The Sporting Class: The Chiefs' Dynastic Moment

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

LeBron James actually ran past me and then somebody else ran past me.

I'm like,

I know he's not here.

Right after this ad.

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We are laughing

about the relative heights of our chairs,

but

when I was at ESPN, I always made sure I had the highest chair.

Wait,

in a meeting.

I see you.

You wanted to look down upon everybody.

No, I wanted them to have to look up to me.

I feel like this, again, is

a big

illustration of how we think about topics.

Power,

stature.

All of that matters.

I was telling Lebetard on a recent show that I would do conversations with players only standing on the top step of the dugout with them in the dugout

because I didn't want to go in with the power dynamic of me, or I would do it sitting down on the bench in the dugout.

But I wouldn't want to do any sort of serious conversation with the player or with anyone where there is a huge height difference.

It sounds like you were on the top step quite a bit then.

There were, yes, I was.

And there's some pictures online where I'm not on the top step and I'm walking or I'm talking to Stanton and there's such a big difference.

And

it's not where I want to be.

So I'm with the chair here.

I noticed you screwed me.

You moved chairs.

I don't move any of the chairs.

Well, there's no side table and this chair doesn't go up and down the way that chair does.

And I always take that chair with the lever on the right.

And now John has it.

And John is purposefully.

The lever of power.

It's the lever of power.

And John is doing it.

If that makes you happy.

I came in and sat in the chair that was at the spot I always sit in.

That's always the same.

I did not ask anybody to move the chairs around.

I don't believe you.

There may be people who are looking for promotions and extra bonuses who just did it for me.

We just want to look up to you, John.

That's

just

for anybody to do anything.

Have you ever noticed when I sit,

I'm never back.

I sit back straight.

I sit legs forward.

I'm only using the top front part of a chair.

You're on the top step of the chair.

That's exactly how I do it.

But I don't have to worry about hitting my head on anything overhead.

Like, I don't walk through a door worrying about hitting my head the way Skipper does.

I just have to think about other stuff.

You guys are so weird.

I mean, I say that lovingly, but sincerely.

That's weird.

David has a beard today.

Can we acknowledge that?

It looks like you can't grow a beard.

Like, you just look messy.

Well,

there's all these patches that make it look like you lasered in a weird side.

It's patchy.

You think this has...

a lasered manicured sort of well it's smooth as a baby's touchis right on the left

I can't do that I can't grow here these are barren um but why what's going on I just like mixing it up sometimes okay it's good looks good just my target demographic John Skipper yes it is full it's a little more gray but thank you but yeah compliments from skipper looks like a good sort of combination of shaggy and

and formatted

can I can I can I just say that I don't buy it when David says I just felt like it.

You do nothing

because I feel like it.

What's the story?

I had some pre-cancer stuff on my face, so I had to have a procedure.

And the procedure was causing a bit of dryness and also made my face look a little blotchy.

So I shaved two days before the procedure as I was supposed to, and I have not put a razor to my face since because everything is still healing.

That's good investigative reporting.

I mean, you stuck to it.

You didn't accept bad bad content good journalistic instinct

But you're you're okay.

Can we declare this?

Yes.

Okay.

I should have used sunscreen as a kid.

I mean, that's the bottom line

and I tried to get my kids to do it and no one wants to use sunscreen.

I don't quite get that

Well, was it an option when you were a kid?

It was not an option for me when I was a kid.

Nobody sunscreen had not been invented?

I have no idea, but no one ever mentioned the word sunscreen in the first 15 years of my life.

Is that a money thing?

Are you making that

pseudo economic issue?

I have no idea.

I am.

Sunscreen's a thing.

I hope you put sunscreen on your daughter.

My mom is a dermatologist.

Oh.

I am shamed regularly for not using sunscreen.

And she's going to shame me when she listens to this.

Well, I don't think you need it in here.

My dermatologist says I should wear it even when I'm not going to be outdoors that I should put it on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sounds like my mom.

No, it's a thing.

It's a thing.

And do I regret it?

I try not to have any regrets, but when I'm getting things sliced off me and Moe's is happening in various places on my body,

which is sort of a technical thing that your mom will love.

They were mentioning what Moe's is.

Do you know what Mohs is?

I don't know what Moze is.

Moe's is when

you have cancer and they dig in.

Oh, M-O-H-S.

Yes.

As

Doug Moe, Larry, Moe, and Curly.

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Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, Veeen Champain, a 14 alcoholic volume, reported by Remy Control, USA, Incorporated, New York, New York, 1738, Centaur Design.

Please drink responsibly.

Now that we've touched on various traumas we all share, I would like to start with the NFL.

Do you guys get sticker shocked still when you get the news that, hey, guess what?

The Bills Chiefs title game, AFC Championship, averaged 57.7 million viewers.

Most watched AFC Championship game dating back to at least 1988, up 4% from last year.

But again,

as we always say, fragmentation is what we are dealing with as a country.

media consumption and otherwise.

And the one thing drawing 60 million people are there about about

is this, John.

And to you,

what is registered?

What is registered is that the NFL is the game of this country.

It is the game in which our country mostly stops where you notice it on the street, right?

I live in a neighborhood not far from here, and I am shocked.

on a Sunday to see how many people living in New York City are wearing Buffalo Bills jerseys and Kansas City Chiefs jerseys.

And I'm not shocked at Philadelphia Eagles jerseys because they're just sort of right down the turnpike, but

Denver Bronco jerseys or Dallas Cowboys jerseys.

It is America's sport and most Americans

stop

for big games like this.

And this is what their day is about.

I see people out everywhere.

My son, Clay,

who doesn't, who pulls for the Jets.

So he has no, should have no interest in the playoffs since they have not sniffed the playoffs, I think, in something like 16 years.

I could have that wrong.

Fewer.

It's fewer.

Nine, maybe.

I can't remember.

Somewhere between a decade and forever.

But it is the longest current streak, I think, of not making the playoffs.

But he still cares, and he still goes and sits with his friends in a bar or has them over to the apartment and they watch the game.

Does he gamble?

He does not.

I personally believe the suggestion suggestion that gambling has anything to do with these high numbers, I don't really believe it.

I think it makes it more fun, but I don't think

that that's why these numbers are high.

I think it is

an intuate sort of love of the game that

is astonishing.

And these guys have built strength upon strength upon strength.

14 consecutive playoff list seasons for the Jets.

David, when you get these numbers, are you still embittered?

Yes.

That's what I was focused on.

The first thing I did on nothing personal was do the math with Coca.

Is it possible that one championship game drew more people than the entire World Series?

And the answer is yes.

And it is infuriating to me.

And so I do a lot of explaining to myself, like notes to myself of why it is to make it so I can get through the day.

First one, there aren't a lot of games.

So I start with that, that of course you're going to have, there are more people, this was part of my PR, more people go to Marlins games than dolphin games.

More people in Florida go to Marlins games than dolphin games.

Of course, we play 10 times as many games, but don't quibble.

Yeah.

Is that the official attendance or is that the actual attendance?

It's actually both, but certainly what I made up is more than what the dolphins draw.

Two, when you look at the number of people who watch these football games, in theory, if we had in baseball a winner-take-all game always in the playoffs, which is what the NFL does, it would help our numbers, but owners didn't want to approve that.

Right.

Single elimination.

It's the greatest.

It's the March basketball, March madness situation.

People are watching because they have brackets and because they gamble, but also because there's so much at stake for every game.

And football is that on steroids.

Well, you're talking about meaning, right?

You're talking about how do you maximize stakes?

How do you maximize what this means to to people?

And eventizing, you got to watch it, or you're also, to John's point, not included in an era where no one is included in anything broadly.

Feels like the thing that makes it unlikely for the NFL to succeed is the very reason why it has its own steroids when it comes to its success.

Sunday is also a family day.

You know, baseball is every day of the week.

Football, well, now football is every day of the week, but Sunday, historically, another thing I would say to myself is, oh, the family's just sitting around.

They're hanging out.

Of course, they're just going to turn on the game.

Or people go to a bar because it's a weekend and they're willing to get hammered early, like a drinking brunch.

So you watch football that way.

So I could come up with a hundred reasons why football was better than baseball.

But isn't it ultimately about

what the viewing experience is like on television?

Because we're not talking about 57.7 million people went to the game.

We're talking about 57.

That's the average minute.

So it probably was 70 million people, which is

one, you know, more than one out of every, close to one out every five people in the country.

It's a great game to watch on television.

It's easy.

You can see everything almost.

You don't have to watch it.

It's better on television.

Yeah.

And by the way, you don't miss anything because the way the game works, a play happens.

And then before the next play happens, you get to see three, about three more views of that play.

So if you miss something, something, if you turned around the wrong way, if you weren't looking at the right part of the field, you don't miss anything.

Basketball, you're going back and forth.

You can't watch all 10 players.

You can't see what everybody's doing.

Baseball is slow and it's a subtle game.

I mean, these are all great games.

I get accused of liking one more than the other.

I like basketball more, but that doesn't mean I think it's a better television viewing experience than football.

And by the way, you can leave and you don't miss anything.

I actually think the fact that there is less action in a football game makes it better.

It's a more social event.

You sit around laughing and talking.

If you sit around laughing and talking during a basketball game, somebody's scored 12 points and gone from being behind by five to ahead by seven.

You sort of have to pay attention.

But I just think television works perfectly for football.

You know, it's funny, there's businesses that are being started, and I'm going to get the name wrong.

I don't know if it's pronounced COSM.

Oh, it's the sphere-like that arena.

Because people don't want to be on their couch.

They want to be in an environment like going to the game where you can celebrate with people and have that.

It's why these stadiums, when the team is on the road, they open their home stadium and 40,000 people come to watch on the Jumbotron because of that feeling of being there.

Yes, yes.

And by the way, we tested that feeling during the pandemic.

What's it like when no one's there?

And everybody agreed at home, in person, it's

even the players, especially the players, maybe.

Everybody agreed that this collective human, ecstatic experience was actually what makes sports special.

My question, though, is also I laugh at the idea that the 44.2 million viewers for the Eagles blowing up the Commanders was a relative disappointment, right?

I just wonder when it comes to sports as a cultural and economic product,

is there trickle-down economics from the NFL booming even if other sports aren't quite to that degree?

Does that, does it, does it get,

put it this way, is it good for baseball if the NFL is booming like this?

No, because everything's by comparison.

So it makes us look worse as an industry.

But then we'll do the math on the media deal and say, all right, if they're getting five times our rate, what's the reason?

Is it based on viewers?

Is it based on somehow what the networks need to program?

Because it certainly can't be based on the hours that baseball could provide because they can obviously provide more.

So we never saw a trickle-down.

We never got to go to sponsors and say, look, the NFL has these numbers, so we're going to up our rate card.

We just never could do that.

It's interesting, John, like sports as a category.

When we get into the

respective incentives that are very different from baseball executive to football to basketball, it makes me wonder like, so what is sports actually then?

We've created a category in which all these things are collected, but it feels like the company you are the president of ESPN is one of the main venues in which it actually might feel that way.

You turn on the channel and it's all there, but otherwise it's all disparate.

It is disparate, but yet it is sort of a common

attraction, right?

You, whether you are in the stadium with a bunch of people or you're in your living room with a bunch of people, or you're in a bar with a bunch of people, it's a communal experience and it's more fun.

I do sometimes watch games by myself.

I don't find it not enjoyable, but it is a whole lot more fun to watch with other people.

I don't know why.

And there are not many of those activities that we do anymore.

We go to concerts a little bit.

But for the most part, we do a lot of things solitary.

I can go to the movies by myself.

It's fine.

I love a solo movie.

Me too.

I like watching games alone, actually, because I don't like being bothered.

And that comes from probably 18 years of watching games and being bothered all game.

But I enjoy it.

I watched the championship games, and I was solo, and I could do whatever I wanted.

I could mute it when I didn't want to listen to Brady.

I could put it louder.

I could stand up.

I could pause it if I wanted to go to the bathroom and not worry.

Like, I love the control of being alone.

And is that for every sport?

Because I can understand for baseball, where you understand more than most people do and you may not want to be.

I don't enjoy watching sports or watching movies or watching award shows with other people.

I'm shocked to hear that you like control.

Well, I think it's important.

I think that to control the viewing experience, it's something that we all talk about is how do we give the viewers more control with their bundle, more control with their camera views.

And it turns out people don't actually like the level of control that they thought they would.

I'm just a little different.

I do like that level of control.

And I manifested, I find, by being alone is the best way.

Are you the one person that picked his own camera angles?

No.

So there actually is no person.

The number of people who actually picked their own camera angles.

Wait, wait, explain.

Picking your own camera angles was something that was available.

Remember when you could, there was a 3D time, you could get the glasses, there were different angles, and you could decide how you wanted to watch the game.

I don't want to be indirect.

Every sport and every network at some point has made the case that, oh, we're going to give you the opportunity to pick the camera you want.

And to my knowledge, no one has yet picked a camera.

It's so true.

It's funny in that that is what they thought would be added value for the consumer.

That's what all these increases in technology and improvements are: is let's give the consumer what they want.

Except consumers, at the end of the day, we all think they're so sophisticated in their desires.

I'd say a slightly more positive way.

I think that the production of sports has become so spectacular

that I don't know why anybody would decide they could do better sitting at home toggling a couple of buttons.

You don't miss anything in a game anymore.

There's

30 cameras at a football game.

The replays are spectacular.

The slow motion,

the effects,

it's a beautifully produced game.

The games are beautifully produced.

I always laughed when people thought, oh, 3D is going to be great.

It's like 3D.

First of all, you ruin the communal element.

You put goggles on.

And second of all, it looks fake.

Even though it's supposed to look less fake, nothing looks better than the two-dimensional, high-definition, well-produced game.

That's all you need to see.

You don't miss anything.

I sat one time on 6th Street, which is that street in Palo Also where all the high-tech companies are.

And they made me put on goggles and I sat in a seat and LeBron James actually ran past me and then somebody else ran past me.

I'm like, I know he's not here.

So

why is this going to excite me that you can make it look like he's here?

I do like the idea, though, of John being, again, John is

just like they present the king with the new technologies.

The court has presented

from an angle below him, the finest technology.

And John is like, I know he's not here.

At what point they're just like, well, we're f ⁇ ed.

Like, this guy is not going to play along with this very basic premise.

I'll never forget being at the Walt Disney Company, and they were trying to show us how great

VR would be, virtual reality stuff would be.

And they put us all.

on like this ledge that looked very much like you were on the ledge and then if you jumped off the ledge um

you would go into an abyss.

And they were going to invite us to jump off the ledge.

And I didn't even wait.

I just jumped.

I'm like,

first of all, there's no way they're going to put an executive at risk here for disappearing into an abyss and dying.

So why would you give in to the idea that you were actually on a ledge?

This is a very revealing anecdote, I feel like.

The question is, what percentage of people actually thought that they were sitting you on the abyss?

Well, at one point, I think they wanted me to be on the abyss and jump.

I want to go back to the idea of inaction being good for the product.

The Wall Street Journal pretty famously in 2010 had a report, a study.

Football games have 11 minutes of action.

But what are

baseball games as well?

There's a number of minutes of action.

We would study this.

It's also overblown.

And I'd like John to probably discuss it.

I've seen it as anything from sort of 11 to 16 minutes.

I do think it probably is the greatest disparity between the amount of time that's on a clock.

Baseball, of course, there is no clock.

And the actual amount of time they're playing.

The greatest being

possibly one of my two favorite sports, which is soccer, where you are actually playing

105 minutes in 90 minutes.

And

they actually care so much that you're playing, they're not really playing 105, but

they theoretically.

That's extra time.

What?

That's actually

extra time.

So theoretically, in a 45-minute half, if you don't play 45 minutes, they add time to make sure sure you actually play 45 minutes.

Is there anything more random than the extra time called at the end of a half?

It's become less random.

You're right.

They keep track of it.

They have actually begun to keep more track of it.

It still is somewhat inexact.

And I still love the fact that they don't tell you.

They say it's plus nine minutes, but then the clock does not reset.

You have to put it on your watch and actually look at it.

And then it's not nine minutes.

It's seven minutes and 55 seconds, or it's nine.

Well, it goes 45 to 54 if it's nine in the first half.

You just have to do the math.

No, is that not accurate?

Well, it is accurate, except the 45 is on the clock, and at 45, and they say, Oh, we're going to have six more minutes.

The six more minutes does not appear anywhere publicly that anybody.

Oh, I thought the 45 winds up to 51.

No, so the 45 stops at 45?

Stops at 45.

And no one's counting the extra time?

Everybody's counting the extra time.

There's no

public display of it.

There is on TV?

No, yes.

No, scorebook.

Well, look, we'll say plus whatever, but in terms of the there's no countdown.

It's a count up.

There's no count up timer, right?

Like it's not actually a bell goes off.

A human being has to declare time, which means that it's up to their interpretation of what's crazy.

I know, which is why you see the coach running down the sidelines, pointing at his watch, going, you said six minutes, and we're now at six minutes and 40 seconds.

Well, I love that they let a play develop in soccer where in football, in other time sports, you don't say, oh, wait, we're on a fast break.

Like, yeah, the buzzer went off, but we're on a fast break.

Play advantage, which is smart, smart concept.

But the question of precision and whether people are frustrated to the point where they stop watching brings us to the controversy in this game.

Just to touch on this some amount, right?

Like.

Yeah, there was a fourth down call that was very controversial

that resulted in a turnover.

Bills giving the ball back to the Chiefs.

Referees disagreeing on the field, ultimately ruling in a way that was widely disputed, but

so it goes.

The point being that this was a human judgment that was not technologically precise.

And the question of can this controversy spark change?

Like, what happens in the aftermath of this, right?

Everybody stops, people debate, and then behind the scenes, what happens?

I want to quote Bud Selig here because anytime I can quote him, I love to do it in honor of Bud.

And we would complain whenever we had a call go against us.

And there's a head of baseball operations, onfield operations.

After Joe Torrey was done with the Yankees, it was him for a while.

Now it's Mike Hill.

And you call in, and sometimes you go all the way up to the commissioner when you get a call against you, an umpire's call against you, a blocking the plate or a ball strike or an out.

And Bud would say, all right, here's what we're going to do.

We're going to keep track for you.

And you'll find over 162 games.

This was my first year or two in the league.

He said, over 162 games, if we keep track of every call, it's going to be 50-50.

50% are going to go your way.

50% are not going to go your way.

And you're only going to call me on the ones that don't go your way.

But I receive a call on 100% of the calls because every call has one team that it doesn't go their way.

So you have to understand that you calling me is not going to have any impact.

So you can keep doing it.

And this is when I was new to the game.

Keep doing it.

But when a call goes for you, why aren't you calling me to thank me for that?

And so we would keep track.

We actually had someone who we would, I wanted to know the truth.

We being the Marlins.

We the Marlins.

And I started this with the Expos, actually, but we kept track because I wanted to know whether it was in my head when the owner would call and say, how come we never get a runner in from third base with under two outs?

But every time the other team does, they score.

Because it feels that way when you're a fan.

And I wanted to get the facts.

And the fact of the matter is that it is true.

It's 50-50.

It's basically 50-50.

So, but that question of like the reason people are furious at the Chiefs is because they are now in a dynastic moment, right?

Maybe this is just, in fact, not a moment, but an era.

And there is, John, this, this.

I think it would be hard to actually have a dynastic moment.

By definition, it would not be

a long moment.

Just trying to

add that.

He's Harvard, so trying to make sure that no one would pay attention to that part of what I said, but nonetheless.

The dynasty of the Chiefs being villainous, right?

In this moment, they are super villains.

And in terms of whether that is bothersome to anybody, right?

People who own the rights to these games, what does villainy feel like to you?

Well, villainy is not.

a bad thing.

I wanted to first ask, why is their dynasty villainous?

Aren't all dynasties villainous simply because you're keeping every other team and and their fans from winning there's what's villainous about astros patriots well

i think to segue from

the previous

dynasty wasn't villainous they may have had some villainous actions well i think that's the same you think the whole chiefs dynasty is villainous well what's happening now is that people believe Again, broadly speaking, there is a feeling that people think the Chiefs are getting calls that other teams do not.

This is the psychology of what we just discussed.

And so there is this feeling that, as I see it, it feels like a billionaire is getting tax cuts.

Why are they getting breaks?

Why are we favoring them?

Why do they get even more advantages that are unfair?

And it raises this question of like,

what are the consequences or repercussions to having a villainous team with these allegations of favoritism from the refs on the actual product?

You know, if the NFL were scripting this, let me just say there's so much confusion right now in the media and in the fans.

The NFL would want the Cowboys in the NFC championship every year.

They'd like them to play the Giants every year if that would be possible.

The NBA would like the Knicks to be in the NBA Finals.

That would be terrific.

And baseball would like the Dodgers and the Yankees to be in every single year and certainly not have the Yankees in it for the first time last year since 09.

So all of this talk that everything's scripted and this is what the NFL plans.

It's not exactly accurate.

Are there calls that in theory have gone the Chiefs' way?

Yeah, but there's plenty of calls.

The Bills didn't lose because of the fourth down call.

They didn't lose because of the incomplete pass that was ruled.

Was it ruled an interception, Coca, when the ball was on the ground, or was that a reception and it was going to be an interception with Bills Chiefs?

That was a reception that was a reception that should have been an interception.

I just don't.

I don't think that that level of conspiracy exists.

And in terms of the hatred of Kansas City, I view hatred A as jealousy and I view it as great currency.

I want people to hate me.

I want people to love me.

I just want people to to care.

And that's always been the view.

What is villainous?

Isn't Patrick Mahomes a pretty likable guy?

Isn't

the Kelseys appear to be pretty likable?

A lot of people listen to them on the radio.

Sure, on podcasts.

Taylor Swift is a very popular entertainer.

Number one ever.

And you're in Kansas City, which is not particularly controversial.

It's not like people dislike the dominance of New York or or Los Angeles, or they don't happen to like,

for whatever reason, some other city.

But think about what's the dislike?

But I believe the dislike is they are winning everything.

We are getting force-fed them as a function of them being really good every year.

And now it seems like they are getting preferential treatment.

And so I bring this up in comparison, let's say, to the Golden State Warriors.

The Golden State Warriors and the NBA, right?

They were very likable, arguably, but at the same time,

they were so good that people began to resent them.

Doesn't that happen with everyone?

Everyone who's likable or successful has enemies because they want to bring them down a notch.

It makes sense that David Sampson is objecting to the premise of a villain and what that really means, because doesn't it just mean that you are good enough to be cared about?

But I am asking about this in the premise, in the context of you want villains.

Villains are good.

Good for ratings, good for business, good for movies, good for stories, good for books, good for life.

You have to have people.

Bad for neighbors.

parts.

Bad for neighbors.

That's a funny way to think about it.

But yeah, I'm always, when you're casting something,

we always say, oh, that's central casting for a villain or central casting for a hero.

There's always been that in every sort of story, both fiction and non-fiction.

And sports is the same.

I never objected to a team being a villain or to a player being a villain.

I didn't want a dirty player.

That's very different.

Dirty versus

villainous.

And in terms of the the worth of the broadcast in terms of interest talk about goliath right like goliath people don't root unless you're well goliath lost in fact i think he's 0-1

decision 0-1 as far as we know there's only one fight and he lost i don't think you can be goliath without having won previous fights i think the one we remember is david but i would assume he was the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world at the time that's how i always pictured it i don't know he lost to that kid with slingshots right but that's that's the one you remember because that's Buster Douglas.

Is that a reference?

Well, I'm pretty sure there is no record of any other fight.

I would not disagree with you that might potentially.

I think he picked the one fight of his life happened to be the one that's remembered.

Can we do a first take episode about David versus Goliath?

Can we continue to do this?

You can't certainly believe.

Goliath overrated.

Well,

since what I actually believe is just a story

that you you made up, it's not any different than that scene in Troy where this big mohunk comes out and

Brad Pitt runs up and smites him in three seconds.

It's just a story.

I'm sorry, just mohunk, though?

Moe's to mohunk.

Mohunk?

I've never heard the word mohunk, but I just assumed it was a Carolina thing.

I was going to let it go.

Normally you type when you don't understand a word.

Like I noticed when I said Mo's, I believe you were typing to confirm thinking that I got it wrong.

But how come when Skipper says mohunk, you don't, your fingers aren't walking?

Because I.

It's just an honorable poetic word, sort of meaning a big hunk.

He's a mohunk.

I might have made it up even.

It's not a word.

No, no, it's you can make up a word.

No, I'm quite.

I thought it was a galoot.

It was like in the galute coaching family.

He's in the galute family, I ain't.

I ain't the galoops and the Motherhunks.

We're like the Hatfields and the McCoy's.

I'm upset with all the Chiefs' hate.

I really am.

You resent the resentment.

I do.

I think that we all want to be, we all wish it were our team.

It's like Bulls fans.

Bulls fans in the 90s recognized how fortunate they were.

They had gone through the Pistons, and now Jordan was winning six titles in eight years.

And we all hated them.

They were villains because they kept winning, but it's jealousy, villainy.

People, I'm just jealous.

I'm not sure it's any more complicated than if a team wins consistently, it means every other team is not winning.

And I have to say, I'm mad every year when my team does not win at the team that does win.

I want to pivot us to a noted villain in this way because Tom Brady happens to be a fascinating character in this milieu.

So, Tom Brady is calling the Super Bowl for Fox.

He's getting paid $30 million a year.

We can talk about the scatting report on him as a broadcaster versus as a player.

I believe it's 37.5.

37.5.

Is it not 375 over 10?

He is also now officially a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders.

And every bit of reporting that we are seeing is indicating that he is not only a minority owner, he is the leading football voice.

And Mark Davis himself, the owner of the team, the majority owner, has said that he has essentially replaced John Gruden as

that foremost influence in the building, making decisions on hires, interviewing people and all of that.

And I just don't know of a precedent for this.

Well, if you're a Raiders fan, you got to be upset to hear that because if you want someone running your team and your organization, that's a full-time job.

And there's no question about it.

To be good at running a football operation or a business operation, it can be your only job.

And in order to be the number one analyst for a network in football, that's got to be your full-time job during the season.

It takes a week to prepare for a game.

It requires an unbelievable amount of preparation.

And I don't see how Tom Brady can do both.

And that's been my position on Nothing Personal.

It continues to be my position.

Has there been a more awkward on-screen moment than the game that Burkhard and Brady did, where before the game, Burkhardt set up Brady to say, oh, I'm going to be here.

You're stuck with me, partner.

I'm not leaving.

It was so manufactured that it was obviously not believable to me.

And if I'm Mark Davis, I will not allow Tom Brady to continue at Fox because I want his full attention.

And if I'm the Fox, I will not allow Tom Brady to run the Raiders because I need his full attention.

John, does it bother you as this hypothetical sports television executive that Tom Brady is not nearly as good as the guy he replaced, Greg Olson?

Does it bother me?

It bothers me that these salaries are that high for a position that makes no financial difference in the game.

I don't

believe that 53 million people would have watched instead of 57 million people if Tom Brady wasn't in the booth.

I don't know if he was in the booth for that game.

He was not.

He was in the booth for the lower game in the NFC.

Embarrassing $44 million.

Embarrassing.

Outrageous.

Which, by the way, proves the point.

But $37.5 a year to confirm that.

So does it bother me?

I do believe there's a conflict, and the conflict should probably be resolved.

I don't know why he's allowed to continue to have that conflict.

And he probably brings more value, though I doubt Mark Davis is going to pay him $37.5 million, though his stake in the team may be well worth more than that.

He should make a decision about which one he wants to do.

So here's what I've been thinking about, all the alt casts that are happening.

And I was thinking about John and

getting his budget shown to him as he's looking at his P ⁇ L and he knows what he paid out in rights to let just take football.

And he knows what he's paying the announcers, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, which is an unbelievable amount for each of them.

And they're great.

And then he gets presented with, you know what?

We're going to bring in the Mannings.

We're going to put that on a different channel for an altcast.

And then we're going to do another one where it's going to be for kids.

You will not have heard of anyone, but there's slime and various things involved.

And you're going to look and say, wait a minute, that's an extra $8 million per product for production.

What are we doing here?

So is it progress, all the altcasts?

That's what I'm having a hard time understanding that we're trying to attract different demographics.

So we're doing it with all these alt casts, but we're just increasing the expense when it turns out that maybe people don't care.

Somebody should do the real test, and that is to have the Manning cast be the only cast.

I mean, what do we think?

We can take the game off linear and see how things are going to be.

No, no, no.

No, just give the announcers away and have it just be the, that's all you can do.

The Manning cast is on linear.

What would happen if on a Monday night football broadcast, your only choice was to cut on and watch the Mannings?

Do we believe more or less people would tune in?

I believe that roughly the same amount of people would be watching for.

So then, why would you increase your expenses?

If you're not getting an incremental revenue benefit for it, why are you increasing your expenses?

To make it look like progress?

Well, what Fox seems to be doing with Tom Brady specifically is using him as this ambassador for their corporation.

He is on stage.

He is

seemingly a marketing device.

And $37.5 a year for 10 years for, again, a perhaps villainous, but certainly

wildly famous and accomplished person.

Like, that seems to be part of the math that they're doing too.

To me, it was an ambassador deal that enables you to draw from different budgets.

So

I would bet you that you would not want on your P ⁇ L 37.5 million for Tom Brady as your play-by-play guy.

I would imagine that you're happy to take money from the corporate side for him to go to investor events.

And so that's worth an amount of money.

And so you split up his salary.

I don't think that's a big factor.

I'd like to go back to and put everybody on the spot.

I watched several Monday Night Football broadcasts this year, almost all of them with my son Clay.

And we chose the Manning cast every time.

And we did not miss the old school, hey, so-and-so turns around.

He hands the ball off.

He goes for three yards, second seven.

I don't miss it at all.

would prefer that people would get more experimental and get more interesting.

All they're doing is continuing to do radio on television.

They're calling a game as though I can't see what's going on.

The Manning Cast is entertaining in itself.

I don't find it.

Have you watched the Manning Cast for a full game?

I've sampled it, but I've not watched it.

I've watched it for a full game.

I've watched a lot of it.

And it does feel like more of a digital podcast product where you're not relying on the announcers to tell you what's happening because you're just watching it and also want to be entertained by your parasocial friend, Eli and Vaden Manning, who's going to entertain you by talking about the video.

Yeah, I view it as that, that you're not a fan of either of the teams and you just want to hear what these guys have to say.

But what's very popular now are these watch parties.

Metal Art does them, where you're watching somebody watch the game or you're doing a

screen experience.

Fundamentally, what a Manning cast is,

is that.

By the way, John did put his money where his mouth was when you were running the company, famously putting tony kornheiser into the booth trying

and i i love love love love tony but this was an experiment of course it was an experiment and um

i have to say in retrospect my attempt to do so was undermined not popular not accepted and the people who were in charge of the production and the other people in the booth made sure it didn't work.

Do you have any

recollection of your P ⁇ L?

Excuse me.

Do you have any recollection of your P ⁇ L?

Did you have Kornheiser on with no concomitant expense or did you have to take part of his already existing salary and put it into yours?

What a highly specific curiosity.

Well, I'm obsessed with this because I love the way big companies allocate talent.

Well,

we didn't really do it that way.

We paid Tony Kornheiser to do PTI.

And when we asked him to be on Monday Night Football, we negotiated an additional fee

to have him on, but all he was doing, and that fee was allocated to Monday Night Football, and the fee for PTI was PTI.

So it was an extra fee.

So that's the answer is that you didn't just put him on it.

Well, he was doing more.

He was doing more.

He was doing more.

We did have the concept that we can ask you to do other things and we're not going to pay you more.

And we built in, we were notorious for building in, you're going to be a college football analyst, but you're also going to appear on college football weekly.

See what Charles Barkley says.

They're going to put me on Deportes.

You know, they're going to have me calling games in Spanish.

It was true.

Nobody worked harder than the people who worked at ESPN.

I was always amused, and I am still kind of amused with your talk about how hard it is to only have a week to prepare for a game, a game that you have spent your whole life either playing or announcing.

It doesn't seem that hard to me.

And

that's so sad that your view is that because you're in charge of hiring and sort of establishing value for the people who are doing this, that's like saying, you know, Dan, doing four hours of content a day, five days a week is not hard.

It's hard.

I didn't say it wasn't hard.

Three times a week.

You were talking about how difficult

it is

that a person who is one of three people in a booth must spend, what,

14, 16 hours a day for the other six days.

I do think anybody does that.

My experience with the people who are doing that is they were very conscientious about preparing, but that they weren't getting up at the crack of dawn and working till midnight to make sure they understood what?

What is the great complication?

I was always...

When you're watching the games with your son, can you name every player on the team?

But this is, I want to bring this back to Tom Brady.

If I studied for six hours, I could name every player on the team.

Yes.

But one of the comic aspects of the Tom Brady story is that here is a guy who is faster and better at processing on the fly in live-fire situations what was happening with all 22 players on the football field.

And he is struggling.

in the booth to articulate that.

And so whatever is necessary to be great at this, he is not that, despite having all of that processing power.

And I want to bring it back to what Mark Davis has said about Tom Brady, his minority owner with the Raiders,

on December 22nd, which was, quote, when Tom was hired, I promised to Fox that we would not get in the way of Tom's job.

And he's going to be one of the best announcers in the game.

Anything he does with the Raiders will be in the future, as far as that goes.

This is again December.

I talk to him all the time.

His input is greatly valued.

Always will be valued.

We'll see as time goes on how his role evolves in here, but he's very excited about it.

We're respecting his obligations to Fox.

That was Mark Davis, which also speaks to me.

It seems to indicate a level of treatment that also it's Tom leaping Brady.

Like we are treating him differently because of what he has historically achieved.

Mark Davis was lying, obviously, because it was two weeks later that Tom Brady was doing the interviews for head coach.

So I'm not, and right during the playoffs while Tom was calling playoff games.

So I'm not sure, were you giving that quote because you believed Mark Davis that that he was showing that sort of respect and deference?

I think he was just lying.

It seems like Tom Brady is getting to do everything that Tom Brady wants.

And everybody is saying stuff to enable that.

And he's getting to do two jobs that no one has done simultaneously before in sports.

And he's not necessarily good at either of them.

That is.

Well, we don't know about as running the Raiders yet.

I mean, it's too early.

Are you judging him on his running the Raiders football?

I am skeptical.

of why he is the person running that team.

And are you judging him as a broadcaster?

I think, you know, we're giving him a lot of hate.

He's been doing it a year.

I was wrong.

I said immediately that Brady's skills as a quarterback quarterback would transfer you'd want that guy in the booth and boog shambi criticized this take and boog was right it's was right on

it is a separate set of skills people do actually go to school and spend four years sort of learning how to do it and having actually seen it and i i don't want to to let my previous remarks not make it sound like I respected what they understood how to do.

They understood when to come in and when not to come in.

There's a big truck, right, full of people, and they're talking about putting graphics on and doing replays, and the people have to understand how to work within that team.

It has very, very little to do to what you do when you take the snap from center, you drop back three or four steps and see the field.

That even if you did that better than anybody, you still don't know how to articulate that.

You don't know how to, when to do it, how to interact with the other people who are helping you do that.

But to bolster the point you were trying to make before, it is funny to speak of a baseball announcer like Boog, who calls a zillion games a year, 162.

But 10 times as many as a national weekly announcer to the point of like, how can you possibly do more than one job in the week?

Well, in baseball, they actually do that all the time.

Is there anything harder than being a solo radio announcer the way Vin Scully

doing baseball?

Well, Vince Scully is a unique talent.

And I would make the argument that nobody before

or since has called the game with the sort of level of eloquence, insight, and not

spending almost any of his time on the pedestrian things that happened.

Oh, they popped the ball up high.

So-and-so is sitting underneath it and has gathered it in.

I don't think Vince spent a lot of time doing that.

Vince would talk about 15 minutes of it.

So it's the same, the action.

So of course you're describing the action as it happens, but we know, like you're saying, that the football announcers shouldn't say second and seven, handoff.

They do do that, but that's only about 16 minutes of a three and a half hour broadcast.

So the skill, one thing that I don't know if the result of this will be is John criticizing or thinking that broadcasters are not worth anything.

The fact is, and I want to reiterate what he said, there's people in your ear all the time talking.

You've got, it's like a concert that's happening and there's everyone playing a different instrument to make it sound good.

Yes.

It is really hard to do that job.

Not everybody can just wake up, roll out of bed, and eloquently wax poetic about mohawks.

That is a hard thing for anybody to aspire to.

Mohunks.

Mohunks.

Not mohawks.

Mohawks.

I'm sorry.

He said mohawk.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Did I say Mohunk or Mohawk?

A fake word that John invented?

Yeah, he said Mohunk.

Mohawk.

Mohawk is the hairstyle.

I said Mohunk.

Okay.

Well, Mohawk is actually an

anglicized version

of a native, the name of a native tribe.

It's a dark hairstyle from the Ace.

Agree to agree.

Thank you, Pablo.

Thank you, David.

Bye, John, John.

Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Averoma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Dawig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McRae, Rachel Miller-Howard, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, Chris Tumanello, and Juliet Warren.

Our studio engineering by RG Systems, our sound design by NGW Post, our theme song, as always, is by John Bravo.

And we will talk to you next time.