The Bill Simmons Podcast - The UFC Cashes In, Plus a Truly Riveting 1990s Cowboys Documentary With Ariel Helwani, Cousin Sal, and Bryan Curtis

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Ariel Helwani to react to the news of UFC landing a blockbuster streaming deal with Paramount and discuss what it means for the fans, the fighters, and the company (3:01). Then, Bryan Curtis and Cousin Sal join to talk about the new Cowboys documentary, 'America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys,' and reminisce about the early-’90s Cowboys (49:55). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Ariel Helwani, Cousin Sal, and Bryan Curtis Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bill Simmons podcast, brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where we have a new rewatching balls that went up Monday night. We did Roller Ball, which came out 50 years ago, and is the second greatest modern sports movie in the whole arc when you go Longest Yard, 1974, Roller Ball, 75, and then we're off, Rocky, Bad News Bears, Slapshot. This movie's awesome. I can't believe how well it's age.

Talked about it with Brian Coppulman. Producer Craig was out of his mind. Really fun podcast, and you can watch it on the Ringer movies. YouTube channel as well. Coming up in a second, we're going to talk to Ariel Hwani about this massive, massive paramount UFC development slash deal, which is going to

change the face of how we watch UFC and it's going to change Paramount as a streamer and there's so many different ramifications. We go into all of them. So get ready for that. And then cousin Sal, who is going to be on here every Sunday night when the football season starts, but him and Brian Curtis

came on because Dallas Cowboys mania is about to happen thanks to this Netflix documentary. It's coming out this weekend and it's unbelievable. And we dove into all the things we learned from it. It's not coming out for a few more days, but we really just want to talk about early 90s Cowboys and just what an amazing, amazing, amazing crazy bonkers era that was. It just reignited a lot of football stuff for us. So, Sal Curtis, second part of this, and then, and that's the pod. Wanted to mention the Celtics that came out today that, that Whit Grossbeck, who sold

the team with his family to Bill Chisholm for $6.1 billion is not going to be the governor. Initially, when they said the deal, they said he was going to be the governor for up to three years. On this podcast, I talked about that I was dubious of that, that it would be three years. I thought he would be passing the baton sooner. And now it's literally sooner. He's done. It's going to be Chisholm as the governor.

So Wickrow Speck brought to Celtics, 2008 title, 2024 title, professionalized the team in all these great ways. I really liked him. I thought he was a great owner. And now it's done. Not surprising. This is how it goes. This is out went with Mark Cuban as well.

But yeah, so that's it. So now we have the Bill Chisholm era is officially here in Boston. We'll see if the team can be half decent. Anyway, all right, that's it. Podcasts coming up in a second. We're going to take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Iro-Hawani next. All right, recording this Tuesday morning, Pacific time.

R.L. Hwani is here. It's tough to book them. He's doing like four hours of content every day for Uncrowned on Yahoo. He pops on here every once in a while. This is the biggest UFC story, not only of the year, but one of the biggest ones ever, because Paramount just went all in. They bought UFC basically $1.1 billion a year. It's way more money than I think anyone was expecting.

And there's so many ramifications out of this. But the biggest one is that the whole concept of the number of pay-per-views and just how we're going to get content is completely shifting. And the pay-per-view era is basically over. This is it. Now the numbers are going to come down. There's going to be stuff on CBS. They're going to be making the sport accessible in a completely different way.

This feels like a win was my first takeaway for UFC fans. Oh 100%. And by the way, thank you for having me back on. It's been a minute. You look fantastic. I move everything just to be on the program. So this is still number one. You look great to. Thank you. Thank you. It's gigantic. So there's basically four entities involved. Number one is Skydance Paramount. They have this big merger. They officially finalized it last week. David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison. He wants to make a big splash. He does the South Park deal. But, you know, Paramount and CBS, they are in the sports business. There's the NFL. There's the Masters, there's Champions League on Paramount Plus and then the final on CBS, but they don't own a sport here in the United States. They had an opportunity to own a sport. So to me, it's a no-brainer. You can argue that they paid a little bit too much, all that stuff, but they can own a sport and they could do a lot with it over the course of seven years.

And yes, the number for them by themselves is a big one, but I always thought they would get the UFC, that is, and TKO would get over a billion a year for their rights. I just thought it was going to be split up. So that was surprise number one. We all thought they would go the way of the NFL, NBA, et cetera, where they would split it up among two or three different entities. They only go to one. That's surprise number one.

By the way, I think that was happening all the way through June. I think that's where we were heading, where it was going to be Netflix, getting the numbered pay-per-views and ESPN get everything else. And I think that's what everybody thought this is where we're landing. Yeah. And if you believe Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro, who said on CNBC on Monday,

as of late last week, that was the plan. The plan was the 30 fight nights to Paramount, and then they were going to sell the 13 numbered pay-per-views or PLEs, if they want to call them that now, like WWE, to someone else. But once the Skydance slash Paramount deal went through on Thursday, in 48 hours, they said it took just 48 hours. They said, we want the whole freaking pie.

And so that's why it went to them for $1.1 billion a year. And so it's a win for them because they can own the sport. obviously, you know, for the UFC brass, for TKO, it's a win because their previous deal was about 500 million a year with ESPN, dating back to 2019. So now they go from 500 million a year to 1.1 billion a year. I would say that's a win. Obviously, as you just said, it signals the end of pay-per-view starting next year. But it did make for a very awkward dance yesterday, Bill, because at the beginning of the day, you had Mark Shapiro, CEO and president of T-KO say, pay-per-view is dead, it's antiquated, we're off paper-view, only old things are on paper-view.

And then you had Dana by the end of the day saying, well, I actually have to sell a pay-per-view this Saturday, UFC 319, and I have five left on ESPN, so don't kill it just yet. That was a little bit awkward, but they'll figure it out. And then we just move very quickly forward for the fans, obviously it's a no-brainer, because if you're paying $12.99 for the premium package on Paramount Plus or $7.99 for the essential package and then some shows on CBS. It's way cheaper now to be a UFC fan. Here's the biggest one, though. What about the fighters? I had Tom Aspinall, the UFC heavyweight champion on my show yesterday. He knew nothing of the deal. He's asking questions

like, well, what about my pay-per-view points? For those that don't know, certain fighters and the champions will get points based on the amount of pay-per-views you sell. Well, we're celebrating the death of pay-per-view. What about the champions who rely heavily on those points? Do the purses go up as a result of $1.1 billion coming in? Are the fighters getting any percentage of this deal like they do in the NBA 50%. No, as of right now, they're getting 0%. So there's many different permutations here. But overall, as far as the fans are concerned, yes, it's a huge win because it's now cheaper

to be a fan starting next year. You left out Redbird, which was the other piece of this. So Redbird owns 22.5% of Paramount. Jerry Cardin owned that whole group. And they've been buying up sports, different, they own different sports assets. They own pieces of teams. piece of Fenway sports group, all these different things. And they really want to get into sports with Paramount. That was one of the reasons that they grabbed the big piece of it. There were no

sports left. This was it. Like the NFL, I think now gets the CBS package, gets to go back. But Goodell, I think that's already done. Paramount and CBS is getting that. Other than that, this was it. This was the one chance to basically grab a big sports asset that you and I have really believed in as something that had a lot of potential, plus with people under 30, which I think is a big part of this UFC audience, what does that look like if you make all of these free? I think the thing that was the hardest to figure out was how many people were pirating the pay-per-views, what the actual audience is. I think that was a big issue for Netflix trying to figure out, all right, if we're going

to buy out all the numbered pay-per-views, which is what they were looking at, what's the actual audience because ESPN kept jacking up the prices for those pay-per-views, they were getting to like 79, what was that, $79.99. So if you're a UFC fan and you wanted the 13 pay-per-views, now you're paying $1,000 a year. So people are now picking and choosing. Maybe they're getting three, maybe they're getting four, or they're pirating them. And I think the big variable that I have no idea with the answer is, is how many people are actually out there to watch these pay-per-views? you could almost tell me any number. You could tell me it's 500,000 people.

You could tell me it's like 2 million people. And what if they put it on CBS? And basically everybody can just click on CBS at 8 o'clock on a Saturday night and watch UFC for three hours. What is that number? Maybe that's 7 million people. Could they grow the audience?

And then on top of it, I think a big thing for Redbird is there's ad stuff with this that you couldn't really do the way UFC was structured originally. You can actually put real stuff in here now, now that it's free, and try to grow it in a way that I think ESPN had a tougher time doing. Yeah, and we'll never know that number, to your point. What we do know is those numbers, as far as the plus pay-per-view numbers, were dwindling. And that's part of the reason why ESPN probably didn't want to pay a billion dollars for this.

They initially, when they first signed the UFC, they said, we want exclusivity, we want the whole thing. And I think it was a great relationship. I think UFC propped up plus, and I think ESPN gave UFC the rub. And if I'm, look, I didn't talk to Dana White about this, but I know Dana White quite well. Dana White wanted ESPN and Netflix. Forget the price tag. He's an optics guy. There is no chance in hell that he said my top choice was Paramount Plus in CBS.

Even yesterday on that CNBC interview, they're talking about the Tiffany Network. They're talking about like old school CBS. Dana White's not that kind of guy. He wanted to be where the cool kids are hanging out. That's why he always touts social media and the podcasters and all this stuff. And if you even break down the social media numbers from CBS to ESPN, from everything Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, ESPN blows all things CBS Paramount out of the water. And so I'm really curious when you're talking about those young kids, like your son, like my kids, like my nephews,

okay, to them they know ESPN. They see it ESPN. They see it on their feeds. They see it on YouTube. CBS and Paramount, while they have maybe three times the amount, of subscribers as far as Palmon Plus versus ESPN Plus. I don't know if those subscribers are UFC fans right now. They may become UFC fans and UFC fans may come over there, but I'm really curious to see how this breaks down in terms of like the footprint. As you know,

when you're in business with ESPN, they make you a part of the news cycle, right? They talk about you on SportsCenter. You're on the ticker. You're watching the NBA finals and I see Issa Makhatchew and Dustin Porier's faces on the scores table. All that is gone now. That doesn't happen. Yeah, you might get an ad read from Jim Nance during the Masters, but it doesn't quite hit the same. And so I think they're going to lose out on some of those things while they're still obviously making a boatload of money. And what a week for them, right? Who would have thought, Bill, in 2026, ESPN would be in business with WWE and not UFC or even

top rank. It's a crazy reality that we're living in. And TKO is obviously making a ton of money involved. Well, that was the other variable in this. ESPN ends up with, what does it look like, 10 premium WWP pay-per-views? that Jimmy Petaro was on Brian Curtis's Press Box podcast yesterday and talking about they have these 10 signature pay-per-views and they're actually going to work with ESPN scheduling to try to,

and this is something Nick Con, I think, has been great at with WW, trying to figure out where the holes in the schedule are, where it's like August 2nd, there's just nothing going on in sports. We should put SummerSlam right there and make it two days and try to blow it out. So I think they're going to work together and try to do these signature things, but they're paying, I think it was $3.50 for the 10. which is money they could have spent on UFC. So they basically chose those 10 premium events of WWE

over the totality of having all of this UFC tonnage, which I guess they just didn't value in the same way anymore. And then from a Netflix standpoint, Netflix could have bought out the number of pay-per-views. And I think, you know, they're already in that raw business. That was like, what, $500 million a year, whatever the hell that was. They could have the number of pay-per-views

with a way bigger audience, right? Netflix has 300 million subscribers. Yeah. But I don't think they valued it the same way Paramount did. Paramount has seven, I think I saw they had 7.1 million subscribers. That's it.

They're like one of the lowest ones. If you're able to add a million subscribers, now it's like 14% subscriber growth, which is all they care about. If they can try to get to 8, 9 million subscribers, that's a huge win for them. Netflix didn't really need it. You know, it's nice to have.

But ultimately, it's not like a game changer for them. For Paramount, it's a game changer. And for ESPN, I don't know. What would you rather have? Would you rather have the 10 signature WWD events or all the UFC tonnage? I think I would rather have the WWE stuff. It's a really interesting question because obviously the WWU fans are super loyal and they'll follow them wherever. Just ask Peacock.

It's 10 shows over 12 nights, right? Because you're getting two WrestleMania nights and two SummerSlam nights, at least for now. Who knows if they'll add more nights to some of those other shows. and you can make a case that the WWE package is a little more reliable because you know that you're getting the top stars almost every single month, right? Those guys are competing every month. As far as the UFC is concerned, like, look, if you're ESPN, you're saying the last time we had Connor McGregor on our air was 2021.

And here we go. He's not fighting for four years and we're never getting him back because the deal is going elsewhere. And so you can have a streak, as you know, where it goes up and down. And, you know, there aren't top stars. are in top draws, they aren't top champions, John Jones isn't fighting, Connor isn't fighting, Ronda Rousey disappears. The whole thing we talk about every time. And so it's a little less reliable. And so if you're someone like CBS slash Paramount, as it has come to light over the last 24 hours, because again, the messaging was a little bit funky. Initially, Mark Shapiro said, likely all of the

numbered shows would be on CBS. And then I was like, wow, that really is kind of shocking because don't you want people to go on Plus and subscribe to watch those previous shows? They backtracked on that pretty fast. Then Dana said four shows. And then even by the end of the night to New York Post, he said, hey, we're not totally like ruling out pay-per-view in the future. I think it will ultimately be those four tent poll events, including the big White House show, July 4th, 2026. But here's where it gets really interesting. As you know, WWE can't ever go back on pay-per-view. Once they made the decision to put all those PLE shows on the network and then eventually Peacock, they decided we're out of that business. UFC is now out of that business. In seven years, they won't be able to go back. And

they were the last ones left, who, whether they were getting 100, K-bys, 200, 500, 600, they were the last consistent entity left that was using pay-per-view, and despite it going down, still somewhat successful on pay-per-view. Now that's gone. And so I asked them, and I asked Paramount, what will ultimately be the difference between UFC 326 and UFC Fight Night Omaha? What's the difference between these shows now? Because before you would tell me, oh, John Jones has to fight on this date because that's

UFC 327 at Team Mobile. Well, ultimately, they're all on the same platform on the same spot with no extra charge. So what's the difference now? I'm worried just playing devil's advocate. Ultimately, I think it's a great thing for everyone involved, UFC fans, et cetera, not the fighters, but you know my reasoning there. I'm worried that now there's not that pressure to stack the deck for the number of shows because they are behind a paywall, and that will thus lead them to kind of take their foot

off the guys a little bit and make the product a little more water down than it already is. That's my worry. it's interesting because the pressure would now have to come from paramount instead of the pay-per-view prices but yes my my interpretation reading everything and talking to people yesterday was that they're kind of moving more toward a WWE model where they're going to have like the three or four signature shows which in a weird way they were already doing they just didn't say it like we knew this summer like we knew the big the big show is the Vegas show and at the end of June right that was the one where it's like oh this is

some of the big guns are here then the next month isn't as big of a show and you kind of knew ahead of time which three or four they were stacking up and they're just I think it'd be more transparent about it and maybe just maybe it's like they have the one Vegas show will be huge

they'll have a New York show that'll be huge they'll have some show in South America or Mexico that'll be huge and then they'll do like a Dubai whatever and that'll be kind of the four corners. They did specifically say it's 13 premium live events. So what is going to distinguish?

Both of us know that's impossible. They don't have the fighters for it. I mean, one of the things that's happened, even you've been a fan way longer than I have. I've been a fan because of my son in the last seven, eight years. You could feel it's really hard to find the hooks for the main events because they just don't have,

I don't want to say in a rut, but it feels like they're in a transition. And it's a little like wrestling, where all of a sudden they could have seven guys who could lead a pay-per-view. But right now, they're really leaning on some of the older guys and then hoping that Tuporia is going to be like this massive Connor type guy, which I don't think is going to happen unless he fights Conella, which I thought was another interesting thing this week.

Him calling out Canella, I was like, oh, you want to go on the map, Teporia? I know it's not going to happen, but if you want to go on the map, that would be one way to do it. But who are the guys who would be the signature main event pay-per-view guys that UFC even has right now, other than Aspinall and Taboria? Look, they've got four on the books right now. The fifth is in December, but they haven't announced the card for that because it's a little far out.

I would argue these four coming up are pretty damn good cards. This Saturday, Driggis 2 Plus C versus Hamzaa Shamaev, a lot of people said that to them is their most anticipated fight of the year. Like dating back to when we found out that Hamza was going to fight DDP, everyone has been salivating. Both guys undefeated in the UFC. Shamaev has been on an incredible run. So that's this Saturday.

That's pay-per-view number one. Then you've got October 4th. Magamad Ancalaev versus Alex Pereira 2. Uncalive shocked everyone when he beat Pereira back in March. Also, Marab Duolishvili against Corey Sanhagan. Like, if you're a hardcore fan, you love that. Khalil Roundtree is on there against Yiri Pajaska. That's October 4th.

October 25th is the return of Tom Aspinall, defending his title for the first time officially against Cyril Gana, France. Love that fight. It's a heavyweight title. You know, that's a big deal. And then you go to the MSG card in November, and it's Islamachev moving up to 170 to fight the new champion. Jack Della Madalena.

Like those are four gigantic, at least to me, like salivating worthy big time fights. And so they still have those guys. Are they million plus buys like they had in 2016 with Connor and Rhonda? No, but they were unicorns. And so I still think that there is at least, you know, I don't know, eight to ten solid pay-per-view main events a year. I'm just really curious how they're going to skin that cat now moving on to this new era where none of these are going to be behind the paywall.

And I can tell you, a lot of these champions are wondering, all right, so what's going to happen now? Because they make a ton of money off the buys. Does my base pay go up? By the way, do the performance bonuses go up? You know, now everyone goes crazy over these 50K bonuses for fight of the night and all this stuff. Do they at least raise it to 100K,

thus changing people's lives? The base pay now is 10 and 10. Meaning if you're a UFC debutante, not like a guy that they signed from another organization, like just a guy who's like six and one coming from the regional scene, you're getting 10 to show and 10 to win. Do they at least raise it to 20 and 20? Or are they keeping all of this to themselves?

Because I think that's a really big part of this as well. Like if I'm a UFC fan, I'm happy that I'm getting this all for free. But I also kind of want, or at least for a minimal cost, I also want to know that the fighters are being taken care of because we've seen what happens to them at the end of their careers where they're left with very little. It's a good point. Could this lead?

Everybody's always wondered, could there be an MMA UFC union or any of that stuff and everyone says. It should. By the way. This is the time. If there was ever a time, this is it. They're literally sitting here watching everyone from the executives going all these great shows, waving their pom-poms that they have just scored the biggest deal ever.

Over a million, a billion a year, 7.7. Like this rivals, this is more than what, you know, the Olympics gets and NHL gets and PGA gets. Like, they are now in the mainstream, right? Tiffany Network, all that stuff. And you're sitting there as a fighter being like, wait a second. If I just kind of like band together with my brothers here, and maybe we threaten not to show.

I'm not suggesting they do that, but like that's how this starts. What do we get out of this? Look at the mat. Look at all the ads. What do we get from that? Like, it's crazy. But by the way,

my prediction is this will not happen. They've had other opportunities. They've never shown any interest in doing it. They're not going to show interest now. The problem is the careers are too short. And if you're going to risk out a year, like in basketball, you can lose a year if you don't want to,

but you can lose a year. You're still going to have a long career. Football is the one where, even though football has a union, but football couldn't, the average career in football is like three, four years, something like that. So if you lose a year, you're losing 25% of your earning, I would assume that would be the same thing for this. The easiest way to do it is there's like five to six max influential managers in this sport who, you know, work with the top stars. If those guys came together and said, yeah, we're going to convince all our guys to do it, I think it could actually

happen relatively quickly. The problem is those guys, for the most part, are way more concerned with being friends with the UFC brass than doing what's best for their clients. So there's no chance in hell that they would ever do it. Yeah. And then from a paramount standpoint, so this would be, this would be the zag against what you're saying about how do you incentivize the fighters. If there's, if they actually elevate some of the paramount stuff and make it a bigger deal on there and there's advertising and there's a chance to be seen by more people than you would think there's some sponsorship possibilities for the specific fighters and there's outside the octagon stuff that maybe maybe they could get. I'm a little nervous about it,

even though I think it's great because I do think people were picking and choosing the pay-per-views. I'm a little nervous about how this plays out with the sameness of week to week, kind of not as a, like I'm a way more casual fan than you, kind of not knowing when to come in and out. And now, it's like, you know, because I'm not, like some of the ESPN stuff, I just skip unless somebody tells me, got to watch. There's somebody on this card. And I'm like, all right, I'll watch it. But I don't, I don't know the 52 week cycle, you know, at least in basketball, there's a start, a middle, and a finish. You know, football goes September and we end in January. W.W. It's like, all right, we have these signature things. And then there's raw if you really want it

week to week. How UFC figures out how to stagger all their content in a way that makes sense for my brain, I think it's going to be really hard. And that's the part that I don't know if they put a ton of thought in yet. You know, I think that they cater to different people. There's like the super casual who are going to watch maybe one or two. And then there's different levels all the way to the hardcore who are watching every single one and who are saying those shows at the apex on Saturday like this past Saturday is I can't miss because X, Y, and Z guys on there.

But one thing that I don't think that has been talked about enough in all this, and I can't wait to see what it turns into. And again, you're the perfect person. to talk to this about is, like, you know that when ESPN is out of business with a sports entity, they essentially stop covering that entity, right? It's the NHL. NHL coroll. They're the perfect example. They left. They stopped covering them. They're back. They've got ancillary shows. They've got analysts. They've got the coverage on Sports Center. I'm fascinated to see how ESPN treats UFC. If history is any indication, it will be the same way. And what they lose out from that,

because I really do think it's very valuable to have the Daniel Cormier Friday at the way in spot on first take before a pay-per-view where he's breaking things down with Stephen A, having all the stuff on their Instagram, having all their stuff on TikTok. Those numbers are insane compared to what CBS slash Paramount can do for them. And to me, that's not being talked about enough. Because at this point, unless ESPN decides to re-up their deal with PFL, so they have a deal with PFL, who's the distant number two. they've got one year left on that deal that ends in 2026.

Unless they decide to re-up with them, they're going to be out of the MMA business. And I think part of the reason why the UFC is getting a billion dollars from Paramount Billion Plus is because of ESPN. ESPN elevated them. Think about where they were when they left Fox and think about where they are now in terms of like what kids are talking about watching how they know the UFC starts.

That's a huge, huge deal. And by the way, kudos to the UFC. They have always had the great benefit of timing. When they left Spike and went to Fox, Fox needed them to prop up FS1, right? When they left Fox and went to ESPN, ESPN needed them to prop up ESPN Plus. They leave ESPN to go to Paramount. Ellison needs them to prop up the new Paramount Plus. They have been able to really benefit from great timing.

And that's not a knock on them, but they've just been able to be used as this thing to prop up. And history has shown that they are able to prop those things up. FS1 dies on the vine, in my opinion, without UFC, and Plus doesn't really get off the ground without UFC. So I think that they'll have a similar success, but now it's totally different, right? Because there's no more pay-per-view. And so that whole breakdown has completely changed. I think that's a really good point, especially about TKO the last couple years, because Netflix and the Raw deal, they are hating Netflix right as Netflix is like, we really want

to see what Live can do for us. We need something. Oh, here's Raw. Let's grab this. They get the Paramount. Paramount is getting bought by L. Ellison and Redbird, and they're like, we got to get into sports. We got to boost subscribers.

Oh, here's this. This will be the last sports thing available. We'll grab this. Same thing for ESPN Plus. And then this WWE deal that they just did, which honestly makes more sense for whatever this flagship thing is going to be, where you want basically these little signature events, tent pole events that you can kind of get behind. So the thing you just said about ESPN, it's interesting because I think 20 years ago was

probably a bigger deal from a TV standpoint because ESPN was just more in people's lives than it is now. I don't think SportsCenter matters, you know, even 10% like it did. I think first take matters a little. But the social stuff and their and their foothold in all these different social platforms and how big their app is and TikTok and Instagram. And if ESPN is just like, we're just out, we're not going to, we're not going to talk about this stuff the same way. that is like a massive footprint that they just lose. I actually have some of these numbers for my show today. Thank you to my producers for this.

Take a look at this, Bill. All right, this is kind of crazy. As far as tick, excuse me, as far as Twitter is concerned, ESPN has 58.8 million, 45 million on their sports center account, and 1.6 million on their ESPN MMA account. As far as CBS Paramount Plus and CBS Sports, 1.1 million, 416,000, 1.4 million on CBS sports. Just that alone. Just listen to Instagram. 28.2 billion for ESPN. CBS has 965,000. Sports Center has 38.8 million followers. Paramount Plus has 1.5 million. ESPN MMA has 4.6 million followers.

ESPN, excuse me, CBS Sports has 1.9. In total, if you take TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, ESPN has 308, 300.8 million followers slash subs. CBS Paramount and CBS Sports has 32 million followers slash subs. That's a huge, huge difference. Now,

Paramount Plus definitely has more subs, 77.7 subscribers, million subscribers. ESPN Plus has 24.9 subscribers at the end of Q1 this year. But again, I think the vast majority of those, we don't know the breakdown, but But I would venture to guess that right now,

a lot of those subs on ESPN Plus were built off of UFC fans. I would venture to guess a lot of those 70 plus million subs on Paramount Plus aren't UFC fans. It's going to be very interesting to see in two, three, four years, how many of those go from plus ESPN Plus to Paramount Plus. And that's the thing. We don't know whether that's 475,000 people

or three million people. We have no idea what the number is. For Paramount, all right, so everything we're laying out it's like wow why would they do this it seems like they overpaid i was trying to think about like when you have a streamer and you're not netflix or you're not youtube or you're not a uspn like what's your identity right so you like you and i are buying paramount we're like what the fuck what the fuck are we buying we're getting south park um we have the cbs we have some NFL uh we got Taylor Sheridan we have all of his shows um what now you get show time you're getting

You get showtime, you get like the carcass of MTV, you get some Comedy Central. But really, like, you're thinking like a year from now, who are my faces, right? So now you have UFC and you have Dana White and the broadcast crew is like now a face of Paramount. Taylor Sheridan is a face of Paramount. Football is a face of Paramount. The South Park guys, they're, you know, they're like the ultimate disruptors in the comedy content space. and you kind of see you're moving toward this is like a male kind of like those are things that there's like a Venn diagram where there's a lot of stuff colliding in that Venn diagram

and I think that's maybe what Paramount might be trying to look at here is we can have sports and then this content and just kind of go after dudes and then you get from CBS you get people like my dad who's could be more excited about Boston Blue with Donnie Wahlberg filming right now getting ready for a September launch but you guys. get like older men with CBS and then you get the younger men with some of this other stuff. And it's like, all right, at least now we have something unlike where like I look at peacock down. I'm like, what the hell is peacock? Right.

NBC stuff and that's it. Yeah. Premier League soccer, you get that. So I'll be keeping my peacock and probably my ESPN plus as well. But that's, yeah, that's pretty much it. And by the way, how about the fact they have done, TKO that is, has done an incredible job of splitting this pie up in as many way possible. Like, look at how they did WWE here in America. Raw on Netflix, Smackdown on USA, NXT on CW, the PLEs to ESPN.

That's four different entities right there. And there's even still some talk about their library because the library didn't go to, you know, the vault, if you will, didn't go to ESPN. So could they sell that off to someone else? Well, as far as UFC is concerned, okay, now we know that all this is going to Paramount. They have, Paramount doesn't own it globally. they have these rights in different countries around the world. For example, in the UK and Ireland, they're on TNT sports. But they did carve out something that now Paramount will get a 30-day exclusivity period

when the deals are up around the world to be able to negotiate exclusively with the TKO Brass in order to try to gobble these up all over the world. But we go one step further. They still have something called Contender Series, which actually kicks off tonight on ESPN Plus, which is basically the UFC signs. these regional guys, these up-and-coming guys, the likes of Sean O'Malley started there. And then if they win, Dana White sits there,

like on his throne, old school Roman Coliseum days and says, all right, we're giving you a contract, we're not giving you a contract. They haven't, that wasn't a part of this deal. So they could sell that off to someone else. The ultimate fighter is still kicking. That wasn't a part of this deal. They could sell that off to someone else as well.

And so they also have Zoufa boxing, which is about to launch on September 13th with Canelo Crawford on Netflix. That's a one-off. And Dana White said yesterday that that, deal is done as well, they just haven't announced the broadcast partners. So the amount of broadcast entities that this group is, is in bed with, in business with, with, you know, Ari Manuel and Mark Shapiro, Nick Kahn, Dana White, like some of the most powerful people in all of sports,

media and entertainment, it's really staggering to watch how they've essentially like owned all this real estate in a very short amount of time. Yeah, so I think where it heads is the big box and pay-per-views that they're going to do go to Netflix for the most part. The big, WW pay-per-views, go to ESPN. All the big UFC stuff goes to Paramount, and then the biggest stuff goes to CBS. So now I'm in four platforms. I guess the question for me,

we don't know the exact numbers. Let's say Netflix was, let's say Netflix wanted 400 million a year for the 13-numbered pay-per-views. And let's say ESPN was ready to offer 200 a year for everything else. I have no idea if those are the right numbers. but let's say that's about 600 a year. So we'll round it up.

I'll say they can get $6.50 a year from Netflix, and then you have your pay-per-views with 300 million subscribers, and they buy it out, and then the rest is on ESPN. Or you go to Paramount, I get an extra $400 million a year over seven years. So I'm getting an extra $2 billion, but way less certainty about my audience. What would you have done if you were the UFC conciliary? I would have taken this deal. This is a tremendous number.

See, I would have to. Yeah, you're taking the money. It's too much money. You're taking it. And by the way, so much less pressure. Now all the pressure is on Paramount and CBS to sell these shows. Like, we'll just put together the cards. And, you know, Paramount and CBS are banking on the three letters.

And there was once a time where all the pressure was on the UFC where they're like, yo, man, we need Brock Lesnar at UFC 200 because we need to sell over a million pay-per-views. We need to figure out. how to get Connard to come back to fight so-and-so, Habib Nurmaga-Madov, let's say, because we need that $2 million. They don't need nothing anymore. And so when they're at an impasse with some superstar between,

eventually they'll be at an impasse with, say, Ilya's like, I ain't fighting unless you give me $20 million. They'll say, cool, enjoy. It doesn't change our lives. It does not change our lives in one way, shape, or form if you fight or not, because all of it is bought and paid for. You know what I mean? And so it's not even, by the way,

It's not even bought and paid for it to where, like, hey, our partner needs these pay-per-view buys anymore. No, our partner is not even putting these numbered shows behind a pay-per-view wall anymore. And so for CBS and for David Ellison and for Paramount and for Skydance and for Redbird and all these people, they're like, all right, we just want those three letters. We want it on our streaming platform. And we're going to hope and pray that those read letters mean a lot to a lot of people and that they're going to deliver for us.

But if I'm the UFC brass, if I'm TKO, this is the greatest deal in the world. it's over a billion, you're now playing with the big dogs, and there's zero pressure on you. Of course, they would listen to this and be like, what are you talking about? Of course there's pressure. We want to put on the best product. I get that. But it's not the same type of pressure as 2010 when you're out there freaking trying to cut deals with everyone because you are benefiting from the pay-per-view. Yeah, it's, I get it from everybody's side, but it does feel like something is going to be completely different now.

And I can't put my finger on what? I think what you said about the press. about, oh shit, we have this thing in Vegas on June and our top guy just fell out. We have to make sure we have, like, are they going to care in the same way as the question? No. I mean, you'll care from a gate standpoint, but the pay-per-view is completely different and that's a huge number. I think right here now, and this could change between now and let's say next year, I think the ones who this affects the most are the kids in good ways and bad ways. And when I say kids, I mean like your son's age. Because I think, great.

They won't have to pirate. And by the way, a lot of these kids, as you know, aren't even paying for the $12.99. They will still pirate because they're just lazy and they expect to get everything for free. But it won't hit the pockets as much. The stealing it for the pirating is part of the art.

They love that they save. You're a pirate. Yeah, yeah, they like it. But I'm telling you it's that digital footprint, man. I do not discount social media. CBS Paramount basically has no presence on social media. CBS SportsHQ compared to ESPN or whatever is nothing. And I really think, like, I would get it all the time from my nephews.

They would send me stuff. They would send me clubs like, that's not going to exist anymore. And so I'm really curious to see how that affects the just sort of general popularity. Because as you know, five years ago, during the pandemic, no one benefited more than the UFC because they came back so soon and they were the only game in town. I was on the, I was in the A block of Sports Center, a 6 p.m. Sports Center. in the middle of spring when it would be like NBA playoff time talking about like random fights that no one cared about because there was literally nothing else to talk about. And obviously

that was an extreme, but all that is going away. And so I'm really curious what that translates into. And my prediction is that it will, that demographic will kind of find something else to tune into. It's going to be fascinating. One other thing about Paramount that I wish I'd mentioned earlier was the whole concept of buying a subscriber base and how these big companies think about you buy this UFC audience and even though they overpaid for it, they're still getting this audience and maybe they didn't overpay. But now they have, I think I said before, it was like 7.1 million subscribers. Maybe that gets to 8 now. Maybe that gets to 8 and a half. But it's people that aren't canceling Paramount once they get it because they love UFC, right? Once they're in,

they're just in at that point and you can just count on them and there's no churn rate for it and what all of these people care about the most is churn rate like Spotify one of the reasons the stock is 700 plus dollars is because once you get Spotify you kind of don't cancel it

you don't get rid of it right? You have all your playlists on there, you're used to it and it's just the price and nobody really gets rid of Spotify wants to have it. I think UFC fans, whoever has the UFC content, once they're in on it, And once you know there's enough content week to week, month to month, you're probably

just, you're probably just doing the automatic recharge. You know, HBO would have that issue where they would have like, White Lotus is coming and people get HBO and then cancel it right after White Lotus ends. I don't think the UFC, I think that would be way harder to do if you can sprinkle the content correctly. You know what I mean? Yes, I would say the number one most loyal are the WWU fans. They will follow you or ever

and WWE does a great job with all the other stuff, the documentaries, the behind the scenes. UFC hasn't really done that as well. Like, WWE turned WrestleMania 9, one of the least-like WrestleMania's of all time into this great behind-the-scenes documentary that they put out back in April.

And I was gobbling it up. I loved everything about it. Look at this WWU Unreal that everyone was talking about on Netflix. So like, WW fans will eat it all up. And I would say the next tier are the UFC fans. who are a little bit more fickle

and who will come and go sort of like boxing fans but I would say a little bit more loyal to the brand than boxing fans are loyal to a specific brand and they will follow they will do their thing

it's just a brand new world and you can never go back to pay-per-view now you can after you tell them now pay-per-views it's a wrap DeZone did this do you remember when DeZone

came out with the pay-per-view is dead thing and now they went and then they went back to paper view and now they're telling you again that pay-per-view is dead like you can't do that to the public

Once you tell them once that, hey, you're, hey, you're paying too much. We wanted to help you because you're paying $1,000 a year. In seven years, you can never go back to that. And so what does this sport look like in 10, 15 years as a result of the decision announced yesterday? Can't wait to see. Well, and then the last piece that we didn't talk about. So they had the unicorn of Connor.

They had the unicorn of Rousey for two years. And then going back in the 2000s or a couple other people. But they really haven't had the unicorn, somebody who can pull everybody in. for a while. They've had some people that seem like maybe and it just really hasn't happened in the 2020s. What happens if they get their version of Caitlin Clark or the 2000, late 20s version of Connor or whoever and get somebody who then becomes a mainstream

megastar for like two, three years? And now that has to be on Paramount and CBS. We don't have that. And by the way, we don't know if that's going to, that might not happen. Like it hasn't happened in golf since Tiger. And Tiger hasn't had anybody like that for basically 15 years. So maybe it doesn't happen. But if it does happen, it's happening in Paramed. That person will come.

That is my one prediction that I know for sure. I don't know who. It could be Ilya. It could be Tom. It could be someone we've never heard of. It could be someone who's in the seventh grade right now. But those people will always be there. It could be Brock Lesnar's daughter for all we know.

Like those people will always be there. I saw the shot putter. Yes, yes. Who knows? they will always be there they will always come there will always be superstars and I don't think the UFC

is struck like who saw Drickus Duplice becoming this champ that people love Humza could win on Saturday and turn into like a tour to force that doesn't lose for the next 10 years who the hell knows

I'm not worried about that that fight by the way you know what I think the like if we would have talked six seven months ago everyone had been like oh yeah Hamza like he's just he's unstoppable right

he's a locomotive I think the cool pick now is Drickus. I think like the smart mark pick is Drickus because everyone says if Drickus takes him into the championship rounds, so to speak, three, four, five, he's got this in the bag. In other words, if you looked into a crystal ball

and that crystal ball told you this fight ends in one or two, oh yeah, Hamsat-Wan, if you look into a crystal ball and it says it went to the championship rounds or the distance, it's Drickus. I'm leaning towards Drickus. I just think the guy is impossible to figure out, but also, like, he could lose in 60 seconds and everyone would be like,

of course he's going to lose because Humzad is so crazy. I think the smart market is minus 260, which I thought was higher than I thought. I actually would have, I wouldn't have been surprised if you would have said, like, 325 or something like that. Really?

What stric is? Plus 196 on Fandall? That feels, I like that one. That feels like the pick, in my opinion. That's the flyer. Be a good one. All right, this is all great. How are you feeling about the bills?

I put Josh Allen at the top of my QB pyramid. I don't know if he had any thoughts. I appreciate that. I don't know if you're trying to do like some sort of like reverse psychology. I wasn't. I don't do that stuff. I thought he was the best guy last year. I mean, he won the MVP.

It wasn't like it was a hot take. And I just didn't think Mahomes had a great ear. But the chiefs didn't. There were some people who said Lamar deserved it. I don't agree with those people. But this, I feel something in the air. I have to say I'm reluctantly watching hard knocks. I wasn't a fan when I heard of me.

Because I just, I don't want the distraction. I don't want to play up to the cameras. But it's fun seeing my team shown in this light because, you know, that's an institution. I'm a little worried about the James Cook stuff, although just today, Sean McDermott, Coach McDermott said he's going to be practicing. I pray to God they figure that out. And if they do, who's stopping us? Who's stopping us?

Certainly no one in the AFCEs. You would agree with that, right? My team's going to be a little friscier this year. I'm just telling you. We've got defense. What's frisky? What are we talking about? defense.

Our team's pretty good. We're well coach. What are we talking about? Six and 11? How about 10 and 7? Man. It's kind of the Washington commanders last year. Sure.

It was a nice story. New coach, new QB. This is it. This is our year. It has to be. If not now, when? I'm seeing him on all these commercial snickers. Pepsi, he's the face of the NFL, for goodness sakes.

Everyone has chief's fatigue. There's no way they're going to repeat in terms of making it back to the Super Bowl again. It feels like our year. I'm worried. By the way, here's my prediction. I'm worried about week one. I think the Ravens's, will come in with like freaking revenge on their minds.

And then I think we might run the table after week one. Like I, I could see an 0-1, sky is falling, press the panic button on the lower thing on first take, and then I see them winning 16 in a row. I wouldn't be surprised. Honestly, I would have you recovered from the Knicks yet? I feel fantastic about the Knicks. I have my Gershont Yabuselli jersey already. I love that.

That was a great signing. Yeah, that was great. I love that signing. I love that one. I'm obsessed with that guy. I was obsessed with him when he killed Canada in the Olympics and then what he did to USA. Love the Jordan Clarkson signing as well.

Love that we didn't tinker too much with everything else. Cautiously optimistic about Mikhail Bridges, I almost feel like they had to do that deal because they gave up so much for him. I think he will thrive under Brown. I'm all in on Brown. I feel horrible for Tibbs. I've said this already.

But again, just like I was talking about the East, as far as the AFC is concerned, like who's going to stop us in the Eastern Conference? Cleveland, right? That's the one that everyone thinks. Other than Cleveland, who are we worried about? Atlanta. That's the cool, sexy pick. Come on. What are we talking about? Philly, no chance. Boston sucks. Milwaukee would be the one that's kind of just because they have the best part in the conference.

I think you have to mention them. Best player. They added Turner. They lost Lillard. I'm not too worried about them. They, you know, they don't really show up. It's Cleveland had a fantastic regular season. And I wouldn't be surprised if they're one and were two. We meet them in the Eastern Conference final. We punch our ticket, revenge against the eye heart and the thunder. And around like June 17th or so, Canyon of Heroes, Parade. It's going to be. be a great 2026. On Saturday, the NBA TV was showing game one of the Indy Knicks series. No.

I don't mean to do this to you. But it was the fourth quarter and there was six minutes left and I was like, I haven't watched this since it happened. I got to watch this. I will never get over that. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. I actually, it was three times more unbelievable than I remembered.

Like, Nisbitt just starts making these crazy shots and then I just can't believe the Pacer's came back in that game. You look at the score with like, I think, 246 or something like that. You had the game for 46 minutes. You're up eight with like 40 seconds left. But it was, I had forgotten that that was probably the craziest loss.

I mean, it really was, you don't want to say a flute because Indy made every shot. But if I'm a Knicks fan, I'm looking at that. I'm like, we probably should have made the finals last year. Why can't we just get back? 100%.

Absolutely. And I think we beat the Thunder. If I'm sort of being honest with you, But, man, I can't wait. I keep seeing all this NBA and NBC stuff, like the promos and all that. I think next year's NBA is going to be great. It sucks that these stars are out. I don't wish that upon anyone.

But the nostalgia. And you know what I'm so excited about? Like, the new voices, the mellows of the world. Like, I'm just, I'm excited for the new coverage, right? Positive media coverage. I'm just, yes. Elevation. Some new voices.

And I'm fascinated to see what happens with the inside the NBA guys as well with ESPN because I think that might be a fascinating marriage to watch from afar too. But yes, I feel good about the Knicks. I think Brown will be a new voice. I think they'll be changed. I think everyone had their little fun this summer about all the... Optimistic, Ariel. I can't believe this.

By the way, not since, dare I say, 1994 have my two teams had a better chance to win a championship. Not since the bills were going to their fourth straight and the Knicks were playing the Rockets in the NBA finals. And I have to mention, since this is on a very, very special date, August 12th. 1994. I probably peaked as a sports fan because you'll recall that date lives in infamy. That was the day that the players went on strike and the first place, Montreal

Expos, six games ahead of the Atlanta Braves. I will never forget August 12th. And so every time I see that, today's August 12th, I remember this. So I peaked as a sports fan in 94. I'm hoping that I just get one before I die. Well, I'm about to talk to Cousin Sal and Brian Curtis about the Cowboys

mega documentary that's coming on Netflix. I would advise you to skip it. No chance. I'm just not watching a second of that. Yeah, I would honestly, as your friend, I would skip. Okay. I wasn't planning on it, by the way, if I'm being 100% honest, but I'm happy. There's a specific episode. Just don't watch it. All about that? All about that? Just stay away. The helmet and all that? No, it's just, just stay away. It's going to bring up some dark, some dark demons. Is Leon Led and Don Beebe in there? They are not, but there's some other stuff in there that I'd you know this stuff was all 30 years ago there was stuff I forgot about anyway

ariel great to see you uh you can listen to him and watch him on the uncrowned podcast which is a fan you get like four fighters a day by the way yeah we're working hard here I appreciate it thank you thank you always a pleasure thank you so much all right recording this on a Tuesday morning as well Brian Curtis is here from the ringer cousin Sal even though deep from what's happening died today had decided to power through it and It's the funniest female of the 70s for you, or was there somebody else? I think so. I, you know, I put Bonnie Franklin from one day at a time up there.

No, no, of course, it was D. She was terrific. She'd cut anybody down. All right. Well, thanks for gutting through today and talking Cowboys. So Netflix has this giant Cowboys documentary coming out that when we saw the news, I don't know how many years ago, and it was Netflix paying like 50 million bucks, Jerry Jones, the way some of these team documentaries work.

how the Patriots thing played out with Bob Kraft, just putting himself over all of it, and he was just like, wow, this Cowboys thing's going to be a train wreck. Jerry Jones is going to be all over this thing. It's not going to be editorially responsible at all. This is just going to suck. And then I got an advanced copy of the first seven episodes,

and it was like last dance level, riveting. So many things I forgot. So I implored you guys to watch advanced copies. Who wants to start? Because there's so much to go here. Sal, I told you, like, clear your schedule. You have to watch this. Did it exceed your expectations?

Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, this is no great feat. But I think in 18 hours, I knocked the whole seven hours out, whatever. So, and you couldn't stay away. I had my oldest son watching with me, and he went out one night. I was like, no, no, no, stay home. I'll pay you to stay home. We need to finish these. But to me, this was like, I fucking loved every.

It was like a vial crack with a, like a sprinkling of parmesan cheese and smothered with Michelle Pfeiffer from Greece, too, all rolled up in one. Well, you felt like you're at the White House. I think that was at the White House. I was at the White House. White House, by the way, not very impressive. It was basically like a suite at the quality end behind the training facility. I thought it was going to be like this big mansion.

But anyway, I'm sure we'll get to that. But yeah, I freaking loved it. And I got to, I mean, we'll let Curtis join in here. But I took a different perspective of how I looked at. some of these guys. Curtis, did, I mean, you've read every book, you're a lifelong Cowboys fan, you thought you knew everything and then you hear this is coming out. What was your reaction watching it versus what you thought was going to happen? Well, I did read every word. I mean, every word that Ed Werder wrote, you know, that was me because these events take place between

my first year of middle school and my last year of high school. Yeah. So I was at like my maximum sports fandom. And Bill, I don't know if you've ever mentioned the 86 Celtics on this podcast. I think I heard it once or twice. Yeah. The 92 Cowboys are my 86 Celtics. I'm very protective of them. I feel like for the rest of my life, I have to tell people how great they were.

And that when they bring me stories, I'm like, I knew that. I read that. Dude, I enjoyed this so much reliving every moment of this. I mean, I was ready, as you say, for the Jones family, I mean Biden family, I mean Jones family rehabilitation project.

Yeah. And this was a riveting fun. it was like a Western directed by Baz Luhrman. I mean, it was just a really, really fun series. And it's not coming out for a few days, but we just seemed like the perfect time just to talk about that whole era. I think what struck me,

because it's been, you know, 30, 35 years for a lot of this stuff is just how much I forgot. I watched all of these games. And as the years, Pat, when it's not a Boston team where I can remember the beats of a Boston team, but when it's other teams and when it's 90s NFL, the stuff blends together.

So, like, as you guys know, I am the king of the outside Dallas. I would rather have Emmett Smith and Barry Sanders. That's been, I've been on that hill forever. And one of my big cases was the separated shoulder game. And over the years, I thought that that happened in the NFC title game or whatever. And I forgot the context of the giant. So it was like, it was a lot of like just jogging my memory from what actually happened, but then reinforcing things, you know, that I have.

felt. And the reality is football just felt like it mattered more in the early 90s. And I don't really know why. I know we were younger. I know it's easier to say stuff like that. But there was, it wasn't a 24-7 like we have now where everybody is social media. Everybody's got a podcast. There's coverage for, there's video everywhere. Back then it was just like you, you watched the Sunday game. We had Madden and Summerall. And you had these big epic teams that felt like these superpowers with the Giants and the Cowboys and the Niners whom I leave it out

Giants, Cowboys, Niners and the Redskins from the NFC and it was just three of them were always good, they would always battle, we'd get to December, January it felt like the games were the most important things ever and Dallas was just great

like great to the point that we always used to say it felt almost unfair that it was like well we got to fix this. They got to do something with the salary cap, but you shouldn't be able to have this many good players. So that was, it made me really nostalgic. And I don't know, Sal, are we just old? I think what's going on now is unfair, how we haven't won in 30 years and don't even really

come close. I think that part is unfair. But I think you're right. And it's hard to explain to people to say that, oh, football was bigger back then because it can't possibly be bigger than it is right now for all the reasons you laid out, right? The 24-7 coverage, the Twitter and everything, all different streams. But like you said, like Aikman, Young, Favre, Kelly, Sims, every year, Montana, like trading off.

Like, it just felt huge by every metric. I don't know how to explain it. But yeah, that was the time to be around. I'm sorry. I'm sorry you missed it, Cowboys fans. I really am sorry. Hopefully this helps. I mean, you would think because I'm a Pat's fan

and we won six Super Bowls in the 2000s and the 2010s, I'd be like, that was the best era. And it just wasn't. It felt like the 90s, the sport was also way more violent which I think that's one of the great things about this doc. She's like, oh my God, like I just can't

believe they had this Aikman concussion montage at one point and he has what is it, eight concussions and or six concussions in 14 months or something or nine or like. Yeah, it was like five and 12 months and nine undocumented. Just kidding this and the guys in the early

90s but you know this is why Curtis, this is I think when football went up a notch. I was there for, Sal and I were there for the 70s, 80s, 90s, but it felt like 90s was when everything got cemented. Even when you look back in the old, like the

retro news Twitter account will have like the ratings for 1977. And Monday Night Football was like 20th. You know, and you think like, wow, football, Monday Night Football is only 20th. But by the time we got to the mid-90s, it felt like football was the biggest thing, right?

Yeah. The media B-roll from this doc, if you lived in the 90s, I mean, How many Leslie Visser's sideline reports are in this thing? Young Pam Oliver, all of it, yeah. Madden and Summerall, you know, and again, that's what made it feel so special. I think that's what you're talking about a little bit, too. That's all mixed in here. Because that Giants game you're talking about, where Emmett has a separated shoulder.

John Madden, in my memory, came down from the booth and went to the Cowboys locker room and said, that's the bravest thing I've ever seen. And that was like this laying on hands moment. It was like, oh, my God, John Madden said that to Emmett Smith after a game. who in the world would have the ability to say something like that now and it would be meaningful. Right. Well, and then there was these other beats in there that because we hadn't followed sports for long enough, like Emmett's contract told that, which I totally forgot.

It felt like one of the biggest stories of all time as it was happening. Like, wow, he's going to sit out the season. Like they're not going to pay him. And then that new guy comes in and he's terrible. But it's tough now, like in 2025, guys hold down. You're like, all right, we know how this is going to go. It's going to, it's like what you're dealing with Michael Parsons right now. It's like, all right, we're going to do this little dance.

And then we're going to get to August 29th, and Michael Parsons will be a cowboy. When Emmett Smith was holding on, it's like, is he ever going to play again? What's going to happen here? They're going to throw this away? Exactly. I wonder if Jerry reliving this reinforces what he's doing with Michael Parsons, right? So Emmett missed two games that year. And they won the Super Bowl.

And he won the rushing title, which is crazy. So this is why he doesn't freak out about holdouts because he knows he's going to release the funds, like you said, in late August or early September. Maybe he does even miss two games Parsons. By the way, we'll lose the Eagles anyway, so that's one game that didn't matter. But he gets to play a villain for the whole month, right? I mean, it must have killed him to know that Nico Harrison was the most hated Dallas executive for a minute. I mean, he's got to get his title back. But he loves it.

Even at the red carpet thing last night, he said, this is controversy like this is good for the team. Like, what? Nobody thinks that, but okay, good. I guess you have a plan here. Well, one of the things, Curtis, with this doc, with just the storytelling, it's just perfect IP. I think the two best IP for sports documentaries were the last dance and this, because you have Jones and Johnson and that falling apart. You have the Aikman, Emmett, Irvin, like that Treyoka, and all of them have different kind of faults, right? Aikman, She's getting the shit kicked out of him. Emmett's like the constant overachiever who's underpaid.

And then Irvin's just a maniac. You have that piece. But then you have Jerry and Jimmy falling apart in a way that now I feel like we'd have more day to day. We would have known more about it. There would have been like little kernels coming out all the time. Just the national media didn't work that way back then. When Jimmy left, it was like he's not going to come.

coached the Cowboys, it was like the most stunning thing ever. I don't feel like people would ever be stunned by that in the same way, right? I agree to a point. Well, you were a Dallas fan. So you were sniffing it out in Dallas. What's funny is the doc reminded me that a lot of this stuff was kind out on the table. You know, before that second Super Bowl, Bob Costas did an interview with Jerry and Jimmy together. And can you imagine the Kraft-Belichick version of that interview?

And the interview's point was basically like, do you guys like each other? And if you listen to the answers Jimmy gave in the press conferences before the Super Bowl about his relationship with Jerry, I'm like, I can't believe this was happening like days before a game. That was wild. I guess we had no mechanism back then to really talk about something that happened. Because the MJ gambling stuff was all happening at the same time too. And when you look back at some of that stuff now, it seems bonkers.

Like they're asking him on the NBC pregame show, do you have a gambling problem? them. But we had no internet back then. We had no way to be like, hey, do you see that? What'd you think? Wow, I thought that was crazy too. And the Jimmy Jerry, it felt like something was wrong, but you always just felt like stuff was going to work out in sports. Like, oh, they'll get back together. The only time I can remember that not being was the Billy Martin, George Steinbrenner stuff in the 70s and 80s. We're like, well, these guys say, oh, he fired him. You know, but it's just like, how is Jimmy going to walk away from that job, Sal? He had built like the super team of all time. I know. And they

dangled the Jaguars in front of them. I remember that being like, what the fuck? The freaking Jaguars, the things that bad that he wants to go to the Jaguars? They'd never snapped the ball yet. But I, yeah, but to the point of like we weren't finding things out, like Jerry puts it all out there. So you don't

really have to dig. Like they're caught at a Mexican restaurant before he's even hired Jimmy Johnson, right? He knew he was going to get busted there. At the press conference and he buys a team, he looks at TechSram and says, I'm gunning for your job. And Tech Shram looks like the saddest man on earth because he knows he's not fucking around.

You know, it's like, so Jerry put, and he's still to this day, does interviews it three times a week. So you don't really, you didn't really even need Twitter back then for a lot of this stuff. You know what was going on. Well, the Landry thing, so if we followed sports in the 1980s like we do now, the Landry thing

for somebody like me living on the East Coast where he was like Tom Landry, he'll never get fired. The guy's one of the great coaches of all time. But meanwhile, he'd really been declining for years and years and the team had been declining and he just got old but it still seemed inconceivable he was going to get fired and when jones comes in he buys the team and he fires tom landry what do you remember from that curtis when it happened i was 11 years old and i remember that i freaking loved

it you know i was just at that age where you're starting to think anything that happened in my parents generation sucks right that's the past and here comes jerry jones and he's like i'm going to take your parents Dallas Cowboys Coach and your grandparents, Dallas Cowboys Coach, and I'm going to fire him. And we're going to start fresh. And I was like, hell, yes, here we go. I mean, it was like this, he was doing this, like, you know, child versus parent thing on my behalf. Right. And the doc reminds is he fires Tom Landry. And then the city of Dallas has a huge parade for Tom Landry. Imagine Bill Belichick, like a week later, they're just marching him down the streets of boss. Like, we just want to thank you, Bill, for everything you've done for this organization.

Yeah, people were horrified. Yeah. Well, do you know how old? I mean, it's weird watching the doc. I forgot. Landrie was only 38 years old when they fired him. No, no, he was, no, but he was 65. I would have thought he was like 92.

You know, 65's nothing. He's younger than Andy Reed right now. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it was weird, but I will say, like, I've had the same feeling as Curtis. I was a little older. But I was like, all right, maybe this moves things around. This moves the need of with Landry.

But then when they traded Hershal Walker, I didn't. not think that was a good idea. Then I was like, oh, we might be dealing with a madman here. Fires Landry and trades, Hershawker. Where are our chances here? So I was wrong. I'm glad Sal said the words Nico Harrison already in this podcast because that was the Nico Harrison trade in the moment in October 1989. It really was. And they covered in the dock was the way it was reported versus what the trade actually was was so confusing where you get all these players, but then there's these weird secret conditions where if you wave each one, get this pick. And it was really about the picks, but nobody, we were like, what, if I could

trade at Hersha Walker for those five guys, what is this? Right. And at that point, you think Jerry Jones is just a complete lunatic. And it turns out it was pretty brilliant trade. When you, the Jerry Jimmy thing we've been talking about for 30 years, when you watch this with the knowledge of what happened in the last 30 years with Dallas, the Jerry Jimmy thing almost makes more sense in retrospect where Jerry just the whole time is like I'm the GM I'm in charge of this shit and now we've

had 30 years of the Cowboys being terrible I do did you have like a slide indoors thing either of you with what happens if Jimmy just is the coach the whole time how does this play out what if Jerry is just a little bit

like I'm just here to put the right people in charge and help them work like what happens to the Cowboys So my take on that is it's all Jerry's fault, number one. He screwed everything up. But that if Jimmy had stayed, it would have been a fast burn. Jimmy was Bill Parcells. He was, I'm coming in for five years.

I'm going to yell at everybody. And then I'm going to go get bored and go do my next thing. Because if you look, he actually spent fewer years in Miami where he was head coach and GM than he did in Dallas where he was having to share power with Jerry. Right. I mean, think about that. Like Jimmy was just a fast burn guy. The other thing that Doc kind of touches on is 1993 is the beginning of NFL free agency.

So all of a sudden, the most talented team in the league has this problem that no NFL team has ever had before, which is like we got to actually keep all these players who suddenly have this power. Ken Norton can go to the 49ers and, you know, kill us in the NFC championship game. And that, that I think, I think Jimmy would have lasted one, maybe two more years and then he would have been gone, even if he'd had everything he wanted. Yeah, it's a little like the second apron NBA right now. where all of a sudden it shifted and it just became way harder

if you did a really good job building a team to actually keep all the components. And Cowboys had, you know, these assets, but at some point you got to gather behind some of the assets. What do you remember about that whole Jimmy Era South? I mean, I just, what was most fascinating with that. Curtis, how much would you pay for that sign that Jerry Jones claimed he had on his desk

that said, if you're willing to give others the credit, you'll conquer the world? Like, how much would that fetch on even? Thousands and thousands of dollars from me, personally incredibly ironic and it's amazing and then he comes out with the announcement that 500 coaches could win a super bowl with this team and at that point you didn't really know it was like Kobe Shaq right like oh man who do I try if I have we have to lose one of them I'm not going to lose Jerry really right but who do we trust Jerry or Jimmy here and then they bring in

Switzerland who had been gone removed from anything for like five years which is like like coach Kay coaching the Knicks this year you know it was it was very weird but you're like all right You've got to think he knows what he's doing. And the fact that you knew Jimmy Johnson was rooting against that team the whole year and gets the boots on the ground. Like he's actually announcing and he's a commentator during halftime and everything. To me, that was my favorite part of the thing, those little nuggets that year. Yeah, some of the stuff when them on the field and just Fox felt they'd finally figured out

how to modernize a pregame show. And, you know, early Terry, early Howie with Jimmy, James Brown. And it just felt like, and then eventually our cousin Jimmy started, when did he start doing the bits? He was, 97? 99. Yeah, by that time, it had been established as whatever. But that was a really fun era, too, Curtis, of when coaches would come on TV. Because Pat Riley started it.

He never gets enough credit. Pat Riley went on NBA on NBC for, I think one year and was awesome. And then that led to this whole run. Johnson was good, but then it led to this run of guys who weren't awesome, like George Seifert, who was one of the worst people ever on TV. But it just, everything felt like just like the biggest thing in the world. I don't know, maybe we're just more used to the grind of football now. And like, all right, week one, Thursday night, and there's more football. And there's Thursday and there's Sunday and there's Monday. There's going to be Friday. There's Christmas. And back then,

I was like, man, Dallas is playing San Francisco. This is the biggest game of my life. And I'm not even a fan of either team. I think we were perfectly saturated back then. You know what I mean? Now it's oversaturated. And now it's like, in addition to everything you just said, we have to wait to see what Stephen A and McAfee say on Monday morning

before we can form our own opinion. It's kind of ridiculous, right? Somebody's zagging. Somebody's got to like throw somebody in it. Yeah, the other thing, and it's weird because this I'm sure was not an intent of the Doc, but it was just a natural outcome, was how important Madden and Somerall were in it. Like, I just, I know we've talked about Madden a million times, but 90s Madden and Summerall, I think is the most important announcing team of all time. Like, they really elevated

and when Madden said something like when he's praising him and Smith during the game, or when he was mad at that Switzer went for it on that fourth and one. That's unbelievable. You would just kind of feed off whatever his reaction was and it would just become your reaction. I don't know if there's another, is there another announcer like that, Curtis? I don't think so, because nobody says stuff like he did, you know? Like, Matt, Madden was not Stephen A. Smith,

let us be clear about that. But when he criticized you like he did with Switzer, that moment against the Eagles fourth and one, where they go for it twice because the first play didn't count and they still run the same way again. And he would just blast you. That was huge.

So what was your single favorite part of this, Doc? Can I just say I felt with Madden in Summerall? I felt the weather. when they were announcing. Oh, it's a great point. I don't know if it was a spacing between their words or between, you know, whatever else. And yeah, they were important.

You'd watch the old madden thing, the special, right? Would you do that for anything else? Like now? So my favorite part, the Skip Bayless testimonials really hit home with... No, no, I hated that. The Skip stuff, I'm sorry, people. You're going to have to...

It's like the Dr. Melfi scenes with Tony. You're just going to wish you could fast forward to them and get to the more tire irons. But he had to be in there, though. He was the biggest chronicler of that team. Like, they couldn't avoid having them. My biggest takeaway or my favorite thing is that I have a new appreciation for Jerry Jones because I looked at it through the lens of him being a gambler.

Like he talks about, and it's all in the first like seven minutes of the thing, right? He talks about I had this one well. I invested $800 million or whatever into this well. And if this didn't gush, I was in trouble. And it gushed. And he's like, he like a flowery description of how it did and whatever. And then he struck it. And we knew like Jerry like he took chances.

I think he like owned like shaky's pizza. You like try to borrow money from his father to own shaky's pizza. But that to me, it's like, oh, yeah. For real? Shake his pizza? I swear to God, look it up. Yeah. Come on.

Really? Look it up. It's right there. Yeah. Now we can shake his pizza. I know. Now we got it. So that, that to me was the big, oh, I understand Jerry more.

It doesn't mean I hate what he's doing less, but I do understand him. Well, you understand Jerry Moore, and then you understand how the last 30 years happened. Because the same irrational confidence to be like, I'm throwing everything into this last well, and I'm going to fire Tom Landry and hire Jimmy Johnson is the same piece that leads to the last 30 years. But, I mean, Curtis, the thing I was the most worried with this, especially after the craft experience. And I had the opposite experience when we did the Celtic stock, like the owners just trusted us, that's the word thing. Jerry sold this to Netflix and Skydance and the worst case scenario of just just being a Jerry Hageography. It really wasn't. I actually thought they were like,

it was like a warts and all Jerry. I mean, obviously they could have gone further with how dysfunctional. I think some of the family stuff is and having his son, you know, basically the two of them and whatever is going on with the credit grabbing in that family. And who knows? But I thought for the most part pretty fair, right? I didn't hear the words paternity suit anywhere in the documentary, and that might have been the price of admission to get in. Yeah. And when it starts, all the main characters, Jerry, Troy, Emmett, they're sitting in front of these like Western movie sets. And it felt like when a billionaire invites all his friends to his birthday party and they have to come and they're sitting in front of some very elaborate kind of thing. And everybody's like,

oh, what are we doing? By the way, I got worried with the first five minutes. I was like, oh, no. It was a little overproduced. Yeah, and then it just settles down and becomes awesome. By the way, the Way Brothers directed this, who I think are really great. But it settles down in seven minutes and we're off. Two things save it to me. One is it's not really the Jerry story.

That's kind of woven in there, but it's really the story of the 90s Cowboys, which is the story you want. Thing number two, and this is my MVP of the whole series, is Michael Irvin, ladies and gentlemen, the playmaker. I mean, you mentioned the Cowboys White House

where the partying happened that was over by the practice field. All the players in the docket are like, you know, we don't talk about the White House. And Michael's like, actually, let's talk about the White House. Let me tell you all the stories of the things that happened. Let me tell you about the time I stabbed the teammate with scissors. Like, he goes into all that stuff.

Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing. I was not expecting that at all. I was expecting kind of the sanitized Michael or every interview, but he's like, no, no, here's everything that happened. Let's go. And that's the other thing. Documentary is kind of ebb and flow

with maybe the best eight interviews in the documentary. That's why, like, Last Dance had, you've Michael, you have Phil Jackson, you have Steve Kerr, you've Scotty Pippin, you have people who are actually compelling to see interviewed. This one has Aikman, who's been, you know,

I think he's the best broadcaster in the league out of all the ex-players at this point. I think it was lately that he grabbed the title, but I do think he's the best guy. You have Michael Irvin who was on TV forever. You have Emmett who's done some TV stuff who's pretty competent. You have Jerry who's a character.

You have Jimmy Johnson who's been on TV forever. And then you have Dion who has had multiple documentaries about him. So just you start with those six. It's like, yeah, of course this is going to be good. Not to mention all the other stuff. But I thought Irvin was like actually I had forgotten how compelling of a 90s character he was and how many jokes we used to make about him.

And he was one of those guys. He was just like, I don't know if this guy's going to be alive in a year. And so I used to live now. I mean, it was up for a murder for hire thing. Like, thank God he wasn't killed in that. Had you forgotten about that? That was another one I had just forgotten about. He was a police officer.

A Dallas police officer. What's the person who was alive? I thought it was a rumor. Yeah, yeah. No, he's a national. He was my favorite of the bunch. And by the way, you can't say enough about Aikman. Even if you don't think he's the best commentator of that, he, Joe Buck should be propping

him up. The fact that he could speak coherently at this point, if it's graded on a concussion curve, he's the greatest analyst of all time. There's no question about it. There was some stuff I just forgot because I'm older and my brain just the sports info sometimes just get squeezed out.

I totally forgot about the Steve Burline coming in and then Aikman being ready to play. And then they're like, no, we're riding with Burline. He's hot. That would, I was thinking like now in 2025, I think that would actually cause a riot. Yeah. I think that would cause a sports talk riot.

Nobody would know what to do on first take with that situation, right? Bill, Skip Bayless, 6 to 8, KLF and Dallas. That was every segment. That was the A block every night. Can you imagine? I don't know if there's a better, what should they do? Because benching the hot quarterback is always dangerous, but then Aikman and then he was pissed about it.

So that piece was awesome. I forgot that Niners game where they're playing Steve Young with Montana on the bench, like the theater of that. It's hard to explain, like, how important that everything about that was, because Montana was the best quarterback of all time. This would have been, like, doing this to Brady and, like, with Garoppolo in 2015. It was just inconceivable they weren't going to play them. And then Dallas is trying to beat them and all the history of those teams,

going back to the catch. That was great. And then the bill stuff, which has been in different documentaries. But I'd forgotten that in that last Super Bowl, yeah, the bills. maybe they're going to do it this time and then it just went off the deep end again with them like it always seemed to do but what else did you just forget

that you hadn't thought about in a while Curtis Jerry Jones was tied to Jimmy Hoffa like early in his business career that was right whoa I didn't remember that one yeah the Eggman part I remembered him getting knocked out of the NFC championship game the second one

against the 49ers I forgot that the Super Bowl was a week later and he goes out there and plays in the Super Bowl This is a guy who has no memory to this day of the NFC championship game. No memory. A week later, he's playing the Super Bowl. And I forgot how just kind of bad or mediocre he was in that game. Right.

And, of course, knowing what we know now is like, of course, he was. That's another piece of this, like the whole, the lack of knowledge about CT concussions, all that stuff. By the way, Sal has no memory of the game, Romo when he dropped the PAT against the COCs. He's blocked out that entire three hours. Leave meeting here. It doesn't remember any piece of it. Sal, was there anything you completely forgot out of this when you're watching it? I didn't completely forget, but I forgot what a train wrecked Charles Haley was before we even brought him in.

Like he pissed on the 49ers GM's desk and it was widely known. And they still, the Cowboys, like, yeah, let's bring him in. He's like, imagine like Zach Lowe defecated on Jimmy Petaro's desk. And you're like, yeah, yeah. That would have been a better story. Maybe that'll come out. Let's spread that rumor. but yeah that was great um i'm trying to think what else was good i mean michael irvin with the fur coat

i can never see that enough times walking in his first day of uh the court appearance like that was a tremendous stephen shoving um jerry after the dion deal which was the angriest jerry ever was right even admitted he cried after that 20 but they go down 21 nothing they lose to the 49ers uh they come back as you pointed out you was sending text of the box score it was crazy how the Cowboys just dominated them that game. But, yeah, I like, this is another, like, pro-Jerry thing. Like, and you have to, as an entrepreneur, you should appreciate this. Like, Jerry's like, fuck the rest of the league.

I got this Fox deal done. I'm going to sign Dion. He's got, his son is shoving him up against the wall, and he's like laughing. He's like, I'm going to sign this Nike deal. And then I'm going to get sued by the league, but I'm going to counter-sue for more and scare the shit out of them. And everyone's going to back off. Like, he really did put this league at the position.

it is right now. Yeah, the Nike deal, I forgot how kind of crazy was that he was just like, yeah, I'm going to do my own thing, fuck you guys. When you have a league

where everybody is sharing revenue and is supposed to be equal to some degree, and it's like, no, we're actually not equal. Dallas is bigger than all you guys.

I thought the one thing I didn't feel like in the first part, I thought they could have spent five more minutes on how the Cowboys post JFK in the 70s just all the sudden felt like they were the most important franchise.

Like for me as a little kid, and a lot of it had to do with the cheerleaders and the TV show. I have that run down. Those two things, right? And so by the time we got to like when they beat the Rams in the NFC title game, it just felt like Dallas was the center of the universe based on stupid stuff like cheerleaders and who shot JR, plus that they are relevant. So then when it kind of died in the 80s,

and they got replaced by the bears and the Niners and the Redskins and the Giants and Dallas was kind of fading away. I would have spent like a tiny bit more time on that. Like Jerry saw, no, actually this should be the biggest franchise and went all in on it. But other than that, I don't really have a lot of notes. I thought they nailed it. I wish they would have had a little more on the family. Yeah.

Like what would you want it from the family side? Well, you bring it up. Dallas, the TV show, kind of fueled, like, got everyone prepared for this crazy, rich family, right? It's fighting and drinking at the owner's meeting. Everybody gets drunk and tells Edward, stick around. I'm going to fire this son of a bitch. Like, it would have been like the season finale of every, you know, season of Dallas, which was great. The only other thing I thought, I don't know if, Curtis, did you miss the Steve Walsh stuff?

It was Steve Walsh, right? Yeah, and played for the Saints. It was going to be, it was Akeman Walsh. It was, they were toe to toe to toe for a while. It wasn't automatically Aikman starting for a second. Yeah, I think that's fair. They would have like three minutes of that. And people forget how crazy that thing that Jimmy Johnson did was.

So he drafts Troy Aikman 1-1 in 1989, and then he spends the first pick in the supplemental draft a couple months later on Steve Walsh. The Cowboys turned out to be the worst team in the league that year. So he gave up the number one pick in the draft the next year, number one overall for Steve Walsh after drafting his franchise quarterback. But Jimmy was just firing so many bullets, and that was part of his style, right? Like, I'm going to make 20 draft picks, and I'm going to just bet that like five of them will work out and I'll trade the other ones away. But yeah, that was, that should have at least worn it 30 seconds.

The Switzer Aikman stuff, which I knew because I read a couple of the books. I was surprised they went as hard as they did into the racist stuff with Aikman, the allegations. and they covered all that. They did not cover some of the other stuff that's in the Bayless books. I remember Curtis, you wrote about this for The Ringer in 2016 that at one point Switzerland's camp

was spreading all this stuff about Aikman, that he was gay, and it became like a story in Dallas. And the story was that these guys hate each other so much that Switzerland is actually maybe spreading some of this stuff. The doc did not touch that, but it did touch the racist stuff. I was surprised that it didn't touch both.

It was interesting. And I wonder about that decision on their part, but you got the key detail there, which it was Barry Switzer's camp was doing this while Barry Switzer was coaching the Cowboys. Right. About his all-world quarterback. Yeah.

And you're just thinking like, that happened. And the doc reminded me that some of that stuff was kind of out there on Super Bowl week. Like people were talking about it in the media. Yeah, they had to do a press conference about it. Yeah.

I know we're rehabbing everybody. We're rehabbing Jerry. We're rehabbing everybody. But we don't need to rehab Barry Switzer's an NFL coach. I felt the dog got real close to trying to do that. It's like, okay, the players liked him. I wonder why. That felt like that was coming, but that might have been Jerry's one note.

Like, I don't care what you say about being this doc, but can we make it seem like Switzer was somewhat competent? My memory of this 30 years ago, Sal, was they won despite Switzerland. Yeah. Is that fair? yeah i think so i mean listen i was at that super bowl and the last one we won and i was in the end zone that odana was driving on before he threw the interception so it was like kind of scary but um yes they definitely won despite look like i said he went out of his way to get the best player in the league

a two-way player they're paying dion way more than they're paying achman and irvin and all these guys and they all embrace them i don't know how they got that past those guys just like all right he's going to play two ways so he deserves more money than you i guess that was it but yes i think uh it was yeah he was he kind of just got in the way and the fact that he had a freaking full out brawl or just a like a just a conflict with his quarterback we haven't seen that in a long time eight men still seem mad about it 30 years later curtis you notice that like he he was not like yeah you know time passes he was still like fuck that guy i mean i get hit by a two by four for for for good reason i mean again it's like true eightman's

Like, what did I have to do to earn your respect? Can you imagine a quarterback being treated like that now by his head coach? The power dynamics is just completely different. Well, that's, and that's going back to the nostalgia piece. You know, when we have like some of the Patriot stuff that was happening in the late 2010s that like ESPN and Seth Wickersham was writing about, and it was like the Garoppolo, Brady, Belichick craft, this is, there's a lot of passive aggressive stuff going on. This was just aggressive back then.

This is like a coach leaking shit about his quarterback and the quarterback just openly shitting on the coach that had great NFL films footage of, you know, Aikman just complaining about the coach and the sideline, calling him buffoon. This made the Pat stuff look like a one out of ten from a dysfunction standpoint. Sal, did this make you like Jerry more or less as your Cowboys owner?

Because you haven't even made the, Super Bowl, much less one one in 30 years. And yeah, this was such a great era. And he was responsible for it. So how do you balance that? It's just like, I remember that we were once great. And then I forget that we can be this great. And then it's like, oh, shit, I watched this.

Like, what the hell did he do? How does this happen? But as a fan of the Cowboys, I don't respect them more. But I feel like as a fan of football, you should respect them coming out of it. He made this league as big as it is. is. So your fantasy teams, you're everything. I don't know if it exists without Jerry Jones. Right. Then even go to the arena. What's your take on that, Curtis? It made me love old Jerry and remember how exciting it was to have him as the owner of my favorite team back then.

It also reminded me that what Jerry wants most in the world is, A, to just have a job, like, just talk to me in the draft room so I can pretend like I understand why we're drafting Tyler Booker. That's one thing. The other thing is he wants to be a character. in the prestige TV show that is the Dallas Cowboys. And literally in this case is the prestige Netflix doc at the Cowboys.

That's what he wants. And that's the Micah thing, right? He just wants it to be, after a long standoff with Jerry Jones, comma, Micah Parsons signed

the biggest deal for any defensive player in league history. Like he just wants to do that. And you can see in this doc, he got addicted to that in the 90s. Like he got addicted to being a character, not just an owner,

not just a winner. Yeah. think you could genuinely make the case. I was thinking about this after I watched it. This is probably the most memorable NFL owner ever. It doesn't mean he's the best, but it's like the same way like Sal and I, Steinbrenner just sticks out unlike anyone else.

Like it even like when we were little kids, like Charlie O'Finley was just crazy, but they went all that stuff of the A's. But these owners that also become characters and parts, just part of the history in a completely different way, which I think Kraft tried to belatedly make it seem, and he just wasn't. Like, it was Brady and Belichick that whole time. Jones was just, I remember meeting Jones, and I think it was 2010 at the All-Star Weekend,

whenever that was for NBA, at a bar in the four seasons. And I was with some ESPN higher-ups, and we met Jones, and he was at the bar, and he had girl on each side drinking whiskey or whatever. And he was just exactly like I would have thought. You know, I was like, hey, Bill, how are you? And it was, it was just like, this guy's a fucking character. He's out of, he's out of like a Taylor Sheridan show, which he literally was because he was in the Taylor Sheridan show.

You forget about like the, you talk about the telecast and Madden and Summerall and how much it meant. Jerry put himself on the sideline. It's such a big thing that an owner is there on the sideline. And that cutaway at the end of a game, God forbid the Cowboys lost, I don't even know how much it's worth to the network, but we could all see it in our heads, right, 30 years. later, them losing whatever to the dolphins in the Thanksgiving game or you don't see it. Now it's a Taylor Swift cutaway that you hope to get like five times.

So he might have invented that, but he definitely also invented the, let's let the cameras into our draft room so they can see us celebrating the picks because Jimmy talks in the doc about what the fuck our camera's doing in here? We're trying to pick our roster. I'm trying to think anything else. I think we hit everything. I would just want to say this. I'll say is, oh, I'm sorry, got it, curse.

I was just going to say, like, as a child of the 90s, and you guys lived in the 90s, the thing that made me a little sad is how old everybody is now? I mean, how many thick voices are in this documentary? Jerry's, Jimmy's, Berries, you know, Rupert Murdoch is in this dock in his 90s, you know, Phil Knight's in this dock. George W. Bush's voice sounded awfully thick in this. And I'm like, man, everybody's getting older. All those times are getting away from us.

Yeah, and then Aikman just looks as handsome as that. Ever. Looks like he might be 32. What did you have, Sal? No, the Aikman thing I was going to bring up is like, I feel like his playing career, his attitude mimicked his broadcasting career. Remember he was, I don't want to say vanilla, it's the wrong word for his first few years of broadcasting, but then he got angry. He's now angry in the booth and he gives you like a raw, you know, it's unfiltered and you kind of see like he gets mad at the players and everything. And you saw that the last three, four years of his career on the Cowboys sideline. But by the way, that was one of the saddest.

things. He's gaining all those concussions. Like, I mean, it's just like a screen pass to Darrell Johnston was the best he could do for like four yards those last three years. It's like, please get the morphine drip on him already. This is so sad. And there was a good what if that I had forgotten when the

left tackle got in a car accident, Eric Williams. That probably swung a Super Bowl. So we've had injuries swing Super Bowls, but not the late night car accident when something bad's about to happen.

And that the Cowboys were at the scene, the other players. Right. I had forgotten that detail that they were running up and looking at the car after the exit. What? So most disappointing was that the White House wasn't a palatial mansion for me. Yeah. It just looked like a run-in-the-mill house and, you know, like Monrovia. Right.

Right. Yeah. There wasn't, there couldn't have been 50 girls in there, right? Women and they're like jumping around, right? I think it seems like there was like two and three in and out. every night. I did have more questions about that because they said it was four bedrooms and it just didn't seem like enough bedrooms.

Right. Probably needed maybe some other stuff in there. All right. So how do you think this is going to hit this documentary Curtis? Because it does, the last dance had the had the pandemic. The pandemic and no sports whatsoever. And is the all-time best possible setup for a doc. This is before the NFL season starts

and you can binge it all at once. The binge element of it, which Last Dance didn't have, I mean, you guys lived it, I lived it too. It's impossible to stop watching. Like you just, you, all right. And it's definitely the first one of those in a while. We're like, all right.

And now all of a sudden you're five hours in. So I think it's going to hit pretty big. I think so too, because just think about this. When was the last time Jerry Jones was complimented on an NFL podcast? People won't know and they're going to turn this on and be like, wow, wow, he did the Fox deal, he did the Nike deal.

If you're under 30, you probably don't know any of this stuff, right? Like my son wouldn't know one of these things. And to your 86 Celtics thing, I'm just like, you know, you'll remember that Emmett Smith was also awesome. I know we've decided as a society that Barry was better, whatever,

but like, these guys were awesome. These guys kicked everybody's ass in the 90s. That Cowboys game against the Giants, that New Year's Day game, I was in Las Vegas with my friends, Harry and Darren and Joey, and we had lost all our money. So we had to watch that game at my Aunt Chippy's house on my cousin Mickey's 25-inch TV. I'm trying to think, like, things like that, as shitty as that was, that made it so much more important. There's not any scenario that I would have to watch it on a 25-inch TV.

Thank God, knock wood at this point. But, yeah, I mean, it was the greatest. And I think it's going to be good. Normally, I was like, oh, man, this might be released like a week too late because now it competes with hard knocks and everything. It shouldn't. It really shouldn't. It's great. And I think it'll knock it out in a couple days.

I actually think Emmett's a big winner out of this. He still holds the record, by the way. Yeah. Right? And like pretty, I was looking at the league leaders or the all-time career leaders. Only one who even has like a puncher's chance of thinking about it is Derek Henry. Because these running back careers go so fast now. You know, Emmett was just grinding out 15, 16,000 yards a year for every.

and was really durable and even when he got hurt could still play. But I'll fight Emmett versus Barry. I'll fight to the death. I've talked about it on the pod. I just like if the goal is to actually win

Super Bowls and not just have cool Twitter clips and a fun Madden rating, like you want Emmett Smith. God bless you, Bill. He was five yards of carry. He showed up for every game. He was tough as fucking shit. He blocked.

He was just there. He's still to me in the, in the Mount Rushmore for me. So there you. I have no dog in this race. Good for you. I'm glad you said that. I don't know if you're kissing our ass or what.

I don't know why you would have to, but that's the right take. And I think Irvin is one of the best playoff receivers we've had. I do think Aikman's overrated, but I don't think it's his fault because in the 90s you could just kick the shit out of quarterback. So it's like playing nine years in that era is a fucking miracle. Yeah, it's tough because great offensive line.

great what are his stats supposed to be if you have the greatest running back of all the running back with the you know the record what how what is his stat he only had to be was accurate and a great leader the burline thing wasn't awesome for the Aikman arguments yeah maybe not yeah yeah it's just one season bill I mean that I know but I'm 91 you know he did have a loaded team anyway all right I'm glad you guys enjoyed this I had a great time um Curtis would this been the number one team you would have wanted to cover? Yes. Yes. I would have never slept, but I would have, and I would have been drinking with Jerry at the owner's meetings. You know, I would have been peering through the windows of the White House. It would have been an interesting beat. There are four bedrooms in the White

house, Curtis. They would have given you one. At least got a couch time show or something. Sal Curtis, great to see you as always. Thanks, Bill. Good job by you. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Sal and Curtis. Thanks to Eduardo and Gahau as well. And I'm going to be back with one more podcast. I think we're going to have a Thursday podcast this week and not Sunday. So one more coming from me this week. I will see you then. Must be 21 plus in President Select States for Kansas

and affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in President D.C. Gambling problem, call 100 gambler or visit RG dash help.com. Call 188-789-7777 or visit CCPG.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit MD gambling help.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline, MA.org or call 800, 32750-50 for 24-7

support in Massachusetts or call 1-8778-Hope-N-Y or text Hope N-N-Y in New York.