The Dumb Zone FREE - DZ 9-26-25 PREVIEW | Micah took ping pong to Green Bay and the NFL's impact on Kimmel with Bryan Curtis

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

Hear the entire episode by subscribing at DumbZone.com or Patreon.com/TheDumbZoneOf all of the lessons Micah Parsons learned through his first four years in the league in Dallas, he took with him one important lesson: ping pong builds culture. Plus, The Ringer's, Bryan Curtis, joins to discuss the impact the NFL has on the Jimmy Kimmel suspension ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Hey now, what you were about to hear is a free preview of one of this week's premium episodes of The Dumb Zone. If you would like to hear this program in full, along with the full archive, ah shit. If you would like to hear this program in full with the archive of all of our past episodes, you can subscribe at dumzone.com. Ready? Yes. Set. Sports. Oh, yeah, I like that.

You want to start with this audio, Blake? I think it's funny. Okay, so we go to NFL live last night where they're going around to the big games of the weekend and they'll throw it to the Dallas reporter and the Packer reporter. So Micah's been in Green Bay for a little over a month now. Let's see how things are being reported on.

What is Micah saying about his return to Dallas, Rob? Hannah, you may have heard Jerry Jones say earlier in the week that there's no tribute planned for Micah Parsons Sunday at AT&T Stadium and we asked Micah what he felt about that and he said, look, I don't feel disrespected by that but there were a lot of things that I was disrespected about during this whole process of him getting to Green Bay as for the response that he thinks he's going to get.

Let's start there. That's just going to be what it is where that's the official record now. Maybe slightly true but also a bit... What was the verbiage? There's a lot of things. There's a lot of... Not playing a tribute videos, not just disrespectful.

There were a lot of disrespectful things throughout this process. And it's like, I don't know, maybe, but if you end up with like a 20% pay bump on a better team and they just did it, like, it's very odd

to me to then in retrospect to still make the framing, they really screwed me here. Even if that's how you feel, I feel like you just don't say it. You just say we've both moved on. Like, you forced your trade. That's what I was going to say, especially if you did the trade request.

You said goodbye to Dallas. You did that. You said, I want out. Now, the counterpoint I guess would be. And hey, they traded me. That was disrespectful to trade me after I said I wanted trade it. I guess like the counter. I'm trying to think like if your spouse, like, cheated on you a bunch of times and then you were like, hey, I'm leaving.

I mean, in his mind, like he requested the trade because he had been being disrespected. But. Well, and at the time, I thought it was false. Jerry thought it was false and Micah thought it was false. It was a negotiating tactic. And that's what Micah thought he was using it for, not to actually get traded. I think you're right. Yeah.

And then you get traded and you're like, well, this is not so bad. But I don't think it was the plan from the beginning. But he's disrespected. Down at AT&T Stadium, he said, I think that. Dallas loves me. I can tell you this, Hannah. His teammates here love him. I've got a piece running tomorrow on ESPN.com.

The Packers knew how good he was before he got here. They didn't know how competitive he was. Several players told me that they've been playing ping pong gone bowling. Oh, yes. Listen, that's the, you know, Bill Walsh, Bill Parcells, their guys go to other teams. They're like, here's how we do it back around. from but here he was several players told me that they've been playing ping pong gone bowling playing horse in the facility him and tucker craft have had these intense ping pong games josh jacobs went

bowling and micah rolled a 258 dang rookie colin oliver has lost what do you mean dang that's all he was doing here that was like every other day of practice is like let's go bowling so pretty good yeah Rookie Colin Oliver has lost plenty of money on some horse games here in the facility, but it just shows Colin Oliver told me he's like, look, for a guy of his caliber to spend time with a rookie like me playing, even though he's getting into my pocket, playing these type of competitive games shows you not only how competitive he is, but just how much he wants to fit in and how much confidence he gives the rest of the guys, just showing that he's one of the guys. Yeah, and the best teams have leaders on both sides of the ball.

Rob, we appreciate it. It's going to be a lot of fun. Okay. I'm not going to say that there's no chance that Micah couldn't have grown into more of a leader. We talked about it all offseason, but it is a bit rich now. A guy who, like, during training camp was like, I'm not going to practice today. I'm going to have half my jersey on. I'm going to make this story about me. I'm going to force my way out of here. I'm going to lay on the training table during the game.

Exactly. I'm going to hold this little press conference out here with Trayvon on day one and then not talk again. You just got to have a leader like that. Like the guy's incredible, and I think he could have become what they're talking about. Maybe he just not capable of that also. Some guys aren't. But we're doing a little too much, a little too much of this here. And it's fine because the Packers are good.

I mean, this is your ex-wife starting to take care of herself and cleaning and doing everything you asked her to do. Yeah, I mean, he's already said, like, it's all football now, no podcasts. So that definitely tracks to the Pilates membership for your ex. But they're also acting like, it would also be like if, you know, your new, your, uh, your ex married someone else, whatever. And then he's like, damn, she's just so faithful and committed to me. You're like, well, but the other, you know how they got here, right? They got here by, you know, and it feels weird because I'm not trying to alibi.

for what the Cowboys did here. They effed off and let this situation get where it was. Yeah, and sometimes what you do, you have to pay for that, and the Packers paid for it. And maybe some of these things could only happen with him moving. Yeah. Like getting rid of the podcast, or the Cowboys are about to say, well, get rid of the podcast, and then we pay you.

And he wouldn't listen if they tried. You know, same as like to make the relationship thing. You could say something, and somebody's like, yeah, okay. And then when it's somebody different without the baggage, you're more open to it. So this is the story for now. He's the leader in Green Bay. Yeah, I told Blake, Blake found our old interview that when we're at Super Bowl Week that we did with Micah on the radio and said, hey, go listen to this because he wanted to play some of it. And so I went back and listened to the whole thing this morning.

It's really good. And yeah, it made me sad that he's not here, though. Because he is a colorful guy. He's fun. And he does affect, you know, not many individual guys can just affect a whole team the way he can, like positively. Like, he is so good. And you were just citing some of the things in, you know, in that interview. that just that you had researched and that he was just done with his rookie year

and just so many things that nobody had ever done before. And it just made me sad because I was thinking, boy, when you get a guy like this who's this dominant as a rookie and obviously followed it up the next year, like you're then talking behind the scenes saying the first day that you're eligible to extend him, you do it. The first day. Don't worry about what else we're going.

got on our team. We had, this is a guy we cannot lose because his trickle-down effect on the rest of the team, you know, let's say C.D. Lamb, and C.D. Lamb's awesome. But he doesn't make the other receivers, I don't think as, he doesn't elevate them as much as Micah's play elevates everyone around him. Micah's play will elevate the other defensive linemen. Also, the defensive backs, like everybody, because Micah's out there wrecking things, and offensive coordinators around the league are spending so much time worrying about him

that the other guys can look so much better. And I just don't think like a one guy. Obviously, a great quarterback can do that, you know, but a C.D. Lamb who will make more than Micah, I guess not anymore, right? But at the time, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, 100%. The day that you can, when you identify a talent like this,

And by the way, you should have done it with C.D. Lamb, too, the day you could with him. And Dak, you can argue. He was a fourth round pick. You don't know. There were some ups and downs with Dak. But you probably can't argue too hard because the quarterback position is so difficult to fill that you probably have to do that as quick as you can with Dak as well. So they've made some just, they did this. The Cowboys did this.

Do you want to play a little bit of Micah? From your thing, Blake? We could also get back to it later. If we're in a middle ground here, I don't want to get caught in a pickle. Oh, would I sent you? No, just like... I thought you had like a couple minutes cut up. Oh, yeah, yeah.

You want me to pull that up? No, I got it. This is the part that I think everyone remembers. Can we hit a quick pause here? I thought we were talking about the Micah talking about cornerbacks thing. Oh, okay, go ahead. And also that. He looks like he's saying the guest is ready.

So that may also just mean we could go right into it and we'll have a little more time on the other end. Let's do that. Okay. Because I want to fully flesh out the whole Micah makes his cornerbacks better thing. Okay. Well, then let's welcome.

Is the guest ready? Let's see. Do I have this? Is this what I want? What, the Brian Curtis open? Oh, this is the draft profile. I hadn't heard this in a minute. Brian Curtis, Fort Worth, Texas.

Brian Curtis is the editor-at-large for The Ringer, a title even he doesn't understand. He's the second most famous sports writer to attend Pascal High School. He's the foremost authority on radio row pitches for CBD, male enhancement products, and carrot top. co-host of the Pressbox podcast, Brian Curtis.

Okay. That is Brian Curtis. Brian? Yes. Really? Can we license that at the Ringer? Or is that just a dumb zone IP that's, you know, untouchable? We're open source, I think.

I don't know what that really means, but yeah, we're open source. How you been, man? It's great to see. see you i've been good i missed you guys missed you too i keep up with the pod uh but man i feel like if there's ever been a time where the press box could go daily instead of uh twice weekly it's been like the last month my god has anything been going on did i miss some news talk show host gets suspended because of uh pressure from the president of the united states what man I wanted to start there. I know that's jumping right into the deep end, but I've seen a

couple of these stories percolating. I've seen you talk to the awful announcing guys about this a little bit. But to me, what I think is really interesting about the next star, Sinclair, Disney, Kimmel thing is football. And it is the hammer that is bigger than all else. It's the thing people care about more than politics. So I guess just can you kind of walk us through the hardball that Disney or ABC could play with the SEC Monday night football, that sort of thing. Don't you feel like you're talking to your grandpa about telegrams when we talk about affiliates and networks?

I am. And breaking contracts, you know, what's the term? Like if they don't air Kimmel for a certain amount of time, they're in violation of their rights. It's like, boy, this feels 20 years ago. Yeah, we can watch something. but we need KXAS to be the feeder of that thing to us. I mean, that just sounds so prehistoric. But yes, so the affiliates have a certain amount of agency here

where they can say, hey, we don't like that, Jimmy Kim. Well, we feel he's disrespectful. We need to do this and that before we put him back on our air. And we saw even his comeback show the other day, despite getting six plus million viewers, wasn't on in Washington, Portland, New Orleans, Nashville, because those affiliates don't want to show the show, even though he's back on ABC. So he's on ABC, but he's not on in Washington, D.C. or Portland.

What you're talking about is what Disney could come back with and essentially say, hey, you know, either you show the late night show that we want or the actual last valuable live programming in America, infinitely more valuable than late night, than prime time comedies than anything. else, which is football, we could withhold that from you. We could we could use that as a bargaining chip. I mean, it's hard to imagine it would get to like that just feels like the nuclear button

if you're really pulling football games off because you're just going to piss so. I mean, think of whenever, you know, YouTube TV has one of these standoffs with Fox and everybody freaks out because they're going to miss a game. But could that happen behind the scenes? Could that be relayed to Nexstar and Sinclair and these outlets that own affiliates? Absolutely. And I think it shouldn't it'll certainly be the undertone if it's not stated outright. And then if that became public, people would, they would shape it as Jimmy Kimmel's taking football away from everybody.

That's the way the side, the anti-Jimmy Kimmel's side would do it. Took away Fowler and Herbie on Saturday nights. Now he's gone too far. What about the whole Disney, though, wants the, isn't the whole thing that they're trying to merge and have a way higher percentage of ownership of stations than they're allowed?

And like, isn't that at the heart of this whole thing? Yes. I mean, every one of these things, somebody has business, a merger that the FCC needs to at least not at, or not, you know, interfere with. So with this case, it's next star group of affiliates wants to buy more affiliates. What was that percentage we saw that? What's like more than 30, 39 percent of affiliates they would control if they merge, right? That's a lot. You might be getting into territory of like, hey, that's too many affiliates for one company. They need the Trump administration to nod at that. And then the other one here is, of course, ESPN and the NFL network. That too has got to be approved. You know, ESPN made that deal. But as we know, ESPN doesn't operate the NFL network

right now. That will not happen until after this season. And that requires Trump administration approval. That's also a Disney deal. that they need to get through this thing. Why is 39% considered too much? I think 39% might be what it currently is. Okay. And theirs would get it to 80. So what's the fear that just one?

You know, it's your normal consolidation. Controls too many media voices and you won't get a wide variety. Which editorializing on the side here, not really asking, you know, Brian to support me, that seems really performative because, you know, is that? That's not Brian Steams song. It's not. Like, acting as if that's going to stop, like, a manufacturing of consent, if the government needs to, you know, set a narrative, like, oh, we got to keep this group under 40

so we can really have independent voices here. Like, that's insane. Like, that feels like... Yeah, the thing is what just happened. I mean, that... Under the current rules. Exactly. Before the merger.

Yeah. So you bring up the ESPN NFL network thing. We certainly have not talked to you since then. I know the primary headline was Red Zone's going to have commercials. But in practice, what does this really mean? And we don't know, but your prediction, I guess, how coverage would change, if at all. Well, first of all, it means the headline is Ian Rappaport was going to start working for ESPN. I know he's a personal friend of yours, Jake, going back many, many years.

Going back to some of those great Radio Row plugs, you know, and he was selling some Colombian coffee to the masses. What's he going to mean? I mean, first of all, just there was an old president of ESPN who, and these were his words, he called the NFL ESPN's crack cocaine. And I love those words. And essentially, ESPN has gone from the user of crack cocaine to the dealer in this deal, right? They bought the NFL network.

It's like we will actually just own this whole thing and give you somehow even more NFL. Doesn't matter if it's in the A block of every single episode of first take. We're going to find ways to get you more, more insiders, more reporters. We had all those people standing out of stadiums. Now we got Jane Slater also, you know, on our roster here. So there's that. I think the reporting part of it is fascinating to me because, you know, of course, they're making all the right noises about that.

You know, Roger Goodell even called into an ESPN meeting and said, I'm not going to interfere if ESPN publishes a story that makes me uncomfortable, makes one of those rich owners uncomfortable. But I just think it's so naive to think that that will not change under this new regime, where not only does the NFL a network be owned by ESPN, but the NFL itself has an equity stake in ESPN. I mean, if you're like the owner of the Browns or the owner of the Cowboys and you see that, well, mate, let's throw Jerry aside because he actually kind of likes bad news in a way, but let's say you're the owner of the Browns or the Cardinals. Why would you be okay with that? You know, why would there's some great investigation by Don Van Netta and Seth Wickersham? How are you not picking up the phone and being like, guys, what's happened with us? And we know that ESPN has already done so much to like, what's the word I'm looking for to de-emphasize that kind of reporting? You know, the website's really different. There aren't as many long articles in the ESPN world. I say that as somebody who used to write them. There's no daily outside the lines for a Vanat and Wicker sham to go on

after they have a big blockbuster article like that. So I think what you're ultimately going to see is just fewer jobs for people that would write that kind of stuff or do that kind of investigating. That sucks. That's interesting. Yeah, I don't. Not great news. I mean, they've always, it's been a weird way behind the scenes that it seems like they, well, back in your day there, you know, didn't Simmons get suspended for saying something about the commissioner?

When there's no suspensions anymore, you notice. Or tweeting, yeah. How many suspensions of Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith have you ever seen? Right. And I'm, right. And there's different leadership there now. Maybe things are different. But, I mean, I even remember back in those days, I listened to a podcast called, like, it was the baseball today, whatever the morning baseball podcast was catching up on last night's game and talking about what's going on.

Was it Peter? I can't remember the host's name. I really liked it. And he got run because they were just giving the news of the day. And one of the stories was that they put up a Bud Seelig statue. in Milwaukee, and he made a little joke that wasn't really funny about, you know, the pigeons are going to love to soil that thing. And they took him off for a couple days.

He came back on and apologized, and then they got rid of him. Peter Pascarelli. Peter Pascarelli. Okay. Is that story on his Wikipedia page? How he got run? But the point is, there's always been this weird, hey, we're in bed with these guys. We don't want to make them mad at all.

all. But that's a lot different, too, than just hardcore inside Don Van Natta type stuff that you have to let go, you know, as we're reporting on concussions maybe or whatever. Yeah, the truth is 95% of the stuff about the NFL on ESPN isn't going to make anybody at the NFL mad. It's just going to make them happy. We may even say 99%. Right? Like, I'm mad at Jerry for the Michael Parsons trade. Nobody cares. Nobody in NFL headquarters or even where the Cowboys is upset by that. I'm breaking down film to show you how George Pickens gives up on routes. Nobody is upset at that.

Zero. That just feeds interest in the NFL, makes you want to watch Cowboys Packers on Sunday night. It's that last five to one percent of stories that are the kinds of things that irritate them. And that is the thing that's important to protect going forward. So sort of a separate but related thing here is, you know, ESPN launching their own service so that, you know, if, I guess if they wanted to swing the, we could take local sports from you, Hammer, there is at least an alternative or growing alternative for people to be able to go get those games independent of their local affiliate. But I'm confused personally by what the NFL is doing with YouTube other than it just being like, It feels like, hey, I have these two hot, rich friends, I'll set them up. They have nothing in common.

But when I see Roger Goodell trying to hug eye show speed at a press conference, and to me it feels like a misread of the market, you know, I don't feel like 13-year-olds that are really into YouTube or NFL fans or set to become NFL fans, but maybe I'm wrong about that. I don't have kids that age. It just, it feels very incongruent to me. It looks like in one hand, the NFL is the giant, the monolith, and also that there's still very much an old media league.

Yeah. You know, they just need that round of deals, right? And those were network deals. They were like, this is where we're going to get our last big pile of money out of network TV, out of Fox, CBS, NBC. We'll give a little bit to Amazon. We're going to work in Netflix because we believe in that's part of it. And then you see like the, what you're talking about with YouTube, Brazil game, stuff like that.

But yeah, I just don't think they speak that. language and probably it's because they haven't had to speak that language it's you know the NBA is so online in so many ways and so trying to tell you it's online in so many ways you know that Adam silver compressed conference the other day where he's like well you know we have young people that just watch highlights on Twitter it's like I don't know if you know this but you're not to get paid for that most of the time like you actually want those people to watch some games because otherwise your product is gonna kind of fade but the NFL is just

I never had to worry about that. Maybe that's where that weirdness comes from. Yeah, it is a bit strange. I guess I think about the NFL's place in society a lot, which is weird. But, you know, like I think when you think about these threats over Kimmel and politics, it's, like, I don't think the guys in the Punisher shirts are that big of NFL fans. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I feel like it's not a monolith, but it's, I don't.

I think that it's right or Republican coded, but I don't really think that it's a Republican thing. I think that your hardcore Trump guy is not into the NFL like I am or like you are or even somebody who just doesn't care about politics at all. It just occupies a weird place in society to me that we can't really classify because everything else is broken down by politics. Yes, I agree with that. If you remember the Kaepernick stuff, which is now like 10 years ago, right? wouldn't 10 years ago this this month I think it's amazing that that that much time has gone by there was movement if you looked at like national review online publication saying I'm done with the NFL I'm you know I a right winger am out because the NFL is you know it's changed in a way

I don't like and that just kind of went nowhere you know and then 50 million people watch the NFC championship game was like oh well so the crack still hits that's the thing and that's why I think I think about the NFL a lot is just because it seems to be the last, it's just impervious. Like, I don't know where the new consumers are coming from, but I know they keep coming. You know, I know that the deals keep being worth more.

Like he said, he has pins like, why not more NFL? And everything else in society feels very vulnerable to just be picked off by like, I'm mad about this. And I got a few other friends that are mad about it too. It's interesting. Yeah. And it was kneeling.

It was head injuries. I mean, remember, there have been a lot of things that have come along and be like, is this the end of football? Is this it? And we didn't ever get there. Like we have parents being like, you kidding me? I'm not going to have my kid play this game. Come sit next to me while we watch it for nine hours together on Sunday.

Like, you may not play it, but let's watch it. Yeah, that is interesting because it seems like it did have some kind of effect on Bud Light. As far as sales and things like that, I don't know. But, like, Mike Pence went to a game and indignantly left before it started because he just couldn't take the kneeling. Like, that was so performative. But he was obviously trying to get. All right. Follow me, I'm leaving.

Everybody else behind me. And everybody's like, well, they got other domestic lights. They got other shoe companies. They don't have other NFLs, you know? Yeah. It's the gorilla. Danza, don't know.