The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Hour 2: The Unthinkable

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

The L.A. crew discusses the Aaron Rodgers and Pat McAfee relationship and making business decisions for content companies. Then, Amin believes Jada Pinkett Smith has done THE IMPOSSIBLE. Plus, the crew looks at the mental health terror it must be to be Shams, Woj, or any of the news breakers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. This is the Dunluba Tarshou with the Stugat's Podcast. I wanted to ask this group, Gojo, Charlotte and Dan, how the news landed with you because it broke over the weekend. We didn't get an opportunity to talk about it as it broke. We were talking about all the other things that were happening on the Pat McAfee show regarding Aaron Rodgers. But after we shut off the microphones last week, it was reported by Andrew Martian that

Pat McAfee and ESPN pay Aaron Rogers millions of dollars for his weekly appearances. And it also goes on to say that Nick Sabin is also compensated. And I learned about this in a group chat. My initial response to it was, well, that's a bad look. That's a bad look because there's this thing in our industry that, especially if you're a national show, you don't pay for access to guests. It's kind of like a golden rule of the industry that's never spoken, because why would it be? And I'm like, that's a bad look. And someone asked me, that's not

familiar with our industry, that's outside of it. Why? I really struggled to articulate why it's a bad look. And it made me kind of evolve on my position because initially I was like, well, that can't be doing that. That's such a bad precedent. And in talking it through, I didn't have that big of a problem with it, honestly. Now, throughout the history of this show, when we were local, it's not uncommon to see a weekly recurring guest get paid for their time. I think we had to deal worked out with T.O. That actually helped us in the ways that Aaron Rogers

has helped Pat McAfee show. You usually see it with a tie-in to a sponsor, and it's usually the David Samson show, brought to you by catalogue, like, but on the national level, you don't really see that. And the only place that I actually think it's a bad look for Pat. And I actually thought his reaction to it was oddly defensive. And not like the way that Pat usually gets defensive, which is entertaining and having

fun with the audience, he seemed genuinely bothered by this, calling Andrew Marshan to ret. I guess you have that in common with a pattenography that you have names for Andrew Marshan, which this was good reporting. And this does paint the Aaron Rodgers segment in a different light. So this is why I think it's a bad look. Number one, because of how it's presented. The way that it's presented is that Aaron Rodgers is just kind of hanging out and Pat McAfee

has this show that's really cool vibe that you just want to kind of hang around. And he's this big time charismatic talent who I personally really enjoy. And it's the place to go if you're an athlete, to be comfortable because the host is charismatic and a former athlete and it kind of gets you. That kind of changes a little bit when it's known that people are being paid for their time. Also, what is this money going to?

Because naturally, I'd be like, the spin is just to say, Aaron Rodgers is donating the cash, but I, what, RFK Jr. Super PAC? I like, I need to know where this is going. And I'm wondering and talking it out with you and go, Joe, you were there. The second place that I think it's a bad look, specifically for this to be reported. And it's not so much that they're paying it. It's what they're paying, which is reported on millions.

ESPN, as you know, yeah. A lot of turnover, which is reported on millions, ESPN, as you know, and a lot of turnover, a lot of good people, a lot of really talented people, no longer working there. So this isn't exactly how budgets work out because there's health insurance and head counts that go into it, so it's not exactly Apple's. I'm also not positive that this is ESPN's money. I would surmise that Pat McAfee himself from his cut of money is giving some of it to Aaron Rodgers because one of the things that McAfee said in what you thought was defensive is we've now got a half a billion dollar company that Aaron Rodgers helped me build.

So I just assume that he sliced up. I think a lot of people really don't understand some of the things that have been happening with McAfee or us in the business arrangements. Macafe walked away from four years, $120 million to take less money at ESPN. Walked away from FanDoules money because he knew that the company would get larger and worth once it got to the reach of ESPN with the freedom that he has to do it as he wants, which is much different than the way ESPN has done it. So he framed it as, I'm taking care of my own. I'm taking care of the people who made this company worth what it is.

It's an important distinction because in negotiating this with Pat, he probably had a discretionary budget for these things, but you could already tell almost immediately how that landed with former ESPNers. Like really we're paying Nick Saban and Aaron Rodgers, we're giving Aaron Rodgers this platform, which has been, you know, a tricky spot, whether it be spreading misinformation or anti-vax propaganda, we're giving him millions of dollars. You know from being in there, this isn't necessarily the way that ESPN gets down, but they've surrendered themselves totally to the Pat McAfee experience and doing a lot of different things. Is a former ESPN on air guy had it laying with you?

I kind of the same way you described it there where I looked at it and I usually ask in this conversation, we have around any like longstanding practices, well, why are we doing this? And I was actually curious to ask you guys, as people that have been doing this at this level a lot better and longer than I have, what the aversion to that was because his explanation made sense at a base form to me like all of this in the way that we present all of this. We're all pretty close on and off air, but sometimes on air you embellish even a little bit closer, like we're not a hundred percent authentic even if most everyone in this room is closer than a lot

of places. And so this idea that, oh, well, he's not as close with patent those guys. So what? People go to strip clubs all the time to try and suspend a little bit of disbelief and live in that world. I looked at that and said, all right,

I don't really have a problem with that idea of him paying it like that, but the optics of it against what's going around around the company. Maybe this is just the like the sports and the little bit of athletes still in my background. But I looked all the time and every team I was on and I could see, all right, what does that guy do for the team here and how valuable is it compared to what I do as like a reserve offensive lineman on the squad?

Of course, I'm not going to be treated the same or valued the same as someone who score and touchdowns every weekend and doing all that. So if I can look at myself honestly and say, well, I'm as valuable to us on air as what Nick Sabin's providing them with that hit, then I can get mad. And maybe this is, you know, a conversation about the delusional self-confidence that both athletes carry. I don't have that. So I look around and go, well, yeah, I'd pay Nick Sabin more than me too. Hell yeah. I think though that where it gets tricky and the original reason you didn't pay people, especially if it's people

you cover. Aaron Rodgers and Nick Sabin are both in the news all the time for sports. ESPN is covering them. They are also paying them to come on their show. That inherently covered colors, how they are going to be pushed, which is they're not Pat. Let's Aaron say whatever the heck he wants. And Aaron Rodgers to me is just an agent of chaos. I don't think he has a set series, set series.

I don't think he has set beliefs. I think he just does whatever he thinks will get people talking and to poke the bear. He clearly did that. He also sees his upon those opportunities. Travis Kelsey was the most talked about person still in sports right now. So Aaron Rogers was like, you know what?

I'm going to take a shot at him. Pat doesn't push back. It comes out he's being paid. And I think we're even beyond the, we're not talking about like journalistic ethics anymore because that doesn't exist basically anywhere that has, it's very hard to find. And so I think that when it comes out though, that it's not only someone who has covered so often by the outlet that's paying them, but also pushing weird stuff. That's not, I don't, I don't love that. I think from that standpoint too, because you're right,

like the journalist, I've never been a tried and true journalist. So when people throw that, I mean, I'm like, that's not, I don't have the same background. Neither's pan-mackafate, which I think is important to all of this. Neither do most people listening to this care about any of this subject matter because they don't aren't doing the defining of journalism that I might be doing because I dedicated my life to that craft. I think that most people listening to this, the grand majority, care not at all about journalistic ethics. But I do think at some point, and this is kind of what Charlotte was getting at If it affects the way that you cover that person enough to where you're going to ignore the thing that people do want to know about

Like I always go back to that swamp kings documentary on Netflix talking about the early 2000s Florida Gators Ignored all of the things I came as a viewer to want to learn in that documentary in favor of catering to the people that were willing to sit for them. But a very popular documentary nonetheless. Like your end, end it up being watched. People don't care. People just want. I still think his audience, Pat McAfee's audience also doesn't care. But there were some people, but I don't know from social media, who's his fan base, and who's not.

Why would it matter to a Pat McAfee fan? This is a whole new brand of me, athlete-led media. social media, who's his fan base and who's not. Why would it matter to a Pat McAfee fan? This is a whole new brand of me, I have to lead media. They don't care about unspoken journalism rules. No, but I guess it's not even that because Dan, to your point, people watched that swamp king. I'll use that one as the example here. People watched it because of the fascination in my mind of what I thought I was going to get out of it. And now because of that, I trust that untold series a lot less. Like the next time they come out with something because of that because of the man of that, I trust that untold series a lot less. Like the next time

they come out with something because of that because of the man's out, I'm like, I kind of understand the way you guys are playing with this. And so maybe over time, if it affects the way you've covered enough to where you ignore an obvious thing I want to know as the viewer, maybe it erodes some confidence, maybe if you're looking for something. Maybe, but I would say to you that generally speaking, conflict of interests are all over the place in sports journalism. ESPN for one has a bunch of business relationships with the leagues that they cover. And I don't think that most people listening to this care how they navigate those conflict

of interest. I believe when Mike says, I've heard this phrase so much over the years, bad look. And then people are asked to elaborate on, well, give me what is the infraction? What's the illegality? What is what has happened here? Well, I'm just not comfortable with how that is because it represents a change from what it is that I'm used to. ESPN has made a decision in paying a handful of people while laying off a whole bunch of other people, $17

million a year, $15 million a year. We are banking on these 10 stars and we are changing the way that we do business and our business model with once upon a time decided for reasons that may not matter anymore that are totally antiquated. They decided to be a journalism company when no one asked them to do that. And it seems like no one cared whether they did that or not. And now slowly they're getting out of that business with compromises like this. And I don't think it affects the brand at all.

I think when I saw all of that happen, I'm like, and there's the industry just changing and there's that place changing and evolution isn't always bad, but people are going to get uncomfortable with it and people are going to say, bad look, because it looks different than what they're familiar with. Yeah, after talking it out, where I initially went like, that's just a bad look. And I couldn't exactly explain why to resigning to the fact that I couldn't explain why to ultimately be in like, oh well thank God, he's not that much cooler than us.

Like he's paying the millions of dollars. That's why he doesn't want to come on. Oh thank God, that show from Boulder was amazing. They had the rock out there. I'm like, maybe they're paying everybody. And everyone just likes them more because they're getting paid. And that they were, it's a bad look because people like them.

I was gonna say it. Pat kind of hit to that though. It's like Oh, yeah, I'm making these people valued for their time that they're giving me. He made a bunch of false equivalents. Yeah. Guess what? Dremon Green gets paid by the volume. Like he's hosting a show dude. That part wrong. But I guess in terms of the quality, they're all hanging out. Like, yeah, they might not be best friends. But hey, if I'm getting paid, I'm probably going to give a little bit more effort to the situation. That's kind of how jobs work. Fascinating, though, to me, that money would be something here that would contaminate a utopian ideal that I don't believe sports fans care about. They care about, I'm turning on my television.

Who's there? And whether they're being paid or not, I think we paid Tim Kirchen and I think we paid Torello and so over the years. And that is had sponsorship tie-ins. And that's a, it's a, it's a weird national local radio dichotomy that there is because you see it all the time on local like Javan Holland has like a cordial or ship deal with one of the local shows. But on national, there's something that you do not do, which is funny because then we go to Super Bowl Week, and I think we interviewed Emmett Smith with a literal diamond necklace from Zales

that he brought that day. And I'm like, how does this feel all that different? At public mobile, we do things differently. From our subscription phone plans to throwing a big sale right now when no one else is. Well, maybe they are, but who cares? Our sale is better, and it's on right now, no one else is. Well, maybe they are, but who cares, our sale is better. And it's on right now, no waiting necessary.

You have the latest phone. Now take advantage of a great price on a 5G subscription phone plan. It's the perfect deal for anyone who could use some savings right now. Subscribe today at publicmobile.ca. Different is calling. dandlebatar. Did you guys see Gilbert Arrenas' assessment of Zion Williamson? Agent zero. Stugats. Did you answer my question there or no? No. Okay. Very good. This is the dandlebatar show with a stugats. Guys, I think Jada Pink has done the unthinkable.

She's turned Will Smith into a sympathetic character. I never thought I'd have to slap this dude's gonna be a villain, slash the punchline with a bunch of jokes and everything. And Jada's on, I guess, her book tour, she's putting out a book so she's been doing like the car wash thing in the media. And with every additional interview, I'm like, I get it now. Feel bad for this guy. I'm just remarkably, you got seen any of this? I've read it and been confused by it and was wondering. I didn't realize that it was a book tour because she has her red table series and I thought if she was trying to bring

attention to something that that I was confused by why is this all coming out now when any But everybody for the last year has wanted to know the history of what is happening there I don't know what are the signature items for you on feeling bad for Will Smith whether it's her saying we haven't been husband and wife for a long time I was surprised to hear him call me his wife whether it's saying that Tupac Shakur, his actually her soulmate, what are the things specifically that are making you feel bad for him? You named a lot of them. As an aside, the most interesting thing she said was Tupac Shakur had alopecia as well.

And I said, wow, hold on. Have you seen those eyebrows and eyelashes? No chance. No chance. No chance. He was just balding. That's all. That's what that's called. No, but her depiction of their not really

emerged the marriage of convenience in the most literal sense that we raise children together and we appear as united front to the public, but we have not been husband and wife. She said since 2016. But then it reminded me of what happened in 2016, which was it was revealed that she was dating August Alcina, who was her son, as a singer, who's her son's friend. And after that came out, she had will on the red table. And they had to talk this out and I'm like,

why? And I realized, oh yeah, it's all for the sake of content, right? Like there is no boundary, there is no sense. Yeah, we just, you just have to put your water on. Did you just crack? What just happened there? Did you just sit on a water bottle? Is that what happened there?

I hope nobody heard it. I was like, maybe, if I keep talking. It didn't quite work on that, you imagine. No, not quite. It is amazing in all of this, in someone who has used all of their life for the express purpose of content, and Dan, to your point, had the red table

that was already this vehicle available that there's still this much left over, where we're hearing stuff and doing that because I think we all do kind of look at celebrity life and the things that go along with it and people kind of do a version of it and what they do to athletes all the time, which is well some of this is just the cost of being in business. If you want to be famous like this and you want to play this sport or do this thing, this is what comes with it and then you look at it through the prison of all right, if you're a husband and a father and all this is going on, that kind of sucks because we

can relate to all of that. And watching this guy go out there and publicly embarrass himself at the Oscars and the name of a person who's now on the back end, not claiming him in that moment, feels sad no matter how you feel about him as a guy. And for 10 years, 10 year ban from the Academy Awards. Like, I don't even know why he said that.

Like, what are you talking about? Like, just as a gesture. What did you just like, I mean, we're not together, but thanks for doing that. It just felt really, really odd. And the other part of it is when you say, oh, this is the cost of doing business, right? That's usually when we, the public, are prying into,

hey, nobody asking for these details, man. Nobody asked for this. That's also an amazing thing, Charlotte, in this day and age with content where we get so much of everything, we've all kind of universally looked at this and gone, yeah, I think I'm good. I don't need any more of this. The thing that flashes into my head more than anything else, literally anything else is the headline from, there was a New York time opinion piece called called we all need to know less about each other. I think of that phrase at least three times a day. I also think though,

something very interesting to me about Jada Pinkett about this celebrity culture, about what we think we know, we're getting their version. Like, and as media keeps dying, they control the narrative. And there's so much we don't know. I don't know how Will Smith actually feels about this. I don't know what Will Smith's been doing for 10 years. And I see what you mean, the optics of it, but it all, everything to me now feels so calculated. It's like, well, there's got to be a reason.

Is it really just to sell the book? But isn't it wild that like in the before four times, when the media controlled the narrative, it's like, oh, it couldn't be who I wanted to be, the media controlled the narrative, it's like, things like this happen now, and I'm like, if you're a celebrity, don't you kind of want the before four times? Because it wouldn't look this bad,

in speaking her truth or whatever you want to call it. She comes off looking way worse than it was just, hey, will and dated and make it. Like most of the time people kind of assume it's infidelity on the man's side. Usually that's the kind of like, of course, because Will was in a couple movies with Margot Robbie. I'm sure something happened there. But when this all comes out like this, you're like, oh, no, man, you guys are, like you said,

like this is who they really are and it kind of sucks. And it's like, that's what they're telling us they are. No, I know, but I'm saying, which is wilder. You start with wilder. Like the idea that they would come out and say, no, no, no, this is how it happened. And you're like, you look worse this way. You know what it reminds me of? And I'm glad we're having this conversation in this building.

When winning time season one came out, all these Laker people came out and said, oh, no, this is terrible. No, no, this happened this way. Wait till our story gets out. Wait till we tell the story, right? Magic Johnson had a documentary, the Lakers had a docu-series on Hulu,

and we just wait, and this thing, it's completely false, so that's not how any of it happened. And then those documentaries and docu-series came on. And I watched them, and they were good. They were really good. And I said, all these people should have picked

a little phone and called Adam, and said, to Adam, okay. Thank you for making me look a lot more sane than I actually was. Magic left cookie at the altar like seven times before he actually married her. Like you were actually worse in real life. Like imagine saying, hey man, I heard Gojo ate a mud pie

the other day. I'm like dude, stop spreading these awful rumors about me. It was shit that I ate. Like, that's, and what are you doing? Just let them tell the story and let you preserve your dignity. You say you're good with information. This reminds me, you're good on this subject. You don't need anymore, but I remember the way we were howling

when Tiger Woods, the veneer of whatever he was selling in the Buick commercials, came out. And there was howling about how he betrayed us and we needed some sort of explanation. And then when he's in front of that sad blue screen in Orlando and he's hugging his mother, at that point, we realized, well, why was I asking for this? Why did I demand this from this man? But in this particular case, I would say that people can't get enough of what is happening with the information around this, that anything that Jada Pinkett gives us will be selling

her book no matter how bad it makes him look or her look, because people are starved for the gossip around show me the privacy in your in your life. Show me the stuff that I don't get to see. I don't know that people can even if it makes us uncomfortable, the truth. I don't know that people can get enough of it. We're talking about it now, at least in part, because we can't believe how appalling the truth is. I am so guilty. I'm like, we all need to know less about each other and then like any little sliver. I am the, I am that idiot. I click, I follow e news on Instagram. If they say Lincoln bio for the stir, I click it more than anything else on Instagram. I'm not, I don't know what it is. My brain, I found an op ed. I wrote in, in high school from 2005

about celebrity gossip. Like it is just, it is like, I can't get enough as I'm also like, but I think I just don't want to know as much about people I actually know in real life. That, because then it just makes me like them less. I'm like, tell me very little, tell me everything about the celebs. You were in high school in 2005. Sorry. Good God.

That's. Sorry. Good God. That's... Sorry. I remember that about then was when Bill Simmons wrote an article about the formula that Will Smith had to become the biggest movie star in the world that went right up I think until Wild Wild West got screwed up by a giant spider. But the formula, you know, he went into orcs and a variety of different things that made him go from Undisputably the biggest movie star in the world an unbelievable acting job in that Ali movie like a really strong actor To the last 15 years or 10 years of it doesn't feel that way at all anymore. Like the deterioration has been a substantive

one. I don't even know where Will Smith is. I don't know how Will Smith rehabilitates everything that has happened to him and how precipitous a fall it has been from where it is that he was. It is interesting to consider all of this as what the starting point is for that information, because in Will Smith's case, it's like, I always say, like the most debilitating thing for me ever would have been see my dad get his ass whipped in public. Like this person who is the image of everything you want to be in all of this to see them taken down in that way that would be jarring to you.

Will Smith for a lot of people was everything they thought a Hollywood a list actor should be. And now seeing these sad details about his life creep in, it affects the way that we perceive the world with that person's involvement in it. I look at it conversely. Man, I tell my former teammate that documentary came out, the starting point was a lot more sad back then where you've got people saying these terrible things about him. This goes on and you feel like then you get one version of it from the media and where amongst this new group of documentaries, his was probably the most well received because all of the sudden you get this much more sympathetic picture of a guy that wasn't afforded the

ability to tell that version of events then. And so I think that being perceived that way because art, it makes us feel a little bit better about things. Oh, we were bad back then, but it's better now versus the Will Smith has been a deterioration from the best we saw of this person to now. Oh, I'm knowing a bunch of stuff. I don't want to know about a guy I really liked before the nerds jump in here. He did win an Academy Award for his portrayal as Richard Williams and King Richard, which

people forget because he also slapped Chris Rob in that same ceremony. Oh my God. That was a senior. People forget. People forget. That movie, I think you and I have talked about this before not that good their actual story so much more Interesting than what that movie it that movie felt like Hollywood feeling like it needed to give Will Smith an Award for that movie because of where we were in the times it worked

for that movie because of where we were in the times. It worked. I'm wrong though. Like I don't, I don't think of Will Smith that it's having done something that would be considered a great work that was a long time. That was great work by him. The movie wasn't good, but that was great work by him. In the same way that Leonardo DiCaprio playing Jay Gahouver did an amazing

job in an amazingly boring movie. Like that movie wasn't good, but he was awesome in that role. And in a way that's kind of sad, right? It makes me think of guys like Brendan Fraser and I'm like, we just write these people all because they took a bunch of shitty roles, but it's like, oh, the talent is still there. He could still, what's the, what's the, how's the quote go? I'm not as great as I once was, but. I'm as good once as I ever was.

Exactly. And I think, God, I was hoping he wouldn't help out there. Because you were good at that. He were gonna just sit on that water bottle again and fart yourself. You did not have that quote in the arsenal. No. Don Lebertard. At the end of our conversation with Alex Smith. And we talked for about 30 minutes,

but I feel like nobody is going to remember anything about that conversation other than how you fell flat at the end with your very last word. Listen to how Stugats here at the end of this interview says goodbye just exhausted to Alex Smith. That's Stugats. What happened? Alex? I'm dead. I'm exhausted. I haven't stopped talking in a month. I mean, I don't know'll, this is the Don Lebertar show with this two cats. I have mentioned before that a lot of people do not know, as they do know the names of Adam Schefter and Lodge and Choms, they don't know what a mental health insanity those jobs are. I would not want to be one of those people in this industry, no matter

the amount of money being paid to those people. And the New Yorker has done a profile on Shams, because his story is fascinating for a number of reasons. He, under the tutelage of Wode has become the new younger Wode does many of the same things. There aren't many of these information people. What are they? Five total throughout the country that you would look at and say worth $10 million a year can move gambling lines. Their information is so valuable that I associate their names with a sport.

They're only a handful and Shams is top three. He's on the medal stand right now. What did you find interesting? I mean about the New Yorker profile on Shams. Well, you know, a lot of it is stuff that I knew because I've known him since he was the teenager who was breaking in. But the extent to which he doesn't have a life is the stuff that, you know, I see him, I talk whatever, but I don't know that part. And to see it come out in the piece, specifically things where he says he can't drive anywhere because he's got to be on his phone.

He can't going on dates, like having a social life is almost impossible because he's always on his phone. And I wonder, you know, when you think of Adrian and you think of some of these other newsbreakers, Adam Schaefter, Jeff Passon, these are guys that... Diana received. Well, Diana is just, I'm talking about the people who feels like...

She's the athletics insider, NFL. But I think what I'm getting at is Adrian and Shom's, they don't write stuff. Their whole world is dying to write stuff. She writes features. Diane does come around to write like a whole feature. Like we did with like the Damien Lillard occasionally. Every time someone needs a solid, he writes a feature. And he's afraid to say under the tutelage. I know that shams was brought through when Wode basically had his own cut out at Yahoo Sports, but we've talked to shams before and

it's been kind of dissected it. How overstated like the wage part of the tutelage is. It is because he had built himself by breaking the news that nobody else wanted to break. of by breaking the news that nobody else wanted to break. This guy's 10 day, this guy, the jealee, jealee call up, right? And what happened was the people that he wrote about, there eight, those agents, those players, some of those players began to rise and become more important people. Great example, which was from the piece was Bernie Lee. Bernie Lee who's Jimmy Butler's agent, he represents Ben Simmons, Bernie Lee is a power player in now in the game. But once upon a time, Bernie was a guy who represented a lot of fringe roster guys like John Lucas III and with my games, right, from Amityville. So there's a part of this where it's like, yeah, he's circles and his connections

were kind of weak in the beginning, but as time grew and these people grew, it became stronger. And so he's getting real scoops, like, and the one that they mentioned in the piece, which is the Lual dang is getting traded from Chicago to Cleveland. He got that on the strength of a relationship he had built years ago with someone who at the time, most would consider, oh, I don't care about your news. That's not newsworthy. So what Adrian did was get him somewhere where he was getting paid a lot more money because he was doing all this out of pocket in the beginning. And the exposure of having him alongside him in all of the video stuff that they put out. But the tutelage, but I agree with you, Mike, is very overblown. I know you're just, I'm more fascinated by the hustle and how depressing the hustle makes me.

How consuming it is, how crazy it is to be competitive in this space. I've told the story before, the one year that I had it to compete for news in Miami, I was sobbing in the Miami Herald bathroom at midnight, still at work at midnight because I couldn't stop and I didn't like the path that my life was taking. It was, I was getting hit in the face by basketballs when I was playing basketball because I couldn't stop obsessive, compulsively thinking, not just because I'm clumsy and unethicaletic. was distracted I could not stop thinking about I was always falling behind and it's just it it seemed to me a Torturous life so when I see these guys be excellent at it. I actually think to myself there cannot be happiness there

You can conquer and have success and it's just an empty hole that you're constantly shoveling into trying to fill it But it's always gonna just an empty hole that you're constantly shoveling into trying to fill it, but it's always going to be an empty hole. You were feeling that before the advent of this, the smartphone, where there is no disconnection. You were always on and always available. You could actually go away. It was like a from a time when people would go on vacation and they might be dead. Who knows? We'll see if they come back.

So what I was getting at is when you talk about these people who are pure newsbreakers, right? Most of them, if not all of them, had a life where what Mike just described, they worked for the local paper and they covered this team and they covered that team and then they got to this place. Shoms never had that. His entire existence has been with that thing in his hand. His entire existence has been just news breaking,

not writing stories, not writing features, not covering a high school team, just news breaking over and over again. And so I think most of those other people, if not all of them, married with children, this dude isn't even 30 yet. And so what effect does that have? It's almost like a child actor, right? Like you didn't have a childhood, Sean, that's some at some stage.

I think it's also such a different world from like when we were cut, like I came up through the Boston Globe system. I worked for Boston.com. I did local reporting, you know, got to a point where it was less about the news. Now I'm sitting here talking with you guys. I think that that is very different synthesizing a bunch of information into one cohesive whole is very different from getting tiny bites of information throughout the day. Sometimes they're huge, but you have to get the tiny ones to get the huge ones. You have to wish someone a happy birthday so that they tell you the huge news.

You can't just sit there and wait for the news to come to you. Shams has to be like remembering people's birthdays, congratulating the new jobs. Like you have an endless social rolodex in your head that is not for you. It's not for him, it's for his job. It's not like it's not, you know, his dating life is family.

This is all consuming in a way that it leaves no room for anything else. And I wonder if at some point is that its own kind of fulfillment of knowing you're at the top of doing it and when, if ever, does that not become enough anymore? I think it's an insanity. I think it's an actual clinical type of insanity that you're inviting that much success to get to the top of this perpetually competitive and that I don't think it arrives at fulfillment.

Like I don't, I don't think any of these guys sign the big contract and then can't and then stop worrying that they're not gonna get beat on that story three minutes later. The obsessive compulsive nature of the job and constantly checking the phone is fortified by the stories that you break. So there is a distinct correlation. The direct reward.

Me being in my phone, totally connected to this device as opposed to everything else, gives me the results that I need to be at the top of the industry. I'll tell you what else I found interesting in there. The quotes from Skipper about why they decided to sign Adrian. And it was basically a dick swing competition. We wanted to be able to say that, oh, the news breaks with us. And that has been at the core of kind of my whole diatribe of where this sports media thing is going off the rails, which is nobody cares who breaks stories.

You watch Undisputed, you watch First Take, you watch all the smoke, it is what it is, what us, what we're doing is we're all going to the same trouble, okay, these are the stories of the day. And now our opinions and our stuff is going so. You don't think nobody cares, though? Social media makes my sense of it. Well, it's a big, I'll give you a great example.

Who broke the story that Paul George was getting traded to the Clippers? Remember, no one knew and then all of a sudden we woke up and it's like, Paul George got traded to the Clippers. I don't recall. Because it doesn't matter, Mike. It doesn't matter who, right? Because here's the deal. If we lived in a world where a genie said, take away all the newsbreakers, how would you

know? The press release. Okay. No press department, either. How would you know that Paul George got traded to the Clippers? The first time you turn on a clipper game is like, huh, Paul George is a clipper. It's not news. It is not news, right? News is finding out that Bill Belichek and Tom Brady, each other, right? And remember, it was a Wicker Shammer wrote that. That was like, oh my God, i had no idea they seem like they want to say page the whole

time that's news right that's reporting when he didn't strouze wrote that Nike completely the bed with Steph Curry they had him in the bag and they messed up his name in the presentation and it was unprofessional that and that's what led him going to underarm her that was and i believe still is the number one most red article in the history of yes, me and not calm, more than the flake gate, more than, uh, Lebron going back to Cleveland, more than any single big news story. You could do Tiger Woods crashing his car. Number one was that story. Why? Because it was actual news. Who stopped

that if Ethan did not do the journalism, we never would have learned about it. As opposed to someone so got tried to guess what? I would have found out when it turned on the game. Why is there so much social capital tied into it? Because it's the boogie man that you give life to. It's like Freddie Krueger. Like if you believe in him, you're scared. I mean, he exists, right?

So hearing or reading skipper say that, I was like, you brought, read, who gives, who broke it? They're not turning on Yahoo to hear about it. But I do. They turn, they turn on, they turn us on ESPN at the time. The world, that's what they turn on to hear about why someone so got traded. Maybe I, I'm kind of with you and you're shaping my opinion

a little bit and changing it, but I do remember ESPN's basketball coverage when it was headed up by the likes of Chris Prussard being laughed at. Okay, so first of all, it wasn't the coverage. Chris had some of the news breaking. No, the news breaking. Mark Stein, Mark Stein, so people have done this math before at the time. Mark Stein out broke news over Adrian.

Like Mark Stein was doing. Now this is what would happen. You guys want to take a real inside here? How much time we got? Okay. So the bottom line, right? The bottom line, this all started because it would say so and so got traded according to media reports and all the people who weren't at ESPN started crying like, they don't give us credit. It's according to media reports. So then ESPN started to hide. I don't know why, but they said, say, fine. According to Adrian Morgan, ask if y'all who sports, right? But here's the thing, when ESPN reporters would break,

when Mark's style breaks something, it would say according to ESPN reports. So when you see the bottom line and you see a name, a name, a name, but the guy on your team doesn't get name checked. Guess what? Like it creates this perception in John Skipper's my life. Why? Why is this guy get everything? If you saw Mark Stein as many times as Mark broke stuff,

maybe Skipper would have had a different perception, but we were all following the flies around the elephant still then. And the reason I think, well, I think we care about these things because we have a 24, 7 news cycle in sports. So when there are no games, you need other things to write about.

So there are people who have built their brand on giving you that gossip because I do think that sports is gossip. I think around the industry, I think that it's a safer way, traditionally, to for men to be able to gossip about something with each of you. Like, did you see this guy got signed? And they tapped into that, built a brand around it. And then now there are two at the top of the mountain. But Charlotte, Paul. I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying, I think that is how this happens. I agree with you, but do we care who gives us the gossip?

If you make it a brand, but why do we allow it to become a brand? That's above my pay grade. I mean, once you get to credibility, can be bought, and you have to pay $10 million a year for these things. I mean, can say that nobody cares, but we're paying for it as if it has a value that suggests that there is caring involved.