The Josh Innes Show - The NFL Collusion Non Story

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

Mike Florio and Pro Football Talk continue to call out media outlets for not covering the NFL Collusion story. Florio is trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill because he fancies himself some sort of sports version of Woodward and Bernstein. The issue he's running into is that no one cares. Something I've learned is you have to know when to pick your battles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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looking at Pro Football Talks Twitter earlier today and they tweeted out, let's see exactly what they tweeted. Fear of reprisal by the NFL and or the NFLPA is keeping plenty of people quiet about the collusion ruling. Great! No one cares. Whether or not these guys are getting cheated or whether or not the owners have colluded to deprive them or rob them of potential earnings, the average person does not care. Why does the average person not care? Well, let's get into that after these words. The average person doesn't care about millionaires being robbed of a couple million more

dollars allegedly, or whatever, because the average person just wants to watch football and the average person cannot relate to anything like this. The average person does not care about what happens to football players. The average person does not care about the brain of a football player. The average person does not care about the body and the wear and tear that playing football has on a body of an NFL player. People don't care just like the NFL players don't care. Just like the NFL

players don't care what happens to me right now, don't care what happens to you right now, don't care about your body or brain. And I know that that sounds crass and I know that it sounds like you're being an asshole and I get all that and I respect all that but it's reality. I don't open up you know the Twitter every day hoping that an NFL player is heard or I don't open up, you know, the Twitter every day hoping that an NFL player is hurt or I don't turn on a game every day hoping that someone gets hurt, breaks their leg, breaks their neck, ends up in a wheelchair, ends up with brain damage. I don't root for it. I just don't give a shit really if it happens because I don't know these people.

They are there for the entertainment of the consumer. Just like we, the consumer, are there to help assure or ensure that these guys get paid a shitload of money because our eyeballs are on the game. This is a completely transactional thing. We might love a football team and love a player. We might want to meet that player. We might want to shake his hand. We might want to take a picture with him. We might want his autograph. Those are all true things. But at the end of the day, we're not friends with Joe Montana. We're not friends with Steve Young. We're not friends with Steve Bono or any quarterback of the 1980s or 90s of the San Francisco 49ers for that matter. We're not friends with any of the Texans. We

might have a couple of personal relationships, but big picture. We're not best friends with these guys. Usually the average person is not. We don't care what happens to these guys and they don't care what happens to us. This is business. We get our joy from watching football. It makes our Sundays great. We love our particular team. We love particular players and that's how it goes. But at the end of the day, we're not here obsessed with how much money

they're going to make. We don't care and we can't relate to it. So what's happening here is you've got guys like Florio and Pablo Torre who are trying to have their little Woodward and Bernstein moment where they're going to go after the NFL and try to wrangle them over this collusion stuff and they want everybody else to be on board with it to try to tear down the NFL and the average fan does not care. How does it impact my enjoyment of watching the game on the field? It doesn't.

When you start fucking with my enjoyment of the game and how it messes with the game, that's why people care. That's why people care about big rules changes because that's impacts what happens on the field. That's why people care about the concussion stuff. They didn't really give a shit guys were getting concussions. They cared about how it was going to impact the game. How much money a guy is making is not going to impact your enjoyment of the game. Therefore, the average person doesn't care and Mike Florio continues to harp on this and wants everybody else to attack the NFL

and they want all these other outlets. And basically Florio is riding in on his on his horse right now getting to be the hero in his own mind and get to be the guy that points to all the other entities that are in bed with the NFL. He gets to point at all of them and say, see they're all on the take. They're afraid of repercussions from the league. And he gets to have at all of them and say, see, they're all on the take. They're afraid of repercussions from the league. And he gets to have his little moment where he looks like the Billy Badass that's fighting the almighty NFL and he's enjoying that moment. But the problem is you're fighting a fight that nobody wants you to win.

Nobody cares. No one's afraid of you. The average fan is not sitting there today going, Oh my God, we've I am so pissed that Lamar Jackson only made 29 million and not 30 million because the owners colluded like no one gives a fuck. So keep fighting it. Keep going for it. Keep posting your stories about how everybody else is afraid of repercussion, but you're badass. You're big bad Mike Florio and you're not afraid of what's going to happen because you are speaking your mind and you are speaking the truth and everyone's afraid.

Let me ask you a question. Let's go this way because I think this is something I know a little bit about working for entities that have rights fees and kind of knowing what battles to pick, right? So when I was at 790 it is well documented that the Rockets hated me. They hated me at 610. The issue with it at 610 is 610 didn't even want the Rockets anymore because they had the Texans the most important entity at that time and still is the Texans are the biggest radio entity in sports there in Houston followed now by the

Astros, but at the time, the Astros are pretty worthless too. So there was no issue with 610 saying good, take the rockets and Astros and go play with your puds over there because no one gives a shit. And by the way, nobody still gives a shit about basketball on the radio, but I digress. So I would always pick the worst battles, right? So I would fight these fights with the Rockets just to say that I won them. And nobody wanted me to win them and nobody cared, right?

The average person listening to 790 liked the Rockets. So their whole thing, they didn't want some guy on the radio who was trying to bring down the Rockets. And I would pick the dumbest battles and have the biggest personal battles with people. And it was pointless. with people and it was pointless. And ultimately it was one of the things that cost me that gig there. It really made the gig difficult and made it easy to fire me because here I am just fighting with the rockets for no

reason over shit that my audience did not care about. If I were fighting with them over bad decisions they made and the fans were behind me on that, that would be one thing. Because people like when I was over with the 610, fans loved it when you'd shit on the Texans because they shit on the Texans as well and they wanted to feel like somebody represented them. As far as the Rockets went, nobody was shitting on the Rockets. They liked Darrell Moore, they liked all these guys. So like you shitting on them made you the enemy. So they were never going to be on your side on that, right? And it's about picking your battles. Like what incentive does ESPN

who's got billions of dollars wrapped up in the NFL, what incentive does ESPN have to go out and pick a fight with the NFL over something that the consumer does not care about, and it does not impact the consumer. It's like shit on the news, right? If like there's some big fight that you're having with like a cigarette company like back in the day, let's say that you're running ads for cigarettes and then you find out that cigarettes are really shitty for you, but you continue to let the cigarette

company lie about how bad cigarettes are for you because they're spending money that impacts the people and that could kill people and that would be to their detriment and you have a responsibility to tell the truth in this case. All we're dealing with is league owners allegedly colluding to lower guaranteed salaries. You're not going to find too many people out there as fans of football who love to see dudes beat their brains in every Sunday for their enjoyment. You're not going to find too many people out there as fans of football who love to see dudes beat their brains in every Sunday for their enjoyment. You're not going to see a big

group of people going my god. We gotta get to the bottom of this because it doesn't impact their enjoyment of the game and it will not impact their enjoyment of the game. This is not hard. So you're fighting a battle. So, you're asking ESPN, CBS, Fox, you're asking all of these people who have a lot of money wrapped up in the NFL to fuck with their relationship with the NFL over something that will not benefit them at all and it will only hurt them because it will piss off the NFL and oh by the way, this isn't real life. This is

fucking sports as I use the cigarette analogy the other day or an alcohol analogy or I think a more current analogy that might make actually make more sense is when you see the number of ads for prescription drugs that run on these networks, the same prescription drugs that you see people happy and they're dancing around and they're playing fun 1960s pop music under the commercial. Nothing is everything. And then there's like a whole list of like shit that could hurt you if you take this medication. Like I think

that's a more current example more so than cigarettes because you don't see cigarette ads anymore. But like when you have these companies, these news outlets that are in bed taking huge sums of money from Big Pharma, that impacts people. That is an integrity thing and that can fuck with people's lives. We're talking about sports. It's the sandbox. And this isn't some sort of thing where there is some sort of biased in the league. It's not some sort of thing where like it's well documented that gays or blacks or women are being held

back in certain things that still wouldn't impact someone's enjoyment of the game, but at least it's impacting people's lives. The amount of money that a quarterback that Josh Allen Lamar Jackson or insert whatever Kyler Murray, whatever the amount of money they're being withheld by the team or teams colluding no one is ever going to care because we as normal humans cannot relate to that and we don't care. And the last thing we want is some dipshit lawyer

trying to go out and destroy the one entity that we all can agree universally is fucking amazing and that is football and that is the NFL. So you're not going to win this. Pick your battles if you're a network. If you are Fox, CBS, ESPN, you'll fight a battle if you feel like your consumer wants you to fight that battle. It makes it at least worth it because you're like shit, our audience demands that we speak about this. And trust me, there's some shit they talk about plenty of shit they talk

about that the average person also doesn't give a shit about but they hammer it anyway. But in this case, you're dealing with the golden goose. This is the NFL. This is the biggest sports entity in America. You are not going to piss off Roger Goodell and the rest of the league when you've got billions of dollars wrapped up in it over some story that your audience legitimately does not care about. Take it from someone who's done it in multiple places. I've fought so many

pointless fights. I have been told many times in my life, Josh, pick your battles. Some would say you're a coward when you pick your battles, fight all the fucking battles Not every battle is worth fighting because the result the endgame is not is no matter What going to be bad for you? Like even if I'm right about certain shit about the Rockets There's no need to do it because my audience doesn't want it and it's only going to be detrimental to me And it's the same thing if you're ESPN today like Like they keep going to the ESPN. Why is ESPN? Oh, you know

why? Because they're in bed with the NFL. They are. They're deep in bed with the NFL. They're super in bed, and they're fucking each other. And that's fine. Because again, it's the sandbox. It's not the real world. This isn't politics. This is football. It is sports. It is not a huge deal. This isn't politics. This is football. It is sports. It is not a huge deal. So when people fight over we need to get to the bottom of this. Do we? Does anybody give a ****? And the average person, ask the average person if they

give a **** and the average person is going to tell you I don't give a ****. What's that line in Step Brothers where they keep asking if they can build if they can turn their room into bunk beds, like put bunk beds in their room to have more room for activities. He's like sure whatever they're like he goes takes off his glasses. I don't give a fuck. and that's what people feel right now when they look at this story. It is a dead non-story to the average everyday consumer of sport.

That's why ESPN doesn't care. That's why Fox doesn't care. That's why Fox News doesn't care. That's why CBS doesn't care. CBS has rights to the NFL. Do you think they're going to sit there and be like, let's dig deep and try to tear down the NFL? Let's piss off Roger Goodell.

No. You think Fox is going to do that? No. do you think NBC is gonna do that no they're too busy fighting Trump all the time anywho more to come