The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Colin Cowherd Podcast - Should Bears Trade For Kyle Shanahan? New Aaron Rodgers Documentary, UFO’s, Clark/Reese The New Magic/Bird?

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

Colin is joined by Danny Parkins, host of “Breakfast Ball” on FS1! They start with the Chicago Bears and debate whether the Bears should consider making a trade offer for 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan in order to change the culture and optimize the development of #1 overall pick Caleb Williams (4:00). They discuss the new Aaron Rodgers documentary and why it confirms Colin’s theory that Aaron’s success stemmed largely from his natural talent and not his willingness to “grind” like so many of the other greats (10:30). They pivot to the recent social media obsession with UFO’s and give their takes as to what’s really behind it (17:30). They debate whether MLB’s proposed “Golden At Bat” rule is a good or bad idea (30:30) and whether the Caitlin Clark vs Angel Reese rivalry can fuel WNBA ratings for years to come (40:00). Finally, they talk about the social media exodus of users from X to Bluesky in the wake of the election (54:15) and the major lack of self-awareness in American media and politics (1:05:00). Follow Colin and The Volume on Twitter for the latest content and updates!  #Volume #Herd  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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There are things, especially in sports that I noticed, because we're both in this business, that you wonder why they haven't taken place sooner. And then over the course of time, like, if you really think about analytics, why did it take so long for NBA GMs to figure out math? It's like, this was... Three is worth more than two. Yeah, like it's... What happens?

Did a slide ruler fall into a GM's office and he had doodling one day with time? It's so here's one of them. I believe exits. The smartest people I've met did not always go to great schools or have great childhoods. In fact, I would argue if there's a certain jet fuel to chaos as a child that propels you to an aspirational life, right? And- Sure. One of, at any one time in the history of the NFL, there's about five rock star coaches.

And right now it's, you know, Sean Payton took Chernobyl and two years later, they're going to make the playoffs with a rookie quarterback and, you know, dead cap hell. Jim Harbaugh, Andy Reid. You know, there's a handful. I think McVeigh and Shanahan fall into that group. And pro football talk suggested the bears should call Kyle Shanahan. And I'm just going to throw this out. exits. So, Kyle Shanahan is smart. He has a losing record in San Francisco as a head coach without Christian McCaffrey, who is now into the twilight of his career. Heard a lot in Carolina,

more so in San Francisco. He is staring down the barrel of signing Brock Purdy, injured for the second time to a big deal. It is an old, expensive, brittle roster. And he has the least talented quarterback. And here are the bears. Good roster. He'd get power. Quarterbacks free for four years. He's got weapons. Actually a decent back. And it's a restart. And you'd say to yourself, why? Because just like San Francisco, San Francisco was a dead franchise. Hell, the Warriors were a franchise for years. But the minute they got good, people are like, oh, Rick Berry, Chris Mullen, certain franchises are dead. The New York Giants are. The bears feel like they are. But again, the Warriors were, the Niners were. Chicago is a massive football brand.

And to be the savior of it in an offensive era, I said this today. I would absolutely say, Here's three first round picks. We got our quarterback. I don't need that. Here we go, Kyle Shanahan. I think, staring down the barrel of Christian McCaffrey's age, Brock Pretty getting the bag, an old expensive roster with a lot of Debo and IU questions.

I think he takes the call. Am I nuts? No, you're not nuts, but I mean, he, you don't really trade with him, right? The Niners have to agree to trade. Yeah, So like do the nine, because Kyle Shanahan maybe is interested in the exit, but are the Niners interested in it? Like, I would absolutely, say the Bears get the 12th pick in the draft.

Of course I would trade the 12th pick in the draft for Kyle Shanahan. Like it's not even, yes, of course. The guy, the guy took Jimmy Garoppolo to a Super Bowl. He took Brock Purdy to a Super Bowl. I'm thinking he could do wonders with Caleb Williams. Like, I want a known commodity. It would be amazing. I'd call the Rams and ask about Sean McVeigh.

Absolutely. I hire an offensive coach, the most proven one that you can find to develop and stabilize for Caleb Williams. However, they have to go about getting that. I'd be all four. The Niners situation is an interesting one. They still have a ton of talent on the roster.

It's old and brittle and expensive, like you said. I don't think it's a disaster. I think if you asked a Vegas odds maker, hey, what are the preseason Super Bowl favorites for next year? I'd be shocked if the Niners were outside of the top six in terms of preseason odds. We don't know are they going to pay Debo. We don't know if Trent Williams is going to come back. But they got a lot of talent still on that team and they had a freaky amount of injuries.

So I don't know if he looks at it as dire as you do. I hope he does. because the bears have no evidence that they can just conduct a search and hire the right guy. They have no evidence of it. They used a search firm and had Ernie O'Courcy consult them on John Fox, and then they had a general manager draft Mitch Trubisky without telling John Fox that that was going to happen. And then they made John Fox coach Mitch Trubisky. Like it's so dysfunctional for so long in that hiring, firing, like 30,000 foot view part of the organization that if Kevin Warren and Ryan Poles, the president and GM, go the trade for a coach route, they've never done it before. So I'm in for it.

And then just one thing to your point, Chicago, I've said this to you before. It's unified by the bears. The 85 bears still have media deals. They still drink for free. Mike Ditka, and I know. know he was a cult of personality, but I mean, the guy made tens of millions of dollars from merchandising. I mean, he was on ESPN for forever. He had cigars. He had wine. He had restaurants. He had video games. He had everything from being the coach of the Bears who won the Super Bowl.

So every, it matters when you win a Super Bowl everywhere. But a parade in Chicago would be different than a parade in Los Angeles or Cincinnati. So I would think a lot of coaches who currently have jobs, not just Ben Johnson or Cliff Kingsbury, I would think a lot of coaches, if the bears are in the market to trade for a coach, I think a lot of coaches would call their agents and say, hey, can I get on that list? The, so one of the things I like about this is the exploration of different things. So I'll ask you about UFOs later, but I want to start with this. Hell yeah. So a lot of times, there's certain things I try to be careful of. Recency bias is a talk show host.

Don't over, don't get hyperbolic on something because it happened today. Confirmation bias, don't like something because I predicted it. And I think about those two all the time. Don't do that. That's what fans do, and I get it. I'm not a fan, right? I'm not paid to be a fan. The other thing is don't let singular moments define someone.

buddy. So Matt Ryan in the Super Bowl had a really bad second half and people now think, you know, he was never clutch. Well, the truth is he has 38 come from behind fourth quarter wins. He's actually not that far off Brady, Montana, Elway, and Mahomes as one of the great come from behind quarterbacks in the last, well, I mean, at forever, 38. Ever. It's unbelievable. But you see this. I did not, I did not know that. That's a big number. Aaron Rogers, conversely, because of the Jared Cook completion down the sideline against the Cowboys in one of the great throws ever. I mean, it's up there with David, Tyree, and Eli. It's one of the great playoff throws ever. People view him as a great comeback quarterback. He's actually

dreadful. He's got fewer than Ryan Tannehill, significantly fewer than Russell Wilson. Matt Ryan has 38. He has 22. This year, we've watched five or six times. He's not good. He gets very, very tight. And why would this be? He's so talented. And I have a lot of beliefs on Aaron Rogers personality, but generally quarterbacks who are not good late, it's because they get tight. And I think Aaron has been elevated because of the aesthetic appeal. Marino had this, the aesthetic appeal of how beautiful he threw the ball, that he's never been a grinder, and he's kind of an ad libber a little bit. He doesn't grind in the offseason. He relies like Marino did on his aesthetic, athleticism, the beauty of it. I mean, he literally throws the ball and he's not on the ground.

Like you ever seen those passes where his feet aren't touching the ground. And the truth is, the prep quarterbacks Brady Matt Ryan was a legendary prep quarterback Drew Breeze Mahomes Russell Wilson

I mean I brought Mike Tomlin saying today the dude loves football you can't get it out of the cell at the football is that Aaron has been the reason it doesn't make any sense that he'd be great all the time he's not a good fourth quarter

quarterback And I think it's because that is grinder territory. Bow Nix, by the way, is already classic grinder. A little smaller than you want. He's already an outstanding fourth quarter quarterback. And so there's my take is that this Aaron Rogers dot comes out. And it's just very funny how we view him is this legendary late game quarterback. And it's been on display this year with the dysfunctional organization.

He's actually bad at it. Yeah, so I would be very interested in actually parsing the data on like number of opportunities. Is it at all possible that Aaron Rogers has had fewer opportunities than you would expect because he's so damn good and his team was always winning? Well, Russell Wilson and Seattle didn't trail much and he has 30% more. Okay. Yeah, fair enough. Rogers, you and I, I definitely fall for the aesthetic of it. Aaron Rogers won four MVPs. Some of Aaron Rogers' peak.

Until Mahomes came along, I would always say it was the best I'd ever seen. And it was better than Brady and it was better than Manning. Not more accomplished or anything like that, but just guy had a 45 touchdown six interception season. It was just stupid. His ability to be a big game hunter, hunt for touchdowns, throw the ball down the field, and not turn the ball over. Like Aaron Rogers at his peak of his powers is still about as good as ever and I think crazy and influential. You mentioned Mahomes.

Mahomes is a combination of the two, right? Mahomes has the from the pocket, Andy Reid extension, brilliant snap throw, diagnose everything, football guy. And then also can throw a ball horizontal to the ground, basically like submarine style. through three dudes and you're like, I don't think, I think a robot made that throw. So like Mahomes is stylistically, I actually think very similar to Aaron Rogers, but he has this like weird combination of both, which is why he's the most talented to ever do it. I think that the explanation with the Jets is simpler than that. I mean, the guy's old.

One guy has been good at his age ever. And it was Tom Brady. One ever. And Aaron Rogers has other interests and the Jets are really disheartedly. functional and he's coming off of a very serious injury. And, you know, maybe the Jets bring him back next year, but I wouldn't if I were them. I'd eat the $49 million, spread it out over two years and just be done with the nonsense

and the circus and draft a quarterback and move on. And if they do that, can you name a team that would sign him? I said the Raiders, maybe. Yes. Like the Raiders maybe intrigue, tough division, have no shot to win it. You draft a quarterback. You sign Aaron Rogers. You hope that Rogers has the quarterback sit behind him and has like a Jordan Love situation.

Maybe. Do you have an organization that would pay Aaron Rogers to play football next year? It's funny because Brady now is going to be part of the Raiders ownership group. So Mark Davis would rely on Brady's opinion on that. And I don't, I'm not going to speak for Tom, but I don't think he holds Aaron in the regard that fandom does. I think Tom sees a guy that relied heavily on talent and didn't put Brady's obsessive Peyton Manning, Breeze's obsessive compulsion to work. I think within Brady has to be just disgusted that Aaron Rogers has other interests. You hosted Jeopardy?

you travel in the off season. You do experimental drugs. And by the way, that trailer, I'll watch the documentary, but that trailer of him saying, I love silence, or I love silence while being miced up and filmed

is one of the most unintentionally hilarious things ever. Like, buddy, you've got like a camera crew and a sound guy and you're miced up, but you're doing a darkness retreat. It's just so, he's such a, oh, he says enigma, I don't know, or you're just a pseudo intellectual who loves attention and has a massive ego.

It's just, it's so funny to me. I want to delve into something that is, so I, not that I was late to TikTok, but my wife, 15 minutes when that stuff came out, she, she strolls that every morning. She's got recipes. And I mean, she's constantly saying, oh, God, I saw this recipe. I got to try it into dog videos. And she'll, I'll be playing. wordal and I'll be reading, you know, CNN or the New York Times or whatever I'm reading. And my wife is just, and she'll read that stuff, but she's scrolling, I mean, just through it.

And so I don't know what it is, but, and I'm going to suggest to you what it is, I guess, is that over the last three weeks, I have just had this compulsion to go on TikTok. And I think it's the UAPs and the UFOs that I find it hysterical. I do not believe in them. I never have with the Hubble telescope and the other telescopes, if they were out there, we would see them. I'm not going to trust Clancy in, you know, middle of Indiana at night for Heineken's Inn to tell me, you know, hear aliens. So I, people say things. They'll say it's incredibly arrogant to think we're the only people in the galaxy. I'm not saying. that. I'm saying with the technology we have, I don't think Merle would spot it. I think our telescopes would and that I don't believe any of this stuff. But I am fascinated when people go to the sky, often in the flight line of a major airport, and go, look at that. And I'm like, yeah, I live near LAX. There's 40 of those puppies lined up. And the further they are away,

the more they look like UFOs. Now, tell me your stance on you. UFOs and this, I mean, on TikTok, there's now like UFOs today. A thousand pictures come up, videos. It was in the news in New Jersey yesterday. Like, Carton on Breakfast Ball was like, did you see the UFOs over my house? I was like, no, I didn't. And he was like, oh, yeah. And he showed me a news clip.

And you watch the video and he's like, what do you think that is? I'm like, buddy, I don't know what it is, but I don't think it's an alien. I don't think it's, fuck. Like, I don't, I am not arrogant enough to believe that we're the only thing in the galaxy, but I'm also not arrogant enough to believe that I can explain it. And my cynical nature or distrust of whatever is like, it's probably us. Like, it's, it's, it's, the government doesn't tell us everything. Like, it's probably us or China.

or a military exercise of some kind or what, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know what it is. I'm not saying that people don't see things. And I'm not at all claiming that we get the full story. But I don't necessarily think it's spot. Yeah. So back before the stealth was created, I worked in Vegas. I worked in Vegas from like 87 to 93 or something like that.

So we had a reporter, Dan Burns, and he kept getting these calls because he did like our aviation beat, right? We had a mob beat and aviation beat and all that stuff. And Dan Burns was this great reporter, and he kept getting calls about these triangular shaped lights people would see. And it was like a two-year deal. And, you know, then the Iraq war hit, and the stealth was now part of our national discussion, right?

That nobody, nobody, we had the word stealth, but stealth bombers, CNN. When they flew in and under the radar, well, they were testing. Stingham at Area 51, among other places. So people weren't crazy. They were seeing things, but they wanted that to be secret. So I'm with you. I think our government is, first of all, drones. Well, you knew our government was going to create at some point super drones,

like drones that you're not going to get anywhere else. I mean, you hear about the government, what they want to do with, like, the bitcoins and cryptocurrency. And you hear stories from business people, entrepreneurs about what they're wanted to do with AI in the Biden White House, regardless of what side you are on the spectrum, they like to get their arms around stuff, fortify it, modify it, and control it. That's what our government does. Probably more than we're comfortable with. So I'm with you. I tend to think they're experimenting and they want to see how the public reacts. They want to see how visible it is.

They want to see if they can hide it from the public. I think this has just happened my entire life. Absolutely. I mean, Colin, my fore. My fore. year old has a drone. Like, they have, I mean, drone technology has been around for a while. It was a big part of the Obama presidency, certainly. And now, like, you can buy one for 40 bucks. So I think there's a bunch of stuff that the couple, what is it, trillion dollar defense budget, my guess is they got some pretty cool toys, like that occasionally Merle or Clancy or whatever sees. and they're just not going to tell us what it is. But I also think we want to believe stuff.

And media works for a reason and movies make hundreds of millions of dollars for a reason. Independence Day is a hell of a watch. It's a great movie. Alien versus Predator. There's a reason why it's a franchise. It's a fun story. We don't want to believe that. I got a mortgage and a life and a couple of kids.

And if you're lucky, you get 80 years and then you go into the ground and there's nothing before us and there's nothing after us. And you know what I mean? We want to believe in extra cool stuff. And there's a reason why Twilight and Stranger Things and Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and all that stuff is so popular. It's fun to believe in things that are overwhelmingly likely not real. We just are, we're easy, we are, I don't blame people for believing in it.

I guess this is my point, because we are fed so much stuff to make it seem like, a Game of Thrones, that dragon looks real. I'm sorry, I don't know what a real dragon is, but I'm like, it looked real. We get inundated with a bunch of fantasy in a way where I understand why people want to believe in stuff. The Emirates NBA Cup is here, so you can win big, getting in on the action at Draft King's Sports Book, which is the official sports betting partner. of the NBA. There's sure to be rim-rattling slams, no-look passes, get behind your favorite players and the prop bets you can make on Draft Kings, the home of NBA player props. If you're ready to

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Join me, Keir Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hardway. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Learn the Hardway, and listen now. I know you have a great affection for baseball, and my first job out of college was a AAA baseball announcer. So I wanted to be a baseball announcer, and then the world changed that football and gambling in Vegas and whatever. So, but I do think baseball, I'll start with this premise, that baseball is going to go through a really good decade. The regional sports networks have died since Fox sold them. And the bottom has fallen out of the sport. The bottom 10 to 12 payrolls now needed that money, and it's dried up fast.

And so the gap between the halves and the have-nots between the Dodgers, Yankees, Astros, Mets, Padres, and the rest of baseball has gotten wider. And it actually helps baseball. Because where baseball drives its revenue, a large degree of its television. And if you can combine teams that become the Warriors with KD, star-driven Philadelphia, New York, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta. It actually works for this sport. There's always been a competitive advantage when the Yes Network first exploded and other entities weren't making that money. The Yankees dominated the Hot Stove League for 15 years, and now it's some other teams and the Yankees. So I think the best players are on the biggest brands and in the biggest market, and it helps.

Conversely, NBA, ants in Minnesota, Wembe's in San Antonio, Yokic is in Denver, Janus Milwaukee. You know, Jalen Brunson's a nice piece, but in the end, with LeBron and Steph Curry aging, there's a markets matter except for the NFL. So with that premise, baseball is in a good spot. So nobody likes their commissioner. Rob Manfred has stepped in it a few times, Danny. But he has been aggressive enough, and his last two moves have absolutely worked, removing the defensive shift, and the pitch clock. Attendance and ratings have benefited. So the golden at bat is being suggested. And obviously, I've said this, I'm not sure if I've said it before, but baseball purists are a lot like the Quakers of religion. They're diminishing in numbers over my lifetime. We were all exhausted by their purity. And baseball purists, us very much are, you know, the sanctity of the game.

But television now is the primary provider of revenue, and they want more stars and they want faster games. And I got to tell you, seeing Bryce Harper for the second time in 12 minutes instead of the dugout is not a terrible thing. Now, you're more purist than I am after my rant here, but I see the upside to it. No, I do too. So, okay, there was a lot there and it was really good. Let's start with the golden at bat and then we could work backwards. I like it. I don't know that it'll work. I don't know that it'll get past. But my basic premise is I like sports and leagues who try stuff. When the NFC championship game with the Saints happened and there was the terrible pass interference penalty and they made pass interference reviewable for the next year, I said at the time that that was going to backfire. I was like, that's not a good idea, making penalties reviewable.

But I understood the thought process behind it. They did a trial for a year. It was a disaster. They went back on it. But I applauded them for trying it even if I thought it wasn't going to work. The in-season tournament will see how big of a deal it becomes. But I like that they tried it. The pitch clock, as you mentioned, they finally tried it.

Theo Epstein got really involved, made a bunch of recommendations. He backed it by data. He tried stuff in the Fall League and the minors and independent ball and they worked it up and they're trying it and the rule changes are working. Trying stuff is a good idea. So I like the premise of it. I like thinking outside the box. I don't particularly care about the purists. And then I had our researcher at Breakfast Ball, Troy, he's excellent, look into the data on it.

And just to use the Dodgers and the Yankees, the teams that were in the World Series with the biggest stars, if you said a thinning or later, tied or one-run game, runner in scoring position, the Dodgers had that circumstance happen 138 times this past season. Otani came up to the plate 20 times. It's not enough. When you compare it to Mahomes,

down six, balls in his hand. Last two minutes, LeBron's got the ball in his hands. Aaron Judge came up in that spot eight times all year. Juan Soto came up 10 times all year. So your biggest stars, your best players, did not come up in the biggest moments all year long nearly enough. So that is a problem that is worth solving. I have no idea if the baseball Illuminati will go for it, but I love the creativity. Here's a prediction for you.

And you're more sourced than I am. You know all the head honchos and more owners and all of that. But let's just call this an informed one. I think the next CBA in baseball is going to be ugly. The last couple have been because of the collapse of the RSN model and how much of the revenue is localized, right? The Dodgers got the last great deal. So they have more money than everybody else.

And then the vanity owners, the Steve Cones of the world, the Yankees of the world, they can outspend everybody. The Cubs have a network, but they launched it late. So they don't make as much money from it as they would have if they would have launched it in me 11, 2012, 2013. I think we've got the best chance that we've ever had in the history of the sport to come out of the next labor negotiation. And it might be ugly. We might miss some games. We might miss a spring training. We'll see how ugly it gets. I think we might get a cap and a floor. I think there is a real chance that enough billionaires that are in smaller markets are

going to say, guys, I understand we want stars in big markets, but we can't compete. with no local media deal. Like the Fox money is great, the ESPN money is great, but if you guys are making, if the Dodgers are making hundreds of millions of dollars, basically a year from their deal, and the twins and the Diamondbacks and the Brewers and the pirates and a third of the league at this point has their local media

literally owned by MLB, the people that own those teams are still billionaires. and their friends are, they're friends with the billionaires who own the rich teams with the good media deals. And the players, I think, are going to go through, you know, Corbin Burns will get paid, Soto will get paid. But I think we're going to go through enough free agent cycles where enough players are going to realize that the Dodgers can't sign everybody.

They only can play one right fielder. They only can play one shortstop. That they are finally going to acquiesce and say, okay, it's in our benefit. if the pirates have to spend more and the Dodgers have to spend a little bit less. And then it will distribute the stars a little bit more evenly, which will go against your first point. But a cap and a floor, I think, has a real chance to come to baseball in the next five years. Yeah, I think you're paying attention to it.

And of course, working at Fox, both of us now know about the regional sports networks, the RSNs. It is one of the great exits in the history of business. those were worth half as much an hour after the Murdoch sold them, and 90% less, two hours after they sold them. It was, and it was a $2 billion, $3 billion a year revenue for Fox, but the problem being there were about four major markets in the offing, looking for new renegotiations and deals and the profits were going to diminish. And, yeah, that's really, really hurt the Kansas cities.

Pittsburgh's, the Seattle's. It's highly punitive. They just can't afford. They can't even get in the running on sometimes second tier players. Forget Soto and Otani. Yeah. And again, like the Cubs are a big market team that make a killing that attendance and in stadium revenue matters in baseball more than any of the other sports.

And it's not close because they have so many, right? You've got 81 home games. So the Cubs are a big market team who do very well. But again, they launched the Marquis Network late. I'm not speaking out of school. This is well documented. They would admit to it. And so you would think broadcasting 150 Cubs games a year would be great business.

It's good business. But it's not great. It's not close to what the Dodgers get because of when they launched it, because the cable companies are not doing it in the same way that they are. They're not willing to pay for it and cord cutting and all the reasons that are impacting the media landscape. So it's the inequity, I think, has grown. You're right. It puts stars in big markets, and in theory that is good.

But there's too many billionaires that own too many teams that don't have that deal, that you don't want them to get out of the baseball business and not want to own the twins or the Diamondbacks or the pirates or the brewers. So I think there's going to be a mechanism to level the playing field through the next CBA. I really do. The, as we do what we do for a living. Yeah. I've never been a real envious person. But as I've aged, there are some things in our business that feel like sometimes minutiae,

like doing shows in July. You know, last year for the first time I took like three weeks off in July. I said, guys, it's... By the way, thank you. Because I hosted for you July 8th and 9th, and I think it changed my life. So... Please do that again. So the reason July and August have gotten less interesting are cultural changes.

I believe Sean McVeigh said, I'm not playing any of my good players in the preseason. And everybody said, you're nuts. You'll start off 0 and 8. And he started 8 and 0. And then everybody went, I think he's got it. And so now the preseason is utterly charmless. There is nothing interesting about it at all. Therefore, those three to four weeks, and they've shortened it from four to three weeks,

will probably be short in two weeks, and August is dead. It's regular season baseball. A lot of the, you know, as the gap between the good and the terrible and major league baseball widens, the races are settled. You know, the good teams are resting pitchers and, you know. So it's a little minutia. So sometimes I think the audience thinks we do things just for ratings. Of course we do, right?

Ratings and revenue drive our entire existence. But I was sitting there day and I was thinking about the cyclical nature and I took a calendar out and I thought, here are the busy times, here are the slow times. And I found like six weeks. If I could ideally take six weeks off a year, six to eight, here were they were. And one of the things that was interesting is that in my lifetime, only one sport has been created, UFC, that literally becomes part of my life. I'm now watching UFC. I watch college, pro, NBA, March. madness, golf tournaments, tennis. I watched all that stuff. Now, soccer is more popular, but I was watching the United States men's and women's national teams 25 years ago. I didn't care. So UFC is now the one created sport. A lot of it's just the force of nature, force of personality of Dana White, like renting an island during COVID. It really sums up who he is. But I was sitting there and I said, you know what? Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese has a magic bird feel to it. And I said, I talked about it 10 times this year, and I monitor my ratings.

And the ratings, people dug it. It was often my first or second highest-rended segment. And I said, I think it's going to become, I never thought this in a million years. Hell, the teams don't make any money, WNBA. But I'm like, well, do I have to cover the league? No, I'm going to cover Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. I don't cover boxing. But about three times a year, there's a fight in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and you'd say,

okay, here's all E. Foreman. We would. before I got into this business. And I know a lot of people will push back and go, that's very PC. But outside of UFC, I am convinced that Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese will be a decade-long potential story, as long as both teams are viable. Is that a reach? Is that recency bias? No, I don't think so. Listen, one of the all-time great Colin Cowherd analogies is that you're in the omelette business, not the egg business. I love that line. think it's so good. You're like, my job isn't to make you interesting. I talk about you when you become interesting. I loved that line from you. And so they are interesting. The data supports it.

And it has a lot of things. Listen, frankly, some of it's ugly, right? There's racial components. There's sexism components. Like some of the stuff that came back on it was pretty ugly. But at its core, I always say rivalries are awesome. That's why Steelers Ravens gets your juices flowing a little bit. Bears Packers, Yankees Red Sox, Cardinals, Celtics

Lakers. We like it. We like rivalries because I want less hate in the world than more hate in sports. And so like a healthy amount of hate is okay to me. Like I don't want there to be riots, but I wasn't like clutching my pearls over flag planting.

You know, I'm like, it's kind of funny. Like, it's kind of funny that a two-win team plants a flag at midfield and then they push and show and it goes the other way. Well, you're pepper spraying college kids. I'm like, that's ridiculous. And I understand that I'm flirting in a gray area there on advocating something. And then when it gets too far, I'm like, well, that's too far. Sorry, call me a hypocrite.

I like a little bit of trash talk in my, in my sports. I'm going to do something on breakfast ball tomorrow. I don't think taunting should be a penalty in the NFL on sportsman. conduct, like you punch a guy, you spit in your guy's face, fine, unnecessary roughness, same thing, delay a game, same thing, taunting, let them trash talk and figure it out. I'm cool with it. I'll make the case tomorrow on the show. That's a meandering way to get to. Rivalries are awesome. And star power, celebrity, it dates back to college, familiarity, we know it. And then there's also this. And you could speak to this. You've been in the game longer than I have.

people like to be a part of something that is growing, right? Like the World Series, the number was big. It was as good as it could have been. Yankees and Dodgers, Otani, Judge, Soto, et cetera. But like if baseball got that number 30 years ago, they would have been appalled. And so, like, the general trend of baseball is down in terms of ratings from where it was. the WNBA, the arrow is going up. People like growth stories, right?

How many companies have you invested in or talked to their CEOs out there in California where it's like, we don't even need to show a profit. We just need to show that we're growth and more users and all of that stuff. So I think that's Netflix for years. For almost all of them for years. You know, like the line in David Finchers, the social network. Like don't, you're throwing a cool party. You know, a million dollars isn't cool.

You know, it is a billion dollars. Like, don't take an ad when you got on a hundred college campuses. Wait until you're in a hundred countries and then do it, right? Like, lose money, keep getting your funding and then cash in big at the end. So I don't know how big the WNBA can get. That's right. I don't. Like, I do have some skepticism on how big it can get.

I agree. As a whole league, teams. Caitlin Clark, not rooting for it, obviously, but like, say she tears her ACL in the second week of the season, I think that'd be real bad for interest for the sport for that season, right? I think it's carried by a very few pockets of stars right now. But will it be more popular in five years than it is today? Yes. Like, it is clearly a growth enterprise. And I think that that is also a really popular phenomenon. I'm like people like to be a part of something early in on the ground floor. I knew this band before they got on the tonight show. Feels smart. Yes.

Oh, when did you sign up for Blue Sky? Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's happening right now. We'll see. Maybe Blue Sky will be a huge thing in two years. Maybe it will be like, what was Blue Sky again? But so I don't know where it ends for the WNBA, but I am absolutely positive. Caitlin Clark will be a story 10 years from now.

She will bring the league with her. And that is good business because it's growth, even if Yankees, Dodgers, outrates the WNBA championship. Like, it's just one's going up, the other's going down. So therefore, it is seen as a cooler thing to be a part of. Let's talk about something really, really important. If you're ever injured, check out Morgan and Morgan to America's largest injury law firm. And they are there for you.

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was... This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast where people could call in and say, Hey, Jonas.

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You need to tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Jacob told Levan, you're ruining my life. Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to talk about Blue Sky and I want to talk about the media in general. I'm not going to join Blue Sky because you can't transfer your followers. there's what they call a bridge that can help it, but people are too busy to worry about my bridge and my followers.

So if I could transfer all my followers, I don't even know if I would do it then, but I can't and I have almost two million. So I'm okay with X. But it's a bigger picture. Is that a lot of people on the left post-election, I'm out of here. And my take is, well, that's kind of precious

and a bit convenient, is that the truth is, and Ethan Strauss discussed this recently in a column on Substack, everybody gets treated like shit on X. You got it pretty girls, ugly boys, everybody. I mean, nobody's happy because people, most people don't have power,

and anonymously, we all have more power, and a lot of people who are miserable and lonely, this is their time to flex. So let them. Just don't read it. But it's interesting. I think there's a responsibility to some degree. We're all somewhat, you know, responsible for our happiness.

I tell my daughter, don't wake up looking for happiness. Have things to do, follow your passions and what you're good at. You'll find happiness, right? Like, happiness will come to you. If you just wake up, it's like grabbing a rainbow. I'm going to wake up and find happiness. There's nothing to grab. You have to seek other things that make you happy.

That's happiness. And it really, what's interesting about a lot of Hollywood and the left moving to blue sky, it's like you just lost an election. And there's an argument to be made. The primary reason was you were a bit out of touch with regular people. Well, a lot of regular people get a flex on X. And when you lost, they did. And you're saying, I don't want to deal with you.

And to me, I'm like, guys, you want to state if you won, stay if you lose, stay connected to people, even if they can be angry and occasionally vile. One of the reasons I stay on X is to allow people to take shots at me, to allow people to whack a mole me. Because I'm wrong. And if I'm wrong, I don't have to read it. I can mute it. But I do think one of the forms of hypocrisy that really bothers me about the media is we criticize for a living and we can't take it. Oh, yeah. I hate that about us.

Yeah. The last part of what you just said, I could not rubber stamp my agreement on more. People, it's amazing what we get to do for a living. and like the fact that like if we get a wrong opinion thrown in our face then people get defensive about it in our industry. I'm like, are you nuts? Like we don't get fired for being wrong. Like Matt Eberfluse just got fired. You know what I mean? Like he's got to sell his house and move. Now he'll be fine. I'm not asking you to like play a violin for the guy. He made millions and millions of he'll be fine, but still, like, there were consequences for him not being good.

There's not consequences for me being wrong about a prediction about the Philadelphia Eagles. Like, be entertaining, own up to it, keep it moving, come back the next day. So I'm with you. Media people who deal, especially in the opinion space, who cannot deal with criticism, I think that's crazy. Now, obviously, there are lines that should not be crossed, racial slurs, threats, obviously. Right. people of color get it worse, women get it worse.

This is all documented. I remember once there was a study like negative feedback outweighs positive feedback by like 30 to one. You don't call your cable company and said, cable's working great. Like you call when there's a problem. So the discourse of the feedback is going to skew negative. So that's all of that part. The other thing about the thing about Blue Sky is like, so I squatted on a username. I haven't posted once.

I don't do anything. I was just like, in case this becomes big, I don't. want anyone else to be Danny Parkins on Blue Sky. I have my username and I'm going to be in this at this point longer than you are, right? Just by age. I don't, I'm just trying to like, I don't know where it's all going to go, but I'm trying to be prepared

for where it does. My thought on the liberal move to Blue Sky was I understood the desire to form your own team and like consolidate your own team.

But like it's A, it's not like a conservative can't sign up for Blue Sky. There's no pre-requisite. So who's to say it's not going to turn into the exact same thing? And by the way, I'm not at all saying that the only people that are negative or nasty on X are conservative. That is not what I'm saying. But like if Blue Sky gets big, a lot of people with diverse opinions and backgrounds and actions and intentions are going to be on it. And then the other thing is, aren't we bubbled and siloed enough? That was my big thing about it. we all are in our own feedback loop already. We all already have our own algorithms.

And like, yeah, the 4U tab is clearly being influenced by the lunatic who bought X. But like my Instagram reels, when I search how to cast iron a rib eye, I then get way more Instagram reels about steak. Like they're not made from nothing. And so I agree, like leaving the place where the. biggest public discourse on the internet happens because you were upset with the result, didn't feel like it would solve a problem. It felt like it would make you feel better as opposed to working towards solving a problem. So if you want to do it to feel better, fine.

But I also, I don't really believe that most of these people are like gone for good. We're addicted to these things. Yeah. We are just addicted to them. I've checked my phone twice since this interview started. Like, it's hard to put it down, you know? not interview conversation, but like it's just, um,

so I, I'm very skeptical of like blue sky, like long term, us feeling like we are just, oh, we just found a new one. People, they'll be,

they'll be on X and if it gets big and replaces X, then it will have the same problems that X has. Yeah. No, the silo comments interesting because I joke with my wife. She just, every time I start this conversation like once a year, she said,

stop it. I'll say to her, I get free parking in Los Angeles and a free smoothie every day at Fox. I did the math on that. That's $7,200 a year. And she's like, I know what you make. That's the dumbest thing I've heard. And I always say to her, do you understand if I stayed at a company for 20 years,

the value of free parking and free smoothies and oatmeal and coffee at a company? And she said, I said, who gets that? And I often think about that little thing. By the way, I get my haircut for free. Haircut, smoothie, coffee, parking. That sounds ridiculous. Do you know how many people if you could sign up for that in a city would literally fight over it? And I do, and I guess my point with my wife is, I'm never going to allow those to be forgotten.

If people got free parking in Chicago, they'd be like, honey, I just got free parking in Chicago for three years. That'd be the greatest thing ever. Yeah. Let's go to dinner. When I filled in for you and they delivered that smoothie to the dressing room, I was like, I texted my wife. It was like, I think it's a smoothie. They asked for my smoothie order and then it showed up. It was amazing.

We don't get free smoothies, by the way, at Box Sports 1 in New York. I've asked, we don't get free smoothies. You got to put in a good word for me out here. I need the free smoothie treatment from the L.A. offices. Well, that silo comment's real because I tell my wife, it's easy to forget. the stuff I get every day, a staff, like, it's just something that most people would fight over. A parking space in a major city could be $4,000 a year for parking. Oh, yeah.

Don't think that everybody who works on breakfast ball, like, that drives in producers or whatever, it's a huge thing for them, right? It's like, it's very expensive to park in New York City. And, like, we're not on the Fox lot. But again, obviously, I'm not complaining. The job's amazing. The perks are amazing. But yeah, it's good to have perspective outside of your bubble.

And you made it about smoothies and free parking. But I would also say, like, there are very few people. There are a couple. I'll admit that I'm like, I just want to mute you because I don't want to see like your intentionally divisive, mean-spirited, racist, hateful, rhetoric come into my timeline because it just there's there's just negative ROI on it right like for mental health happiness I'll go down a rabbit hole it'll make me upset and now I'm just angry so like that was just I've definitely done that with some people yeah um but I do try to understand people

who disagree with me I do try to read sites and people and feeds and interact with things that like I challenge my worldview because it's a big, messy, diverse country and a big messy diverse, diverse world. Like, if you only consume all the stuff that you already agree with, like, what's the point? Yeah. You know what I mean? I want to learn. I want to understand.

I'm the same one. Gapts. Like, it, I don't believe that, like, people who disagree with me are, like, bad people inherently. I think some of them are and some, or at least motivated by some bad stuff. but like generally speaking people want to be healthy provide for their family have happy healthy kids and like get along with their neighbors so it's like okay let's try to understand each other and meet in the middle somewhere so that's how I try to operate but some people man you got to mute you got to have a smooth about your day yeah no no I know you do I know you do and we're

we're meandering here this is a very abstract conversation but so I like apps that's why podcast work No, that's true. That's true. I just, I don't know how much deconstruction of the election you've done as to like why it went the way that it did. Oh, no, no, no, no. I believe me, I, so I, I'll throw this at you. When an election happens every four years, a federal election, I go to the losing team because all winners act the same. Cocky, condescending, told you we were right. Yeah. I go to the losing side. So when Trump lost, I went to Fox News for three weeks. I don't watch. lot of cable politics outside of like election day or midterm day. So I went to Fox. So I went to MSNBC for three weeks. And I told a friend, I said, I don't think MSNBC has bathrooms because nobody there is looking in the mirror. It's like a real problem. First, it was racism. And I'm like, no, Obama had two terms, could have won a third. Then it was misogyny. No, Hillary Clinton won the popular election. And what I found on MSNBC, and again, I don't, I'm not taking sight here. I

don't watch a lot of either of this stuff. I think Steve Kornick, he's very good an election night, and so I lean toward him. But by and large, I don't care. Even though I work for Fox, I tend to be a moderate, socially, left, fiscally right. But what I did find is there is, there's an inability by both sides when they lose to discover why they lost. And I'll give you, that's my first take is it's, I'll give you an example, a sports example. about the election. So every weekend in the NFL, there's three blowouts. Does that mean there's three great teams? No. No, definitely not. It means there's lots of crappy teams. There's a lot of

average politicians, average candidates, average teams, average coaches. There's almost no great. College football this year, 130 Division I teams, there's no great team, not one. Tennis, any one point, Federer Yolkowitz-Nadol, in the whole world, three greats, a lot of goods. Serena, you know, Martina in her prime. That was one and two, right? So my take on the election was, if you go back to Reagan winning and he had like a record turnout,

record support, why? Because Jimmy Carter was one of our weakest presidents, and Mondale, when he ran against him, was a really, really weak candidate. And Reagan was charismatic. Yeah. So it was as much about Reagan, first three years in office were not profound. He struggled, right? It took him a while.

But it was about a charismatic personality who had been an actor and really weak opposition. Trump, and it's, as the total votes have come in, it's not the mandate we many people subscribe to. But think about this with Kamala. Even in California, never heard of her until the 2019 primaries, of which she had no coalition, didn't get any votes. And because of the emergence of TikTok and Biden's decline, he dominated the news cycle for three and a half years. She was invisible. They gave her the border. I'm not sure she went to it.

She was invisible. Then Biden stubbornly was kicked to the curb very late in the process. She came in. And for three to four weeks, the primary issue was, where'd she go? So Trump has the biggest personal brand in America as a human being. she was largely invisible as a vice president as they're prone to be, but the age and TikTok, Instagram. I mean, Biden was everywhere.

And so this came down to she wasn't a terribly strong candidate and he had charisma and a brand. Even in high school elections, the popular good looking or the popular funny kid wins, right? And so they gave her the border. That was it. She didn't do a good job with the border. That was the vice presidents get one, one thing to put their arms around. She kind of butchered that. So to me, instead of MSNBC just acknowledging she wasn't a great candidate.

He's a big brand with a lot of bluster. Instead, it was these branches of the tree. And I'm like, oh, this is painful. That was my long-winded take. Yeah, I think that the, you know, anyone who says they know exactly what happened right after an election is wrong, right? Like, there's 150 million votes. People, genders, races, income classes. They're not monoliths. They don't only vote for one reason. People generalize it. You've got to actually, like, crunch the numbers and the data and, like, come to conclusions.

It takes time. I listened to the Pod Save America podcast with the Kamala campaign manager and like a couple of advisors. And it was just infuriating. it was it was just complimenting themselves on how great they did and how task was. And listen, maybe it was impossible. Maybe Trump was too big of a brand. People were feeling inflation too much. Biden was too unpopular. And it was 107 days.

And she was a vice president for an unpopular president in a tough economy. And maybe it was impossible. Maybe it was impossible for her to win in that timing and that circumstance. But God, did they have a lot of. like, well, we had to do this and we ran this and we raised a record amount of this and we had to define this and we got on this and we couldn't do everything and we tried to do this and it was because of this. I was like, do you not have thumbs? Can you point a thumb? Can anyone point a thumb? I was just pointing fingers. And it's just like excuses and we did this

and I was so proud of this. And they were so good at this. I was like, you weren't great because you didn't flip a single counting. Stop telling me how great you did. Just take some accountability, take your loss, learn from it, and move on. And so, you know, I hope they do. I don't think it's as doom and gloom as everybody else seems. I never do. It's very cyclical. It'll go back and forth, back and forth. The Reagan example is probably the most famous one, right? Like, 49 states. Like it's, it, so, yeah. But man, just a little bit more accountability would be Nice. A little bit more accountability would be nice. Yeah, but I do think it's much more fascinating to watch the losing side try to discover

their issues. And it's fascinating to me how infrequently and how long it takes and how infrequently they do. And James Carville and Bill Maher, I think, have been closer to the reality of it. But it was just a lot of race and misogyny. And it's like, guys, mirror. look in them. Stop blaming the voters. Look in the mirror. Yeah, I think there's a lot of that. And by the way, that's the thing that's true in sports too.

The most interesting story is often in the losing locker room. Who blew it? Who choked? Who's getting traded because of this? Who's getting cut because of this? Who's getting fired because of this? Like, there's more, there are often more interesting stories and lessons to be learned from the losing side of a story. I think almost always.

In fact, when I do my show in the morning, I try not to be negative. So this morning, I led with the 12-team college bracket, kind of defending the committee, being positive, defending the committee, Alabama choice. And then I went to the idea, which is kind of uplifting if you're a Bears fan, that let's go for it and get Kyle Shanahan. But I've had days. I had a day about two weeks ago where the first four stories, it was a Monday. And I was like, God, I'm just herping.

And I remember taking two of my stories early and just put them in the last hour. I'm like, God, I'm wearing me out after these first three stories. I don't think we do. But I think that that's actually a good sports media criticism. Like, I think that people have, like, gotten tired of the chiefs on some level. Like, they're very popular. Like, the data doesn't say that. But I'm saying, like, it's almost becoming vogue.

And they're playing close games. They're not as dominant this year. like on-field questions and criticisms of close games against Vegas and Carolina and all that is totally valid. I'm not saying it's not. But we should strive to. And I try to and continue to try to and we're 68 shows in or whatever we are into breakfast ball. So hopefully I've got a long road ahead of me to back up these words with actions. But like, it's fun to appreciate stuff and be like, how cool was that?

How great of a play was that? Like, we are watching, you're like, Daniel Jones sucks. Like, I guess, but he's actually awesome. He sucks compared to Patrick Mahomes. I don't want him to be my team's quarterback. But if he was the Syracuse football quarterback next week, they'd go on a run. They'd win a bunch of games. So I do think there's a little bit more room to, it's easy to talk about what's wrong

with fill in the blank team as opposed to making it interesting of why the lions are crushing everybody. Like we just as a collective, I think we should try our best to like appreciate sports and celebrate them. Not that you can't be negative, not that you can't take an axe to something or call for a firing. It's all fine and good. These guys get paid a bunch of money.

It's the opinion business you should be. But it's just a good healthy thing to remember that like we should celebrate the champions. I get on stinking carton. I'm like, you guys just like you hate greatness? Are you rooting against the chiefs? Like, are you crazy? Like Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes, these guys are unlikable in some way? No, they're awesome.

They're historic. Like, we've never seen a three-pe. You don't want to see it? Why? I want to see it. I want to see the greatness that I've never seen before. I'm not tired of it yet. The only thing that pushes back on that for me is I feel bad for Buffalo.

I'd like to see Buffalo win one. Had Buffalo won before Kansas City went on this run, I'd love to see a three-p. Listen, I called Josh Allen MVP before the year. I said he was the second best player in football before the year, and I picked him to win the division before the year when few people did. Like, I think he is, it is so, I think I said this on your pond a few visits ago. Like, he is so very clearly the closest thing to Mahomes.

And that's not like a one-year sample. the 18 interceptions last year to not change my opinion. Like going back to 2020 till now, it is very clear to me that it is Mahomes 1, Allen 2. And so he will get one. I will root for the three Pete this year. But part of that is also my mom's families from Kansas City. I worked there.

I was there when they hired Andy Reed. So part of that is like a personal tie and bias and Chiefs fans and Arrowhead and all of that. So yeah, Josh Allen, Buffalo and those fans, that would also be an excellent story. Obviously the Lions would be an excellent story. But I'm not tired of the greatness yet from the chiefs. I liked Tiger Woods.

I liked Michael Jordan. You know, Brady did get a little ridiculous to me. I will admit that. It's like, dude, you're winning when you're in your 40s. Well, I even had LeBron and Brady fatigue. Two decades is a little much. Yeah, but Tiger's 10 years. Go back into YouTube, Tiger at the U.S. Open.

Pebble Beach. You could watch the entire final round if you had three hours. It's insane. Listen, my dad didn't golf. And I love golf because of Tiger Woods. Like, I'm of that age, right? Like, I'm born at 86. I'm 11 years old in 97 when he wins the Masters. Like, he was like, it was a phenomenon. It was Michael Jordan. It was incredibly influential to watch that level of greatness. Like, Caitlin Clark is creating women's basketball. fans like Tiger Woods created golf fans um there's cult of personality figures in that level of dominance that I'll always be that I'll always be that I'll always be bones Jones I hadn't bought UFC fights in a while I love the UFC bones Jones fights I buy the car 100% like there's like I am

attracted to greatness um almost universally Danny parkins breakfast ball FS 1 good talking to you buddy you said once a month anytime buddy you know that I'm available anytime Thursday night football is on. It's only on Prime Video. Best season yet. Pack with big rivalries and even bigger stars. Al Michaels, Kirk Herbstreet, Kaylee Hartung every week. Games you can't miss. Coverage begins at 7 Eastern with football's best party. TNF tonight. Thursday night football tonight. If you're not a prime member, no problem. Sign up. 30-day free trial. Cancel any time. Thursday night football and it's on Prime Video Restrictions apply. See Amazon.com slash Amazon Prime for details. Hey guys, it's us. The Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin.

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Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. 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 podcast. Podcasts. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is, getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is, getting a new one put up in its place. I'm Akela Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season 2 is about both of those things.

As I was watching these statues come down, I was thinking about what it meant that I grew up in a majority of Black City, in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslave people. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Every family has its secrets. But what happens when you discover that your dad has been living a double life? That is not the look of an innocent man. Is everyone lying to me about who they are? I felt such desperation. I felt it was what I had to do.

Listen to Deep Cover the Family Man on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yello.

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