Will Cain Country - Clay Travis: How Woke Politics Ruined Sports

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

On this Friday sports edition of ‘Will Cain Country,’ Outkick Founder and Author of ‘Balls: How Trump, Young Men, and Sports Saved America’ Clay Travis joins Will to revisit some of the most insane intrusions of identity politics into sports over the last 10 to 15 years, as documented in his recently published book. Will and Clay compare their accounts of Woke culture’s slow creep into sports during their time at mainstream sports outlets, from Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the National Anthem and the push for transgender inclusion in sports, all the way to the ongoing course correction we're seeing today. Will also gets Clay's predictions for the Oklahoma-Alabama and Texas-Georgia games coming up this weekend.   Subscribe to ‘Will Cain Country’ on YouTube here: ⁠⁠⁠Watch Will Cain Country!⁠ Follow ‘Will Cain Country’ on X (⁠@willcainshow⁠), Instagram (⁠@willcainshow⁠), TikTok (⁠@willcainshow⁠), and Facebook (⁠@willcainnews⁠) Follow Will on X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Guerrilla tactics, Robert Lee, George Floyd, Colin Kaepernick, a trip down memory lane of the most insane moments in sports history by the author of a brand new book, How Trump, Young Men, and Sports Saved America. Clay Travis. It is Will Kane Country, normally streaming live every Monday through Thursday at 12 o'clock Eastern Time at the Will Kane Country YouTube channel, the Fox News Facebook page, but always available by following us on Spotify or on Apple. That's where you find the sports edition of Kane on Sports. Clay Travis has a brand new book out. It's entitled How Trump Young Men and Sports Saved America. Balls. It was fun to talk to Clay.

our careers walk down the same path together and they walk down a path of the most insane years in sports and Clay's cataloged this moment and how we overcame it, how we came out the other side through roughly 2014 to 2022. And it was really fun to talk with Clay

about all of the moments during that time which will blow your mind if you can't remember we couldn't catalog at all in one 40 minute conversation because the insanity was on a way. weekly basis, from Bubba Wallace to Michael Sam. And it can't be forgotten. And that's Clay's goal with this book. So we went down this path together one more time. We also, by the way, broke down who's going to win, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Texas, Georgia. We hope you enjoy this conversation with the host of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show, Clay Travis.

What's up, Clay? How are you? I'm going to go ahead and hold the cover up. I appreciate that. that introduction. I'm doing great. We just moved into a new studio. So there may be a little bit of Bell, a little bit of issues, but so far so good. No, we'll be good. Yeah, I want to talk about the book, Balls, How Trump Young Men and Sports Saved America. Let's, in the book, you focus on a lot of events over roughly the past decade that led sports, the sports media industrial complex, the broader conversation down a path and how ultimately we kind of began to emerge out of it. So let's start with where you think it started. Like when did we begin losing our mind in sports?

I really dove into this, which is I'm not sure I'm 100% right, Will. But to me, it really started with Michael Sam. If you go back in time and people remember, he was a seventh round NFL, draft pick, late round pick, one of the last of the seventh round. And ESPN put him on air, kissing, making out, whatever you want to say with his boyfriend when he was drafted. And to me, it was identity politics meet sports because he wasn't an elite talent. And to me, up to that point, ESPN had tended to cover the guys or the gals who were actually the best at what they do. And that was the first time where I said, I don't really care what about his sexuality at all.

Is he a really good player? He never played in an NFL game. And they covered him like a starting NFL quarterback. And so that to me was maybe the very beginning of that collision between identity politics and sports. And so Michael Sam, if I remember correctly, Clay, would that have been like 2013-14 somewhere in that range? Yeah. And then my trajectory, I believe it was 2014, the draft. He never played in an NFL game. And by the way, they tried to say, oh, NFL fans are homophobic. I think you're a cowboy fan. Unfortunately, I'm a Titans fan. If you told me that a transgender midget could play quarterback at a high level for the Tennessee Titans, I would be like, I want that dude on my team, right? Whatever it's going to take. And so I think what happened was we went Michael Sam. Then we went Caitlin Jenner getting the Espy, which a lot of people remember as like a holy cow moment.

And then the next year, one, two, three, we had the kneeling of Colin Kaepernick. And it was like, boom, identity politics is here. This is just sports is just politics by any other name. So I would argue, Clay, Michael, Sam, and Caitlin Jenner, while definitely notable, were sort of like the first shots in a war that didn't really begin to explode into a wider conflict. And I think you're right. I think you agree. For me, Clay, and it's wild, your career and my career marry each other in a lot of ways. And I think I was at ESPN really for the life of this.

entire whatever we're going to call it, five, seven years of insanity. For me, for me, Clay, and I want to come back to you in a second and a lot of what you're writing about in the book, I were forever remember. I joined ESPN in March of 2015. So a lot of this, the stuff that you just described had happened or was kind of happening. But my life at ESPN for the first nine months I was there was fairly normal. I was going on first take, filling in on holidays, debating, you know, who's the 10th best player in the NBA. And then I was sitting on a beach in New York. And it would have been in August, I think.

Was it a preseason game? Yep, that's exactly right. And I remember my phone blowing up. And I looked at my friend I was with and I go, Colin Kaepernick just knelt during the national anthem. And it just feels like instantly you knew this is gigantic. This is huge. Of course, after that, Donald Trump says something, and we're off and running, and it was on a monthly, perhaps every two to three weeks, schedule of your latest outrage insanity.

Yes. I think that's right. And that's why, to me, the opening move to the era that Kaepernick really set off in the NFL was the Michael Sam and the Caitlin Jenner. Because here's what I think is significant, Will. And I dove into this quite a bit in the book. If you remember in the David Stern era NBA, Mahmoud Abdul Raouv, some people will remember him as Chris Jackson, great basketball players, shooting guard, small guy,

but could make a shot from anywhere, played with Shaq at LSU back in the day. He refused to stand for the national anthem. And David Stern just said, we're not doing this and immediately suspended him and eventually they worked towards some form of compromise. Nobody even remembers the name, Mahmoud Abdul-Rove now. Now, it's the NBA, not as big as the NFL, but this was when the NBA was at its apex, the Jordan era NBA. And David Stern just said, this is bad for the sport. We're not doing it. And I think,

think if Roger Goodell had done that, it would have been a flare-up, but I think it would have faded. What happened was at ESPN and other left-wing sports media organizations, they decided overnight that Colin Kaepernick was a hero. And I do think it was connected to Donald Trump because it was in August of 2016 as we got ready for a presidential election. And it just took off. And I think it led us down a path of everyone losing their mind. And let me say something positive here. I do think, and I don't know if you feel this way, I feel like ESPN has started to find sanity on some level anew.

I think Pat McAfee has helped. I think the bus in with the boys guys have helped. I think Stephen A, not being a crazy person, actually somewhat interesting, non-left-wing everything opinions has opened the network back up to some small measure of sanity. But you were there. They really lost their minds for about five years. Let's take a quick break. But continue this conversation with the author of Balls, How Trump, Young Men, and Sports Saved America.

Clay Travis on Wilcane Country. Welcome back to Will Cain Country. We're still hanging out with the host of the Clay Travis and Buck Samp. Text and show, Clay Travis. I often was there. And, and, I mean, I was often, one of the things that banged around in my head, Clay, you know, have you heard the famous quote about Fox News? I think it was George Will that said this, but Roger Ailes discovered an incredible niche in America.

Yes, it's a great line. And I, and I would think about that when I was at ESPN. I was like, well, they're all, because by the way, there was like two versions of me at ESPN. There was the one on first take that took all these debates head on. And then there was the guy that had his own radio show syndicated on ESPN radio. And that was a totally different thing where what I said is I'll address these things when I want to and when I think they're important enough. But I'm here to talk sports. Like in my radio show was really geared around the sports fan.

And I was like, I can't believe the rest of this network is ceding me this market. This market is the market that A built this brand and B represents the vast majority of people that are tuning in DSPN. Remember, I succeeded Bomani Jones. Nobody, meaning I got the same time slot, nobody was tuning in DSPN Radio to hear about social justice. They were here tuning in to hear about Josh Allen versus Patrick Mahomes. And so that's what I, I was like, you're going to give me this market. And I think that's what they're turning back to a little bit, sports. But I will say, I'll see what you think about this.

I was just on Sage Steel Show. And she asked me a similar question to you. and I said, honestly, I don't know because I don't think it matters as much. And I'm not trying to insult it. And I have love in a lot of places in my career, my heart for ESPN. But I just don't think the relevance is there anymore. So it's like whether or not you're correcting course or you continue with insanity, it just doesn't hit the same as it did 10 years ago.

Well, I think there's just so much more opinion. And that's the thing. I love that Roger Ailes quote that you nailed about why Fox News is so successful. It doesn't surprise me, Will, that Outkick has been successful. But what I have said is the fact that we have no competition is what blows my mind. We basically can talk to 75% of sane American sports fans. And then there's still somewhat of a knife fight for the 25% of woke sports fans. And that's probably generous because I don't even think that market is that large.

But let's say it is. wouldn't you want to compete for the 75 as opposed to compete for the 25? And so I didn't, I'm like you. Look, when I started Outkick, we did pretty girl rankings on college campuses. You know, we did SEC girlfriends, quarterbacks going out for Halloween,

just fun stuff, right? The kind of stuff that guys would sit around and girls at a tailgate and talk about. And then, like I said, about 20. I actually think there was another one in here, too. You may remember it. It was the Missou protest, the University of Missouri, which for college football kind of exploded. This is when you, this is when you hit my radar, Clay. And I can't remember what this was. So I don't know when your career took off. But I remember sitting on an airplane. So for me, Clay, I would

back this up because you said Donald Trump played a big part in the Kaepernick moment that made this explode, and you're right. But similar to Caitlin Jenner and Michael Sam, in the broader news world, there were other events leading us up to this Kaepernick thing. And for me, I was at CNN in my five years before ESPN, and I would put watermarks around Trayvon Martin and then Michael Brown, right? These were huge moments in our culture where we had irresponsible conversations around the topic of violence and race. They were horrifically bad malpractice conversations around both of those subjects. And so I was on CNN doing those two subjects watching the world begin to lose its mind. Sports, always a trailing indicator there,

lost its mind when Kaepernick fed off of that stuff. Because those two cases are kind of what led Kaepernick down this path, right? And then he and Donald Trump exploded in the world of sports. But you hit my radar on the same topic. And I can't remember what year it was, but it was the Missouri racehooks. And you dove in. you you dove in man and you were the truth teller out there on that case yeah for people who don't remember that story and i'm going to try to find the year here by jumping in in uh at the university of missouri they decided that they were going to have a race protest and i think will it was right around that michael brown which was the st louis area which was the state of missouri

but they decided that they were going to have a hunger strike. And they took over the entire campus, the main quad, at the University of Missouri. And they said, we're not going to stand for the outrageous racism at the University of Missouri. And I remember because it was college football. The college football team, Missouri, talked about refusing to take the field and play. And so this story exploded in my world because I, I'm out there like, wait a minute, they're not going to take the field? What happened?

And it was everywhere. And I think, Will, the other part of this is social media. That was right about the time that Twitter was taking off and things went mega viral and it was super left wing. And I went in and I looked into it. And there was virtually nothing. Off the top of my head, a guy alleged that somebody yelled a racial slur to it. him off campus. There was a drunk kid who walked through a campus event and may have used a racial slur. And then somebody, this was the crazy part, somebody allegedly did a poop swastika

in a Missouri dorm room in like a public bathroom. And I went and I looked up. I said, okay, what's this atmosphere of racism and everything else that is man that is demanding? these players not play. And I wrote about it. I said, there's nothing here. A guy off campus, I wish it didn't happen, allegedly yells a racial slur. I think he was like in a red truck, they said. Okay. And then one drunk college kid walking through campus allegedly uses a racial slur and gets in a lot of trouble for it. And then a poop swastika. This is the, this is what throws an entire university into chaos. And so the atmosphere was so ripe for things to take off, even if there was no legitimate backing. And I wrote about it because it directly connected

with college sports and college football, which I loved. And I think it was around 2014-ish. And that thing took off. It was everywhere for people who remember it. Yeah. And you and you, and you, then, Clay, continued kind of, it sounds dismissive to call it on that beat, but what we experienced then for about a four to five, maybe even a seven-year period was a continuation of that same Missouri story at various levels cropping up during time. You would hear about somebody spray painting a racist thing on a college dorm room door. And then it turns out, oh, the kid himself did it, right? So you would tell the truth about these things that more often than not, became hoaxes or were revealed. I think it was Michael Bennett. Remember when he said, oh, I was racially profiled at a Las Vegas casino? I had to do that.

And it took over the entire news cycle for the NFL. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Here's one on one to ask you about, Clay. And I don't know if you've covered this in the book because you, another one that you did. So my point on highlighting that all these stories kept coming back up, right? and you somewhat alone, and the most powerful on social media were the guy pushing back on it, which made you public enemy number one.

But you were always, you know, looking at the facts. Did they support the conclusion of the quote-unquote narrative? The one that I haven't heard followed up on, Clay, that I remember you being out front on, is LeBron and the gate. Remember what happened at the gates of his mansion in Los Angeles? And I don't even remember the update on that, Clay. There was supposed to be a police investigation. Revisit that story.

Yeah, for people who don't remember, LeBron alleged that someone at his super high-in Brentwood L.A. Mansion had written a racial slur on the fence of his mansion gate. This public road, there is a gate with a big camera. right there on the gate. And he alleged that somebody had scrolled a race. It was right during the NBA finals when he was playing against the Golden State Warriors. And everybody ran and covered it and said, oh, my God, look, even LeBron is not able to escape this awful racism in this country. And I had a radio show at the time, the Outkick the Coverage Radio Show.

We had one of the top shows in L.A. We were on the Dodgers affiliate. I was on super early in the morning, but I had a lot of friends and connections in L.A. You got up in the 5 a.m. hour in L.A., there's a good chance you listen to my sports talk radio show as you were driving in to start your day, going to the gym, whatever you do.

And you know, Will, a lot of people with serious jobs are trying to keep up with the East Coast. So the 5 a.m. hour in L.A. is actually a super active hour. So there's lots of people out moving, maybe different than a lot of other cities. So I knew L.A. well because Fox Sports is based there. And immediately the alarm bells went off in my head because I said, wait a minute. It's a 20 million dollar mansion. It's probably an 80 million dollar mansion now. But it was a 20 million dollar mansion in a super high end area. And I said, why isn't there video of this? Everybody

on that street has tons of security cameras. You can't drive down that street without being seen. LeBron has a huge security camera right there. So I had some connections in the LA police department. I said, hey, can I get the police report on this? Can I, they said they're doing an investigation. What's actually going on here? I made calls reached out. They said, well, some interesting stuff's happening. First, the video camera, the security camera, it wasn't turned on. So, oh, well, that's kind of interesting, right? Because if it had been, somebody would have been right on camera doing it. And secondly, if you're just a reasonably rational person, a huge security camera right by a gate

would seem like a place that you would be very nervous about doing some form of graffiti, much less racial slur graffiti. And by the way, the police they couldn't find any video on that whole street of anybody showing up.

And then it gets more interesting, Will. When the police showed up, LeBron's team said they had already painted over the slur. I said, wait a minute. Really? If you thought there was a crime committed,

wouldn't the first thing you would do be to just get back and you wanted to catch somebody? You wouldn't say to somebody, hey, go get the paint. Let's cover up all the evidence of the crime. You wouldn't do that. So the police showed up. They said, hey, can we get the video camera

and said, oh, the video camera's not working. Well, where's the slur? Well, we took a photo of it, but we went ahead and painted all over it. Where's the photo? Somehow it didn't get entered into evidence. And the police investigated. Will, they closed the investigation

and said they couldn't determine that any crime had ever occurred. Well, hold on. How come I'm the only person that even tells that story? because there's still a lot of people out there, Will, who when they hear, they think, oh, well, LeBron was the victim of this awful hate crime. Well, there's no evidence that ever happened, and nobody in media even followed up

to even ask the basic questions that I did. Now, I think that's because there is a higher demand for racism and victimization than there is actual number of crimes. Obviously, Jesse Smollett is very famous. But I think there's a significant, substantial amount of evidence that LeBron James and or he may not have known. It might have been the security guards. It might have been the penumbra of LeBron James dudes, right, created this whole story that was 100% untrue. Let's take a quick break, but continue this conversation with the author of Balls, How Trump, Young Men, and Sports Saved America.

Clay Travis on Wilcane Country. Welcome back to Will Kane Country. We're still hanging out with the host of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show, Clay Travis. And the point of revisiting these, Clay, as you have in the book, is to document something that happened. And it's like a mass psychosis. And the number of stories at that point that continue certainly defined my career and yours and the entire conversation in the United States. And it's hard, and this is what you've done a good job of, but it's hard to catalog. I mean, it's Kyler Murray using homophobic slurs, you know, when he's 15, and now we've got to talk about it when he's drafted number one overall. It's Josh Allen, you know, quoting modern family and rap lyrics. And so now we've got to revisit that when he gets drafted number one overall.

It's a baseball pitcher who, you remember I can remember with the. When you're a teenager, it's crazy. I can't remember the baseball pitcher. Who was the pitcher that got the All-Star nod to be the starting pitcher in the baseball in the Major League Baseball All-Star game? and now we've got to revisit his social media from when he was a teenager. It was just on and on and on. And then, I mean, and it comes for me towards the end. And then there was the Bubba Wallace affair, which is a lot like the LeBron affair, right?

And so you just keep going down. And I'm telling you this stuff, everybody remembers, but this stuff was happening so fast and so often. And the conversation of why you were a villain and quite honestly why I was a villain was we question the assumptions, never the facts. and the assumption is what made you virtuous. The assumption being, look how racist America is. Well, your evidence isn't strong. The things you're pointing to isn't strong. And then it became, well, Clay Travis and Will Kane and whoever else, they don't believe in racism.

But then it went a step further because they don't believe this is racism. They are racists and they're racist. So we keep going. And then we get the trans stuff that starts to bleed in at some point, which Leah Thomas wasn't the first of those stories. I can't remember what the first of these stories was. But here's my question for you. When do you think we reached the top of the mountain where it starts coming back over? Because we've rebounded now.

We've headed back where the popular narrative has bent the ark back to sanity. What do you think was that tipping point? I think it was Lee. I got two because I say the high water mark of wokeness to me was Leah Thomas winning a win Women's NCAA Championship, ESPN crediting Leah Thomas as one of the stars of women's athletics in their Women's History Month series. And most people miss this because it was the women's NCAA tournament first round. But ESPN paused and had a moment of silence over the so-called don't say gay bill during

a South Carolina Howard NCAA tournament game. That was in March of 2022. That and the Leah Thomas win were almost within 24 hours of each other. I think that was the absolute peak of wokenness. And I think we've begun the decline since March of 22. So when I look at that era, I say it roughly started in 14 will. then it kept growing all the way up to 22. And now we're on, I hope, the backside of a return to insanity in sports. And in that arc, Clay, what I would say is it hits jet fuel with Kaepernick, right? You've already laid the groundwork that it started before, but it hits jet fuel with Kaepernick. But at that moment, I know because my career is defined by it, there is an appetite to hear a contrarian point of view. There's at least an acknowledgement that this isn't unassailably correct. By the time we get to 2020 and George Floyd, we have arrived at the point where alternate points of view are not worthy anymore. They don't have a place. Now, by the way,

that doesn't mean I was, I was not pushed out of ESPN. I had a contract offer on the table and chose to join Fox. However, I will say I was on first take less. And it's not just about It's not about me. What you saw was now people begin to make a lot of money because we were in the peak era of woke sports. I mean, uncomfortable conversations with the black man launched Emmanuel Acho, right? All this stuff, and I like Emmanuel, but now you're talking about a market that took off by doing this stuff, right? And starting at about 20-20, you had about a two-to-three-year period where literally people in sports made minimal. billions based upon the backs of these woke stories.

Yeah, look, I mean, they did, the Colin Kaepernick got a Netflix documentary series, Will, where he said that the NFL draft combine was modern day slavery. Netflix aired a documentary where they show athletes walking around in their underwear, as they do, getting measured, to try to become multi-million dollars. draft picks. Everybody wants that invite. And they changed. It's one of the craziest things of this era. Will, they turned the NFL draft picks into slaves being auctioned on the stage. I mean, that was Netflix. Kaepernick got paid millions of dollars to make that documentary. And of course, he's suing, begging to get back into the league. Will, remember, they changed the name

owners in the NBA to governors because they were concerned about the connection to slavery. Team owners. And so I think to your point, I mean, the biggest, I said the apex to me was Leah Thomas with the trans world, but in the bubble, and I think you have to make COVID a part of this too, because I think it accelerated the psychosis. They had NBA guys voluntarily giving up their own name on the back of the jersey to be replaced with political slogans. I mean, this whole era is bonkers. And really, one reason I wanted to write this is I hope people buy it now.

But I hope we don't forget the history and it needs to be in a place where someone can go and say, holy crap, that really did all happen. know who else would write the book. Let's take a quick break, but continue this conversation with the author of Balls, how Trump, young men, and sports saved America. Clay Travis on Will Cain Country. You know what's better than the one big thing? Two big things. Exactly.

The new iPhone 17 Pro on Tullis' five-year rate plan price lock. Yep, it's the most powerful iPhone ever, plus more peace of mind with your bill over five years. This is big. Get the new iPhone 17 Pro at tellus.com slash iPhone 17 Pro on select plans. Conditions and exclusions apply. Welcome back to Will Kane Country. We're still hanging out with the host of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show, Clay Travis. Let's go back to really quickly now, now the correcting mechanism.

And you forward this in your book. You talk about the role of the Manosphere. So Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson. And you talk about, you talk about young men, which was inevitable. Yes. Like the young men at some point are just going to go, enough, enough of this. And you talk about the role of Donald Trump. Yeah, look, I think Trump is not the cause of this.

I think he's actually a symptom of the craziness. And he was just one of the people on a much more significant level than you and me that was willing, Will, to look around and say, what are we doing here? This is just crazy. And I know this happened to you all the time, too. It wasn't necessarily that everybody was infected by the woke virus. It was that stepping up to the people in power had real consequences. And most people aren't willing to take on those consequences because they had real significant impact in careers. And if you're the guy who's trying to say, hey, you know what?

You know, George Floyd is not representative in any way of how most minorities deal with police on a day-to-day basis. If you just said that in 2020, I mean, they fired, this is also in the book, but remember, they fired Grant Napier, who had a multi-decade career of calling games because he simply said all lives matter. And people are like, well, you can't have that. You can't have that opinion. You're fired. I mean, they fired

Rachel Nichols, who is way more talented than most of the people, whatever you think about her, way more talented than the people around her who ended up replacing her because she happened to be a white girl. And this is just the world that we were all living here.

The tennis guy, the tennis guy that got fired because he said, I think it was Venus. Venus Williams was using guerrilla tactics, which G-U-E-R-I-L-A, warfare, like, you know, tactics. Like unexpected, unexpected attacks on tennis. It's not an uncommon phrase that is used there. And they said, oh, he's calling her a gorilla, G-O-R-I-L-A. Hopefully I spelled that right.

And they fired him. ESPN. He'd been calling gay tennis matches for years. Wait, Clay, there's a better one. I got a better one. Wasn't there an Asian guy who, yes, an Asian guy who was calling a college football game, but his name was Robert Lee. And they wouldn't let him, they wouldn't let him.

I don't know if they fired him, but they're like, we're going to take you off play-by-play for a little while because your name is Robert Lee. He was scheduled to call the University of Virginia game. Robert Lee, an Asian man. And because of the Charlottesville protests, ESPN said, we can't have Asian. Robert Lee calling the game because his name is too similar to the Confederate General. I mean, this was really happening. Oh, my God, what are we doing?

I mean, all of these stories can just be forgotten. A lot of people just want to pretend that whole era didn't happen. And you and I were controversial just because I would say something like, you know, I don't think most people are going to be like, oh, man, Robert E. Lee died in 18. I mean, maybe somebody makes a joke on social media because it is kind of funny. Oh, look at Robert Lee. Robert E. Lee thinks he's slick sliding back into Charlottesville pretending to be an Asian dude. I mean, that's kind of funny, right? But the idea that you have to pull him off the game, that he would be punished because he has the same name as a Confederate general who died 140 years ago.

And remember Bob Lee is at ESPN at the time. And his nickname was the general. I just, people lost their mind. Oh, my God. I forgot about some of these stories. They're so good. Oh, my God. It's such a psychosis.

And I really, I think it's great that you've done this man that you've cataloged it. Here's the last thing on this, Clay, and we'll leave it. Where do you think we are? Are we back? Like you said, the ESPN's corrected course. They're trying. A lot of the people that made those, a lot of the people that made those decisions are still there. A lot of the people that were on air driving those narratives are still there. To your point, by the way, not everybody lost their mind.

And that whole era, and notably COVID, taught me, I used to walk around thinking like Wall Street. Remember the movie Wall Street where he said greed is good, that the base level human motivation was greed. I learned greed is not the base level of human motivation. Fear is the base level human motivation. When you rip everything else away, what people are driven by mostly is fear. And I think I got a lot of notes. I know you did because you used to tweet this. I can't tell you how many on-air people at ESPN would say things to me off-air about in support of the opinions that I had.

And famous athletes, very famous athletes who weren't on-air. would send me messages. Keep saying what you're saying. Keep doing this. You're the only voice of sanity. And I would appreciate it, Clay, but I would also think, why don't you do it too? You know, like it would be awesome if you still stepped up as well. But fear is very, very powerful. I, you're right about that. I think you nailed it. People knew it was wrong, but they feared the consequences for pointing out the wrongness. And I think we have at least created a culture when I see the Detroit Lions score against Washington and they do the Trump dance and they point to Trump in the in the broadcast booth or the owner suite wherever he was at that time

and when I see John Jones and I see Christian Pulisic and they're doing the Trump dance I think those young men are actually just evocative of the overall young male perspective and I think young men, pardon the language here, are just over the bullshit. And I don't think I would have written this book the way I did, Will, unless I had three boys myself, because you start to see the world through your kid's eyes, if you're a parent. And there are a couple of stories in here that I just couldn't get over and they're anecdotal. But let me explain them really quick. One, I took my kid, during COVID, my middle son, we're going out to buy baseball cards because he loves baseball cards like a lot of kids do. We walk into a target in my neighborhood and he just

points and he says they would never have those for us, dad. There's an entire section of girl power shirts. And he said they would never sell boy power shirts, dad. And for you and I will, who are around the same age, I think we grew up in the era of, hey, girls should be able to do everything. guys do be a senator be a president be a doctor lawyer whatever else that's great but their era is there's something wrong with boys and that's very different than girls should be able to do everything boys should be able to do it's being a boy is toxic so i that saw his eyes then also what they're taught another friend's son came over will and he said today mr clay we learned that white men are the cause of all the problems that we have in the country and the world today. And they told us

that we have so much power and we screwed up so much. And he said, how do I have so much power, Mr. Clay? My mom doesn't even let me pick what I get to eat for dinner. And so if you tell kids something that doesn't reflect their reality over and over and over again, and they see it as being untrue. At some point in time, they start to rebel against that. And so that was to a large extent also the genesis of this book. And the book is Balls, How Trump, Young Men, and Sports Saved America. I encourage you. I encourage you to check it out. Before we go, Clay, there are two games that matter to me this weekend. I Will USC is a good game that I'll be paying attention to, but there are two games that will dominate my attention. I want to see what you think is going to happen

in these two games. I don't have the lines in front of me. You may have them off the top of your head. I've got them legit right here because these are all my gambling picks. I don't know if people can see this, but yeah, I've got it. I carry it around with me. Oklahoma going to Tuscaloosa, Oklahoma, Alabama. What happens? I love the under. I think that if I had to pick aside, Oklahoma's around a six and a half point underdog. I think I would take Oklahoma because I see this as a 24 to 21-ish style game. I think Bama will win because it's hard to beat Bama in Tuscaloosa, but I love the Oklahoma defense. I think that they will take the air out of the game, and so I like the under a lot in that one, but I think Bama wins 24, 21.

I kind of am on the other side of that from you. I think Alabama covers. I think they beat Oklahoma by more than six and a half. And the other one, obviously, for me, a big one, is Texas travels to Georgia. What's the line on that one, Clay? Georgia is right around a six and a half point favorite as well. And I'm on the under will. I'm on the under in this one. I don't know what you think, but I think defenses are going to dominate in this one, too.

I think that's right, which would lead you towards Texas plus the points, right? An under game with six points is a lot. I think Arch, I mean, it's a small sample size because it's really one game. But Arch against Vanderbilt, Clay, was a totally different player than one that I've seen to his career so far. And I've said this, Clay, the guy I saw play Vanderbilt, not only, that is the guy everybody talked about. That's a top 10 pick in the NFL draft. I'm serious. And I've been down on Arch.

But a guy that climbed the pocket, stood in the pocket, took a hit to the chin, still delivered the pass, was throwing passes where receivers will be, not where they are standing wide open. It was incredible. Was it a one game thing? I don't know. But if that arch continues, Texas can beat Georgia and Texas can beat A&M. You're 100% right on that. And look, I think that we like to praise and then bury and then praise and then bury quarterbacks, especially young ones, a ton. And Arch had more hype than almost anyone probably in modern college football history because of his last name. But I think you're right. He looked really good. Honestly, you watch Texas closer than I do. I watch their games, but you're obsessive on your watching. My recollection on this is that it

actually broke down basically in the final 10 minutes of Mississippi State. Texas suddenly found its office because that was a tough one against Kentucky to watch. Texas was fortunate to win and it looked like the season was basically off the rails in that game and then boom, final 10 minutes, everything changes. Yeah. Well, and remember, Arch didn't throw the game winning

pass in that Mississippi State game. It was back up Matthew Colomwell who did. But Arch was beginning to play better. But he still was running the ball, doing the things that we've come to the Vanderbilt game. I was like, oh my gosh, that's a quarterback. That's not just a guy that can run that's not just, I don't know. But I'm humble about it.

I can't trust that one game is the turning point. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. If it isn't, get on Georgia. If it is, Texas could be. And last thing, Clay, here's the, I was looking at the rankings. I think they're really good. I was looking, I don't have a complaint with the way the college football playoff committee has, and the AP has it right now.

I think they've got it pretty nailed from bringing Texas Tech in at six above Ole Miss and Oregon. to having, you know, Texas just ahead of Oklahoma at 10 and 11. I think I see your rankings every week, and you've had Indiana and A&M above Ohio State, which I think is fair, we don't think it's unfair for others to have Ohio State. The top three are clear. Yeah, I think that's right. I would even take a next step.

I would say basically the top five are pretty clear. I think Alabama, I know they stumbled against Florida State, but you look at the resume they've had since. they have to be top five. And I think Georgia has to be top five. So you can quibble inside of the top five. And even the top 10-ish, top 12-ish, is kind of settled. So we'll see what happens with these big games.

I'm excited to watch just like you. All right, there it is. Clay Travis, check them out to Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, and at Outkick.com and pick up the new book, Balls, how Trump, young men, and sports saved America. Good to talk to you, Clay. Thank you. Keep up the good work, Will.

Thank you, brother. There you go. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Make sure you check out Balls, how Trump, young men, and sports saved America. We will see you again next time. Listen to ad-free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcast, and Amazon Prime members,

you can listen to this show, ad-free, on the Amazon Music app. You know, and then, Uh, uh, and uh, You know what I'm going to be.