The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Colin Cowherd Podcast - Chuck Klosterman on The 90’s, MJ, OJ, Steroid Era Baseball

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

First, Fake Questions, Real Answers (3:00), including why Colin has been so hard on the NBA recently, why he takes issue with Andre Iguodala saying Rasheed Wallace would be better than Giannis in today’s NBA, if Zach Wilson reportedly hooking up with his mom’s friend is a big deal, and why accusations that Colin is anti-Cowboys are completely ridiculous.  Then, New York Times best-selling author and contributor Chuck Klosterman joins Colin to discuss his latest book, The Nineties: A Book, the coverage of Michael Jordan’s pursuit of a baseball career (10:00), the difference in media in the MJ and LeBron eras (14:00), why Phil Jackson’s “Zenmaster” reputation has aged so well (24:00), what the media missed during the McGwire/Sosa home run chase (26:00), if college football was better in the BCS era (32:00), how the OJ Simpson chase and trial changed television (44:00), the best thing about the decade (47:00), and the case for KD becoming an unapologetic permanent NBA mercenary (1:04:00). Follow Colin and The Volume on Twitter for the latest content and updates and check out FanDuel for the best wagering and daily fantasy action! #Herd See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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The Colin Coward podcast presented by the Fandul Sportsbook. Hi, everybody. Welcome in to the Thursday morning podcast. I think you're going to love it. Chuck Klosterman is a brilliant writer. He's got a new book. It's called The 90s. Fascinating.

He re-examines a crazy decade, politically, pop culture and sports. But first, fake questions, real answers. I have stuff I want to talk about. Don't want to wait for people to ask me. Fake questions, real answers. Here we go. Colin, you've been very critical of the NBA this week on your show. Adam Silver had.

some talking points that bothered you. Why? Because I love the NBA. And they've got an optics problem. There's this belief that young people run Silicon Valley. No, they don't. Silicon Valley is run by 50-year-olds. Larry Ellison is 77. Mark Zuckerberg's one of the kids. He's bumping up against 40. Kids can't run an industry. You think tech Silicon Valley's 20-year-olds. It's not. The average age of founders is mid-40s. You can't let players run the NBA. They're 20-year-olds.

Many of them for the first time in their life becoming mega-rich. In fact, in most cases, most athletes becoming mega-rich. In baseball, the front offices control the sport. In football, the GM and coach does. In basketball, the players do. Think about the NBA's optics right now. Kiree quit in his team. KD's quitting on Brooklyn, Hardin quit on Philadelphia and Houston, Ben Simmons refuses to play.

These are four of the biggest names in the sport. It's bad optics. Adam Silver held another press conference this week, and he's got two issues. He's got to convince players to actually want to play games and to honor their contracts. You don't think that's bad optics? It's embarrassing for a sport I love. Dear Colin, I saw you got worked up that. André Iguodala said if Rashid Wallace played today, he would be better than Janice.

Go into it more. I found it amusing. So did I. I covered Rashid Wallace. You know, it is interesting how some things, like we know with art and wine, they obviously get better with age, right? But it's like Bo Schembeckler. Bo Schembeckler is viewed today as a football coach greater than I think he was viewed while he was a football coach. He lost eight Rose Bowls.

Whenever they played Ohio State, I thought he was the second best coach on the field. Every time he played in a Rose Bowl against my Huskies, I thought to Don James, he was clearly the second best coach on the field. The Big Ten was never easier to win. Wisconsin was a joke during Bow's run. Now they're a top 15 program. Penn State wasn't in the conference. Now it's one of the five, six hardest places to play in college football. Jim Harbaugh is winning as many games.

The Big Ten's never been better. Harbaugh succeeded at the professional level, got to a Super Bowl. Harbaugh is dismissed, mocked, eye-rolled by the Michigan Faithful. He's a better coach in a much tougher Big Ten than Bo Shembeckler ever was. That's my take on Sheed. Rashid Wallace's career average was 14 and a half points. He was a walking technical foul. He was a child who had a sweet jumper for

for a big guy. Janice is the face of the league. When Janice wakes up and then goes to bed, for those 18 to 15 hours, he is an adult, his disposition, his maturity. Rashid Wallace was a talented kid. Folks, he never averaged 20 a game. He was the third or fourth best power forward in the West.

Carl Malone was better, Duncan was better, Kevin Garnett was better. I liked him. But he was a kid. He wasn't even the face of the Blazers, even though he was the most talented. Yonis is the face of the league. Dear Colin, Zach Wilson's story is intriguing. If your mom's best friend hit on you, what would you do?

My mom's best friend was heavy set, shall we say. But if my mom's best friend was a smoke show and I was no longer living in the house, I wasn't married and she wasn't married. I'd give it a run. But let's be honest, most of our mom's best friends are using a walker and eat candy for dinner. My mom's best friend thought crocheting was a physical activity. I'd pass. Dear Colin, I always feel like you're anti-Dallas Cowboys and anti-Dak.

Recently, you had a top-10 quarterback pole and didn't put DAC in it. The executives did. what say you. Yeah, the executives put him at number 10. It's a top 10 list. I had him like 12. Here's all you need to know about the Cowboys. Let's talk reality.

Tom Brady has more playoff wins as a Tampa Bay Buccaneer, and he's been there two years, than the Dallas Cowboys do since 1996. What do you want me to say about the Cowboys? Boys. They're an underachieving mega brand. That's what they are. They're right now the Lakers. They're sort of Kentucky basketball. Double check on who the Wildcats and John Calapari lost to in the tournament this year. St. Peter's. The Cowboys fewer wins than Tom Brady as a Buccaneer in the playoffs.

In the last 26 years, it's who they are. He's a best-selling author, a writer for the New York Times, Washington Post, Esquire, GQ, a magazine all never appear in. His name is Chuck Klosterman. He's got a book called The 90s. A fascinating look back at a wild decade. So, Chuck, one of the things you discuss. of the many topics is the Michael Jordan baseball career. And it's fascinating to me because you touch on something that I've talked about with friends all the time,

how something is perceived later compared to how it was perceived at the time. So, you know, Jordan's baseball career is considered largely a whiff. I don't know how I thought about it in the mid-90s. Take me back, Chuck. What was the reporting and the coverage on it? Were we bewildered? Were we disappointed? Were we kind of impressed that he gave it a run?

What was the coverage on MJ's baseball career back then? Well, you know, what you're mentioning is very true. It's interesting to me how this period of his career now has sort of been reconsidered as charming. Like, I think that people now look at as sort of a, like an interesting detail in this person's kind of trajectory. you know, that in some ways has humanizes him, although it doesn't really make a lot of sense. I mean, at the time, it was very strange. You know, we were in this period where there were people like Bo Jackson and Dion Sanders who were playing multiple sports, but those were very different situations.

Not only had they played in college, but they seemed to have this sort of physical imposing quality that would transcend to any sport, whereas Jordan is this guy who's 6-6. pretty wiry. I mean, I guess you'd argue he could play volleyball, but he doesn't, he doesn't leave the body that's made to play baseball. So then the thinking was, well, why is he doing this? Like, is it because of the death of his father and his father had loved baseball, which is sort of what Jordan implied, you know, there were the conspiracies about this idea of gambling, that he was secretly suspended by David Stern, and this was some way for him to keep earning his money like it had been some kind of compromise. There was this idea that maybe he

perceived himself as invincible and that there wasn't really a sport that he could not excel at. It was very strange. And, you know, his profile at the time was larger than any player in Major League Baseball. So during spring training of those years, you know, it was sort of the main story surrounding baseball. And then the season would start. He was relegated, you know, to the minor leagues. And then we kind of go back to our normal coverage. I guess what I find interesting about it is to me, it sort of illustrates the last period in American history where baseball was still seen as different than other sports. And somehow his desire to play baseball did not seem as maybe paradoxical as it would seem now. I mean, we were thinking about

this time when, like, you know, Ken Burns' baseball was on PBS. And there was this idea that baseball was just different than other sports. And I would guess when you were a younger person, particularly for like your father, there was this idea that baseball had the separation from football and basketball, even as it lost its kind of popularity. And I look at Jordan's attempt to play baseball as sort of the last time when this thinking was still so common that the greatest basketball player in the world would somehow seem, see a logic in trying to play this sport that was really receding from the cultural conversation. There's two people in my life that I I consider had a force field around them.

Reagan, who once laughed and joked about bombing Russia, and it was a story for like a day. And MJ, that MJ, a lot of vagaries here, selfish, punched a teammate, quit twice, hard to coach, tough on teammates, failed at baseball, was divorced, gambling controversies. LeBron James, big knock is he really didn't criticize China much when he had an opportunity to.

Oh, yeah, once is a free agent and he left. Is that I think history would be much more favorable to LeBron, not that he'll be criticized. But he would be far less criticized if he played when Jordan did. And Jordan played now. Jordan would be pummeled. It's almost as if sports center never ran any of his misses. And there was a bubble around Jordan. And Chuck, I always felt a lot of it was he was the first in on the big shoe deal.

That Nike surrounded him with an impenetrable shield, a bubble. And Reagan felt a little bit like that now with Twitter and social media. and the polarization, Reagan would get crushed as doddering, old, goofy, actor, vacuous, and they had his critics. So that my takeaway on Michael is he was kind of fortunate. You could have a lot of flaws in the 90s. Am I wrong on that? Well, no, I mean, in terms of one's ability to sort of go through life and have huge parts of it hidden,

Everybody prior to the social media universe benefited from that. I mean, going back to the idea of FDR being paralyzed, essentially, was something that you could sort of keep out of the public conversation. I mean, the thing you say about LeBron, it's pretty fascinating in the sense that I can't think of many other examples of a situation where somebody was very young, and before they had done anything, was sort of deemed as this individual is going to become,

you know, the apex of his sport. And then it actually worked out. I mean, Tiger Woods sort of had that, but then that all sort of dissolved, you know, you know, once we move into like 2006 and 2007, you know, LeBron's, the fact that he's never had a cataclysmic failure is surprising. Now, you look at Jordan, it is interesting. I often think that, you know, that we remember these guys for their. their great achievements, but they're sort of defined by their greatest failure.

And, you know, Jordan's greatest failure, if you really boil it down, was his inability to control his competitive nature. Yeah. That at times made him misread both like his ability to play baseball, his ability to come back with the Wizards and be the same, although the two years he spent with the Wizards probably isn't as bad as we now seem to sort of remember it. But, you know, Jordan going to say Gamble when they're playing the Nibble. and disappearing all night with his dad and coming back and they're down to O.

Now, it is pretty obvious to say, like, in the social media era, that would be very different. There would have been attempts to argue that he didn't really care about winning. But all of those things were removed from the equation to the point where we now look at Jordan's kind of almost sociopathic competition as our favorite thing about him. The idea that he would cheat, you know, Buzz Peterson's grandma at goldfish when he goes, go fish when they goes home with him at Christmas. The idea that like he would keep Isaiah Thomas off the Olympic team. All these things that in truth are sort of signs of somebody who is unable to sort of turn off

this desire to dominate. We love that. And maybe if he had been punished at the time for it, we would think differently. But because he wasn't punished for that in the 90s, we forgive it now retroactively. Yeah, it's almost like when Oliver Stone made Gordon Gecko, he did not make him to be a beloved character. And it just so happens he was, right? Well, I mean, that's how I mean, you look at a character like Archie Bunker, same way, where it's like when someone tries to do satire in a way that is so close to reality that a lot of times people will enjoy it at face value. You know, like Jordan's sort of overheated competition, we enjoyed that at face value.

It was the idea that it meant something else wasn't really part of it. I mean, now when you look at an athlete in the spotlight, whether it's, you know, LeBron or Kyrie Irving or, you know, Aaron Rogers, any of these guys, all their decisions that they make that are ancillary to the sport they play are sort of injected back into the view of them as an athlete. So if we look at, say, you know, Aaron Rogers and we say to ourselves, well, there are all these issues that I have with sort of his worldview, maybe somebody has. They try to kind of fit these into our perception of him as a quarterback. And there was less of that in the past. I mean, the idea of looking at an athlete seriously for his political views outside of, you know, Muhammad Ali and these kind of, you know, Jim Brown to a degree, Kareem to a degree. There wasn't an expectation where now that expectation is sort of applied across the board, that every person who kind of comes into the public eye as an as a as a on the field or on the court

performer, we also are considering what we think their moral worldview is, you know, and that's something that does seem to have come with social media. That wasn't part of traditional institutional media that much. This baseball season turned K's into cash, big hits into big wins with fans. Fandul Sportsbook. Okay, right now, new customers. Step up to the plate. No sweat first bet.

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human potential. Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Clipper Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show.

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You have a footnote about Buddhism and the Zen master Phil Jackson, who I thought, came across really well in the MJ documentary as a level-headed, not stoic, but in a sea of intensity and toxicity, he came across sort of a stable 30,000 feet arms around the juggling all the weird personalities. But you talk about this in your book, the 90s, about how he is viewed more faithful. favorably now the Zen master stuff, then probably it would be viewed today. Maybe he'd be viewed as weird or quirky. Well, there was a strange period, kind of starting with the late 80s, but moving through

really the middle to late 90s, where the idea of, say, new age thinking, or what we call new age thinking, what Phil Jackson was doing isn't like he's not staring at crystals or something, but he was part of this world, right? Well, this is something that, you know, kind of emerges in the late 60s. and early 70s and is seen as sort of like the fringe of the leftist world. Now we live in a period where we look back on that and it's kind of quaint and seems almost like what those silly hippies, what they were into. But there was this one period where a lot of the people who had been involved with New Age

thinking at its inception had moved into these positions of kind of fiscal and financial power. And the things like the Biosphere project, that was an extension of new age thinking. So when Phil Jackson was, you know, having, you know, his players read these books about like, you know, Native American taboos and all these things. Like it was like that was a strange, interesting thing. But it was like, I mean, certainly bracketed with his success, it sort of made that seem reasonable. You know, many years later, I interviewed Kobe Bryant. And I was surprised by how much animosity toward Phil Jackson, along with the respect he had for him, that Kobe still felt. And that Kobe really felt that, you know, Phil Jackson presented himself in the media as this reasonable person and then would use that position to pit him against Shaq or to tell Shaq things through his criticism of Kobe and all these.

It is an interesting deal. There was, I think, a point where, like, Phil Jackson almost seemed Teflon. Like he had had so much success and he seemed so much smarter than the people around him or so different than the kind of person who had that job. You didn't really hear him criticize. And now you do. I mean, his tenure with the Knicks was weird. And I think just his inability sort of to disappear from public life in a way has changed the way we think about him. You know, I think as a 90s figure, Phil Jackson was almost untouchable.

Right. You know, you touch on something else, the steroid era. And this is my memory. I lived at the time, I can recall this. anyway, where you do now, Portland. And I was a local sportscaster. And I remember during the Sosa-Maguire chase, we would turn into this special feed. NBC, I worked at an NBC affiliate, would have a special feed.

So McGuire and Sosa, but mostly McGuire would talk after every game. And I remember McGuire would come in and these sleeveless shirts. And we used O's joke in our sports office. We're like, his arms are bigger than our legs. He's on steroids. It's so obvious. And I don't remember being bothered by it. The sport didn't seem to care.

So I didn't care. Baseball was fun. Let's go back and reexamine that as your book does the 90s. This is Chuck Klosterman. We kind of, I'm going to lay it out there for you because I'm not, I'm just getting into your book. My view from outside the perimeter is, it saved the game.

How was it viewed when it was happening? Well, even as you're saying what your memory of this is of like seeing McGuire and seeing like his arms and thinking like those look like legs or it. It would be interesting, I think, to go back and and sort of maybe watch footage of what you were saying at the time because here's what I have kind of come to conclude about this period of time. that it's very difficult for people to think about that period without sort of pulling in the way they think about it in a, in a, in sort of a modern context. So there was this idea in retrospect that, well, some people saw this and they were like, it's obvious that these guys are on steroids.

It's it's completely clear. Everyone knows it, but nobody cares because we like the result. And there's also people who say like, oh, well, we were just naive. We didn't understand it at the time. As far as I can tell from both the combination of my memory, but specifically going back and sort of rereading stories at the time, the real answer was much more in the middle of those two ideas, which is that it wasn't as though people had no idea that steroids were out there. I mean, Ben Johnson had his situation years before. It was definitely in the public conversation, but there was a lack of information about how steroids worked. specifically this idea that there was almost a belief that steroids were some, you know, a magic bullet that you inject it and your muscles get big.

And every rational person was like, that's not how the world works. So it's like it seemed unlikely that guys were just taking steroids and suddenly becoming these, you know, these colossive sluggers. There was also, I think, a lack of information about the psychological upside to steroids. Right. I mean, what really happened and I, this was mentioned with Barry Bond. more than anyone, which is that because there was this belief that he was on steroids, an opposing pitcher was then afraid to challenge him, seeing that this guy had this, you know, assuming this guy had this advantage that they did not have. We didn't, you know, and the third

thing being that the biggest thing that steroids did was allow guys to train harder and recover faster. So in some ways, it did seem as though the people who would have succeeded anyways just succeeded more. As far as what like what did people think at the time? Well, of course that was varied, but I think it is much more varied than we want to believe, that we like to accept that there were straightforward ideas about this and they were not. But that's the case with most history. I mean, we're always looking back at time and coming to these conclusions that this was the normative way to think or that this was the overwhelming perception of an event. And of course, when you go back and look, it's never like that, you know,

If nothing else, there's almost a desire, particularly by the media, to always sort of inject the opposing view, which gives this kind of weird illusion of multiplicity of thought. You also look at college football in the B.C.S. era. And Chuck, I've really been hitting on this for the last couple of weeks with the Big Ten expansion, is that political and sports pundits often throw. topics into an outrage blender. And that if you give them some thought and you give them some time, there's more normalcy to a lot of this expansion than we think. But we live in a 24-7 news cycle, and I have to have a strong opinion tomorrow. And I think the expanding Big Ten, the emerging Big 12,

combined with the PAC 12, that with an expanded playoff, it's going to look more like college basketball. We won't care how people get in the tournament. The teams that should get in, we'll get in. Be at the SEC, the ACC, there'll be one from the Mountain West. We'll have 16 teams. And that we just live in a world of cable news, getting clicks, a lot of outrage,

and that most things are layered. And also, Chuck, I believe, though when anything new happens, it's a bit of an avalanche. And that over time, whether it's tech, everything has a gold rush quality, right? everybody's in Bitcoin. It explodes. Now it pulls back. The truth is Bitcoin will survive and in one year from now it will have survived its great depression. Right.

But we don't, the way media covers things, it's very in the moment and very urgent. So let me roll into your argument about college football. There is this sense that college football now is a bit of a mess. And my argument is, wait, time out. I grew up in the 70s. I mean, sometimes the best team, you didn't even get a play for it. And you talk about the BCS era in college football more pragmatically. And I'd like you to dive into that a little bit.

Well, yeah, I mean, I got to say, I kind of disagree with what you're saying here. Because I feel like the shift that you're talking about is slightly more dramatic than sort of the way you're perceiving. Well, can you compare it to the NCAA basketball tournament? The NCAA basketball tournament still has the ELLGELD. of all the conference tournaments. I think, like a lot of people, I've become someone who almost enjoys that week more than the actual tournament because you're seeing teams who are playing for something that really is the, maybe the fulfillment of the kid's dream. You know, the kid goes to, you know, Central Michigan or whatever. His dream is to just make the NCAA tournaments.

So you're seeing this game where the outcome of that will potentially be the greatest memory in that kid's life. where with the big schools in the ACC and the Big Ten, you know, they go into the season with the assumption they're going to be in the tournament. And I feel like in general, we have kind of dramatically attempted to push both college basketball, but really college football, into a pro reality. And the difference that, you know, the idea of USC and UCLA going into the Big Ten, And it just to me that it changes a lot about what made college football separate from other sports in the sense that like, I mean, I think it's always really interesting to me that, you know, how many years has it been that when the Mississippi Old Miss football game meant a lot in the national picture? It's been a long time.

There's still a lot of interest in that game. That game still has meaning in the state of Mississippi. You know, and I see what college sports are doing is like, I mean, here's a great, I guess, an ancillary point. Think of other controversies in your life, you know, adding the DH, having pro basketball players play in the Olympics. With these situations, I always recall there being two strong sides to this, somebody wanting it and somebody being against it. Who is for these conference realignments in college football outside of the networks and a few university presidents? Have you heard anybody who's a Pac-12 fan who's like, this is great? I mean, it's a strange deal.

It's almost as though we feel as though we have no agency in this. Like, it has to happen because money dominates everything and it just has to happen. And we're, I think, oddly accepting that this is going to be a completely different sport to experience in five years. I mean, what you see on the field will not be as separate as the product we see now. But it seems like its social meeting will be totally different. I mean, it has hurt college basketball that it has become more of a pro-like game. Like when you watch a college basketball game now, especially if it's in the middle of the year, and the teams are good, what you're really seeing to me very often seems just like a lesser version of the pro game.

Where it used to be in my relatively recent memory, like, you know, the Big East had a style of play, the Big Ten of the style of play, the SEC of the style of play. And it almost rewarded the fan who cared and was knowledgeable and interested in this. And now I feel like they're almost making college football into something that will be more accessible for people who want to play college fantasy and for gambling. And to make sure that there's not that one week where like all the SEC teams play subdivision teams and there's no game for CBS. I feel like almost everything that has happened with this change has been unpopular. among people who like football and also kind of just weirdly assumed to be inevitable. And I don't think it was.

I don't think this had to happen. Well, do you feel like it had to happen? Yeah. So college, I love college football. You're the only guy who really talks about this. I mean, this is also the weird thing. Because ESPN is driving so much of this because they dominate the college football telecast, you turn on all those ESPN shows.

They're talking about basketball, even though college football is substantially more popular than the NBA. I feel like people aren't talking about this enough. Oh, I talk about it constantly. I talked about college football today. Chuck, my feeling was there's a seven-year TV ratings and attendance decline in the sport. It is too insular and regional. And the biggest problem with the game, because it has no czar as a billion-dollar league. This is why the UFC stole so much real estate from boxing.

There was no centralized voice until Dana White arrived. Like him or not, here's the message. I'm delivering it. Here's the fight card. We're all in. Boxing was Aram. Boxing was Al Heyman. It was Don King. There was no leadership. So college football has no leader. The problem being, of course, is all these power brokers, Sabin, Dabo, they run the sport. They do whatever's good for their schedule. They put buys before the big games. So college football has an overwhelming issue, and I think this helps solve it. it's got a big game problem. On any given Saturday, Labor Day is wide open. It should be college footballs.

There's 95 games. There are two I have to watch, Notre Dame Ohio State, Georgia, Oregon. The following week, there's 98 games. There's one I have to watch, Texas Bama. Is that in college football, I don't get an expanded playoff forces because you can lose multiple games now. USC will now play Wisconsin, Penn State, Michigan, Ohio State, Iowa. They literally have a UCLA game and a Notre Dame game. The sport doesn't have enough big games.

But to me, you seem to be describing it as purely, and maybe this is, maybe not only this is your opinion, maybe it's the right opinion. You seem to be describing this purely as a form of entertainment, that there is really no difference between college, football and the film industry or any of these things. Because the entire filter you're going through on this is sort of like, how does this, you know, and I think that this is a, that's not an unreasonable argument. I mean, ultimately this is all entertainment and television does control all of this. But, I mean, when you say you talk about the seven-year decline in ratings and revenue, I mean, that has, it's just, I mean, I think all sports in the United States,

with the possible exception of the NFL, are sort of eroding that. They're losing, just because things are more splintered. And I think the regional quality of college football is kind of what, in some ways, insulated it. But by keeping that regional quality, they're still going to be interested in this sport, no matter what it sort of happens in sort of a national specter. Games in Florida are still going to be popular in Florida. And I think that, like, I mean, I don't know. when you watch a college game, it just, to me, it means so much more than watching a pro game,

because in a sense, if you watch the Giants play the Cowboys, okay, you're watching guys who happen to pay taxes in those communities, that everything just kind of changes and cycles through. When you watch, say, Stanford and Notre Dame, you are also thinking about the kind of kid who goes to Stanford, the kind of kid who goes to Notre Dame, like that, that even though these athletes are outside of that. And that certainly a lot of guys who, like, I mean, a lot of guys who, you know, maybe play football for Duke, maybe couldn't get into Duke in any other way or whatever, there's still an, like, the university sees them as an extension of the student body. And I just, I think it's weird that we're just sort of accepting that the thing that made the sport

unique is the, like, the primary obstacle to its popularity. I just, I don't think, I, that, it's troubling to me. Like, I, I, I, I'm pretty, disenchanted by what has happened. I mean, when I heard USC and UCLA were going to the Big Ten, I mean, it just at first I was like, so, so none of this matters. Like the, like, it was strange enough when the Big Ten had to suddenly have 11 teams. Took me a long time to get used to that. But now we realize, well, the Big Ten is just a name. It's just a word.

Like, it's like we, all these things that are just words, you know. For the record, overwhelmingly. the media that covers college football and the fans who enjoy it agree with you. So I'm wrong often, generally with conviction, but that's just my take. So I also want to talk about something about television. And your book is about the 90s. And, you know, the 90s, I was just getting married, been married, just having kids. actually just had my daughter

late 90s, early 2000. Did I ask? How old are you now? 58. 58. So I'm 50. So you're 8 years later. You talk about the OJ trial, how it changed television.

I can remember the brown couch in Tampa, Florida I was laying on during the verdict and hearing people in the apartment complex react to the verdict. How did it change television in your opinion? Well, I mean, in a lot of ways, I think when you look at every aspect of the O.J. Simpson scenario, the crime itself, his Bronco chase on the highway, the length of the trial, the amount of characters who kind of moved through that trial and temporarily became super famous, Cato Caelin or whatever, you know, the idea of talking about Marsha Clark's hairstyle and all of these things. It was almost as if all of the things that people had been, that like naysayers and critics had been saying about television since its inception, suddenly happened. Like the idea of seeing a tragic news event purely as entertainment. The idea of seeing real people as characters. The idea that something is meaningful simply because it's on television, simply because the trial is being shown.

and that the interest in it perpetuates a greater interest so that the obsession that the country or the world had with O.J. Simpson's trial was not necessarily a product of what happened, but of a need to be included in what everybody else was interested in. I mean, it is. I don't look at something and you say, like, well, this was some kind of social tipping point. I mean, to me, it seems clearly that that was. that the way people talk about current events and the assumption of what a current events coverage will be was shifted and sort of misshapen by that period. And the fact that it went on for 14 months is just a staggering thing. I mean, look at how rarely the war in Ukraine is now mentioned as opposed to the way it was two months ago. And that's a war, right? I mean, the idea that there was interest in this trial for 14 months, pretty much nonstop, and that it was still kind of reaching its crescendo at the end. I mean, you say you remember the verdict?

I mean, so do I. I think most people who were alive during that period remember that, and they remember where they were during the Bronco chase. I think those are two things that people use in a way that people in the past would have used landing on the moon or the assassination of Kennedy or any of these things. And that's odd. It's odd that this athlete's trial became that for that period of time. And it's a very 90s thing in a way because it was like it's a murder trial and the stakes felt low. It's strange. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged.

It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games. and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care which I'm saying. Yep, that's me, Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media.

Well, somewhere along the way, This platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment. And the next, we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast.

It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. You know, Chuck, something that I have noted a couple times on the air,

I was fortunate enough when I worked at ESPN to have President Barack Obama on the air with me twice. So during his eight years, for no reason other than good fortune, he talked to Andy Katz at ESPN. He would have Andy Katz and he would do their little 64 pool every year. And he came on with me twice in radio. And the second time I asked him a question and I got probably his best response. And I said, you're the first president in the history of this country. that has had to preside over America with this vile and reactionary weapon called Twitter and social media,

and that every action is viewed and often viewed harshly. And I just ask him, have you ever thought about that? And perhaps it was playing to his vanity. But he gave a more elaborate answer about that we were becoming a more a rougher, society and a less empathetic society or a more judgmental society, if I recall. And I think about this. When I look at the 90s, Chuck, I'm going to throw this out there, not related to your book, and I just want you to fire back at me.

I could be wrong. But people that were public used to be popular in the 90s. Nobody is popular. Presidents aren't popular. I don't know the unlikable qualities of Obama. He wore a brown suit. Now, if you're a conservative, you could disagree with policies. Commissioners aren't popular.

Governors aren't popular. Senators aren't popular. Tom Cruise, some of obviously Scientology, is not really, he's polarizing. There are no truly popular figures. There are only polarizing figures. Maybe Tom Hanks or Denzel is an exception. But in the 90s, you could be somewhat worshipped. It doesn't mean it's healthy, Chuck.

But I feel like 90s was the last time that we loved public figures and we defended them righteously with their issues. Now we seek their problems. Yeah. Well, you know, I think hearing what you say, but I guess if I was giving my answer, I would say the 90s are actually the beginning of this shift. And here's why I say that. You know, when you look back, say celebrities of, well, the relatively distant past, Joe DiMaggio and Maryland Manson, or Maryland, Maryland Monroe.

So Chitamaccio and Marilyn Monroe. You got these figures who, you know, they were seen as almost separate from the rest of society. And partially that was because the assumption was what they had done to achieve that, was remarkable. That DiMaggio's greatness as a player, Marilyn Monroe's beauty, but also her stage presence and all of these things. Like there was a reason that they were separate.

When you get to the 90s, you see the rise of several interesting things. Reality television being one, the central one, but also the fact that the most popular form of nonfiction writing became memoir writing. And a certain kind of confessional music, which had always existed, was sort of covered in a different way that somebody was more interesting because of the experience they had as opposed to the song they wrote about it. And I think that that changed people's perception of how valid celebrity was. That if they saw somebody who was famous because they were on the real world, or if someone like Elizabeth Wurthel writes Prozac Nation, where she seems to just kind of be admitting the darkest things about her life, you know, for kind of like for reasons that aren't necessarily clear,

I think that changed people's perception on how we're supposed to feel about a famous person. Because what you're describing now is true in the sense. that the idea of like a universally beloved person, that that just doesn't happen. Even in politics, go back and look at, I mean, maybe it makes more sense, but like, look at the approval rating for Colin Powell in 1992 from both sides of the aisle, from Democrats and Republicans. His approval rating was almost untouchable. Like, who would be a political figure like that now?

Like, what would have to happen? What would have to happen? We can't even create a hypothetical one because there was, you can't because what you, like, what positions would this hypothetical politician have that would make, you know, that would make them completely beloved by people with a kind of disparate interest, you know? The binary nature of society, you know, say going into the 2000 election, this is maybe even the better example. So going into the 2000 election, I'm sure you remember this.

The overriding description of Gore and Bush was that these guys are identical. They're both white guys who went to Ivy League schools. Gore, in some ways, was seen as more reactionary because of who he selected for Veep and who his wife was. Bush at the time was somebody who spoke Spanish and was seen as like a kind of compassionate conservative, which kind of merged them in the middle. The reason people were interested in Ralph Nader was not because he was a third choice, but because he was seen as a second choice outside of this sort of conventional political world. Then that election happens.

It's chaos. 9-11 happens. Prior to that, the Supreme Court makes the decision to basically keep Bush installed his presidency and not allow a recount. And that swapped everything, that these two guys who had at one point seemed identical, where there's like a rage against the machine video about how they're identical. It was so private that the idea was, oh, no, they're diametrically opposed. And in fact, everything is diametrically opposed. That there are only two sides to anything.

Not just to an issue, but to a person. There's the good and there's the bad, and that's it. I mean, that is the way we understand the world now. And everybody sort of recognizes that it's a problem. Like, no one says it's good that the world has become more binary. But everyone also accepts that it has and is trying to live within those conditions. Chuck, what, when you finish a book or a project of this depth, and nature and you look at it from the rear view mirror what is your favorite quality of the

90s you know it's it's this is the the thing I'm not supposed to say I realize and that that this will be seen as troubling but I think when people feel nostalgia for the 90s and I really tried to stay away from nostalgia with this book I tried to stay away from thinking about events to my own personal experience but I think when people do do do that when they look back at something from that period. They're like, oh, that was a good time. You know, I like liberty. And you ask them why. I think what it was was less social pressure to be involved with society. Like it was still completely understandable to have your own thoughts and keep them to yourself and to, you know, if you wanted to engage with whatever the

like the public discourse voice, you could, but you didn't have to. There was no, sense that, for example, someone like Michael Jordan, as we talked about earlier, that our perception of him as a basketball player was going to radically shift because, you know, he was unwilling to come out against Jesse Helms. Like, he was criticized for that, but it didn't completely alter his perception. You know, when you look at celebrity from this period, you know, movie Titanic or whatever. It's like Leonardo DiCaprio became this massive star in a way that we really never experienced before. And yet there was no expectation that we had to understand what he thought about the world. He was not expected to give an opinion about the 2000 election. It would have

almost seemed at the time ridiculous to ask him. And now that's part of it. So when I think of the 90s and like, what do I miss about it? I just think that the stakes were lower and that the idea of just being a person going through life with your own concerns was not perceived as being like self-sistic and selfish. It was just kind of perceived as the way people move through the time. Now, I understand the trouble with that because some people would say like, well, that's just sort of shutting off the rest of the world so that you can be happy, you know, in your own insular private society. I guess. But in some ways, I think that's what good times are. A good time for a country is when people are able to think about their own life.

And I think that that's something the 90s afforded people, a chance to just be themselves and not worry about other people. Yeah, I mean, if you go back to your high school day, certainly mine, there were the quiet kids. There were the shy kids. There were the kids that didn't want to be engaged socially. And that was completely okay. And I know as a public figure, if I tweet something and something else has happened throughout the course of the day or a 24-hour news cycle and somebody has passed, or it's seen as controversial, I'll get criticized as a sportscaster for not having a political or social view on a story. And I think I'm a sportscaster. I was told for the first 20 years

of my career to stay in my lane. Well, no, it's a tough thing because it's sort of like a person wants to be more than what society tells them they can be. And then when you do that, there's this weird penalty for having made, you know, that. Like, I'm curious. Like, how much how much do you think about the reaction to your ideas before you express them? I don't at all, Chuck. My loyalty is to interesting. And so when I build my topics in the morning, I not only want to make the audience feel something or think something,

I'm trying to think of something myself. I feel like the process of building the topic is often more interesting. and it's more rewarding to me than the airing of the topic. Well, I realize that, but to some degree, that can't totally be true. And here's why I say that, because that would also suggest a lack of thoughtfulness. If you never considered what you said, how that would be perceived by people, you can't really have your job being a thoughtless person. So certainly when you wake up in the morning and you're thinking about what you're going to talk about that day,

There must be times when you're like, well, I really think this is true. But if I say this, I realize it's going to be interpreted to mean a very different thing. And then do you alter, do you then alter the way you express it? Or do you say, like, I've got to go ahead on this and just sort of absorb the damage? Because if I don't just go ahead on this, then I'm going to become this false kind of caricature of who I was. There are, John Saracino was a sports writer for the USA today. And one time covering a boxing match, he said, you can write the same story two ways. There are ways that I could deliver something more harshly and off-putting.

And then there are stories, I want to give more context, and I would call it soft-pedaling. Like, folks, this may not be right, but I'm just going to tell you authentically, this is how it lands for me. And that I think you get blowback on it. But there are, as a broadcaster, ways to verbalize things that are perhaps less punitive to the person I'm delivering the blow to. Does that make sense? Oh, sure. But, I mean, you have a particularly interesting job. I mean, it's like, do you ever feel that because your job requires you to have an opinion on almost any pressing issues that it damages the value of those opinions?

But the fact that it's like, it's part of what you need to do. Like, like, it would be very weird if someone called in about Durant wanting to get traded and you're like, I don't know, I haven't really, I don't really have an opinion. You've got to have an opinion. So does that in any ways damage the opinions that you're forced to express? Well, yes. That's a really good point. And that's something I don't talk about. But since you asked it, yes, my, I had this discussion once with Bill Simmons.

I said as I age, I don't want the quality of my work to slip. I want the volume of it to be reduced. And that I'm on a treadmill three hours a day. If you tape me every day, you can find fault and inaccuracies every day. I'm literally just, it's just my show is the equivalent of 28 sports columns a day. I have bad columns. So I think the problem with my job and the frustration I have, Chuck, is that I don't have strong opinions on everything and that it can at times hurt my ratings or hurt my relevancy

is that I don't care deeply and am rarely outraged. I'm outraged if you are harmful to children, women, animals. Sports rarely gets me worked up because I try to be impartial. Therefore, I don't have that sort of visceral view of sports where a guy that, like, Bill, Simmons still screams at a TV over a Celtic game. I don't have that because I've moved so much in my career for commerce. I don't have a favorite team. And so I do think the criticism that people like me have to have an opinion as strong one every day, I've tried to fight it. And sometimes it makes me less interesting. And that I struggle with, that I'm not interesting all the time. Yeah, well, because your self-identities based around being interested. That you identify as a, well,

because I mean you wouldn't have got into broadcasting. Certainly, I mean, your show, you're one of the only shows where the guy just talks at the camera from usually 20 minutes a time. You know, that's a very, that's a different thing. If you, I, you know, because this is something that really happened to me just sort of as I moved through journalism, I guess, is, is it, it seemed like when I was younger, it was easier to, like, having an opinion is always easy for me, but to have a really kind of strong one that somehow was an easier thing when I was. I was young. And I wonder if it was because when I was a younger person, I actually had this unconscious craving for attention. And that once that attention was sort of satiated, it certainly

seemed preposterous that I had to have these, like the idea of feeling, you know, and, but it's tough because the expectation from the consumers that like people aren't interested in moderate ideas. Like they're just not. They're not like, they're not like, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, When they hear a moderate idea, they're like, I could have had that idea. I think what they're interested in is an idea that seems to take something that they thought was no big deal and makes it cataclysmic. And that's a hard thing to gin up every day. Yeah. I think you have spotted not a moral dilemma, but a broadcasting dilemma for what I do.

And I don't think, you know, I'm not going to, you know, I'm interviewing you today. But you have spotted the dilemma that I think about, which is this show is mostly boring. because I'm not outraged by any of these stories. Like, you know, today, just to give you one, I don't think I was outraged on KD, but my take today was the reason the market for him is small is this. So he couldn't play with a domineering player like Westbrook. Okay, I get that.

Then he couldn't play long-term with selfless players like Golden State. That's odd. Now he can't play with a friend, Kyrie. Who can he play with? Well, I mean, you know, we're talking about, we were just referencing earlier, I mean, this is no brilliant insight, but KD has definitely been the most damaged by the social media era of any of any athlete I can think of that in terms of like, like, it's not that he's the only guy who cares as much. A lot of these guys do, but he is the most talented athlete who seems to have a hard time separating himself from how he is perceived. Not even a hard time, an impossible time. Where I actually think that. that his perception of himself is mostly just push back against what other people seem to tell him. Like his whole life is that way. I mean, I don't know, I guess I feel sorry for him in some ways.

But, you know, because people would say like, well, he should just turn off his phone or whatever. But like, that's not the person he is. You know, I was like a rock critic and a movie critic and stuff like that. So when I put books out, my books get reviewed. Sometimes the reviews are bad. It bothers me. People say, just don't read them. It's like, so I spent my whole life reading reviews about other things,

about, you know, reading the Rolling Stone review about the second poison record. Like, I was super interested in that when it came out. So now when people review my own work, I'm not supposed to care. I mean, I think that's how Kevin Durant feels. He's like, so there's all this conversation about people in the NBA. There are people talking about Kyrie. There's people talking about LeBron. There's people talking about Janus, but I'm not supposed to care what they're saying about me.

Like it seems insane to him. But what has happened is it is just, you know, my thing, I think what he should do, I don't know, maybe there's like contractual rules against this, but I think what he should do is try to harness this weakness and make it into a strength. Kevin Durant should say, from now on, the rest of my career, I'm only going to sign one-year deals. I'm just going to go to whatever team I think can put over the top. I'm going to be the ultimate mercenary.

I'm going to see if I can win eight titles in eight years. And I think weirdly public sentiment would change in his favor. Then it would be like, oh, he owns this now. He actually is the ultimate winner. He only cares about winning. Like, if he decided he was going to play for eight different teams in the next eight years, and the idea was every one of those teams was going to be like whoever fit. Like if he went to the Celtics this year.

And then the year after that, he went to whoever took second the year after that. I think it would be an interesting career. That's one of the greatest sports ideas I've ever heard, honestly. But I don't know if I don't know if the contractors, because they used to have those deals where it was like a one plus one deal, like LeBron kept signing. Yes. Where you'd say, I think that might be the only way to do it. And I think some people would say, well, he's going to leave money on the table if he does

this because you can't sign out of Supermax if they keep signing one year deals. But the amount of money he would make outside of the NBA would be insane. I mean, if all he did was go to somebody who was. was playing for the title every year for a decade, his public profile would be huge. And he would also be perceived kind of in the present tense the way we believe Jordan used to be, this merciless guy who would do whatever it took to win a title. So I think that would actually be the best thing he could do, just like completely give up this idea that he cares about team identity at all, that he's just a guy, you know?

The greatest compliment, Chuck, I can give you is what my producer one time said, Hey, do you want Chuck Klosterman on your show? And I said, you can't give Chuck Klosterman 12 minutes. That's not fair. That's like, that's just not fair. That's like, that's like going to a David Bowie or a great brand and saying, we're going to invite you all the way to Texas to play. Just want one song.

It's like Guns and Roses, it was an experience. They'd be three hours late on stage. Then they would get better as the concert went on. You gave your day up for Guns and Roses. There's three hours of waiting. and then three hours of show, basically. Well, you know, you could have me on for 12 minutes. You could tell me I can only talk for 30 seconds a question,

or you could just ask me one question. I appreciate you having me on this at all. I mean, it's, you know, it's always fun to do stuff like this. Chuck, so the book is called The 90s. You're just a fascinating guy. I love that you were willing to say that may be unpopular, but it's something that I think that you're spot on with. And that we live in the 90s,

You were allowed to be private, not have an opinion on controversies. And that was not only accepted, and sometimes it was seen as a bona fide strength. It was rewarded to be apathetic, which is weird, but I was perfect for that time. Absolute pleasure, Chuck. 90s is the book. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot, man.

Make sure to check out the Draymond Green Show. I brought Draymond Green into the volume because one of the more entertaining voices in sports, unique perspective, understands behind the rope. Also chops up with guests like Gary Payton, Zach Levine, Tracy McGrady. Make sure download the Draymond Green Show wherever you get your podcast, only on the volume podcast network. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.

This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged.

It's the enhanced. games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me. Clivert Taylor the 4th.

You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Cliford Show. This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to The Cliford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok.

the Look Back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it.

With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to Look Back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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