can name, we can remember some guys for literally the rest of the day.

Yes. Right? And that is not the Republican Party of 2024, as I understand it. And I want to know who, if not sports fans, actual real sports fans, who's directing this cruise ship? I don't want to do the thing where you're just like, because I see this all the time, ergo, it. must be happening everywhere. AKA the Twitter effect. I do see it all the time.

And it happens to be that we are in the midst of a observing a political campaign in the Trump vance campaign that is the most online campaign in the history of politics. Like, I'm aware this is a very recent history. And when I say online, I don't mean like on the internet. I mean stuff coming from the internet

being things they start talking about. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there. Donald Trump has his own ties to football. Like, I do not think Donald Trump knows what an RPO is. No.

My view is that Donald Trump's understanding of football ends around like 1987, 1988. Oh, oh, can I give you a wrinkle on that? I believe that Donald Trump has always viewed football as a means to the end of Donald Trump's self-interest, which allows him to use it as an instrument, a blunt instrument, but never actually like it in ways that are plausible to me. Yes. The Trump administration, the campaign, they read their mentions.

Oh. And they are, they love a retweet from one of these, you know, these gremlins like Charlie Kirk. I will not, you know, spend my time watching a league that tolerates this blatant anti-Americanism. He does not know ball. He does not. You think Laura Lumer knows what an RPO is? No.

No, absolutely not. But these characters, Jane, if you were to classify that strain of quote-unquote conservatism, which I think deserves the scare quotes, for all the reasons, what is that? Weird dorks. Weird dorks. Major League sports in and of itself is nothing but a sci-op. Get kids plugged into the cycle of going to public indoctrination cases. playing sports for their school and go into games.

Many end up devoting their entire childhood to competing in various sports, only to be cut from the team at which point they become brainwashed into supporting professional teams because they know their dreams of becoming a pro athlete will probably never happen. So then they become obsessed with some grown man who gets paid millions of dollars every year to throw a ball around while promoting poison death shots and child slave labor through various brand deals and endorsements. So sad. It's like the weird dorks shifted parties because there used to be,

I think you saw, like, you know, a couple of years ago, there would be always like somebody who's super left-leaning who is like, you know, sports are bad because they are... Sports ball, Jane, it's sports ball. And now you're starting to get like sports ball on the right. Like, you know, I've never watched the Super Bowl or like the people... Basically, you're getting, but I don't even own a TV, but from Republicans. Correct.

I'll give you an example. example, a couple of years ago, there was a piece, I believe, in a conservative outlet written by someone who was at the time a big Ron DeSantis supporter. This piece that was like, ah, American men are spending way too much time watching sports. Like, sports is degenerate. Like, the light hint of, like, why are you watching black people do things? Like, you should be outlifting weights and eating meat or something like that. And so you start to see people generally online who are like, sports is just, it's bread and circuses. How can people pay so much attention?

You saw that a lot during the Super Bowl this year where people incepted themselves into believing that Taylor Swift, Travis Kelsey was some sort of weird conspiracy theory. Oh, it's a sci-op. And not just the most obvious thing. Like, oh, famous woman dating famous guy must be a conspiracy. There is a funny shift of power in the high school cafeteria of American politics towards the kids in the back who feel like they aren't the jocks and this time they're the Republicans. Republicans in this particular way have become like weirdo hipsters of being like,

no, I'm not going to do the super popular thing. Like, I, you know, I went to college in the early 2000s. I remember hipsters. a lot of people listening to LCD sound system and Crystal Castle. Like, this is more irritating to me personally. At least we're on college, the hipsters went to the games.

There's a lot of like, we're stomping our feet, threatening to leave the house, and you're going to be so mad when we do because go woke, go broke. And then it's like sports, football in particular is the one thing that I predict will not go broke.

To me, it is an effort to simultaneously signal that you are not part of the mainstream because mainstream is bad. So much of this is not just a rejection of sports, it is a rejection of the mainstream and a signal that maybe you're doing something even more important.

Like, yeah, sure, you're watching football, but I'm studying the blade or something like that. There is definitely like kids who have a katana fetish, a literal blade fetish. Kids who, who when they say, bread and circuses, they are pining for the Roman Empire. In that extraordinarily, not even like fun online meme way, but in a like, you guys

took the wrong message from the Da Vinci Code sort of a way. If you went to a sports bar on the day of the Super Bowl, and if you had gone to that bar and started ranting about how Travis Kelsey was a shill for Pfizer and that like this was all part of a giant conspiracy, the bar would ask you to leave. It's really interesting because you see Republicans, again, not everybody, but we're talking about like the top of the party, like, I am not the one that put Laura Lumer on Trump's plane on the way to debate. But you were an actual coach, right?

You weren't like one of these fake assistant coaches like Tim Wals. You were an actual football coach. One of the things that I worry about with his time as a coach is he was more interested in boys wearing tight pants. So I should just jump in here to point out that someone like Laura Lumer, a Trump advisor and noted 9-11 conspiracists and general all-around bigot, who said, for instance, that the White House will smell like Curry if Kamala Harris wins the presidency.

She isn't the only person in Trump world who has zero idea what an assistant football coach actually does. Because Trump himself argued on Truth Social, quote, Walls was an assistant coach, not a coach. not a coach, end quote. And even though Tim Walz was in fact a state champion defensive coordinator at Mancato West High School, and even though all defensive coordinators at every level of the sport are, in fact, assistant coaches,

Trump's surrogates all began parroting this same exact point. Unlike this assistant coach Tim Walls who supplied his young men with tampons and maxi pads. Yeah, Joey, I mean, I've been assistant coach for kids' soccer games. I don't necessarily think that I should run for president. You know, when I played football in high school, my tiny little town, I always looked at the assistant coaches and thought, you know, that guy should be president. Valor associated with his assistant coaching. It's like a stolen tackle.

Yes. Just like stolen valor. It's like very similar. Less important than the stolen valor. And on and on it goes. All of it suggesting a very basic lack of familiarity. with football itself from MAGA Republicans. And therefore, a glaring, corresponding opportunity

for the Democratic Party. I watch, every Saturday, I watch like eight hours of college football. It's great. I love it. It's a great thing to do. Highly recommend. Most people don't do that. But the Democratic Party is seeing football a thing everybody likes. It's just so obvious, Jane.

It's so obvious. It's so obvious and also cynical and also the right move. It is. Which all three, all three, it's very cynical. I know that. I know that this is like the degree to which I am being pandered to in a way that like, for instance, I saw Tim Walls going to the Minnesota Michigan game on Saturday. And I literally was like, of course he is. He's the governor of Minnesota. He's going to wear Minnesota stuff. It's going to be right. he's going to talk to students about the importance of voting. Every four years, everyone remembers that actually most people in America, this wonderful country that I love, most people don't care about politics very much, and they would prefer not to have to talk about it or think about it. I think that the way in which most people encounter politics is generally right now, and they are thinking about it in terms of their local elections, what's going to matter for them,

what's going to matter for their family. So yeah, like, if a major political figure happens to show up at the football game where you're going with your family, that's good. Like, that's right there. That is the kind of like retail politics, especially because I think that the message around football also goes to the idea of like, you don't have to agree with them on everything, but you're welcome into this tent. There was a person that I was dying to talk to and I was hoping you would get. at time with that was not willing to talk on the record for reasons that I think tell this story in a nutshell. Anthony Gonzalez, right?

Can you explain who he is and what happened to him and why he will not talk about this stuff in public anymore? Anthony Gonzalez, for me, he will always be terrifying Ohio State receiver who slept in a hyperbaric chamber he built in his dorm room. To me, this is perfectly natural, and this is kind of a way to get, think what other people might be getting via supplements, but I do it by sleeping. So he played in the NFL for a bit. He looks, throws one downfield, Gonzalez. Nice.

1040, 35, 30, 20, cuts back in, looks for a bluff. Then made it to Congress from Ohio. He voted to impeach Donald Trump after January 6th. And so it was deeply sad to come to the conclusion that I did. And to feel like I could no longer trust the president of the United States, even for a few days, to be the commander-in-chief of our military. In response, his life and the life of his family was put in danger. He left Congress because he was getting constant death threats all the time.

time. What does it say to the Republican Party? This is a 37-year-old guy, a football hero in college, had an NFL career, Cuban American Heritage, a state of Ohio, Midwestern State. This was a guy who a couple years ago, everybody was saying, this is a future senator or a future governor, maybe a future national figure for the Republican Party, and now he wants no part of it. And so I reached out to a host of people. I reached, you know, obviously tried email, tried phone, tried LinkedIn. And it just basically was like, he won't talk. He's changed his number.

He does not want to have any interaction because, again, people were trying to kill him. And these were people who probably voted for him. People who, for whom his conservatism wasn't enough. His, you know, his bonafides were not enough. Absolutely understandable that Anthony Gonzalez would not want to talk about the intersection of sports and politics after essentially having to give up what could have been a long and promising political career because he made, to me, the correct decision and people wanted to kill him over it. He was one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump in a way

that would, again, absent all of the culture war stuff we've been describing, would have seemed obvious to the Republican Party that used to regularly, regularly be unquestionably known as the party of football. It's wild to see how this has become a sport where a sport that is, it's controversial, but not for the reasons Republicans want it to be. Every couple of months, there's somebody who's like, you know, some conservative influencer who's like, that's it. I'm never watching football again. And I'm like, bitch, come on. There are moments when you meet somebody who's like,

oh, I'm not really into sports. And your brain is like, oh, well, I'm fine if people genuinely aren't interested in sports. However, making that of virtue, that's where I get irritated. Making like, I am not interested in this thing into I am better than you or I'm superior to you because I do not pay attention to this thing, that, no, no. It's, I mean, on a personal basis, it's annoying. As a cultural effort, it's stupid.

But Tim Walls, here's my critique of how the Harris Walls campaign has been rolling out Coach Walls, because, of course, it's been obvious and cynical and the right thing to do, and they bring out his former high school football players on his team that he was the DC of. What I worry about, Jane, is that Tim Walls, the more he reveals himself to be the guy who is the right person that you want to run the gay straight alliance at your high school, that's more time being devoted to not remembering some guys.

I almost feel like he just needs to, yo, be a sports fan. Tell me about your memories of watching goddamn Johann Santana take the mound. Tell me about the time. I don't know. Some person from the state of Minnesota, made you feel like everything was going to be okay when they scored a touchdown. Like, just give me some shit. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, especially because I think Minnesota specifically has like a really interesting college football legacy. And like, I still think about that Stefan Diggs touchdown against the Saints.

I will say that that's one of Joe Buck's best calls because it's just like, Diggs touchdown. Like, it's great. That was awesome. Like, talk about that. Yeah, I think that if we're all working towards pandering towards stuff we care about, Tim Walls, go on the shutdown forecast. Everybody's talking about it.

Do it. Absolutely. Absolutely. And by the way, Tim Walls can and should make appearances on all sorts of sports podcasts and programs, because I have heard him do this very comfortably before. And the 41st governor of the state of Minnesota, Tim Walls has stopped by the 9-to-noon radio show.

He's here for the joint practices today. But nevertheless, what brings you here today, Governor? Well, football, for one thing, I said I come about this somewhat more honestly than being governor. I said those years of coach in high school football and all the Mankato training camps. But it is great to be in this facility, world class. This was from August 2023 when Governor Walls joined Vikings' play-by-play guy Paul Allen in studio during Minnesota. a Vikings training camp. And at one point, out of nowhere,

Tim Wals and this announcer, begin to remember a guy. A guy named Craig Dahl, a totally obscure NFL safety who won a Super Bowl with the Giants, and a guy that Walls happened to coach against in high school. So, Governor,

so when you were at Mancato West and Craig Dahl played at Mancato East, was it East? Yes. Okay, and the Super Bowl, question. I apologize for not knowing this. Did you coordinate against him? Yeah. He was a monster. Yeah. And what I remember first, the first time I ever saw this kid, they were playing a freshman game. I believe they played on Monday nights or a B-squat game, and he was a freshman. And they sent me up there to scout, you know, to scout east. So I'm setting up in the stands. And I see this man amongst boys.

Yeah. First play of the game goes around the left end or whatever. And I remember the only notes I brought back is I said, we may be in trouble for a couple years with this kid. Well, he was a safety on defense too, right? Yeah. Because I was a safety on defense too, right? Yeah. Because I was. at Jerry Brown Stadium. At various other points in this interview, Walls goes on to talk about how Randy Moss, the Vikings Hall of Fame receiver, would stop by Mancato practices, and how much man-to-man coverage

high school teams are playing now versus when he was a high school coach. And all of this, all of the banter, it just feels familiar. It feels populist, even, as measured by millions of Americans who speak this language. At a time

when populism, happens to be the banner that Trump and Vance are very explicitly waving. Populism has a long history, very long history in America, and it's one of those things where it sounds like it should make a lot of sense, but the way it gets interpreted so often

is that I am a better knower of the people than you are. And so it's been interesting to see populism bewilded in this way that's so narrow. Like populism is a response in some part to the gilded age, which is about like, everything looks great at the very top and they're the richest people you could possibly imagine, but everything below them is first is shit.

But the populism that is being wielded right now by Vance and by Trump and by others is a populism that is like, you need to be this very specific type of person to fit into our version of the populace. You need to be working class, but if you're working class and working in the service economy, eh, we don't care about you.

You're working class, but you're unionizing, but you're unionizing in a way you're not like, we don't care about you. It's like the narrowest populism I've ever seen. Your personal political platform, which is that college football is actually the best test for being a normal person in America. Absolutely. 100%. Just like, can you, even at like a basic level, like, do you know who is good at football? Can you be like conversant in that? Yes. Not even in terms of politics, because I think that the policy and politics question here is almost secondary.

It's just like, do you seem like a cool hang? Cafeteria table, that test. Who are you sitting down and shooting the shit with? Yeah, cool hang who could have a normal conversation about stuff that actually isn't about policy, which is fine. And to be clear, there are lots of Democrats who could not pass the cool hang test. I don't know who created Pokemon Go, but I'm trying to figure out how we get them to have Pokemon Go to the polls.

By the way, that used to be the major, the major Achilles heel of the Democratic Party. Yes, like they couldn't be cool hangs. No cool hang. And now it's like Republicans are like, we are going to be the worst hang ever. Like, we are going to make famous every single person who you would,

would avoid at a party. I'm kidding again. I'm running for the vice president. I can't see it. Okay. I'll only work here. I'm a here to begin as your lap. Okay. Everything.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of glazed here, some sprinkle stuff. Somebody's sending rolls. Just whatever makes sense. It's the language. It's being able to, you know, it's code switching. Being able to talk to talk about, you know, talk about football in a way that is like, you are with them, but also talk to everybody else. as if you care about them.

That's the biggest thing here for me, is can you convince me, can you convince millions of Americans that even if you're not exactly like them, that you care about them and are interested in what they think? Because what we keep seeing again from J.D. Vance is the answer is no.

It is the weirdest thing to me. Democrats say that it is racist to believe, well, they say it's racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today. I'm sure they're going to call that racist too, but it's good. I love you guys. I understand that we are in the realm of political strategy here, right?

This is, we're talking about how to, again, win a culture war, win an election that is going to be contested on the grounds of, am I like this person? Mm-hmm. Tim Walz, his main advantage, as I see it, is that he's actually someone that you know if you like sports. Oh, yeah. is actually plausibly the person inside the building with you, not for political reasons, but for actual I love football reasons, watching this game.

So they were running the ball a lot. Yeah, I appreciate you bringing this stuff. These guys were crowding the box, making sure they didn't. That's exactly it in our guards. In high school, if you pull a guard, it pretty much know where the ball's going. And if you can teach kids to do that. Like student body rights,

student body left, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Everyone is tuned out. Thank you for not allowing the yearbook to close on this challenge. of my life. I do think it's important. It is important. The more that we don't get to see that, the less powerful the whole, like, balancing of

the ticket is, right? This is another version of a DEI sort of math. Yeah. Let's say you don't believe that Kamala Harris is hanging out with you at a tailgate. Okay, cool. But this guy actually is. He is a guy who will show well. at the party with a 30 rack.

He will make sure that you don't drive home. I'm not trying to be anyone's campaign manager. I just think it's very funny that we have gone from, I have gone from a person who's like, look, sports and politics are absolutely interlocked. And of course, you cannot talk about one without the other, only to arrive at politics and be like, you guys should do less politics and more sports.

Just like stop talking about policy. Stop it. Yeah, and especially because I think that I spend a lot of time around people who do not think about sports. And I genuinely am like, you know what, you'd be happier if you did. Well, you'd be happier sometimes. And then you'd be like really furious. And then you'd need to explain that you're furious because like a group of children made a mistake. But like, that's a growth experience.

No, Jane, what you just described is what it means to be a real American. Absolutely. You know, once a week for the best part of the year, I permit a group of children to decide how I feel for the rest of the week. Real Americans, once a week, we pack stadiums and parking lots because tailgating is awesome. And we watch on numerous channels. We pack into bars, living rooms, and dens, and we stand around somebody's computer. and we watch children play a brutal, stupid, beautiful sport.

And we love it, even when we hate it. Even when we're so mad, we're like, well, we might as well just watch this other game that could be interesting. Because you don't know when you're going to see a 120-yard punt return from BYU and the kids throw up afterwards because he worked so hard. Cooped up by the return man, Parker Kingston, and now he's going to turn the corner. There he goes. Kingston to the 50.

Still going. Touchdown. You don't know if you're going to see the greatest touchdown you've ever seen this past year's Rose Bowl. Even thinking about it gets me emotional. And they pitch it to a touchdown as Wilson walks in. Robin Wilson, a huge impact on that drive. And for us to tie going to overtime against Alabama. You're actually getting emotional right now.

It genuinely, it is a, it is to me, I've said this before, that that is one of the most sublime experiences of my entire life. You spend years as a fan, decades as a fan, hoping to get a moment of sublime. And whether that's like the helmet catch, Giants Patriots, or whether it's like, you know, winning the World Series, or whether it's watching somebody win the Tour de France, or whether, you know, it's anything in sports, whether it's watching the All Blacks play,

whether it is watching, you know, the New York Liberty kick ass. Like, you get a moment of sublime and you spend the rest of your life, you're like, I got to have another one. I got to have another one. And there are millions of Americans who know what I am talking about,

who know what that feeling is, and they cross all parties. We want to share this with people who otherwise might hate our guts. 100%. I still want you to feel the goosebumps that I am feeling. I want that for everybody. I want buzzer beaters.

I want home runs. I want touchdowns. I want blocked field goals. If the kick six, there's this great video following the kick six where you watch the Auburn band react to the kick six. 45, 50, 45. The band is.

playing the band manager, is sobbing incoherently. And it's one of those things like, I know exactly how you feel. Like, I know, I'm not an Auburn fan. I've never lived in Alabama. I don't know who any of you are, but I know what that is.

So much of what I'm interested in sports, of course, is the way that sports allows me to talk about other things. Yeah. But political debate today has made me almost saccharin about the emotional power, the unifying power of sports, as you described it. Yeah. I realize, oh, this is the love.

lone big tent in American life, where we're all getting along. My dream for any given American election is for it to feel like I am watching a reaction video on YouTube that I'm going to look forward to watching years later. Yep. Just to vicariously enjoy something that other people are clearly, clearly going to take to their grave as a formative American experience. I also want people to find joy in places that are not politics. Because politics, there's a unique thing to politics, which is that there are no eternal victories.

What people in politics are looking for is that kind of eternal victory that you only get in sports. Like, I have long said that I think in some ways Donald Trump thought that winning the election was like winning an Olympic gold medal. Like he would get a parade and everyone would be happy and he wouldn't really have to do anything. I think winning a presidency is great. I think being president sucks. And so it's been interesting to see that relationship. And so I think, like, so many people are looking for the eternal victory that you could look up on YouTube. That doesn't really exist in politics because politics is, like, just an endless slog fight.

Like, you know, since kind of the beginnings of urbanization, you can see that, like, some of our political battles where it's like, oh, yeah. So we're still mad about ethnic conflicts and, you know, rural versus city. Oh, okay. Like, we're still mad about that. And so, like, those eternal battles. And then you see people being like, you know, could this be the big one, the big victory? No, there isn't that such thing.

But if you want that, if you want the perfect eternal victory, you can watch college football. You can watch, like, the 2019 LSU team where they just kicked the shit out of everybody all year. And it was great and they were perfect. As they say in the Bayou, That's it a bon time roulet. Let the good times roll.

That's it. Like, you can go watch like when an NFL team is at their absolute best. And when it's just like, it's just over the second it happened. You're seeing Damar Hamlin get an interception on Monday. And just like that stadium vibrating because they know what he's been through. Lawrence on the move. Watching down the middle. Intercepted.

Over for the man. And Tamar Hamlin. A huge roar. Those are moments of kind of eternal victory that last, that there isn't going to be like, oh, Demar Hamelin has to go, like, defend his Senate seat tomorrow or something like that. Right. Nobody upon losing an election

goes back and watches the video of the last time you won an election. No. Nobody does that. No. That is absolutely what you do if you are hurting. hurting because your college football team maybe just got picked off in the end zone

and suddenly the only thing that can make you feel whole again is the fact that there is a banner still hanging with your name on it. Yep, exactly, 100%. Jane Koston, my fellow sicko. Yes, we are not well. Thank you for helping me take the temperature of the American political system.

Anytime. For more Jane Koston, by the way. You can go subscribe to Crooked Media's What a Day. It's their daily news show, where Jane is now the lead host. This has been Pablo Torre

finds out, a Metal Arc Media production, and I'll talk to you next time.