The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - The Possibility Of A Future Super Bowl Being Played Overseas: 'It Is Going To Happen'

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Brian T. Smith of talkSPORT in London joined "The Matt Thomas Show with Ross" live from Radio Row in New Orleans to preview Super Bowl LIX and discuss the possibility of future NFL championships being played overseas.

Let's say hello to our friend. We have not talked to him in a long time, and it's frankly my fault because I'm just a bad friend. But Brian T. Smith, I think he, I don't know, did you get rid of the Brian? Let's see if he got rid of the T. His Twitter account is definitely different than it used to be. Longtime columnist for the Houston Chronicle, Beat Rider for many, many teams, and joins us from the Big Easy, where that is his hometown. Brian, how the hell are you?

Matt, it's been too long, man. I'm great, and it's good to hear you and Ross together and talk to everyone in Houston from New Orleans at the Super Bowl, where I'm covering it every second for TalkSport. You can find it at TalkSport.com. Find me on Twitter at BTSmith, UK. End of self-promotion. Let's get on the fun stuff. How the hell are you guys doing? We're doing great. First of all, you've left for your wife got an amazing opportunity for work, and congratulations to you and to her. what has it been like being there and when you got there you said look I'm going to get into the business you have been I've been looking at your tweets for many many months now when there's something you ask sports related they go to you so how has that been how much explaining do you have to do

or can you get right into the X's and O's and the analytics of talking about United States sports in London I appreciate it Matt yeah it's uh safe to say it was a huge transition you might have heard of this. You know, England is very into a hierarchy and kings and queens and poshness and, you know, all the great, wonderful things about England. The move's been incredible. It was a transition. It was a life transition. It was a work transition, you know, in a good way. You have to earn it there, right? Just like Charles Dickens did 200 years ago. So, you know, you got to put in your time. You got to come in with letters of recommendation, just like Ben Franklin did. And it's work. It takes time, but I'm having a blast, man, and being able to be in New Orleans.

I was just literally just interviewing Patrick Mahomes and asking him, you know, about MJ and the Bulls and the, you know, could they ever have a, even imagine having two three pieces, let alone one, which obviously the chiefs are going for on Sunday against the Eagles and having fun too and asking about, you know, what the heck do you think about being a mass fantasy and Luca Donchich in a crazy Lakers uniform. So doing that all for Talk Sport has been great. London, I mean, I loved Houston. You know, it was so hard to leave. But it's just been an incredible experience, living over there, working over there. And as you said, I'm able to do a lot of the same stuff, still write columns. And actually, you know, I love Houston sports. It's great to take a little bit of a life break and do more of the national stuff.

But, yeah, they're so heavy Premier League over there, obviously. the Tark Sport does an incredible job of covering the hell out of the Premier League. I mean, they have 2.3 million followers on Twitter. Everyone, and I imagine a lot of, you know, English football, Wrexham, Chelsea, Man City fans, obviously no Arsenal fans in Houston. But, you know, that they follow TalkSport. And so TalkSport is covering the heck out of U.S. sports. And I'm trying to help them do that.

All right. Last question about overseas there before I get to what you're doing in New Orleans. Obviously, the NFL goes to. Europe quite a bit. How many of the games did you get to go to in England this year? What was it like being there for those games? And the bigger question is, do you really ultimately envision a full-time NFL team there? And do you believe that at some point Roger Goodell is going to bring the Super Bowl

to the London area? This has been one of the super cool things for me is being able to live over there and now doing you know, more of the United Kingdom, obviously London and England, but doing Europe. So it's not just about personal travel. It's about work travel. I'm honestly, I'm going to be at the Super Bowl much longer than I ever would have been for The Chronicle. You know, the Chronicle is a fantastic place to work and was tremendous for me. But, you know, TalkSport understands that the NFL is going global and that is the push. And I've been writing about

this and covering a lot of that. You know, they're going to Australia. They're going to, you know, Spain, Brazil, Mexico City, the London game. So I was at, I've done NFL UK at Tottenham, Hotspur Stadium. I've done it at Wembley. And Matt, it's just getting bigger over there. And I mean, I always have to caution it, right? It is just 95% Premier League there. But London's such an international city. What it does is that becomes their leapfrog everywhere else. And Roger Goodell mentioned during his press conference to really kick off. Super Bowl week, you know, he brought back the idea that he wants to one day have an international team. That had really fallen by the wayside after the Jacksonville Jaggerwires had received

a $1.4 billion approval to renovate their stadium. So whether that's expansion, you know, they add two teams down the road, whether that they eventually move somebody. I mean, you know, the Cleveland Browns are jacking around with their fans right now. Could you imagine if the Browns threatened to move to London? But they have the stadium. They have the infrastructure. And I, and I do think, I do think that two things will eventually happen. The NFL is obviously going to get its 18th game. I just asked Patrick Mahomes about that. You can see my tweets about that. But Goodell gets what he wants, right? So the NFL will get its 18th game. And everything that I've heard is that the hope for the NFL is that that 18th game becomes an international game. And so every team will play either a home international game or in a way international game. And Matt, all it is, for the NFL, it's two things. It's more money. It's more building. It's more building. billions in their coffers and it's more exposure. The NFL is completely saturated the U.S. market. It really can't get any bigger, but it can easily expand overseas. And once you do that, Matt, they will eventually have an overseas Super Bowl. It might not be for 10 more years,

but it is going to happen. And that's what's cool about doing, you know, covering everything for talk sport in London is that, you know, as big as it is in the United States of America, it's really starting to kick over internationally, and we're at the center of that. Well, Brian, I get very few things right when it comes to my analysis of sports, as you know. But I have said for months that when the NFL goes to an 18th game, it's going to be that everybody has to play overseas one time. Because as you said just a minute ago, there's, I mean, they, Brian, they got $150 million from Netflix to put on two games. Okay, so they're always trying to find new ways to make television money.

But they're being potentially tapped out here in the United States. They've got to go somewhere. Hell, they announced yesterday that the NFL is going to play a game in Australia in 2026. The international waters is where the next source of revenue is. And that's why I firmly believe, just like you do, that when that 18th game comes into play, everybody's going to have to go overseas for at least one week. All right, as far as the game itself, you have covered Super Bowls before,

give me the sense of how much the repeat talk there has been and how much if it is referees are giving Kansas City the advantage and there's been stupid media questions about that and how has Philadelphia taken all this in with obviously much of the attention this week

around the Kansas City Chiefs. Yeah, you know, a few things. Number one, the city is really starting to buzz. I mean, I'm from New Orleans originally. to live here. Greatest, for me, the greatest American city in the world. So the city starting the buzz, number one. Everything's really picking up right now.

Number two, this is definitely East Week because of Travis Kelsey and someone named Taylor Swift and the three Pete and Patrick Mahomes. So there's an interesting thing going on. It almost feels to me like a college football playoff championship where you would have Alabama, let's say, yeah, you know, five, ten years ago. And obviously that would be CS. But, you know, where Alabama, you just go into it, and they are the dominant force. And there's another good team that you think could win.

But everybody wants to talk about Nick Saban and Alabama and, you know, adding another ring to the dynasty. However, I've been saying for weeks now in writing into Talk Sport, Matt, that you start doing the matchups. You look at, you know, whether it's, you know, super advanced statistics or just Jalen Carter going against the Chiefs offensive line. You start running through all that stuff. almost everything favors the Eagles. I mean, they put up 55 points in the FC Championship game against a very hot Washington Commander's team and Dan Quinn's defense and ruin the Jaden Daniels story.

So, you know, with Sokwan Barclay, with Nick Seriani needing revenge against Andy Reid, people have already forgotten, I think, that two years ago, they played and the Eagles were the better team for three plus quarters. I think it really comes down to in Jalen Hertz, Channel View shout-out, by the way, can Jalen Hertz be good enough? he has the talent, but it was a very up and down season.

If they can get the NFC championship version of Jalen Hertz and he can stretch the field, he's using A.J. Brown and Devante Smith. It's not all Sitton Barkley. If you have that one-two tandem going on, the chiefs can't really answer for that. I mean, granted, they have Steve Spagnola, but right now, in terms of the media, in terms of the presence, it feels very heavy chiefs. And I will say they were super, super confident on media night. like, you know, mid-80s bears, Mike Dickgo, Walter Peyton, Jim McMahon.

They have that swagger because they have been here before. But on paper, the Eagles win this game, it always comes down to, and Texans fans know this painfully well, Matt. Patrick Mahomes, ball in hand, Andy Reid, maybe the refs, you know, see things a little differently than everyone on TV and in the stadium. It's really hard to knock off the Chiefs and they're going for true NFL history. Unfortunately, your city went through some devastation with the attack on Barbin Street. Security already is tight for the game regardless of what had happened before. Have you heard anything about extra additional security, what to worry about because, again, of what just happened a few weeks ago in New Orleans? I'm getting nostalgic talking to you on the radio because we always have such in-depth conversations.

You're such a good radio host and reporter. I love it. I miss this, man. No, so this is actually very interesting to me. So I've been to the French Quarter 10,000 times, okay? I've never, ever, ever seen it like it is right now. And I doubt in modern history it's ever been like this. And it's not a bad thing. But when I got here on Sunday night and walking around at 7 a.m. Monday morning, it was startling to see pretty, you know, empty quarter streets, right?

They were being cleaned. You're getting all the vomit off, you know, moving the rats. and making it look pretty again for 24 hours. So there's nothing on the streets except for street cleaners and military personnel. Military personnel carrying weapons, you know, carrying rifles. They're nice, they're friendly, but they're doing their job. They have roadblocks, real roadblocks everywhere. It's hard as heck to actually get a car through the French quarter,

the main part of the French quarter right now. And then two days ago, I've never had this happen. In the quarter, I was just walking to the convention center for, you, you know, Radio Row and a military member, very nicely, just asked if he could check my bag, you know, in public, which does not happen in the United States of America. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Safety first, he was, he was very polite. That is how intense they are, they are safeguarding this, obviously, in relation to what happened

that was so tragic, you know, on New Year's Eve. So it is a very, very heavy security presence. Police officers everywhere, bomb sniffing, you know, dogs everywhere. I've never seen security this heavy four days, three days before the Super Bowl. But I give a tip of the cap to New Orleans. They have to take this seriously. You have to be able to come here and have safe.

Feel safe. The flip side is it is New Orleans. And people were having a really good time last night already. So I don't think anything can ever stop real partying in New Orleans. BTS, it's great to hear your voice. We must end this conversation by having. our good friend Ross, Fidelreel, bring in some Premier League conversation to wrap this bad boy up. They don't need any Premier League conversation, I guess.

Ross never asked me a question ever whenever we were on the air. That was my time to kick my feet up, Brian. That's why I always said that. Oh, that's terrible. I was just curious, Brian, like you have a unique perspective. And just maybe from the business side of sports, things Premier League to American sports. Now, relegation to me is something that's cool, but it would never happen in America. but have you seen anything over there that you're like,

you know what, they need to do this in American sports or maybe vice versa? Man, I could talk about that forever. So very, very shortly, I have gotten so into prematurely. And the EFL and the pyramid and everything that you see if you obviously watched the Wrexham documentary,

and I'm going to championship matches and, you know, League One matches on and on. It's incredible. This is what, this is the biggest thing. I'm not even going to get into the rules or whatever. everything that you would see on documentaries or you know YouTube or whatever everything you would watch on the stadiums the supporters the fans it's 1,000 times better in person when you actually live there and there is so much that I think not in just the NFL that really like the NBA the NBA kudos to the rocket for being a good team again and someone for Tita for getting that right but the NBA The NBA overall is struggling with fan, you know, involvement and interest. Baseball, you know, not the Astros, but baseball overall is struggling.

And the fact that, you know, in many ways, the EFL, the English Football League, the Premier League hasn't changed. They're doing a lot of the same things they've done for the last 50, 70, 80 years, 100 years. I actually think that a lot of these gazillionaires from the United States of America, if they're not buying English football teams, which so many of them are, there's so much they could learn about fan engagement, keeping prices lower, rewarding your supporters, building loyalty. The players change just like in the United States of free agency.

That's not the thing. But having loyalty to the brand, loyalty to the shirt, loyalty to the franchise, all those things, they take it so seriously over there. and that is really, really missing from American sports. You get it in college. You don't get it in the pros anymore. And I just think there's really something missing in the U.S. And you can learn a lot from England about how passionately people support their teams.

Literally, liver die, comparing like, you know, Liverpool to Atlanta with how they treat the Falcons and the Hawks and all of their teams that nobody cares about. It's really, really laughable. All right, I got 10 seconds. What food have you enjoyed back being in the States that you can't get in London right now? What have you missed and you're now able to do it? Really quick. So I actually love English food, like real English food is amazing, not the cheap, bad pub food, like the real English food's amazing. You cannot be a shrimp, an oyster, pole boy with a cup of gumbo and then a beat of beer.

I don't care where you're at in the world. That is the best food in the world. All right. Next time Pearl Jam gets back on touring the States, come hang out with us in Houston, my friend. Great to hear your voice with it. Hello, hello, and enjoy your time in New Orleans, and look forward to reading more your stuff on Fox World.

Thanks for having me on. I miss you guys. Take care and hide everyone in Houston. There you go. Brian T. Smith with us here on the program.