The Bill Simmons Podcast - Disney CEO Robert Iger on the Streaming Wars, ESPN’s Reset, Jimmy Kimmel’s First Year, and 15 Years of Leadership Lessons | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: February 10, 2020

HBO and The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Disney CEO Robert Iger to discuss his book The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned From 15 Years As CEO of the Walt Disney Company, his career, lessons in leadership, the rise of streaming, launching Disney+, growing ESPN, unforgettable NBA games, the start of 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!,' and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tonight's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. You talk about the difference between working hard and working smart. Look at these Oscars movies. You know which ones did well? The ones that did well tonight? The ones that worked hard and worked smart, like 1917. What a very well-filmed movie that was. Our presenting sponsor, ZipRecruiter, has the tools to make hiring more efficient and

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Dwight Howard, he's coming. He's not actually on it. We'll be talking about him on this week's episode. It's a pyramid podcast. We also have a rewatchables coming up with the movie from the 80s. Incredibly transformative for me. The Breakfast Club. That's happening. Now The Breakfast Club is a radio show in New York City, but back in the mid 80s, it was the movie that you saw yourself as a high schooler

through the lens of, if you're a white person. There you go. Check out all that stuff. Check out the ringer.com, one of the world's last great websites and check out the ringer podcast network where you can find all of our awesome podcasts. Check out the ringer YouTube channel where it was just growing like gangbusters. But we do stuff like we taped the Rosillo podcast last week, the trade deadline podcast. We cut out the whole Mookie podcast last week, the Trade Deadline podcast. We cut out the whole Mookie Betts section and made it a YouTube clip. We do stuff like that.

We have great staff. So there you go. Coming up, my old boss from Disney, Bob Iger, who I hadn't been to his office for five years until last week, ironically, the same day that we sold The Ringer to Spotify. So that was an action-packed day. But we talked about his new book and a whole bunch of other stuff. Kyle said it was a top five podcast. No doubt.

He's never been a producer. Guy's a planet. That's happening as well. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. Okay, we're taping this early February. We are in Burbank in the Disney offices. Bob Agger is here. We had talked about doing this when I was at Grantland, and I don't remember what happened.

But you said yes. How long ago was that? I think I got suspended, and then it got kind of awkward, and we couldn't do it. But I was going to come in, and we were going to talk basketball for like an hour, and it just kind of never happened. But then when you had your book came out, you did all these podcasts, and I was like, all right. And then I was like, all right, I'm going to read this book. And then I loved it and I ripped through it and I emailed you and I

was like, I loved your book. I want to do a podcast about it. I liked so many things about it. And I really thought it was fascinating. And also like an interesting thing for you to do because it was pretty candid and I was surprised that you shared that much because you're still a pretty powerful person here. I made a decision that if I were going to write a book that it had to be candid. Yeah. And then after, and I made that promise to myself. And then after I made the promise and I agreed to write the book and I began the process, I realized that being candid was not the easiest thing in the world.

Or maybe being generous, meaning with information and with opinion. And the hardest thing, of course, was when I talked about or wrote about people. I really did not want to either appear to be overly critical or overly negative, really, about anyone. And that was hard. Was there stuff you took out, like at the 11th hour, where you're like, eh? Yes. Maybe I'll remove this.

Yes. I spent 50 hours on July 4th weekend, five-day weekend, making 2,800 edits. Really? Yes. I did a final pass, not only to improve the book, which I thought needed improvement, but to address or in that case, readdress what I was saying about certain things. And I took some things out. Yeah.

Either I softened some things about some people or I took some things out that I, in the end, felt might be a little too personal. Because it felt very purposeful. But I think the reason it resonated with me so much, cause it was pretty, you know, it's a pretty simply structured book. It's like, here's my life. Here are the things I've learned. Here's my journey.

I did. It wasn't all great. I got lucky in a couple of ways, but you sprinkled in some, some stuff. And obviously I've been in charge of some things this past decade before the 2010s, never. And I've always thought about, am I doing this right? Am I talking to my people enough? And in some ways, because I didn't know enough about it, that was actually a strength, right? I'm coming at it differently.

And the way I did it, I think worked in a lot of ways. And then in other ways, like some of the stuff you had in there about being pessimistic, how dangerous that can be to the staff. And I'm like, oh, I can think of seven times when I probably brought that into work. And you forget sometimes when you're the person, they're all feeding off you. You're like the best player on the basketball team or something. They're all feeding off your energy. Like Carl Anthony Towns in Minnesota right now, and he's bummed out. He's not traded.

Yeah, he's like, man, love to get out of here. But when did you realize that about the whole optimism thing? Was it natural? I think, well, I don't know that any of this was really natural. I mean, maybe some was within me, and I just didn't know it existed. And through experience, I discovered it or it was drawn out. I learned a lot over the years. First of all, I've been at this a long time.

I've been at this company, ABC Disney, for 45 years. And if you include the year that I was a weatherman in Ithaca, New York, I've been in this business for 46 years in a variety of different places and positions and worked for a lot of people, many very talented, many very generous in terms of what they taught me. And I think I've just accumulated a huge amount of knowledge. Yeah. And it was interesting because it was the accumulation of that knowledge that kind of led to my agreeing to write a book. People who came to me and said, you've got a great story to tell. And I said, well, okay, that's nice, but I didn't really feel a need to tell the story. And they said, well, you also have in telling the story, you have things that you can impart to people, lessons. lessons and that resonated with me because I'm asked all the time by people whether it's kids

in college or business school or people that work with us or people that I just come across and they ask always giving me some advice or what's the most what was what's the best lesson you ever learned or what's the secret to your success and so the combination of people saying you have an interesting story to tell and then the opportunity for me to impart some of those lessons and be generous with them in an efficient way. In other words, do it in a way that could reach more people led me to agree to write something. And then, oh, that all sounds very easy. And then you have to figure out how to make it digestible, how to make it interesting. I had never really read a business book before I started to do this I subsequently read Shoe Dog

if you consider that a business book but I didn't want to write something that was dry and and just educational in nature so you were writing this yourself there was no like ghost person I did I had I hired someone to help me with this I wrote the first chapters in my own words, and then we agreed to a format. And then he interviewed me for each chapter and came back with basically a transcript of what I had said. And then from that, I then wrote it in each one, ultimately, in my own words. So you're like a Starbucks with the other writers, just like working on your manuscript. It's funny.

Someone sent me a note today. A lot of people have reached out saying, okay, this was great. Now could you give me even more advice? And I got an email today from one of those people and they said, you wrote a book. Tell me, when did you figure out, when did you find the time to do that? Like, how'd you fit that in?

He's asked me about exercise and family and obviously work. And it was hard finding the time, you know, from everything else that's going on in my life. But I figured it out. I carved out the time. Something was sacrificed in the process, but I don't know what. A little bit from here and a little bit from there. Obviously, you're in a competitive industry. Do you worry about giving tips that are actually going to help competitors? Because you're in, you know, you're not a war, but you're in a battle with a bunch of different big media companies right now. I never thought about that in this case.

You're the first person that raised that. It's never even come up a meaning in my mind even. Because I feel like Belichick would never do this. I'm not putting my lessons in here. I'll do that when I'm retired. I think you're right about that. I think you're right about that. What was the thing you were most afraid of when you read it? When I read it or wrote it? No, when you it like that when it was about to come out i worried the most about it seeming like an ego trip look at me and my smiling face and my name on the cover and look what i've done i i did not want it to be self-congratulatory yeah and i did

not want in any way to for it to be perceived as just another way for me to let everybody know what I've done. That's actually why I didn't read it right away. Because I was like, oh, he's doing the thing everybody else does. And then a couple of people I trusted were like, you should read the Agar book. It's actually really interesting. And I think the thing that resonated over everything else, I think the most was how much luck you need with stuff. And you were pretty open about that in the book, that you're going to have these. And I know I've had it myself. You have these four to five moments in your life where there's almost a fork in the road. And you kind of need some luck.

It's like a football game. It's like Niners, Chiefs, third and 15 on their four. They need the 44-yard pass, and it flips. And you had a couple of those moments. And I didn't realize that with your journey. I think I had many of those moments. And when you look back on the journey like this, and you count them up because you're writing about them, it's pretty extraordinary. And I've talked about that over the years, and everybody says, oh, it's not luck.

You have to have talent, too. I think it's a combination of things. In my case, as I look back, it was a combination of having a great work ethic. I was just either born with that or my parents instilled that in me. And I was always able to outwork other people. And that got me far. I never thought it was about intellect or even knowledge. It was just that I worked hard.

And I never complained about working. I showed up and was ready to work. That helped. I had great teachers was ready to work. That helped. I had great teachers along the way. That really helped a lot. Yeah, you lucked out a couple times. I did. Well, do you think about the fact that I worked 30 of the years that I was working.

I worked 10 were with Rune Arledge. The greatest sports executive of all time. Exactly. Tom Murphy and Dan Burke, mostly Tom in that period of time because Dan retired earlier, and 10 working for Michael Eisner. 30 years working for three people who are considered among the best in the business. Right. And I learned a lot from them.

And then luck, too. I had bosses retire at a time when maybe I was just ready to take their job. They could have stayed another five years, and I might never have gotten their job. We were bought by Disney. That wasn't by my design. I wouldn't be the head of CEO of Disney if they didn't buy the company I was working for, as a for instance. And there were other things along the way too. Not just things that I said yes to, things I said no to. Right. But there's those little moments, like you had that in your book about when something got screwed up and it was your fault.

And Rune Harlidge asked, whose fault was it? And I've been in this situation. I love when people say, yeah, I screwed that up, my bad, versus either lying, deflecting, throwing somebody under the bus. I think you learn a lot about people in that situation. And you owned it. And you said he treated you differently after that, which I think actually made sense to me.

He treated me differently, and interestingly enough, it was very empowering for me too. Because just the fact that I owned up to a mistake that was made and I survived gave me sort of a lot more courage and a lot more confidence, a lot more belief in myself. Yeah. Interestingly enough, you know, and I got a lot of pats on the back from people that I worked with. They couldn't believe that I'd opened my mouth and admitted something.

And it was small. Now that I think back on it. You were pretty candid about the Eisner relationship. And I spent some time with him over the years because I was on the top sport with him for a couple of years and got to watch him in action during these four hour meetings. And some of the stuff you captured in there, I saw it like he's, if he's in a room with 10 people, he's going to talk the most and he's going to, you know, he has a high usage rate to borrow a basketball term but

has a lot of gems and is a really interesting guy and you had that one thing in there about when he was completely i forget what it was some building or facility and he was upset about the lamps or there's like pointing this out and that out and all like the little meticulous stuff that he cared about. And you realized that like added up to the bigger picture, which is he saw all these little things as part of the bigger thing. I've never been able to operate like that, but I've always appreciated people who could. I learned a tremendous amount just watching him actually, because he had,

has still quite an eye and his, one of the things that's amazing to me about him is his eyes don't look only at one thing or in one direction. They look in multiple directions. We'd go to a theme park, and we'd walk down a path between attractions or whatever, and he was looking at the horizon to see what you could see. Could we see outside, or do we block line of sight from the outside? Sight intrusion, we call it. He would look at, you know, whether the path was looked narrow and it shouldn't have, or whether it led off into the distance to a place you look like it might be a dead end. He always believed that in designing a park, you should always know where you are.

Wayfinding is really important so people don't feel a sense that they're lost or whatever. And that collection of things is very valuable. Even to the point where when I watch a movie today, you're always watching for the main dialogue or action or whatever is central to a given scene. But at the same time, when I watch, I'm watching every corner of the screen. There are nuances sometimes that you catch, or you're basically taking a step back and looking at the whole instead of one minor thing, even though that minor thing in sight could be the most important thing in terms of the plot. And just observing him doing that was quite valuable. And I liked working for Michael. Michael has an energy and a curiosity

and a lot of knowledge too. I was always fascinated that you shared basketball tickets with him. Or you sat next to him. What was it you shared? Michael had season tickets to the Clippers, which you know. Dating way back, by the way. Right. Early. Early Sterling.

Surely the cheapest ticket in town, I guess. Maybe that's why Michael liked them. I don't know. But he had two tickets, courtside, great seats, as you know. Great seats. And he rarely went. And I like basketball. And I have two sons who are now 21 and 17 and both played some ball. And it was a great way for me to spend time with them. And so I shared the tickets with them. Ultimately, I shared half the season with them. And then I ended up getting seats next to them. And we still share those two seats. I have more. Yeah. We've gone to a few games together over the years too, but not many. So when Disney War came out, the book about everything, the history of Disney and all that stuff, and you're in it prominently and Eisner's really in it most of the time.

And somebody spends that much time reporting, but it's not going to be 100% accurate. And some stuff is being skewed certain ways and there's sources for certain things and things like that. When a book like that comes out, is your relationship with him the same after that? Like what happens? Didn't affect my relationship with Michael at all. I think we had similar feelings about the book in that we thought it was unfair in many respects. And the sources that James Stewart used were biased in many respects because there are people that, and this goes back a long time, but they were people that had been let go from the

company and we didn't think they were objective. And I think Jim drew upon them maybe too often in the book. I ended up really only reading the sections or the pieces that I was in. I was given a shot at addressing some of the things that were being written about me. And when I read them, they were so far off that it just didn't seem worth my while personally to even attempt to change them. And interestingly enough, it almost came back to haunt me because when I was in the succession process to get the job as CEO, and the board asked me to see a headhunter at the end of the whole process. And he comes into the room that he was interviewing me in with a book with Disney Wars.

And I can't remember whether they were dog-eared or whether they were Post-it notes, but there were a lot of them. And he started questioning me in this interview. And I realized that all of his questions emanated from something that he had read in the book. And I had to stop him and say, wait a minute, if this is your source material for this interview, I don't really think this interview should go on. Last year, Crown Royal launched the first off-the-field water break to encourage fans of the game to moderate and hydrate to stay in the

game. Whether you're watching in the stadium, watching at home or in a bar, have a great time. Enjoy some Crown. Just don't be that person. That ruins it for everyone. Make the right call. Take a water break. All right. So who made the right call or not this week? Kyle, turn your mic on. The right call goes to me

because we did this deal with Spotify. Oh! But more importantly, I think my son was impressed. Not to turn this into a parent corner, but I don't know what my son thought we were doing for the last five years, but he was really excited when the Spotify thing came out and gave me this big handshake. And he's like, I'm so excited. Now I'm going to have a job. He gave me this big handshake. And he's like, I'm so excited. Now I'm going to have a job. He gave you a proper handshake? Yeah. He gave me a proper handshake. And I'm like, what do you mean? What do you mean you're

going to have a job? And he goes, I'm going to have a job now. We're with Spotify. I'm like, but you couldn't have had a job at the ringer? He's like, well, I don't know. Spotify is just a much bigger company. So he simultaneously managed to compliment me and insult me. Obviously, I made the right call. Crown Royal reminds everyone this football season to take a water break and moderate to stay in the game. Back to Bob Ager. When did you really officially buy into the whole concept of disrupting something that

was working anyway? It goes back a while. And this is something I think that is also maybe the result of people that I've worked for, Rune Arledge in particular, who was someone that was always willing to venture out of his comfort zone in terms of, in that case, how we covered sports. Yeah. There's a lot that was working.

You could apply very basic principles to coverage of a live event or whatever. And he was always willing to take risks in that regard. And it typically paid off. Not every one of them worked, but if you look at the collection of them that he took, they paid off. And it was not only energizing, but it was an interesting lesson. And then when I became head of ABC Entertainment in the late 80s, I thought, it's kind of interesting looking back on it, I thought television had become somewhat boring in that

a lot of the programs on network TV, it was really only about network then, in terms of original programming, were cookie cutter in nature. In other words, they were derivative of other programs that had been made and no one was really breaking the mold. And that I thought the viewer really was ready for more. And that's what gave birth to Twin Peaks and Cop Rock and some other crazy stuff that we did. So I think I've been, I don't know if the word disruptor would be the right word to use back then, but I've always been willing to take some chances. And I think in doing so, I learned the value of doing that.

But it also forces you whether they work, and so you kind of try to analyze what was it about them that worked or whether they don't work, and you try to figure out what was it that them that worked or whether they don't work and you try to figure out what was it that didn't that created the failure i think what i learned in all of that analysis is that the world was changing yeah and that the changes in the world particularly in our business probably would occur in a more rapid even more profound on a more profound basis than anybody had anticipated. So you hop on the Pixar thing.

I was open-minded, yes. Well, the Pixar thing was a little different in that we had a great need as a company to turn the fortunes of Disney animation around. And I thought if we didn't do that, my tenure as CEO would be short-lived. Because at that point, the perception of the company was so totally tied to the success or lack thereof of our animated films. And in trying to figure out how to fix it, I concluded the best way to do it would be to bring Pixar into the company and use the people who ran Pixar to turn Disney animation around. Most people would have said,

we just got to pour more resources into the animation. They wouldn't have actually said, we'll bring in a different company that's actually better than what we already have. I would say that's disruption. Yes, I guess. Well, it's certainly risk-taking. Although at the same time, you're betting on Steve Jobs. So that's a pretty safe bet.

He was a disruptor. Yeah, and it's a safe bet too. I think maybe the lesson that I've learned from all of this is, first of all, nothing stays the same. In fact, the opposite is the case in terms of things change much faster than you ever expected they would. And therefore, if you try to stay the same, you usually fail. Yeah. You're just left behind.

You may hang on for a while, but eventually it all catches up to you. So if you're running a business in a dynamic world, particularly in a specific dynamic industry like the entertainment industry or the information entertainment industry, and you try to maintain any level of status quo, even if the status quo is working for you that day, you will eventually become irrelevant. And so unless you're in the business of changing with the times or ahead of the times, you know, you're destined to fail. And that's always been within me. And again, I've never been afraid of taking big risks.

Actually, I like taking risks. I think the hardest thing to do is to take a risk with something that's already doing well. And I honestly felt like with ESPN last decade when I was there, I could feel it. Because you're protecting something, not you, the company, is protecting something that's really successful and makes a ton of money. And that's when it becomes tough to go, we should do this, we should do that. Even something like Grantland, it's like, well, why are, you know, there's a lot of people who are like, well, why are we doing this? We already have a website. And the pitch to Skipper and Walsh was always, because somebody else is going to do it. Isn't it better if we have this, if we try to do this storytelling site that wouldn't you rather

us have this than somebody else and they thought about it correctly and it was at the time i think the right move but i think it seemed like espn caught a couple years there when things are really about to move and they're like oh shit this is and then they made the move maybe two years late but now they've caught up but did you feel like that was happening? Like they were late there? Specifically, what element or what aspect of the business were they late? You mean in totality? Trust in the subs and not being ready to move toward the streaming thing yet.

And whether you could even see the streaming thing. I don't know what year was the right year to see it yeah i think look i i i think very difficult in the sense that espn's base business the multi-channel cable and satellite business really um has been extremely profitable as you noted yeah over the years and that business model while it is under some duress from all this disruption, is still delivering a fair amount of profitability at ESPN. And the alternative, which is a pivot in the direction of what they call direct-to-consumer, over-the-top services, was not as obvious. Meaning it was sitting out there to do, but the financial implications or ramifications of doing that were challenging. Meaning it's not like you could flip a switch and go from being paid a significant amount of money, billions of dollars in cable and subscriber fees, and immediately earn that

in direct consumer subscription fees. And you had some rules going against you too, where you couldn't do certain things. Existing distributors, first of all, had rights that we had to keep in mind. And then a lot of the license deals or rights deals that we did with some of the big sports organizations like NFL and NBA, et cetera, didn't give us the ability to distribute in a different way. So we were hampered by really three things. One, the business model that we knew was ultimately going to loom large down the road but hadn't really developed enough, so the economics weren't going to work. And then, of course, the other, whether you call them restrictions,

encumbrances would be the best way to describe them. As the world has changed even more in the last few years, I happen to believe that eventually ESPN will be far more of a direct-to-consumer product. And by launching ESPN Plus and investing to grow that by buying more programming for it, giving them resources necessary. We're growing it nicely, but it's still relatively small, both economically and from a subscriber perspective than the mothership. You wrote about in the book, you realized you had to make a move on this new streaming world and it was going to cost a lot

of money and you had to talk your board into it and you basically planned that almost like you know like an attack like we have to do this here's what it's actually going to cost i know it doesn't totally make sense yet but we have to do this right now. We had an earnings call in August of 2015. And at that time, I decided to be quite candid, maybe overly so, but generous with the investment community about what we were seeing in terms of subscriber losses or erosion, as we called it. It had been haunting us for a while because it was the number one issue that investors were focused on regarding the Walt Disney Company because of the size of ESPN and its profitability. And when I did that, I don't remember what the percentage was, 10%, 15% decrease in our stock price. And that was a real wake-up call. I wanted to be

candid. It was premeditated. It wasn't something that I accidentally declared. But anyway, in doing so, the reaction was pretty harsh. And the wake-up call was, OK, it's time for us to change, time for us to move. majority position in a platform or a technology platform called BAMTEC, which made you a baseball hub create, to enable us to launch a direct-to-consumer service. And because of the amount of money involved in making that acquisition, it required approval of the board. So what I did was I went to the board with the team, not just me, and not only presented that acquisition, but presented in the context of what ultimately would be a complete pivot strategically. And that was launching a direct-to-consumer ESPN and Disney-branded service.

And the board's reaction, first, we made the acquisition of a small part in 2015. It was two years later in 2017 that we decided that we would buy up the majority position. And the board's reaction to that in the context of this change strategy was speed is of the essence. Get it done. They were great. The board was great about it. And that was probably, if you'd waited two more years on that, you would have been in

a lot of trouble, I feel like. Well, on yesterday's earnings call, I would have been talking about more ESPN erosion. And I wouldn't have been talking about Disney plus growing subs or ESPN plus growing subs, which dominated the call interest in these new businesses that we've launched is these days, anyway, far greater than anything else that we're doing, which I think. You didn't have that much ESPN stuff in the book. I thought you would have more on like the on some of the right stuff that had happened. I remember, what was it, 2004, 2005, potentially you could have had Sunday night and Monday night football.

2005, yeah. Yeah, which was, that could have been pretty good. Yeah, there were a few other things, big things along the way, either that involved people or, you know, business circumstances that I thought about putting in. And in the end, I wanted to write somethingPN, I probably could have, looking back, I probably could have written something that was of interest to a lot of people, a lot of readers, but I didn't. And I wanted everything that I wrote, I wanted to be in the context of other things I was writing. What happened there, actually, I think it was the 2005 negotiation. ABC had had Monday Night Football since Monday Night Football was created in the early 70s.

Rune Arledge deserved credit for that, you know, the famous. Ultimately what became the Don Meredith, Howard Cosell, Frank Gifford Booth didn't start that way. And ESPN came into what was then Sunday Night Football, first sharing it with Turner in the middle of the 80s, ultimately getting the whole package, and then a network package. So ESPN was facing more competition and ABC as well for renewing their packages. And I concluded that it would be difficult to have them both and be profitable. And actually, I made the decision, along with Michael Eisner, who was outgoing CEO at the time, I had been named, but I wasn't in the role yet. There was a six-month period. So I guess we both made the decision that we would pass on ABC and preserve ESPN's position,

move ESPN from Sunday to Monday. Well, you had Desperate Housewives. It was like to Monday. Well, you had Desperate Housewives. It was like red hot too, right? Desperate Housewives, yes, was red hot on Sunday night. I think we knew that that wasn't necessarily going to last forever. True. That was, I think, a consideration, but the bigger one was we were worried about the economics.

Right. Looking back on it, if we could do it again i would do it differently has anyone ever paid for sports rights and regretted it i'm trying to remember i mean in the last 30 years it seems like whatever the price is at the very least it's well i think look i mean i've been around so long we paid 309 million dollars for the Calgary Olympics. I think it was 309. I can't believe I've, I don't know where I got that number. Uh, that which occurred in winter of 88, it was the last Olympics we did. And, uh, we lost a lot of money on it. And we had bad luck because the weather was terrible. We had bad luck. It was,

it was winter Olympics and they're, they're great, but they're not as popular as summer. True. And if I recall correctly, I think Katerina Witt won the gold medal in figure skating, which was great. But she wasn't American. We only had American rights. And the US hockey team faltered. And there were all kinds of other things going on.

And we lost money. and it stung. Then we were owned by Capital Cities and I remember them being very negative on it. And it got us out of the Olympics since then, interestingly enough. That would be one, I don't know, looking back so long ago, whether we'd say we regretted it. Well, you have some good ones coming up.

Football's coming up. You mean in terms of contracts? Hoops is coming up. Well, obviously. Your favorite sport, the NBA, is coming up. The NBA. I feel like you have a good inside track on that. We have a couple of years left there.

Yeah. And the NFL, of course, everybody's talking about that is coming up. It remains to be seen exactly when. There's a collective bargaining agreement they're trying to conclude before they agree to extend deals. But we'll be at the table there. You have more bidders than ever, though, with people saying the only thing that really matters anymore is sports rights

and that this is the one thing that gets people all over the place to watch something at the same time other than like the Oscars. Live sports, very valuable. Yeah. But I'm not concerned. I'm not complacent. I'm not concerned. And I'm not going to give anything away.

We will be at the table. I guarantee that. We're taping this, I don't know, 10 days after Kobe's tragic accident. How long have you lived in LA? I moved to LA this time around January of 2000. I had lived here before. Have you ever seen the city like this, ever? No.

I wasn't here when Robert Kennedy was killed in 1968 or when John Kennedy was killed in 63, even though they weren't homegrown. Yeah. Well, RFK was here, though. RFK happened here. That's right. Ambassador Hotel. No, I haven't. I think it's been quite stunning in many respects to see.

Shocking, stunning. Yeah. see shocking stunning yeah it's it's only a couple times i can remember in the last 30 40 years the outpouring you know like i think when princess diana when she died could feel it with prince and michael jackson to some degree although i think they were a little bit older wasn't as probably shocking as this but um i was down there last friday last th Thursday for a Clipper game. As was I. I was there Saturday. It was so much more overwhelming than I expected.

I honestly couldn't believe it. I'd never seen anything like it. I wasn't prepared for it. You can see it on TV and you can see it in pictures, but being there was like nothing I'd ever seen. Yeah. Well, 20 years, one team. As you know, in today's world, that doesn't happen very much.

It never happens in football because players, I mean, Tom Brady would be the only thing that would be close, right? Right. I guess. But he didn't belong. He's not 20 years. He didn't belong to the New England region like I think Kobe did because Kobe grew up here and he stayed here after and stayed. Yes. And I think that was the difference. difference yeah along with a lot of other things very very winning

personality in terms of his at least to the community yeah you know he was viewed as warm and affable and friendly and you probably you got to know him pretty well right yes yeah the one of the dirty secrets with you is you get to know all these NBA players. You have a lot of under the radar relationships. They know I'm a fan. Yeah. And you're you. A lot of them want to meet the guy who's running Disney.

And maybe it's because my wife used to be the co-anchor of NBA Inside Stuff. Yeah. They grew up watching her. She was an icon in the early 90s. We can go back to Kobe if you'd like. Although, maybe before we leave that subject, the nature in which he died, the manner in which he died, the fact that his daughter was killed with him,

just how incredibly abrupt it all seemed. His presence in the community. He didn't only play for this team and this town for 20 years, but he was a star, a superstar in the sport, in the world, really. And he just connected with people. And I think a lot of people were shocked. But when it happened, it was quite interesting because just coincidentally that morning, I talked to Chris Paul on the phone, who had come to town to see his daughter's ballet recital. And he and I had a quick conversation.

And about 30 minutes later, I got a text from Jimmy Pataro, who runs ESPN. Did you see the news about Kobe? I had not. And I immediately called Chris back, who was here, and he had just seen the same thing. And we had trouble talking. And I get back to Jimmy Pataro and ESPN, because I thought they would sense this. But I think because I'm here in LA and they're in East, I said, this is a gigantic story. This is bigger than we all can possibly imagine. Let's make sure we jump on this collectively, meaning as a company, because we have a big TV station here, KABC, and ABC News has obviously an interest in stories like this and ESPN and our relationship

with the NBA. It was a very, very difficult, difficult moment, really. And very sad, really sad. Football has more fans and a bigger reach, but for whatever reason, and we could probably come up with seven, eight, nine, whatever, it seems like the NBA stars have a bigger reach. But for whatever reason, and we could probably come up with seven, eight, nine, whatever, it seems like the NBA stars have a deeper connection with the fans. And I think part of it is they're basically naked on the court. Yes, no helmets.

Jersey shorts, no helmets. They're right there. Fewer of them. Yeah. There are fewer of them. First of all, there are only 10 on the court at one time. They can be sold better for the games

and all that, like when you're promoting whatever. It's James Harden and the Rockets. And they tend to have slightly longer careers. True. So go back, just a quick story about my wife and NBA Inside stuff. I was fortunate enough to have attended President Obama's first inauguration and the inaugural ball that night. And because of, I guess, who we were,

we had an opportunity to meet the brand new president, inaugurated that day, and the brand new first lady before they came out on stage for basically their first public appearance that night at inaugural ball. And they were both brought over to us. And I had met the president before, but my wife, Willow Bay, had not. And I said, Mrs. Obama, nice to see you. Mr. President, congratulations. And I was about to say, this is my wife. And I said, this is, and he said, Willow Bay, NBA inside stuff. And she turned beet red. Obviously, he's an NBA fan too. Well, I mean, you're talking late 80s, early 90s, where we had less cable channels.

And I remember I was in college when that show was on. We'd wake up Saturday, you know, not feeling that great from the night before. And you'd put it on and it was like, cool, basketball. And, oh, I like these two people. And I don't know, it was just different. Now there's 9 million channels and we probably would have been on Disney Plus

or Netflix on a Saturday. Yeah, whatever. The communal experience, I think, of all that stuff. By the way, when I first started dating her, on Friday nights, she would track highlights of the games that night for the show the next morning out of a room in her apartment. And I'd be sitting in her living room and listening to her in the other room saying,

you know, five, four, three, two, one tonight, you know, Michael Jordan scored 35 points as the Bulls beat the Knicks yet again. Right. It's kind of funny. These NBA stars who all want to do more than be basketball players now and want to have their own businesses and their own thing, do they consult you with this stuff? Do they ask for advice? They must. Just a few of them. That's it? Yeah.

I mean, there are a bunch that have reached out to seek my advice on things. But either they don't have the time or, in some cases, they're just not really as interested as someone may have suggested they should be at some point and yet some of them really are and chris is one of them he's actually he when he first met me he was traded to the clippers as you know um almost traded to the lakers and um i was he knew that i had clipper tickets and i guess he asked people having just come to la is there anybody i should meet and someone suggested you should meet the Disney guy maybe because he had kids and eventually he'd want to take them to Disneyland but um and when he when we sat down he he told me he was looking for a mentor of some sort I said well let me explain if you want to be a mentor you got to take it seriously meaning if you want some of my time,

be serious about it. And of all those that I've ever come in contact with that have had similar requests, he's taken it the most seriously. I've developed a nice relationship. He's actually a good friend. Yeah, it's interesting when these guys retire now.

In the old days, it was like you do TV or maybe you become... You become a high school coach or whatever you become like a local analyst or whatever and now these guys are leaving and they're actually going on to do all kinds of stuff what's the just out of curiosity you've been a lot of basketball games what was the best game you've ever been to because you've gone to a lot of good ones. I've never seen my team win a championship because when the Knicks won against the Lakers way back. 73. After getting past the Celtics, I guess, right?

I was in college still, and I probably couldn't afford a ticket. So I saw the Knicks play in the finals in 94. That's the best game I've ever seen. Boy, I've ever seen. Boy. I've been to a lot of championships. You must have gone to a lot of Laker, big Laker games. I did. I went to a lot of big Laker finals, actually, against the Celtics. Actually, that Celtics series that the Celtics won, I wasn't a Laker fan.

So I didn't have a rooting interest. That was a great series. Yeah, that was. Great series. Both of them were good battles. Yes. I'd have to think about that. One of the more interesting games I ever went to

was the finals against the Houston Rockets, the Knicks and the Houston Rockets. Oh, yeah, yeah. Junior 94. Yeah. And my seats were right behind the Knick bench. And at some point, the game was being preempted by NBC. It was covering it because of the Bronco chase.

It was Friday night. It was Friday, the Bronco chase. And all the players on Nick Bench, who were not in the game, got up from the bench and went over to what was the press table, was on that side of the Madison Square Garden court, to watch the Bronco chase. Oh, my God. The Bronco chase.

We should have interviewed you for the 30 for 30. I had no idea. That 30 for 30, which was the chase and Arnold Palmer's retirement. Oh, yeah. And the Rangers. Now, I was at the seventh game of the Stanley Cup that year, which happened basically the same week. That was one of my favorite 30 for 30s because we came up with it in a room like this.

The great 30 for 30. We were just like, the OJ Bronco chase. Didn't something else happen that day? And then we started going on Google and it's like, oh, that happened? And it was like five things that happened in the same day. It was Palmer retiring. It was the Rangers. In that case, that day, it was their ticker tape parade because they won the Stanley Cup, I think, maybe the Thursday night before. And it was Palmer retiring. It was the Rangers. In that case, that day, it was their ticker tape parade

because they won the Stanley Cup, I think, maybe the Thursday night before. And it was World Cup. World Cup, which was out here. I went to the – It was the first World Cup game. So that week, I bet I might be the only person that ever did this. I went to the Rangers, the final Stanley Cup game. Took my daughters to it against Vancouver.

Yeah. I went to the Knicks-Rockets game. I don't remember which one in the finals. And I to the finals of the world cup three first the finals of the world cup was at the rose bowl that's impressive that's impressive you you didn't have in your book any of the stuff about when la was trying to get the two football teams because you were involved in that yes you criticized you were critical. You got mad at me. You were critical of me for that. Was I critical or did I have a theory? I think I had a theory. Well, no. You, if you want to put it on the table. Let's do it.

I'm right here. You suggested, and I can't recall whether you, how public you were, but I think you might have been. I might have said it on a podcast. You suggested that my being in business with the NFL was a conflict of interest or potential because I might push ESPN in a direction or skew the coverage of the league to be more positive and less negative. In other words...

I don't think I did that. Really? Did I do that? That was the impression I had, which I would never do. Well, we figured it out. I never actually instructed ESPN to be less critical of the league. I always have instructed any of our journalism pursuits of the company, or ABC News, or whatever, just to be accurate and to be fair.

But I think that's what it was. Yeah, I was. I'm like Mark McGuire. I'm not here to talk about the past. Well, it's a accurate and to be fair. But I think that's what it was. Yeah, I was. I'm like Mark McGuire. I'm not here to talk about the past. Well, it's a long time ago. Yeah. Pete Rose wants to talk about the past. I probably was mad, though, because one of the reasons I left ESPN was because I got

into a good deal, and I was probably trying to come up with my own narrative for the whole thing. It didn't work out very well for either one of us, maybe. Well, it's worked out for you. We're here now. It's worked out for you. Oh, we're here now. It's great.

I was approached to help two teams. Initially, it was one. It was the Raiders. And then it became two, moved to LA. And actually, Jerry Richardson was one that approached me. Yeah. And Mark Davis and Dean Spanos ultimately. And I actually had an agreement with them that if they were successful in moving,

that I would have had a relationship going forward. I was planning to leave Disney at the time too. So it was something that would have ultimately occurred after I had left. Yeah. And as you know, it didn't pan out. They didn't, they. Did you think that owners like kind of resented that you came in and were like, hey, let me tell you how it's going to work here in LA or how it could work. And they were like, who's this guy?

I'm my own kind of rich guy. I don't need help from another rich guy. I don't know. I don't i don't think my presence mattered all that much i think yeah i think um there are people in the league who believed maybe by the way i'm not in any way disputing it that um stan kronke's proposal both the stadium proposal just the proposal overall to move the team, was more attractive for the sport and league than what Mark Davis and Dean Spadis were presenting. Which was less theatrical.

I think to Stan's credit, he believed that if you're going to move a team to L.A., as Jerry Jones, by the way, proved in Dallas, build a football palace, build a great place. And it sounds like it's going to be great. It's going to cost $6 billion, but it's going to be amazing. by the way, proved in Dallas, build a football palace, build a great place. Which, and it sounds like it's going to be great. It's going to cost $6 billion, but it's going to be amazing. Well, I guess it's expensive. Yes, most expensive stadium ever built in the history of the world.

Right. But it could be the greatest stadium that's ever built too. I actually spoke to someone who saw it recently and described it. And I've only flown over it. I have not seen it. Yeah. It's what I've seen from the air and what I've heard, it looks great. I think that's the right approach. If you're going to play that sport here, play it in a great place.

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from square one to whatever's next at square.com slash go slash BS. I would argue that was another fork in the road moment that worked out in your favor because I never understood why you wanted to leave Disney. I think you talked about in your book about how you feel like a CEO has a certain number of years. And at some point, people are going to either start tuning you out or you're going to stop listening to people and a new voice needs to come in, all that stuff.

But meanwhile, you had the best job in the world. Yeah, I still do. I still do, yeah. But it was weird that you didn't totally realize that. Well, it wasn't about how great my job was. I felt a few times that overstaying one's welcome could be a big mistake. And I just didn't want to do that. I didn't want to either temp fade or overstay my welcome.

And as I said at the beginning of this conversation, I've been at this company a long time. Even if it ended five years ago, I was at this company a long time. And I just felt like there was a time, a time maybe for me to explore other things in the world, whether it was ownership of a partial ownership of a sports team or running for office. There are a variety of different things that have come into my head in terms of alternative career paths or post-Disney adventures. So here I am, but now planning to leave the end of 2021.

I'll believe it when I see it. I know you're probably going to, but I don't know. Who leaves a championship team? I guess Michael Jordan, Sandy Koufax. Sandy Koufax, who probably no one who's listening ever heard of, right? I don't know. It's kind of sad.

No, Sandy Koufax, a legend. But he was my era. Yeah. Baseball. And that book, Jane Levy's biography of him, one of the best sports biographies I've ever read. And one of the things that I took from that, it's actually quite interesting. I gave that book at one point to the senior management of ESPN was how he got off the stage or off the field or the mound when he was at the top of his game.

Right. You know, I think about like that 2017 stretch. When did you do that story you took, you told in the book about the whiteboard? Was that right around then? That was January of 2018. That was one of my favorite stories. So if you haven't read the book, people listening out there, you've accumulated all these assets, but for some reason you hadn't actually seen them all in one place. So you grab a whiteboard and you separate it into these three different tiers and you're like i just want to see what we have here and you put would you put like all the networks and the studios and all the stuff on one side and in the middle you put like all the technology and all that stuff i'll show it to

you by the way when we leave this room oh I'd love to see it. But yes. What was in the middle? After we acquired Fox, which was the initial announcement, it took longer than we expected, which was in December of 17. I took Christmas off. And we do that here occasionally. Yeah, yeah. And I came back rejuvenated and ready to go in January of 18 and decided, well, obviously, I felt this great sense of new responsibility. I had a responsibility to figure out how do we manage all these assets now.

The company was growing significantly. And I had my assistant roll a whiteboard into a conference room. Which you hadn't done in like 12 years. No, I wasn't. I'm not a whiteboard guy. I only used it one other time with Steve Jobs about pros and cons of buying Pixar, which I also wrote about. In this case, I stood in front of the whiteboard alone and I listed all of our assets. And what I did was I listed all the, I'll call it the creative businesses, the studios, including everything from Pixar and Disney Animation and Marvel,

but also the networks from ESPN and the networks we were acquiring to National Geographic to Disney Channel and ABC and et cetera and so on. And on one side, so you have this gigantic collection of, I call them content engines or content creators. In the middle, I had what I called our, I had a name for it, but I think physical goods and physical experiences. So it was theme parks and consumer products. We're one of the largest sellers of merchandise in the world in terms of character merchandise. And so theme parks around the world, six different locations and multiple Disney stores,

that whole business, and cruise ships and a resort in Hawaii. And then on the far, that was in the middle. And on the far right was what I called platform. And that was the technology engines that were needed to move all of that content to the consumer globally. And that also included monetization of those assets, so sales and distribution.

Yeah. And user interface, starting to talk in more modern terms about how technology was going to change the way we bring content to people. So user interface and data collection, et cetera, all on one side. What I envisioned was a unit of the company that would facilitate not only the distribution of, but the monetization of all of that content to the consumer. The middle group, physical goods and experiences, does it pretty

much on their own and didn't need any real, didn't really need any change. It's a gigantic business. And that whiteboard became, well, I looked and I stepped back. Sorry, after I looked at all the assets, I started plugging people's names in, figure out, you know, an org chart is only as good as some of the people you have to man the key positions. And then I took a step back and looked at it. It sounds like a movie scene. Like you pan back and the camera pans back and shows the whiteboard. Yes, exactly.

It's like dramatic music playing. Yes, the sun was streaming through the curtains, bouncing off the whiteness of the whiteboard. But then you brought other people in to point to it, right? Against this dark writing. Right. Different pen colors. But then you brought people in to kind of point to it, right?

When I looked at it, and I congratulated myself alone, because I thought it was so brilliant, I then had to immediately say, come see this. And I brought my CFO in and our general counsel and our head of HR and everyone that came brought in. I said, aren't I great? Isn't this great? But it all made sense when you saw it on the whiteboard.

It was like the first time it's like, oh, yeah. Yeah, then you have to. Would you say in the book, like, this is what a modern media company should look like? Yes. And I had done, in that very brief period of time, meaning two weeks, I studied a bit, too. In fact, I met with people at Google. And I said, you know, tell me how YouTube is structured. Interestingly enough, one of the people from YouTube said,

well, there's a platform group and there's a product group and there's a content group. I said, well, what's the difference between product and content? And content was kind of the videos that are uploaded and product was really platform. Well, that's very interesting. That's how you organize that. And I looked at a few other companies too,

Netflix and a few others, and just to get some sense. When you created Disney Plus with your team, did you realize that every parent that had kids under like the age of 11 would demand to have it immediately? Because that's basically what happened. As soon as I heard the idea,

I was like, this is going to work. My two kids are going to be like, get Disney Plus now, immediately. That's good to hear. It's had a lot of assets. We knew that if we created it right, meaning presented it right, navigation, user interface, there's an elegance to it, and we had the content that we were planning to put on it,

and we were going to add more to it, and we priced the content that we were planning to put on it and we were going to add more to it and we priced it right which is very very important yeah then it would be something that families would really want to have on the flip side espn plus still seems like it's trying to figure out what it is because it's got like the live stuff works i don't think people necessarily go in there to watch shows and the library and things like that. Whereas Disney+, like my kids will go there and be like, let's watch Jesse. And then they'll just crank out five. And I think that's a tough hurdle with ESPN+.

ESPN is still an incremental or an add-on product to ESPN. If you're really interested in the most popular live sports, you go to ESPN, not ESPN Plus. So it's an add-on service. But by the way, that provides, I think, good value for people who are interested in some very specific sports, obviously, what we've done with some of the combat sports, for instance. Yeah. How much time do I have left? I'm okay. We're up now.

Oh, we're good? All right. I'll wrap it up. Nothing more to cover? I had two more things. Well, go ahead. The first thing was, you know,

we did know each other when I was, you reached out, you're a big fan and supporter and stuff, but I remember, I think it was, I can't remember what happened.

It was something with Countdown and like people wrote something that was negative and I was really upset about it because it wasn't true. And I remember you just sent me this long email about, don't worry about this stuff. Who cares? Like you're doing great stuff. Just keep doing what you're doing. And first of all, it was a great email to get, especially from somebody like you. But I was also like, oh, it makes sense why this guy is good at his job.

Because, you know, I'm just some random dude that works in your company that has how many people in it? You know, 230 some odd thousand. Right. And I'm like, but at the same time, it really did like reset my brain and all that. So that was interesting. But the other thing is just we're taping this the day that it got announced that I was selling my company to Spotify. And I was thinking about in your book, because you have these different sections about when you have this crazy day and you kind of have to compartmentalize,

I got to go here and I got to do this and I just got to do it. And I just got to focus on this or whatever. I've been up since like 2.55 in the morning because they announced it at the Swedish earnings time. And I've, which sucked, had dealing with texts and emails all day and then the staff and planning and all that stuff and then came here to do it. But it reminded me- Did you consider canceling this?

Not at all. Oh, okay. I never would have canceled on Bob Iger, but it just reminded me of that where it's like you talked about when you're the boss, sometimes you have these days where it's like, all right, this is what I got to do. I got this and I got this and I got to plow through this. And I have this, like, even when you, when you announced the Fox deal that day, you had all the skipper stuff went down and you're just like, all right, now I'm going there. And I think like

these jobs, when they, when you're running complicated businesses or when an event like the one that you experienced today occurs, you have to be able to prioritize and you have to be able to compartmentalize. You have to be able to move from subject to subject or put whatever happened before away long enough so that you can focus on what you have to do next. I remember, funny, and it's not just about compartmentalizing the business side of things for each other, you know, yourselves, like this interview versus your announcement earlier. It's also our personal lives, too. I remember one of the acquisitions, I think it was the Marvel acquisition, and I had one

of those days where you're at work for 20 hours or whatever it is. You get off crack of dawn. We announced it before the market opened. So I drove on to the Disney lot at like 4 in the morning to get ready to go on to Good Morning America, whatever it is. And finally, after dinner, I came home with kind of nothing left in the tank. And my younger son at the time had to learn the 13 colonies or state capitals or whatever it was. And there I am lying in, you know, basically in bed with a six-year-old.

Yeah. 2009. He was born in 2002. Seven-year-old, you know, saying, whatever. The capital of New York is Albany. It was state capitals. It was this and that. I'm thinking, boy, if this kid only knew what my day was like.

We made a $4 billion acquisition. Right. We've been going all day long. And I had to show up for him. I remember the last time I was here to see you was like probably six weeks before I ended up leaving ESPN. And I remember I really wanted to come see you because I wanted in on good terms with you because it really meant a lot to me. Like you're supportive of different things we did. And we talked for, I would say, like an hour. And it was going a lot to me. Like you're supportive of different things we did. And we talked for, I would say like an hour

and it was going past a little four. And then your assistant came in and was like, the Star Wars guys are here. And you were like, oh yeah, the new trailer. And I was just like, this guy's life is amazing. He deals with me for an hour and now he's going to watch the new Star Wars trailer. And then at five o'clock, something else.

But one of the great things about this job is that is the variety of things that I can get involved in and just how much fun they are. It's probably what I'll miss the most. I spent five or six hours this morning at Walt Disney Imagineering and looked at names for new cruise ships and some design, a huge presentation that'll be on the lake at Epcot, a couple of years of design and music for that, a new attraction for Disneyland Paris, something new for Disneyland.

That's the story of my life. I don't know how you shut that off, though. If you're really going to leave in 2021, you're not going to go play golf. No, I'm not a golfer. Like what are you going to do? You're either going to have to own an NBA team or you're going to have to run for president.

Maybe I'll own an NBA. I think of the two. What's more realistic? They're both expensive, by the way. What's more realistic? Well, I don't know. Oh, you paused. i don't know that either one of them is realistic this is where zen is like all right we got in bob i don't know that either one of the realistic i think you know of the two the the one that i probably would be more likely to pursue would be the nba team be great to be an owner of the NBA team. I love it.

Did you think about when the Clippers came available? Were your wheels turning? Not, well, I was asked at that time to be part of a group. Because Eisner bought the Angels when he was running Disney. Yeah, the corporation. Yeah, yeah. We did not. He tried to, by the way, he tried very hard.

After he bought the Angels and the Ducks, I think it was the Ducks and the Angels, he tried very hard to buy the Clippers from Donald Sterling. Thought it would make a really interesting sort of three-tier thing. Sterling was never selling. The only way it was happening was the way it played out. Perhaps, yeah. Before we go, Jimmy Kimmel. Yep.

Did you ever think he'd make it 20 years? Nope. I thought he was the right choice at the time. I thought it was going to be 20 days. You worked on that show. I know. You were there. We were really nervous the first couple of weeks.

Well, after that first show. Yeah. You were there. I was there. Didn't somebody throw up right in front of you? No, that really happened. Remember we had the open bar before the show? Lloyd Braun and I were the ones that made the decision to put Jimmy on.

Yes. Good decision. Lloyd was a real proponent. And we looked at, I won't get into, we looked at, but we looked at a few different possibilities. Jimmy and actually someone else. Yeah.

That would be right. And of the two, we thought they were both great. Jimmy was a lot cheaper, interestingly enough. I don't know how much that influenced us. But he seemed like every man kind of at the time. He had a way of connecting with people, of relating to people. And so we made the decision. We barely knew him. And then I decided to go to the first show. And I remember the mayhem, as you remember. And my reaction was, these are just children. And unless they figure out how to behave as adults in a serious way, because they're doing a live show five days a week, and on a network, and there's

a lot of responsibility, this thing is never going to work. I remember leaving the theater then, the same theater that he's in, thinking, oh, my goodness. We have got to hire some adults to supervise this thing. Well, imagine me moving cross-country to work for the show and also worrying about that four days in. Because I remember I had at least a... George Clooney was a guest, right?

George Clooney, Warren Sapp, Coldplay playing on Hollywood Boulevard. And Warren Sapp because he had just been in the Super Bowl. Yeah. And by the fourth day, Coldplay on the Hollywood Boulevard. It was kind of a moment.

Right. It was a bad Super Bowl. It was the Bucks, somebody. It was the year John Gruden won with them. But yeah, I think it's I just marvel that he's still doing it. Like he just did his 3,000th show

a couple weeks ago and it was just like oh my god. We were on a text thread like oh my god. I think he has gotten really good. Yeah, I agree. He has improved tremendously over the years. By the way, physically he looks a lot better too.

He's got a style about him and he's fit. Yeah, but I told when we decided we were doing this, he texted me the day later because he was with you. And I always forget you guys cross paths. He said, what? You're sitting with Joe Simmons?

Why is that happening why would you do that this was enjoyable though right Zenya's happy this was fun it was fun you didn't get to talk sports that much

well I'm gonna come back I'm gonna save some I'll come back every six months we just traded our best player so Red Sox Celtics so you are true ruins Red Sox Celtics

and Patriots yeah we had a really nice run and now I feel like it's winding down the Red Sox, Celtics, and Patriots. Yeah. We had a really nice run, and now I feel like it's winding down. The Red Sox? Our quarterback's 43. Our owners are trading the best outfielder we've had in 60 years to save money. The Bruins? Bruins?

Well, that's hockey. You never know. Year by year. It's like whoever gets hot for two months. And then the Celtics are probably our best bet now. So they're actually pretty good. No trades in the next 24 hours for the Celtics? I our best bet now. So they're actually pretty good. No trades in the next 24 hours for the Celtics? I don't think so. Good team. Good team. Excited for it. We didn't talk about your necks. Probably a good idea. That should be the team you bought. He's selling my son every day. Is he trying to get you to buy the necks? Yeah, sure. We'll write a check. No problem.

Thanks for doing this. Pleasure. Nice to be with you. All right. Thanks so much to Bob Agar. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Thanks to Norton Secure VPN. If you aren't camouflaging your Wi-Fi connection, you may be a target for a cyber criminal. That's why you need Norton Secure VPN. Use either PC, Mac, or a mobile

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See you then. I don't have a few years with him on the wayside on the first side of the river I don't have