The Adam Friedland Show (Cumtown) - CHUCK KLOSTERMAN Talks Football, Violence, American Identity

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

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Cletus. Cletus? He's the robot that plays electric guitar. Oh, yeah. How do you know his name? Because I like sports. Yeah, I know, but I like sports. You see him getting defensive?

You wrote a book on football? I know, I know. You don't even know Cleetus is. I am. That's right. You're kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I could have consulted with me. You should have had a whole damn chapter on this.

I thought you were talking about the Simpsons character for a second. I believe his name is Cleetus. And if his name isn't Cleetus, I'm going to be really embarrassed. Because I would look that up. It's Cleetus? Yeah. Dominated once again. Yeah.

Flip that. Yes. Flip that. Hello and welcome back to the Adam Friedland show. I'm Adam Friedland. First off, I'm doing Helium Comedy Club February 19th to the 21st

and also I will be in Los Angeles at the region theater May 9th. Here's a link in the description. There is a link. It's a different word. There is a link in the description. There is a link in the description for tickets.

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And guys, merch is available. Theadamfreeland.com, check it out. My guest this week is American author Chuck Gloucesterman. Chuck is known as one of the country's premier cultural critics, tackling any and all facets of pop culture through his writing for the last 30 years. His newest book, Football, is about exactly that. Football. The game's past, present, and future. It's a perceptive look into what entices us about the uniquely American sport,

and it's on the shelves now, so check it out. Football. Got the big game coming up. You might want to read it before then, so you can understand the big game. Now, before we begin, I'd like to introduce a new segment called My Two Sense. Where I give my Two Sense on Topics of the Day. Today, in honor of our guest, here's my Two Sense on Football. Like Chuck Klosserman. I'm a football fan.

Or at least I was up until they started doing that so-called dancing in the end zone. If I wanted to see that garbage, I stay up past 10 p.m. and turn on VH1. VH1 or... Whatever happened to scoring a touchdown politely, handing the ball over to the official saying thank you for being you. Go you, that's what I would say. So you, go you. Getting back to doing your job.

And if you want to celebrate with your win with a dance, we could just please keep it a classic. Instead of the jerk or the soldier boy dance, how about the Foxtrot, the Bolero, the Viennese waltz. But hey, that's just my two cents. Please welcome. Please enjoy. Chuck Klosterman. I like that. Our next guest is the writer. Chuck Klosterman, his new book, Football is out now. Everyone, check it out. Everyone, Chuck Klosterman.

What's up, dude? Hey, I'm really excited. Well, it's great to be here. I appreciate you having me on. I guess I was a bit nervous because, you know, I've seen clips from your show when the subject comes across as a moron, but that's not your fault. I try to be the moron. Well, it's a straight moron or the straight man, yeah. Certainly not.

Certainly not straight. Don't tell the family, Ollie. my girlfriend's cousin is doing sound this is not making the episode I'm a big fan I used to read you from the time I was like I think late high school I know it's weird to hear that

but I understand it yeah yeah it was like what I think the way I found out about cool things because it was prior to like Spotify or whatever I'd like go to like Barnes & Noble and like open up Spin Magazine I'd write names of bands and then I download them on Cazaa

And through that process, I became familiar with you. Well, when I was at Spin, it was the early, you know, 2002 to 2006, and it was strange because the perception at the time then is like the cool part of Spin was over, that everyone believed that had happened in the 90s. But I guess then when we left, 10 years moved on, and people said the same thing about our little period. I, yeah, no, I, yeah, I remember I read, yeah, your books and I thought it made me feel cool, I think.

But for the audience and the people to do that. that don't know you, it effectively what you kind of write about is kind of, it is the nonsense that me and my friends spend hours over, like, you know, like, you know, what would have happened if Drew Bledsoe, you know, didn't get hurt, you know, like speculative kind of, but then the intersection with that in culture, I suppose, yeah. Well, it just, it seems completely unmeaningful now. The idea of writing about culture seems very common. it was less common in like book form when I first started publishing.

It was seen as sort of this strange gimmicky novelty thing. And now it's like, it's not weird at all. Yeah, I think for me it was like David Foster Wallace and you. I mean, those were the two guys that were writing about it. Yeah, the cheaper version. Yeah, yeah. Oh, really? Oh, for sure.

I thought I thought pretty equal actually. Were you guys, like, did you know him? Never met him. Never met him. Never met him. Never met him. Do you think he would have been mean? Do you think?

No. I don't think he would. What they always say about him is that he, was very kind that doesn't necessarily mean he was nice yeah but everyone had always said that at least outwardly he was you know over-the-top kind that it was rare that someone had an encounter with him that was negative although now like there's like a biography about him and completely changes the way that everyone stalked that lady yes and there's and and the one that thing that's a little disenchanting is like I mean

he was he was probably the last writer who really did sort of influence me like like in that I would read this and I was like, I wonder if I could do something like that. And I feel like you become a writer when you stop that. But the thing that was kind of a bummer is it sounds like the most interesting things from his nonfiction work were the parts that he made up. Yeah.

And that's, that was, because you know, those are the things that are so memorable. Like he wrote this very famous essay about going on a cruise ship. Of course. And there's one section in there like where he's playing chess against some random little kid.

And it's just, it's an amazing passage. And he's memorizing these moves and all these things. And maybe it turns out, like, that didn't happen. So the thing I remember most is the thing he added. But, you know, that's creative nonfiction, I guess. Two things that that reminds me of.

One is, did you see the last Scorsese-Dillan documentary, The Rolling Thunder? Oh, that one, yeah, the fake documentary. So, yeah, it was like half-fake, which, like, kind of made it, like, but there was something about it that was true, you know what I mean? Like, because it was half-fake, like, narratively, it's like, we buy, basically, When I learned about Bob Dylan or the Beatles, it's like looking at a picture of your parents before you were born, right?

It's not real. Like you weren't there, right? You create a story, right? And that's what I found to be the brilliant thing about that. What I wondered about that film was if someone liked Bob Dylan but knew nothing about the movie. So they just came into it cold. I wonder at what point in the movie they would have been like, oh yeah, this couldn't have happened. Because if there's one, you know, he wore like white kind of pancake makeup for a while. Yeah, like in the movie he's saying, like, this girl went and saw kiss and she came back and told me about it. You know, and then, you know, Bob Dylan has written with Gene Simmons. They have some relationships. I was like, could it be. You know, I knew going in, though, that this wasn't all real.

So, but I was thinking about myself. Like, when would I have figured this out? I don't think we, I think people probably would have bought it. Because it was presented as a documentary. It is, you know. And people know Bob Dylan's real. And also, you know, like, it doesn't matter at a certain point, right? It doesn't.

Well, I mean, I think Dylan would say it absolutely doesn't. That he would probably argue that whatever myth you project on him is the most important thing about his identity outside of the music. Yeah, yeah. Have you seen that film I'm Still Here with Joaquin Phoenix? That's kind of like, that's one of my top five favorite movies ever, actually. Basically, it's this documentary that you later find out was like kind of a project that Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck were doing for a year, which is he presented that he was going crazy and wanted to be a rapper,

and he went on Letterman famously. That was the big thing. It was almost like the promotion for that movie was as important as the film. Right. And what you find at the end there's like he goes to Costa Rica or something, or like, I forget, he goes to some place where his father lives. He's in a, like, a rainforest, and he goes in this, like, lake, and there's this baptismal kind of scene at the end.

But you realize, like, this man is exhausted. Like, it doesn't matter if it's fake or if it's real because it happened, right? Like, and kind of that blurring, I'm like, oh, that's what art is, you know? And, like, it kind of, like, made a huge impression on me. Shortly after I was probably reading stuff written by you. I mean, what's interesting about that, though, is because of when it happened, you know, in the 21st century, as opposed to happening in the 70s, there's almost an assumption there had to have been from them that, of course people are going to realize that this isn't real. Yeah. Where there was a time when you could have done something like that and the artifact would just be what it is.

And people would say, is this real? Is it not real? It's, I don't know if they were like steering into the fact that we can do this because eventually people will know. Uh-huh. Or if there was actually, if that was the last attempt to legitimately fool people into thinking something false is actual. I mean, like, I would guess that there were some people, when spinal tie up, they might have watched the first few minutes of it, especially when they're talking to the people and the crowd shots, they might be like, well, this, I just never heard in this band. The band Anvil had a documentary and people wondered, is this real or false. That's amazing documentary, Anvil. And is real.

And I will say, when I was a little kid, I was a little kid, I was. I thought Spinal Tap was real. Did you? I thought it was a real band. What age did you see it at? Maybe five. Wow. Yeah.

Because I saw it when I was like a junior in high school. Exactly. Yeah. But, uh, it must have been like 93. Why are you watching this is Spinal Tap at five? My parents let me watch anything, yeah. They covered my eyes for the sex parts, though. Well, there's no sex in that.

In any movie. Yeah, yeah. But really? Like, they covered my eyes for sex and let me watch violence. So what was the most insane thing you saw at the earliest age? would they let you watch nine and a half weeks or something when you were a kid or like faces of death were you watching that at seven I wasn't watching like fucking yeah yeah I wasn't watching I wasn't watching red asphalt the driver's head movie you remember that

you remember the driver's that movie like last house on the left you were like oh he'll love I wasn't watching mainly just like this your neck snap I was watching a lot of Dolph Lundgren John Claude Van Damme sure Schwarzenegger Sloan yeah I was watching I watched all of those movies with my dad. A lot of the, like, secure the parameter. Yeah, lock it down. Like a lot of that. And then a guy's neck gets now.

But I think, this is kind of like a tangent, but I think because they cover my eyes for the sex and let me watch all the killing, I think killing, I didn't want to do it because it wasn't a taboo. But sex, I was like, I wanted to do sex because it was against, you know. It is a common thing you'll hear people say

it's like they'll be, you'll be like, oh, it's crazy, you know, we'll let kids watch violence, but we won't let them watch sex. But actually it makes sense because the fact of the matter is people are going to encounter sex in their life. And if they watch a film version or pornography or whatever these things are, an early age is going to warp their perception of this thing that's actually going to happen to them, they're probably not going to encounter like a mass shooting. And if they do, I would almost want my kid desensitized to it.

I would rather have him be able to be like, I understand. that this can exist in the world, you know? It's like, it does seem weird to demonize sex more than violence. But the fact of the matter is, is sex is something that's part of the average person's life. Yeah. Violence is not. One time a guy did a splits and then punched me and I was like, I'm desensitized. Yeah, I was comfortable with that.

You knew what could happen. John Bobbed. Damn, I'd seen him do the splits and punch a guy. So I was like, this is, finally, it's. I mean, if there ever was. It's happening. If there ever was a zombie apocalypse, there are plenty of people ready for that. Like, they have learned what to do, like where to shoot it, or where, you know, all these things.

Those are some of the worst people in society. The ones with the sticker, they're, like, zombie defense unit are, like, on their car. Those are the worst guys. With them and Patriots fans, I guess. Okay. Let's get to you. Because going back to the David Foster Wallace thing, you guys were both kind of doing this social criticism. How would you describe, like, kind of what you've made your bread and butter doing?

Well, you know, he would have said that he was a novelist and then he also did nonfiction. And it was kind of journalism and it was kind of cultural criticism. His journalism was really essayistic or whatever. I suppose for me, like I worked at newspapers for about eight years and it was, it was very, like I loved the job, you know, but it was limiting. and I wanted to be able to do things outside of that and I was like the only way to do that is books because I wanted to sort of write about things in a way that I don't know

was more kind of entertaining, interesting in a different way so I suppose it's cultural criticism I guess that's... Do you think a girl has ever read one of your things? Ever? Yeah, yeah. Probably it's got to be like... I don't know. It's a little bit... Maybe triple digits. It's a little bit like being in rush. I think it's for...

Yeah, where it's like it was... But I will, you know, I wrote this first book, Fargar Rock City, and it was just about listening to hair metal in the Midwest. I would do book readings and like 14 people would show up and they were all exactly like me. Exactly, like they looked like me. And then I wrote sex drugs and cocoa puffs and the biggest change about that is that book

readings, there were suddenly knowing more people, but like a third of them were women. That was very surprising, you know? Nice, probably. You think because of sex, you put sex in this? Well, no, I think I talk about John Cusack in that book. I don't know. It's just, it's like, I'm not sure what it is. I'm not sure how, why. And then, but, and now it's like, kind of your career goes up and now I'm kind of on the other side again, sort of moving. I assume by the end, like the last time I write a book, it'll be like the first one where like 14 people exactly like me will show up.

Yeah, that's kind of beautiful. It is. That's how it is. That's how it goes forever. It's a rise and fall. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of what life is, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The book is football. I think it's for, it's for, it's for, it's for, Yeah. It's great for your book club. It's been compared to the, to the gay hockey Netflix show a lot, right? Yes, I'm hearing that everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have the QB1 and, of course, the center.

Yes. Yeah. The relationship is right there. Exactly. It was right there the whole time. Guys, how were you the first guy to realize that there could be something between a center and a quarter of that? I'm sorry, I have the brain of a one-year-old.

I literally would be good material for a one-year-old. Okay. Going back to the DFW thing, though, you guys, I mean, he's from Champaign-Urbana, right? You're from North Dakota, right? Correct. Do you think, coming from a place, like, you're from North Dakota? Like, I never think of North Dakota. Well, yeah.

It doesn't make it easier for you to be an observer of culture, right? I'd say the main thing is it makes me in a better position to do criticism about mass culture. because that was the only culture that gets to like a place where I was from. Yeah. You know, I mean, even, I've mentioned this before, but like, you know, like that John Cougar Mellencamp song, like, small town. Yeah. I assumed he was talking about, like, my town with like 500 people.

Turns out he's talking about, like, Bloomington, Indiana, which to me would have seen like a big place. Like, I, like, I didn't recognize how bizarre where I came from was to most of the country until, particularly until I moved to New York, and I would be talking about. talking about my hometown and people would ask me questions like did you grow up in Russia did you grow up in the depression like I know that's in America actually those people are idiots what what Dakota the people that think that's Russia well it would be more the description of what like I would describe like how a wedding would work in our town and

people would be like that it would seem like something that you would read in a Russian novel yeah yeah what the entire town get to go to the reception and they would drive the fire trucks out of the fire hall that's where the dance was you know the families supplied all the booze and the sandwiches and anyone could come. It was just a totally different thing. Did you say the first and the last name, like a Russian novel? Were you like Bob Lundrigan? Like, you know how they say both the guy?

Yeah. I mean, some people just go by both names. I feel like you're somebody. I feel like people refer to you by both your names. And sometimes people just refer to me by my first name, which is I always think surprising. People who don't know me. Yeah, they just...

People say Adam Friedland to me? Yeah. That's how, I mean, I would... If I said just your last name to say... something that was going on your podcast. I'm not sure they would know who it was and if I said both names they usually do. Is that good? I don't know. Yeah. You're one of my heroes now and now you're making me self-conscious. Why would you see be self-conscious about that? No, well, I know what it's like. Why would that make you know what it's like where you grew up, dude? You do?

Yeah, there's a guy obviously that's in Minneapolis and he works at a car like dealership, right? that his father-in-law owns, right? And he's been, you know, am I on to something here? You know a guy in Minneapolis. Yeah. And are you describing the plot of Fargo or something? Yeah, it's okay. So you grew up playing football, though, right?

Mm-hmm. Was it because you were just one of the, there was not enough? Well, I mean, in truth. Were you wearing glasses under the helmet? Contacts then. Contacts, nice. I wore contacts in high school. Because you were a popular kid.

23 kids in my class so it was like the difference between the most popular kid and the least popular kid was not that big of a casual so So that's what so the girls had to play football too not no no girl you know they Because in North Dakota girls basketball happened during the fall they happen at the same time those seasons Really but it also was the 80s so no one to try right right we played nine man yeah right because why because it wasn't enough guys? Yeah, I mean that's like in small in some states, you know like in Texas they have six man in Wyoming they play eight man, these are, if you're in, but we played nine man. So it's like on offense, you remove the offensive tackles, on defense, you remove the cornerbacks, and then you try to play football is close to the conventional way with those, you know, and then all the teams use two tight ends, basically, so it's still a five-man line. If you were watching a nine-man game, you probably,

it would take you a while, I think, before you realize there's something wrong here, like, you know. Did, did, like, kids try to go Brett Far of Lambo, no sleeve? Uh, sometimes, yeah. Yeah, I mean... That had to suck. Well, it was cold, sure. Yeah. Did you have those, like, heat blaster things?

Are you kidding me? You didn't, what the hell are you doing out there? Your parents let you? What do you mean? I don't want you out there with the cold, like that? That's not how it was where I grew up. That was not... I can't remember...

I mean, we, I remember that, like, they would... They canceled school for two days one time because the wind chill was going to be 85 below. So they canceled school on Thursday and Friday. And almost everybody was upset. Almost everybody was upset. Every parent was upset. All the teachers were upset. Some of the kids were like, this is crazy.

And then we still played our basketball game that weekend. Like we still came into town for that, you know. Wait, because everyone loved school so much? No, it was just the idea. It wasn't that we loved school, but it just seemed absurd. Why didn't you move to Arizona? This is ridiculous you people up there. Well, that's a, you know.

It's really, and they have two senators? It's like, don't get me started on North Dakota. Are you going to abolish the Senate guy? I mean, it doesn't make sense. I didn't mean to bring that up, but yeah, it doesn't make sense. Well, it doesn't make sense. Well, it doesn't make sense. Well, yeah, I mean, like, God forbid we like let, like, I don't know, like, like minorities vote or something.

That's what the Senate is there for. Well, it just. Well, okay. Well, let's talk about sports, brother. Let's talk about sports. Okay. Yeah, but you were on a farm. You had youngest of seven siblings?

Correct. Really? What kind of farm was it? A snow farm? Yes, we raised snow by the bushel. You know, we had for snow cones. Yeah, well, when I was a real little guy, it was like wheat and we had dairy cattle. Then we got rid of the dairy cattle right before that became lucrative and went into beef cattle and did that until that got and just before that got lucrative, we sold all those. My dad wasn't always the greatest businessman and by the end, it was just what was considered row crops. Corn, beans, things that are grown in a row and we didn't have animals anymore. And then my brother took over the farm and then now he's retired. And now it's, we don't, it's out of the hands, out of the family. You guys sold the farm? Yep, sold the farm.

How did it feel to sell the farm? It was time to sell the farm. I remember my family too. When you sold the farm? Yeah, we sold the farm. Were you, you said you're from the southwest? Yeah, I'm from Las Vegas. You're from Las Vegas.

Actually from Las Vegas. I grew up in, yeah, we moved there when I was like first grade, yeah. But like your postal address was Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada. What was that like? You and Jimmy Kimmel are the only bit. Boring? Boring? Boring.

Yeah, yeah. It was, well, A, it was like the fastest growing city in America at the time. Like White Flight America, so everyone was from somewhere else. Tracked housing, kind of like, looked like that show, weeds. Have you seen the show weeds? All the houses looked the same. So were you there during like the UNLV basketball period? Or was that?

I was there, Tark. The Tark years were like right, I guess as we were moving there, like, maybe right before. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, our age difference is, it's interesting. Sean Marion. So, yeah, I used to go watch UNLV. Because, like, if we're just talking, it feels like we're the same age. But if we talk about the past, it won't be that way.

Well, I mean, we're both old souls, you know? We love root and toting football. We love, you know. No, I guess it, yeah, that was like, I guess to say, I think to put in context, like if we're like talking about things happening right now, the national championship is happening tonight. Tonight, yes. Are you excited?

You're excited. You're like a, and John Cougar Malencamp. He'll be more excited than me. He has a little place to watch the game at Indiana Stadium, his own little cabin on top of the stadium. So historically, we have this team, Indiana, which was historically just, they're supposed to lose. They're historically the worst program in college football history. It's kind of a tradition as it is that like, you know, LSU is good or something. Or like, you know, Ohio State is good.

But even more so because like, you know, Alabama and these schools, Texas, they have down years. There was no up years for Indiana at any point. You know, I mean, they had years where they weren't terrible. That was the highest they ever ascended to. And so I'll let you run with it. But like, how would you characterize their rise in the last two years? related to the NIL of course and the transfer portal and like what you know when that all came into being when the NIL stuff happened and the portal stuff

happened I think everybody who followed college football was like well it's you know some team that we've never really expected to be dominant is going to take advantage of this and rise up I think people thought like oh maybe it'll be a school like Liberty or maybe it'll be you know a you know it'll be a school like Oregon or I guess have been good or whatever no one thought it would be Indiana. I mean, their coach just understands this stuff more deftly than anybody else. He's a good coach anyways. He would be a good coach in the old style, but he's really great at this. I mean, he just, you know, he came from James Madison, and he took the best guys

from there. He built that, you know, that was a, like a subdivision program, and they moved up, and then he brought him all over. He just really knows what he's doing, and he somehow is able to be both things. Like, he's both, like, this very modern, sophisticated, evaluator of talent who understands that everything has changed, but he seems to coach the guys in the traditional way. Like Bob Knight, like tough, Bear Brian. Yeah, I mean, maybe not to that level, but close, yes. I mean, Nick Saban. I mean, he came from that coaching tree. Yeah, and, and correct me if I'm wrong, like, this is, tonight we're going to see some like 23, 24 year olds. I think the average age for the, for Indiana's like 23 and a half. Yeah. Let's get into your

book, and we're going to go back to like the NIL and the college stuff and like, um, your book posits that probably in 50 years, you don't think football will be a relic. It won't be extinct. It'll kind of be like, uh, I don't know, marching band music. It'll be like, well, John Phillips Sousa. Yeah, yeah. It'll be like something from the olden days, right? Like, well, I, I have a suspicion that it will be like a niche interest. Yes. It won't be the Like right now, like everyone's like there's no more monoculture except for football and Taylor Swift. And I think in 50 or 60 years, I don't think even football will have that role. I don't think it's possible.

I mean, and I know it seems crazy. Like everybody, when I get eager for this book, everybody wants to talk about that last chapter. And I understand why. Because it seems extremely counterintuitive. It seems more likely that football would actually swallow up every other sport in America. And it would be the only sport anyone cares about. But I don't think that's, I don't think it'll happen. I mean, I'll be dead.

I'll never be able to be proven wrong if I ain't. But yeah. So right now in 2026 it's incredibly popular like the most popular thing you cite this statistic that 93 of the top 100 view like highest rated programs Was it last year? 2023 it went down a little bit in 2024 because the election but still it was but it was still in the I believe in the high 80s or 90s Yeah, what and then that there were like four more that were college game. Yeah, yeah So what one thing that that kind of made me realize is like probably it's a product of how we consume content these days. Like the Survivor finale probably would have been on that list like 25 years ago, right?

There's no live, there's no live events. Oh, you're saying like the first season of Survivor. Yeah, yeah. Or like the American Idol finale. Like, you know, there are no events anymore other than kind of football, right? Like those, these are the things that we consume live still. we'll like go on streaming and we'll binge like a show or something. But like these are the things that like collectively Americans will sit down and watch together.

Yes, but even like when you look at other countries, you would think that there would be kind of a similar phenomenon and it's not this dramatic. Yeah, yeah. It is like the dominance of football in the United States now is it's like it's actually like an underrated phenomenon. It defies logic in so many ways, you know? It's interesting because I remember 10 years ago, in the last 10 years, there were a couple moments where I'm like, this just isn't going to, like, continue. And first was the concussion, like, thing about to, I mean, we've seen shocking things happen. Like, you see Sandy Hook happen, and then they don't ban guns.

Like, we saw a junior say out. For me, like, when I was a kid, I used to get SI for kids. And I remember like the two guys that would always be in SI for Kids were Grant Hill and Junior Sayout. Yeah, well, SIF for Kids really cared about the NFL man of the year. Yeah, yeah. That was bigger than the MVP. Man, you know, because it was like, oh, look, it's a good person as well. You know, I mean, there was a guy for the bears who committed suicide and he shot himself in the chest and he specifically left a note so you can study my brain.

Well, yeah, I thought Junior Sayout did that as well. Well, he killed himself. He killed himself, but I think it's, I think you did the same thing. I mean, they were able to look at it. I think they were, I don't know. Actually, I'm not going to say, I don't know. I don't know. I didn't see the autopsy.

And then we got Joe Von Belcher, like, we've had these shocking events happen. And I'm like, this cannot continue. But that conversation was much more prevalent 10 years ago than it is now. Exactly. And part of the reason, I mean, the NFL did something very brilliant. I mean, I guess arguably diabolicals. Anytime there was somebody who came out and it was like, I'm a scientist, I have troubling, you know, information.

about this, they were like, we're going to hire you to help, you know. So that was like, that's the smartest thing you can use. They're like an oil company. Yes, yeah. And then also, the other thing I want to bring up was Kaepernick. I remember I was like, this is terrible PR for the NFL. Like, this doesn't look good. We saw this guy in the fucking Super Bowl.

And I know what, I totally agree with you when you say it's like bad PR, but this is also what sort of sets football apart from all these other things, is that people actually care about the thing, about, you know, like, bad PR for baseball and hockey and NBA, that's, like, that is meaningful. It doesn't really matter what happens in the world outside of football coverage because people actually care about the product. You know, whenever people talk about sports in general, and, you know, they're saying, like, well, you know, the NBA, they're really great at sort of marketing these guys, and you can see them. And, like, you know, like, the 20 most famous NBA guys

are certainly more famous than the 20 most famous non-quarterbacks. Yeah. You know, and, you know, in baseball, they're like, you know, can we get Otani to be a personality? But that's a mistake. It's a mistake to build your thing around the individual because feelings about them change and the individuals change. Football by having this almost faceless automaton world where we're just like watching this simulation of warfare or whatever with just clash of colors. That's what people like and that's why it doesn't really, all these other things don't damage it the way they would damage other. Like, you know, boxing was damaged by the perception of violence to it. was not damaged by the perception of violence in it.

It's kind of bullshit like that they have analysts that are offensive linemen, right? I said this to Nick Wright. Like I don't want to see you unless you were like did awesome things like sacks or touchdowns. Why would you say that? I don't care what Jeff Saturday has to say about a game. But why would you see some guy that just like, you know, used to slang it, used to dunk. So Gary Danielson was a great analyst for a bunch of years. Don't care.

Yeah. So you'd rather see Tom Brady. You rarely see Tom Brady because he was better on. That makes no sense. Yeah, Tom Terrific, of course, yeah. But so like, I don't want to see the big old guy, and maybe it's just not, they're not my taste. It's a taste thing.

But they're talking now, you're not looking at. Blah, blah, blah, okay. How about Greg Olson? You like Greg Olson? He was tight end. Yeah, he was because only because of that rap song he made at the University of Miami. I know what you're referring to. It's a good song. Well, it is, and it's a good song. You guys, Oli.

I added a new idea. Oli, have you heard that song? Yeah. The seventh floor crew? Oh my God, after the show, I'm going to tell him, what do you call him so? Well, let's look it up right now. He discusses his third leg, I believe, in this song. It's very funny.

He used to rap with his teammates. He was at Miami. They got him big trouble. And then he said he got G-Reg, did he call him some? I can't recall the exact thing. I got a third leg. I got a third leg. That's very interesting.

Do you think the third leg helped him? at the Carolina Panthers. You've been a more charismatic, confident guy, I suppose. You know, and that'd probably transfer it over into the field. So let's zoom out again. Tell us the story of football. Just tell us like, no, no, seriously. I know.

Because it's this ridiculous thing. Okay, but first of all, here's how I see it. It's this ridiculous thing where you see these, first of all, they're mushing, right? And you can tell these guys are just mushing their heads, right? And you've got the big guys mushing their heads. Then you have this whole, like, arcane set of, of like tort law, right? Where like they have to go with like...

Hyper complicated, yes, yes, yes. They have to go read the fucking federalist papers to like understand like, you know. Well, that's good for them though. It's good to have good on, I mean, that's valuable. Did he break the plane and did he, you know? Because, okay, how do you, how do you feel about this? Then they have a chain.

Then they have to measure it. They literally have two flags of a chain that they have to bring out and they have the guy come out around the chain. It catches football of the physical world. That's good, yeah. Right? And then they have, you know, okay. So the origin, like, okay, you know what the believed origin of football, American football is?

And it's a pig, they're throwing a pig in each other. His skin, yeah, yeah. The belief, it's hard to verify this, but kind of the consensus about the origin of football was after the Civil War, there was this belief that young men were no longer going to face conflict. They were not going to be involved. And it was going to soften society. And that we were going to, so they were like, we need to find some surrogate for going to war and watching all your friends die or whatever. So they invent the sport of football. You know, they kind of create this game.

And then it evolved sort of in a way it evolves for, you know, 70 or 80 years. And it kind of intersects with television and ends up becoming the thing that we think of now. Yeah. But that, I mean, that is kind of believed to be the origin of the game. That it was, it was, it literally was supposed to simulate the experience of going to war for young men. And who is the first modern football play? You say Jim Thorpe, right? Well, no, no.

The first modern football player, that's a really hard question. Because, like, I suppose in some ways it was Jim Brown. Yeah. In terms of, he's probably the person you can go back the furthest and make a real argument that if we literally transported him. Yeah. Like just in a time machine or whatever, he might be able to still play. I mean, in some ways, like Johnny Unitas and Sammy Baugh were the first sort of modern

quarterbacks, but it's a hard question because, The modern version of football, I mean, like no sport adopts technology and modernity as much. So it's much different than, say, baseball, where the way baseball was played by Babe Ruth, actually is not totally unlike the way it's played now. Yeah, yeah. And so in terms of, like, its popularity, like, how did that evolve over time, especially in the last 30 years? Well, it was already the most popular sport in the country in the 70s, but it wasn't perceived that way, because it was still like baseball's the national pastime.

But already by then, people cared about football more because of the television experience. You know, and I mean, it's just, it's like almost the perfect marriage of these two things. Football is the ideal product to show on television. Nobody would, no one could have obviously anticipated that from football side or television side. Yeah.

And how much do you attribute, like, it's like success on television to Cletus? What? Cletus. Cletus? Yes. He's the robot that plays electric guitar. Oh, yeah. Well, I think that widened sort of its popularity among mechanical prod rock fans. Yeah, yeah. And there was a segment of the audience that was maybe underserved. Who at Fox came up with that?

I don't know. The CGI electric, because it's awesome when you see. Yeah, it obviously worked. I mean, you know his name. It's like, how do you know his name? Because I like sports. Yeah, I know, but how do you, where is that, I mean, I like sports, but I... You see him getting defensive? You're right? wrote a book on football. I know. I know. This is going to be, it's like, I am. That's right. You're tight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I could have consulted with me. I, I would, you should had a whole day and chapter about the Simpsons character for a second. I believe his name is

cleetus. And if his name isn't cleas, I'm going to be really embarrassed because I would look that up. It's cleatist? Yeah. Oh, you got a fast team here. Dude, dominated once again. Yeah. Flip that. Yes. Put that. Put that out. Put that up. sales were going down to zero penguin. By the way, it was this proliferation on television, right? Like TV rights deals kind of like proliferated football in the way that like... Well, yes.

I mean, but also, you know, football is different in the sense that they have this real strict salary cap and no guaranteed contract. So as the money is inflated in all these sports, football has been able to almost benefit more because they don't have to pay as much to the talent. It seems kind of satanic a little bit, no? Well, I mean, yeah. You're mushing your brain for two seasons and then you shoot yourself in the chest. But at the same time, the NFL is probably the greatest example of successful socialism in the United States.

So you should be into that. Is it? Well, I mean, they do all revenue sharing. You know, they sort of invented that. Pete Roselle said, we're going to do this. We're going to do this. And none of the big markets wanted to do it. And he's like, it's going to happen.

And that's why every six years or eight years or whatever it is, the likelihood that some random franchise will be good again keeps happening. Yeah. But, like, it's not fair. If you sign a contract and then, like, they're like, oh, it's over. You mushed your brain too much. So what would be fair? I'm not saying, I disagree with you.

But what's like... The company that's making the most money kind of, like, there's remuneration for mushing your brain, yeah. Well, if you're saying that the NFL should definitely pay for the guys with CTI, sure, sure. Yes, I agree. They stand by a contract that you've signed. Yes, yes. I mean, I think it's cool that Bobby Bonilla gets a million dollars every year.

I just like... It is a cool fact. Everyone loves to mention that. That comes up every year. I think it's cool. Yeah. I just think they're like, fuck the mess. Whatever.

Give them a million dollars. Yeah, I guess it's like there is an aspect about how it's better on TV. Like baseball is a sport that's better live. Well, it can be both. Yeah, yeah. If you're in a nice ballpark on a nice day, it absolutely is better live. There's no question. But sometimes it's not.

If you, sometimes it's, you know, especially the way they've changed the way baseball is broadcast now. Ball is broadcast now, it has become, again, a good thing to watch on TV. I mean, like, basketball games, if you're courtside, it's awesome. If you're in the rafters, it's bad. The best shot, actually, the best place to sit is really where the camera is for the show. Hockey's better live. That's the only sport that's obviously better live. You can't follow the fucking puck when you're watching on TV.

Also, you can't... Most sports try to, like, transfer the live experience to television, and you can't transfer the feeling of guys like hitting the plexiglass. But football doesn't try to do that. The live experience of watching football and the televised experience have no relationship. Yeah. American culture is awesome. Like, right, like, if you go, like, the middle of nowhere, people know who Mickey Mouse is, right?

American monoculture has proliferated. Like, if you listen to the Rolling Stones, like, mix singing in an American accent, right? Yeah, like, for sure. We're so powerful, especially in the 20th century onwards, as a cultural exporter. Why is this the one thing that... It's such an outlier because it's the one thing that hasn't proliferated,

yet somehow it's the most fucking popular thing that we have going on here. Well, I mean, that's actually your really good question. You know, I think it probably is that football is, almost, as you stated, unnecessarily complex, right? It's a hard thing. Like, you can't just get 22 guys together

and play a football game. Like, you can, but it's not going to be anything like what football... actually is. It took basketball a long time. And if it hadn't been for, you know, the, you know, the original dream team, I think that a lot of these countries would still be probably 40 years behind us in basketball. It takes a long time for people to watch a sport, implement it, and also implement it for kids. Because, you know, football really isn't a great game to suddenly start playing when you're 19, and you need that kind of infrastructure. And I also think

that I think probably, you know, it's popular in Germany. It's not really, well, I mean, not popular. The Rhyne Fire. But what I'm saying is, I, I, I, I taught, I taught, I thought, I don't think no. The London Dragons. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or the Barcelona Dragons. The Barcelona Dragons, yeah.

I taught a semester of school in Leipzig, Germany in like 2008. And I was surprised how much awareness of American football was there. But, you know, at the same time, I think that, you know, when people, you say how American culture is just wonderful thing. And, you know, as Americans, we can feel that way. But I think for a lot of other countries, they see this sort of oppressive in football represents, like, the one thing they were able to stay off. Like, I remember when I was teaching this class and all the kids were always like, America has no culture. That was their big thing. And I'd be like, well, all you guys love hip-hop.

And they're like, well, that's an immigrant culture. And I was like, well, quiet really. Like, you know, it's not immigrant. That's exactly. I just thought it was a very funny perception of what they thought of hip hop. Well, they were immigrants 400 years ago during the slayshry, but yeah. No, I guess it's, yeah, but it is weird, isn't it? It's surprising.

It's surprising. It's like, why are the Beatles like... Well, they're from England. No, no, but like, why are the Beatles, like, hearing old rock and roll records, right? Like Chuck Berry Records or something. Yeah, yeah, or like Muddy Waters records. Yeah. And then giving us back our culture in like a new exciting way.

Like that's that cultural exchange has always been like fascinating. Why are you going to Tokyo and there you see American culture everywhere? But it's like they've advanced it and like you know just fashion wise or whatever. Like they've taken our culture and they're obsessed with our culture and then they've enhanced it. Do you feel that way about film? Do you feel that the best films are now made outside of the United States? No, I'm not that kind of guy. No, no.

There are great films made outside of the United States. but I don't. Because rock music is the clearest example. Yeah, yeah. And there are other examples, you know, of it. Can you describe kind of like briefly, like, how you see the decline working the next 50 years? Yeah. I mean, it's hard to do it briefly because, like, obviously it's a long section of that book.

And if I describe it. No, yeah. But if I describe it briefly, it's going to seem like too simple. But it's like, I think that the, that there's going to be this. kind of this cultural shift where people have less of an interpersonal relationship to football outside of it as an entertainment, like a distracting kind of entertainment. Like they won't have played, their father won't have played. Maybe even their grandfather.

Maybe they didn't know anyone in high school who was on the football team or whatever. They just see it as this thing that's on Saturdays and Sundays and Monday night and Thursday and they watch it sort of to kill time. So they're, they'll still like it. It will still be very popular because it's kind of a tautological thing now. Football is what you watch on Sunday, so that's what you do on Sunday. But it won't mean as much. And I think that the economics of advertising are going to change in 50 or 60 years.

And suddenly these huge deals that, it's not they're going to disappear entirely, but these huge deals that Fox gives or Amazon Prime gives or whatever, the number won't go up. The number will either stay the same or go down at some new contract. But the players are being like, we're not going to take a reduction in salary. The league will be like, what are we going to do? Go to 22 games. There'll be a big work stoppage.

And what will be different about this future work stoppage is that people won't miss it the way they would now. I mean, there were strikes, NFL strikes in the 1980s. And people were very, you know, they cared a lot. They like, we get these games back. If that happened now, it would be like a catastrophe. People would be like, what am I going to bet on? What's my life like now?

But I don't think, like, two generations removed, I don't think that relationship will still exist. still be this popular thing, but a distraction can be replaced. And football is like, it's not one of these things like where it's like, it's too big to fail. Like, it's too big to stop. COVID was a great example of this when they had to play those games. Like that's when you really recognized like Major League Baseball and the NBA had to go to the bubble and all these things. These leagues could not, like they kind of tried to position it almost as if, well, you know, people are stuck at home.

They the fans need this we need this but that wasn't I mean like the big 10 was not having classes But they were still having their football games they had to do it Yeah, and that showed the fragility the as the culture changes it's the big things that can't adjust The small things are flexible what games were you getting in the 80s? I was in a lot Were you getting 1 p.m. 4 p.m. and then Well okay first of all it was college football there was one game a week Which was bizarre sometimes two but usually just there would be one game on Saturday.

The last time there was a work stoppage, I mean. Oh, during the work stoppage? Yeah, yeah. Was there, well, after I would, I would do. Was there that 10 hours? No, no, no, no, no. So they didn't have that. There was, there was, most of the teams played at, I guess it would be like 1 o'clock

Eastern, 12th Central or whatever. Yeah. There'd be a few sort of national games at, for me, three o'clock. Usually the Cowboys, if it was an AFC game, it would be like the Broncos or a West Coast team. There'd be the Monday night game. there would be there would be games on Thanksgiving

and the occasional Thursday but like for me as a kid in the 80s I would watch the Vikings were the local team I'd then watch the national game and then I get to see half of the Monday night game and then have to go to bed

Yeah, so everything it was like it was a and you know it's a strange thing it was like now there's almost this assumption that if you say you're a football fan

you're supposed to have watched every game you're supposed to have like seen everything and know everything that's going on. That pressure wasn't, didn't even exist for journalists. Like, it used to always be a big controversy that like somebody would win the Heisman trophy and they'd be like, well, it should have been a guy from the Pac 10 or the Pac-12, but none of these media guys watch the Pac-12 game. It's too late or whatever. Like that, that'd be unthinkable now. It would be unthinkable for someone to say, well, I voted for the Heisman and I voted for a guy, you know,

from Florida because, like, I can't stay up for those West Coast games. But that was a totally normal thing. That conversation came up anytime. Like, you know, like Herschel Walker won the Hysman over John Elway. Many people said it was because, well, nobody sees Stanford play. They play, you know what I'm saying? The same thing has happened actually in soccer. Like, TV rights deals have expanded. You, like, there was something called match of the day in England, where the only way you could watch, like, every team's highlights was there was there was just one program on the BBC. You would usually, just get one game. You couldn't get games in Italy. You couldn't watch games on the continent.

In fact, like the old Arsenal, I'm an Arsenal fan. Their old manager, George Graham, in order to scout players, he would get every newspaper from around the country. And he would read and say, oh, this guy that's up at Leeds is like he's young and he's good. And then they'd sign them based on like just reading the local beat writers, right? Like there wasn't like video scouting even back of the day. But I mean, there was also a higher trust society. They trusted those guys way more than they would now. You would never do that.

You would never make a decision now based on media reports of a guy's talent. Right. So in the Premier League, like I watched soccer and we get it before basically football starts on a Sunday or Saturday morning also before college starts. And that's basically how it is. There were three blocks of time primarily blocked out. In the same way as it is, and if anything, it's better for television because it's kind of a dedicated amount of time. Like, it doesn't actually, like, you don't have overtime games. That's, to me, the biggest upside soccer has.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you start watching a game, no one's going to end. Like, you can say, like, I'll meet you at the bar at this time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going to be able to make it. The wife won't be, yeah, killing you. I was a little kid, like, in the late 70s, nearly 80s, the only way to watch see soccer was on PBS. They would be PBS on, like, Friday and Saturday.

night would sometimes show like a Premier League. I mean, I remember me and my sister thought it was hilarious. It was the first time we ever heard nil, meaning zero. Yeah, yeah, so we would say that. But it was like, you know, but that's how sort of arcane seemed at the time. It would be something you'd see like masterpiece theater, upstairs, downstairs, and Premier League soccer. But functionally, like, there's this aspect of the weekend, right?

Like, in their society, the British underclass. And they actually, when the Queen died, they canceled the games that weekend. And it was like, there was a big uproar because it's like, we go to the football, right? That's what they say, the football. Like, you work your ass off during the week, you're fucking miserable, and then you go to the football, right? Now, you know, they could watch games like all day in the way that we can on Saturday, watch the college games. And on Sunday, you know, you could like have a crappy week and you can be like,

this is what I do on Saturday and Sunday. I sit on my couch, I drink beer, I watch football. There's a demand for that content to fill that aspect of people's time. Oh, it is, yes. So when I'm thinking about the decline of football, I'm like, what are they going to do? If that happened now, absolutely. I think two generations removed, I don't think that person will exist in the same way. Just the thing you say about drinking beer.

It's shocking to me the statistics of how like a senior in high school, Like they just never drank in their life or like it like I think that part of life is going It's just going away now it may come back certainly enough time you know things waxing away or whatever But it is it is hard to think about the future of a sport without kind of projecting the present on it And the same way it's hard to think of the past right without projecting that like the the the present on it It's just it's in human nature to do that I don't think our populace possess the capacity to throw a brick sometimes and I think it's because there's too much Mandalorian you know what I mean or there's like or there's this all day on

Sunday right and it's just like just like just like things can be falling apart outside but like we're gonna want to sit down and just like watch this well it's just I think I totally agree with you although I think for a slightly different reason I think that like you know I maybe we're saying the same thing but like a a bad sort of dead-end life in America is still not necessarily a terrible life to experience.

Because there are so many ways to find meaning within that. Like even if it, I mean, the Mandalorian's an interesting item, but it possibly. Like something like that. You know, I mean, like what you're saying about football in that way, like that's different, that's like a Noam-Chomsky argument, that basically that these things aren't- It's a way to basically, to, you know,

Or that this is a way to basically to sedate the populace and to have them feel as though that there's something meaningful in their life and they won't think about things that are actually meaningful. Of course I've thought about that. I mean, I write about it a little in the book, but I also think that... It's meaningful to us. I mean, sports are meaningful to us.

You can't... It's one thing that you see, especially in sort of like the social media world, is sort of this idea that like, well, you shouldn't care about anything if I can point out something that's a more important thing, that somehow you are morally failing if you have an investment in this thing that when these other things are happening that matter so much more. But of course, if you shift those things, there's still a person who's going to find the next thing. It's like, well, yeah, but yeah, but the

climate. It's like, I just think that that is a kind of an idiotic way. I'm not saying that we should go through. Yeah, I know. I know you're not. I'm not in any way saying you said. I'm saying this is something that I kind of think about, like, you know, sort of at what point do you have to weigh your actual individual experience against what is happening in the world and how much you're supposed to devote your thinking toward that? Beyond like saying like, this is an opiate in the masses, this is a way that we can kind of cope with reality, you know? In a large way, like, I think about Arsenal all week long.

I think about our fucking starting 11 against nodding of a lot of. him forests all week long and it's I'm a loser I feel like a loser that I care but I fucking do care you know well I mean you say it's a way to cope with reality I mean sports are part of reality yeah and what's happening on the your own personal reality yeah well no the hard reality like it's happening yeah part of the world too like what's happening on the field is a simulation of things there is an unreality to what's really going on the stakes are completely fabricated like you know one thing that's really interesting is

And I'm like anybody else, right? It's hard for me to sit through a preseason NFL football game. Doesn't seem like it means anything. None of them mean anything. No one's going to die. But yet, but we... If you win the Super Bowl, they play the next year, right? Yeah, exactly.

It's still, like, every, every game, every sporting events and exhibition, they're all exhibitions. They're exhibitions. Now, we impose these meaning onto them, and I'm like... Yeah. So it's not like I'm beyond this. I feel the same way. You know, it's like I'm traveling for this book tour.

I was missing some of these football games. I was like, I hate missing him or whatever. But, you know, I wouldn't feel that way if I was traveling at the end of August and I was missing the Hall of Fame game. I would have never occurred to me. It's like, oh, my God, I'm missing. But yet, there are actually more, there's more similarity between those two things in a macro way than there is a difference. Yeah, yeah.

I see what you're saying. You don't talk about what could potentially replace it very much. Yeah, I don't think anything would replace. I think that, that, you know, I hate always just saying monoculture, monoculture. But, you know, it's an interesting deal. So I'm sure you know this. So what's the highest rated television program of all time? A Super Bowl.

I mean saying like a broadcast show. Oh, Mash? The last episode of Match. Yeah, yeah. And that will never ever be beat. Like everyone has said statistics. because of the proliferation of cable and the way things work, there will never be an audience for a television show like that again.

And yet, what were they talking about when that show was on? They were like, the monoculture's over. We have cable television now. USA Today is making, like all these, the exact, a very similar argument was being made at what we now consider to be the apex of the monoculture. So I think that it's just a continual erosion of that, of this shared, I mean, you know,

there's so many things and I sound like a thousand years old, but like, things like Johnny Carson, there was meaning to that in the sense that that even people who did not care about the tonight show or watch it knew that that's what was on and that's what he was like and all these things. And those things are just not going to be part of life. Yeah. I mean, that's just, that's done. I want to, we were talking before the show about, I'm a big soccer fan. For me, football kind of like the tuck game, I remember when I was a kid, I'm a

Raider fan and probably part of me, my waning interest in football. I have a friend who's a Bill's fan, so I'll watch with him, and I love Joshy, and it breaks my heart what they go through, especially, like, kind of from supporting this team, Arssel, I've never seen them win the league in 22

years. Do you like the book Fever pitch? No, I, I like the movie with Jimmy Fallon about the Red Sox. Really? Really? No, no. No, no. But yeah, I know Nick Hornsby was an Arsul fan. But they are this fucking team that like it's they say it's the hope that kills you and it's kind of there's a lot of bill it's very billsy but like for me the tuck game i was like it just wasn't fair and it was like you know charles woodson had that strip and like it was just like it's just like it broke

my heart i was like well fuck this shit i love those raiders teams i love like the the west the rich can't rich gannon west coast offense like jerry jerry rice's last ride like fucking like that team like Gannon would go like he'd go like 51 for 60 63 do you remember like all those those little dumps you know he had been he'd been with the Vikings and he was always like

ah well this guy he's near but when it was the end of his career he sort of became this different person there was something really lovable about that team but beyond that I watch soccer now and part of it is as a product much is made about that

statistic about 11 minutes of actual action within the four hours of an NFL game. But like there is two 45 minutes of just flow. There's no commercials, right? Like I fucking hate commercials. You could just sit there and watch the one thing it's not interrupted. And like in terms of gameplay, it's just, I feel like

it's the best. Even in the NBA, the last two minutes of an NBA game, like with the fouls and like free throws, it's just like there is a, the game kind of slows down. If anything, football has the best last two minutes, I think. Well, I mean, my argument is basically that, you know, there are kind of three kinds of sports. There's one that are kind of almost these nonstop, mesmerizing, hypnotic sports, soccer, basketball, boxing to some degree, auto racing. Then there's these very cerebral sports, like baseball and golf, where almost all of the importance is based on what will happen, what just happened, what could happen later.

Like the action is just a very small part of it, and it's all kind of prologged to the end. And then the third one is football, which is a cerebral game in the sense that there are all these stops and all this sort of, you know, it's like... Chest match, yeah. But the moments of action are so hyperkinetic and violent that it creates almost the illusion, or maybe just, I guess, the sensation of real intensity and a real kind of dynamic thing. So, I mean, like, the idea that there's only 11 minutes of action in a three-hour football game that's always used like, as a criticism of football, but 11 minutes is the right amount. It's like the perfect, for the way, I think people, and this is like a weird thing to say that I can't get in other people's brains,

but I think what people say they want from entertainment and what they actually do are very different. I think that the way our mind works actually kind of contradicts what we would say consciously is our desire. Going back to the soccer point, one thing that I've found is really special is that there is a different talent, a development, system.

Yeah, you were saying that. That was interesting. Youth academies. So like when a player plays in a youth academy and then breaks through into a first team, it's almost as if

it's like they are, it's a fan stream, right? Because they've been playing with, like, Arsenal have guys that were there when they were nine years old, right? And the cool thing is

when they're playing like the under 15s, they're playing the under 13s or whatever. They're wearing the same uniforms as the guys in the big stadium. And you could tell that there's something that means so much. Like, no one's in the Jacksonville Jaguars Youth Academy, right? No one's, like, dreaming for the time that they're 10 years old of playing on the Jags.

Well, I mean, I guess a kid who goes to junior high in Jacksonville. Sure. You know, and... But then they get drafted in Buffalo, right? They have no control. Yes. They can't enter the pipeline. And then there are other stories of, like, kids that have been cut from academies.

Like, there's this guy on Arsenal right now. was cut when he was I think 14 years old and he worked his entire career to get back to Arsenal now he's they we just signed him again he's 25 years old I think now and there is like there's a romance in that where you could like members that were all members of the club right then we have a board of directors we have a manager and then we have our first team right and there's a there's a there's a sensation of like when someone comes through an academy And it's been there for a long time. And their family has made sacrifices to drive them two hours to training every day

when they're like a little kid because of a dream of the family. There's like an assumption of that they're one of our own, right? Kobe Bryant was my favorite basketball player. Because he was with the Lakers for 20 years, he felt like one of our own. And in American professional sports, we kind of don't have that, like, romance, I think. Well, it's really interesting because the way you describe it does sound very romantic. Now, you could describe it in the exact same. terms and some would say like so you like the corporate nature of these soccer

factors me what what is interesting that what you say though is that particularly you know like in the Northeast here in the Pacific Northwest there's a lot of places where increasingly I think there's a lot of pressure on parents to not let their kids play football right and now in some places that's not going to change it's not going to change in parts of Texas it's not going to change in Georgia and and in Florida and amongst the underclass too right but yes well I mean what do you mean the end like like poor like Like, poor kids are still, like, there's a version against football amongst, like,

it corresponds with socioeconomic. Yes, it's like the people watching football and the people playing football are increasingly getting separate. Which, ironically, in the NBA, socioeconomically, it's changing. I know. I know. It's like the idea that this kid is like basketball is your way out, like, no, it's not. It doesn't exist anymore, yeah. What is interesting though, is that let's say that this continues to happen, that it becomes almost, you know, most high schools for insurance reasons or just because of lack of interest, they stop playing high school football.

Eventually that's going to impact these college programs. I wonder if in some future world this is how the NFL could find a way to keep talent. They're like they could start this system that starts like, you know, if you're growing up in Jacksonville. Right. If you want, if you're one of the parents who wants their kid to play football, we will make this happen. We will create a youth Jacksonville Jaguar Football League, the best. best of those kids will move up to an advanced league. They'll, you know, by that time, college will be a completely different thing.

Or Bama could be in the NFL, right? Theoretically. Not in the University of Alabama, but like kind of the Crimson Tide or something, some sort of replacement of that. Because effectively, college athletics is, well, at Alabama longer than other places, is a professional sport. Now totally. Now everyone.

They completely professional. Now everyone is Nick Sabin. Well, it is. interesting how that is a thing that people say now. It's like, well, the SEC finally, like, now everybody can take those. You know, and everyone is the SEC. And what is interesting is that, like, it's hard, it's really hard for them to deny that because prior to that, there was like the, it doesn't exist anymore, but like the Southwest Conference, this was like, those were all the Texas schools in Arkansas before all this got changed. And there's a, like, there's a documentary called Pony Excess,

about SMU and there's one. Yeah. Well, Excess. Excess. That's in the documentary. They were called the Pony Express. There was a 30 for 30 about it. Yes. Yeah. But there's like one guy in that documentary who's like, there were schools giving $1 million to players who didn't win a game, which was basically saying like, Baylor was giving $1 million to God. Because everybody, you know, that, so the idea that this has been going on forever, of

course, everyone knows it. What was, but there still is, like it is very different now. It has been sort of like they've leveled the playing field, obviously, in this way. And I think in the short term that's actually going to kind of create a spike of interest in college football because places like Indiana are going to have this experience. I'm watching tonight and I haven't watched college football in years. Oh, really? Because I want to see like, well, A, it's the clips of that quarterback after the game.

I'm like, that guy is hilarious. I guess, yeah. That guy's, that guy. Wait, actually, you know, he's getting paid $3 million a year, I believe, to be at Indiana. Yeah. His high school, like, senior thesis was on why NIL shouldn't exist. Do you know that? I did not know that.

I did not know that. But it is, yeah, he is a, he has an interesting way of talking. It is, it is somewhere, it's like somewhere between, like, AI and, like, a Christian musician promoting his record. It's like a weird, kind of strange, like, he's like a guy from Striper and a machine, but it's like. He's great. Well, but, yeah, like, that's a great example of it. you're kind of interested in this. I do think that in the short term that this is going to increase interest in college football in a lot of different places. I think long term, it's

probably going to be catastrophic for the idea of what college football is because college football offered all these things that the NFL didn't, like a regional quality, a real emphasis on history. The idea that when you're watching two teams, you are in some sense rooting for the kind of kid you imagine going there. Right. Wisconsin is going to, it's going to be 12, 14. Well, they play that stuff. There was a regional quality of all the conferences and all these. And that's going to disappear.

Like, they're all going to play. The talent's going to be equally distributed, just like in the NFL. In the NFL, all these teams fundamentally play the same. It's very rare that you see a team in the NFL who play, you know, sometimes there'll be an outlier on one end or the other. But for like the 15 or 20 teams in the middle, they're basically carbon copies of each other. Because when everybody has talent, you can't make a guy disappear. You can't use a system to a smart a guy. you still could. You could still do these things. Something like Mike Leach, you know, he would

like set up this passing game for Texas Tech or when he was at Washington. None of those guys... Like a spread office. Well, yeah, or just like system-based. Like you used to hear like the system quarterback. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that basically meant that like if we were a system quarterback, it meant your coach was a genius. You knew how to just run guys open. And as long as you could be accurate, somebody like Kellan Moore, when he played at Boise State, I was like, there's no way this guy is not going to see at the NFL. He seems like he's... hits this guy every time. But then when he got to the NFL, it was no shot. Right.

But it was green. Yeah, blue. Yeah, yeah. Well, no, no, I'm saying the NFL, but when he entered the green. They play on a green field. Yeah, yeah. All right. So I've been trying to be one of those people who hit their protein goals every day. And some days, I'm great. And other days, I look up and I realize I've only had carbs. That's why I started using the high protein starter kit from Huell. It's five black edition ready to drinks, plus black edition chocolate powder. and it's honestly the first thing that's made it easy for me to stay consistent. And by the way, Huell just launched in Target nationwide, so you can actually grab the ready-to-drink bottles straight off the shelf now,

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It is. It's... Pablo's ruining his life. It's all Pablo's fault. Yeah. Well, that's an interesting thing. No, it's Jordon. Yeah.

But it's like it's... In a sense, it really does show that he is not interested in his perception. Well, no. Because like... Why do you say no? Because his entire dominance, I guess, was about completely shutting out

the outside world. Yeah. Right? And this is completely goes against everything we know about him. The Patriot Way was that the locker, I mean, they could have murderers in there and we'd have no idea.

Eventually we would. But yeah. But like the Patriot Way was about kind of just completely insubes. Insulating everything from the media and be his personal life being a matter of media spectacles But he but he like he doesn't care what we think is what I'm saying Oh it's like he doesn't care people like us sure like you know it's like it doesn't mean how were they this year UNC well you know they they was the first game of the year

The opening drive they look awesome and everybody was like aha This is like and then it was just kind of you know downhill from there and then at the end of the year they did play better but the damage was done. Yeah, yeah. And sort of the plan he has to make, like, he was like, this is going to be like a way to get ready for the NFL. Like that's all our whole thing. We're going to be a factory for the NFL.

And the byproduct of this will be, well, like, we'll win the ACC. But that's not what it happened. I mean, it's, I, he's probably just going to copy Indiana, right? He's probably going to have like 45-year-old or not 45. No. They'll have like 28-year-olds, you'll find some way. He's the dark lord. He's palpit.

It would be incredible if that happened. I, you know, I find him just intriguing and hilarious, and I just, I love this thing doing talk. I mean, maybe you've seen this YouTube clip where, like, a reporter says, like, well, this really isn't for my story, but I'm curious. It's like, why do you have to call the roster spot for your long snapper? Like, isn't that a waste of a roster spot? Love special teams. And he explained the history of kicking, extemporaneously, for like 11 minutes. And it was like, it was almost like, this is the first time anyone ever asked him a question in a press conference and he was like, I'm going to reward you for this.

I mean, it's, it's... Well, that's the surprising thing about Jordan Hudson is like, I had no idea he was into anything else. Oh, you said, you feel like, well, I mean, I don't know. Well... He also liked sex. Yeah, it was bizarre. But there was that famous footage that went among him, like, leaving some girl's house. Yeah, the ring camera.

Yeah, I don't think that wasn't her house. That was somebody else, right? Oh, he was a lotthar? I thought so. I don't know. I'm pretty sure. I'm almost certain. It's an Airbnb that Pablo, like, rented and then got a video. I know. I know. Wait, I asked Nick write this. Do you think that if David Stern were alive, Pablo would be dead?

You think that he would just be, I think he would be in a dumpsters, trashy. Well, I think that like a lot of things that Silver is kind of allowed would not have been allowed. so maybe they'd never be in the position for, I know what you're kind of applying, but it's like a lot of these situations, I think that when Silver became, I interviewed him for GQ, I think it was, and I was like, this is a really smart.

For sexiest man in the world. Yes, exactly. He was like, this is a smart guy, and he's really kind of personable. He's a company man. He's like a lawyer, right? Well, it is, he is, Stern may have been the last pro sports commissioner

who will ever be that way. Like I don't I don't think that I that I don't know if ownership groups will ever again allow someone I mean like like he exploded the popular he did well if I'm wrong I was born in the late 80s but like in the 80s the NBA was kind of not a thing well with the first time I was a huge Celtics fan and when they beat the Rockets in 1981 half of those games were on tape delay you'd watch him at 1030 or whatever and then that did totally change that did by the by the end of of the 1980s, it kind of felt as though basketball and football might almost sort of be in like this, like, in a kind of collision course.

And then, but then it was too, it was too individually based because the two years that Jordan went away that was really showed the risk of that because there was suddenly there was the interest, the NBA went down. And then when he came back, the interest went back up and it was like, that means they're not really into basketball. They're into this person. You can't build things around personality if you want to have long-term success. Wait, that's, I had no idea.

Can you just break that down? Like, so Michael Jordan stopped playing basketball? Are you being sarcastic? So why would he stop playing basketball? Well, oh, well, when he made, his father died, you know. His dad died? I thought his dad was, his dad was murdered. Oh, I was going to say, his dad would never let him stop playing basketball.

Well, his father's love was baseball, though. You know, you've heard that. And so was he good at baseball? Well, you know, he did not have a high rate of success. He, you know, he's been more successful than I think I would have been if I would have tried to play baseball. But no, he did not ever have a great... So his dad got whacked. You went to go play baseball?

Well, it was a random act of violence. Is that really a whacking? It's not like, you know, a Jill Pesci walking into a room. Okay. He was in a car. This sounds like you're making this all of. I thought that he just hung out with Tweedy Bird, Bugs Bunny. I had no idea that Michael Jordan was playing.

So I mean, are you sort of saying that you actually believe that he was forced out? It seems plausible that the gambling thing maybe needed to cool off for two years? I don't know if I find that to be a very credible conspiracy, to be obvious. To be honest, I mean, yeah. And none of this is going to air because he's a friend of the show Michael Jordan. Give it up for him his erranist. I don't know. it seems bizarre that I don't understand how a commissioner that was so powerful

right could have had the biggest player in the world kind of leave in the middle of his career like that well I feel like David Stern as someone that was so kind of just viciously pragmatic and effective I feel like there had to have been more to that well when when Jordan retired that first time, they had won three championships in a row, and actually, the conversation then was sort of like, well, this is kind of like Jim Brown. Like he's leaving at the height. Maybe he left for civil rights, to be a civil rights league.

Yeah, yeah. He left to be an actor. Well, we know he was a great actor. We'd always seen the space jam. It was phenomenal. You know, it's, and so it didn't, when he played baseball, it did seem really weird, but then the contract thing,

because the Bulls and the White Sox were owned by the same organization, it made sense. And then his, if you're David Stern, I mean, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you, it is true, it isn't, it is beyond brilliant. Oh. Because his return was one of the most thrilling things of like my memory of sports in the 90s. Yeah, the 45 to 23. Yeah. Well, just the game he played against the Knicks and it was like he hadn't been back that long and it was like he is, he is instantly the best player in the league again.

He has lost almost nothing. Okay, I want to do a couple hypotheticals with you. Sure. Okay. Let's stay on the NBA. If Tim Donaghy, if it wasn't, if the New York Post, I believe, didn't catch wind of the fact that he was. Yeah, that was bleak to them, yes. What would, what, he was going to turn state witness, state's witness, right?

I think that could have happened. I think it definitely could have happened, yeah. My understanding is he was going to wear a wire. and then it became public knowledge that he had been caught in this scandal. Like how much would that have diminished the credibility of the refereeing and the NBA at large? Well, it would have been a big deal,

I mean, would have been a huge deal, obviously, but I will say this, because it would be an officiating issue, it wouldn't have been as devastating as if a player point shaving situation happened. I mean, this just happened in college battles, where all these guys now who got in trouble for point shaving, in a real obvious way.

But what is interesting is, and this seems obvious now, but it never occurred to me. It's like, it's always, these point-shaving situations are always going to involve teams that aren't good.

Those are the teams you go to, and because of that, it won't bother fans in the same way. Like, there's not going to be a point-shed, I mean, I'll say this, and it'll happen tomorrow. You know, Juventis, one of the best teams in Italy,

historic team, was caught in a match, am I right, Tim? Yeah. Yeah, in a match-fixing scandal. And then they were sent down to the second division, actually. So it was a huge game.

I'm not saying it couldn't happen. But I'm saying that let's say you're a prospective guy and you want to corrupt, you want to pay off players and have them fix games. It would be a huge mistake to try to get the kids from Duke or Kansas or any of these schools to do it. For another reason those games are really visible

and these guys, but if you find some guy from a college that is never on television, Indiana football for a... Well, yeah. What do you think of... What's not a hypothetical? What do you think about the hypothetical did you write that Caleb what do you think about the hypothetical Beatles movie what do you think about the hypothetical Beatles

movie yesterday well I never actually saw it I guess I saw it on a plane yeah really well because I know I know something about it that to me would is too big of a flaw which is what the Beatles existed well no that like nothing else changed like no no and Sheeran didn't exist Or he did exist? Well, he's in the movie, I thought. No, he starts writing French here. Some bands don't exist.

Oh, you know what they say? People don't smoke cigarettes. Really? Yeah, cigarettes are popular. We all know that the Beatles were famous for six. Yeah, exactly. Do you think that Drake will ever win best actor for the Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama biopic?

Is he playing Barack Obama? No, but I've always said this for the last 15 years, that Drake will one day. Will he do I think he'll win in Academy I think for the for the Obama I think he'll be wrongly snubbed Okay, yeah exactly. I think so yeah they'll give it to Kendrick Lamar for the for the Hillary Clinton by the But he's a Canadian can a Canadian play an American president If he's acting Yeah, I guess he is eligible to play it to be an actor. I guess you know

Okay, let's just stop calling these hypothetical because having these aren't what's the best what is the best soup rock super group like why are the Wilburys as good as Tom Petty why is it like a super a super super team like the is really good at basketball like if you have the best players like why are why does that like why isn't Asia is good as its various components of like why are the traveling Wilburys the best band of all time well because I mean I don't know how seriously you want the answer I would like a serious yeah well because when they're no

When they're all coming together at that point in their career, the ideas that we're doing this kind of like we're almost Everyone is conceding to every other person nobody has a real vision like Jeff Lynn is producing the record But it's for the most part it's like well won't this be fun we actually produced some pretty good songs It's interesting that like you know it's it's strange when you know I think Bob Dylan was 47 when that band happened like he already seemed so old to me But like you know and like Tom Petty was nothing Tom Penny was like his 30s or whatever. But you're not going to be committed in the same way. You know, like a band like Velvet Revolver, I guess that was a kind of supergroup.

So they're the best one, you're saying? Well, no, but I'm saying it's like they would, it's actually hard. It's actually hard to come up with what the best one. I mean, maybe the traveling wheelberries actually might be the answer. Well, because that first record was pretty good and their songs are memorable. And it was it also sort of changed the way people perceived those guys. It made them seem much less serious and detached. They were fun.

Yeah. Okay. What would David Foster Walls, were he alive, have made of Trump? Because his obsession was television, right? Like, this is the television president. It's kind of like that. Well, I mean, it's weird because he was like, he, you know, he wrote a long thing about, I believe his obsession with John McCain.

I think. It was like, as seeing him in this. So the, I mean, like, I would think that he would think Trump is sort of like almost like the greatest extension of everything that has gone wrong with civilization unless it completely horseshoot around. And somehow he was like, this is actually what America is not, it's not good for America, but this is like the, like it would, to be, like to say interesting things about Trump is hard.

It is hard because so many people are trying to do it. everyone's easy, he informs every conversation. In comedy, he's, he's like defeated comedy. He did. Yeah, because he's funnier. Yeah. Yeah. But it's just like, it kind of, there's so much runway in DFW to Trump that it's just like,

it's so embarrassing that I live in Brooklyn and I'm saying I wish David Foster Wallace could, I wish I could read David Foster Wallace on Trump. Well, it's weird because, like, you know, in British Nelson's book, American, Yeah. He talks about Trump constantly in that book. You know, at that point, Trump was just some guy going around New York being rich, you know. Yeah, we were talking about a... Caleb Pitts, everyone.

Caleb Pitts, everyone. Well, yeah, uh... Give it up for him. Guys, Jesus Christ. A little bit of energy. Are you ever considered using a studio audience? That would really change the vibe here, you know? We have, we have.

And they slid out their damn chairs, they got so horny. Oh, really? Yeah, Amazonian women. I'm trying to think. There is in that, in the, what is it called, like the rock and roll circus documentary, The Dirty Mac. The Rolling, yes.

Oh, that, you know, yes. Okay, so that's like John Lennon playing with the Stone. Mitch Mitchell, John Lennon. Also, and that Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath plays with Jeff Rottal in that performance. That's the only time Tony Homi plays with Jeth Rottal. I'm sure this is why women love going to my book readings. We're the same guy.

I have this information. Okay. What would have happened if Mr. Mitch Mitchell, perhaps to me. The drummer of Jimmy Hedrich? The drummer of the experience. I think one of the most underrated drummers in Rock. Great drummer. What would have happened had he joined after the death of Keith Moon?

Had he joined the, what do you call it? The who? Wait, what? I don't know the name. The band with the Tommy and what was it called? Yes. Oh, they're a British band. The who's on first, the what's on, so.

Okay, let's move on, guys. Can you please support me in my dreams of being... Did you bring the Mick Mitchell just to set up that joke? No, no, no. I can't fucking believe you would do that. I didn't play that ahead. I didn't play that ahead. Okay.

My brain is atrophied. Okay, I just, you know. Because it wasn't terrible. I'm not saying it was terrible. I just did not think that would be... It was a horrible joke. I mean, it was the dog shit. Absolutely fucking steaming.

pile of dog shit in front of my fiance's cousin no less it's just it was it was an arcane or object what if he what if he joined the who though yeah that would have been cool well I think that he probably would have hung with him for a while you know the but they did you know they they kept going anyways you know it's like yeah what it was the best post-beetles career how would you who would you know post beetles yeah um so okay so zepplin starred in 69 so no no of the form of the four. Oh, of the four.

Oh, that's a great question. That's a wonderful question. The first three John are kind of top to bottom on fuckwithable. I mean, the best, plastic on a band is the best of those records. Yeah. Paul's career was the best. I think that all things much pass in some ways is like the record. The number one record of all that.

Well, I mean, it does, it does have, I think, it's kind of samey. times but it's I I if I think if I had to actually rank them I would say Plastic Ono Band is probably a better record but it was it was one of these things where it was like it's insane that they didn't let him write more at the Beatles when that record came out like yeah so really it's I mean and then but you know Ringo was in Caveman so it's like you know so that's or no it was it was it no not Caveman was Richard Stark 3,000 BC we're saying yeah yeah that's the best one well I don't know yeah what I appreciate you asking that

question though thanks why are they better what why is England better at bands well England like what's the best American band the best American band I guess Bob Dylan well yeah I would say it would be probably the Beach Boys the Velvet Underground the Grateful Dead Van Halen possibly metallic Creedness Clearwater Revival those are the six I would say but like really with England it's really it's five bands it's the The Beatles, the Stones, Zeppelin, Sabbath, the Who and the King, six bands. So it's like... The Floyd, my brother, the Floyd!

Okay, you can put them in there. That's actually, that's a good, I agree, that's seven. So it's, and, and maybe, and it is probably seven of ten best of all time. That is weird. Why we let them bastards over there take our crap and then be better at it? Well, I just, I think that they... It makes me one of, the red coats. There are enemies.

Yeah, well, yes, that's true. How do we allow his... But that's a I would I don't I It's kind of baffling When you think about it well it might it might have something to do with the singularity of the Beatles I mean the way you know like the stones were just like a blues cover band The first time they had a Like a successful single like the Beatles wrote it for him in like ten minutes

So it's like it's hard to round the pub and just rode it Yeah, well they were like getting in a taxi cab or something like But so that that had probably a lot to do with it that that That that created this idea that it's like well this is what we can do this like I didn't know we could do this I guess we can well because it was the 50s rock Radiohead yeah well it's a it's a yeah that's a fuck Why are they beating us guys what are we doing it's like seeing these goddamn Europeans come to the NBA Will you will you be troubled if Major League Baseball becomes

dominated by the Japanese. No, I like that. You like that? I like that. It's really fucked up what we did to them. You think that's finally equating things? Like Hiroshima, Nagasaki? It's the only time it ever happened.

Yep, the only time. And to them, it's really horrible. They handled it well. Did we say sorry like that good? How sorry did we say it? I don't know. I mean... We were like my bad.

Truman was like my bust. Yeah. Did you say my boss? There seems to be like sort of like, well, we did stop firebombing all these cities you know but it's like what's really interesting is when you hear how they picked these cities I watched like like I have some kind of little documentary or might have just been on you know like how it was selected and like you know like they didn't want to destroy like I believe it was like they couldn't destroy

Tokyo or something because they were like that's where all the leadership is and maybe they won't have anyone who can even surrender and like one city was bypassed just because one guy on the decision committee was like I went there it's a beautiful place it's like so they won't go Nagasaki then it's very incredible how the decision was made. Like this world, time-changing decision was made much more capriciously, at least in my opinion, than I would have ever guessed. Yeah.

Do you think that there is a potential for soccer ever to take the place of football in the United States? Because they've been since the New York Cosmos in Pele. Absolutely. The sport of the future, yes. Well, there was. the time of my life when I would have said absolutely not absolutely there's no chance at this point in my life I would say like I don't think so but who knows I mean every big thing I've ever predicted I've been wrong about I think yeah every big thing the only thing I really got right

is on do you gamble nope yeah well I lose I lose everyone I know is it yeah we had a time I bet we had a we had a new year's Eve party at my house one year and we all had to make predictions for the year and we wrote them down in a book and for some reason And I said, Michael Jackson's going to die next year. And there's going to be issues over his will. And I bring this up every New Year's for the rest of my life. That's the only thing you got right? It was the only thing I got right.

The only thing I've ever totally got right, ever. That totally, like I remember in 2016, I had this friend who was just totally freaked out about the idea of Trump, you know, and it was like, we're watching the election results come in. It was like 815 Eastern, and she's texting with me and I'm like, now don't worry. Like he's not going to win. He's not going to win. It was like literally like minutes before. Well, every white person in America didn't think that.

Well, I know, but what I'm saying, it was like, it was 815 or whatever. Like it was, it was probably two minutes before. And I was like, I just, I am not good at knowing what's going to happen before it does. And read his book about what's going to happen before it. Yeah, exactly. That's awesome. Woo! You're good.

I was there.