'The Reason To Get the F**k Up': Domonique Foxworth on Diabetes of the Ego (and the Job He Wanted)

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

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

I don't care.

I'm dead.

Read my phone.

See all this embarrassing stuff.

Check out my porn history.

Knock yourself out.

I'm dead.

Right after this ad.

You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network.

If you're looking to add something special to your next celebration, try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

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, Feeding Champion, afforded an alcoholic volume, reported by Remy Control, USA, Incorporated, New York, New York, 1738, Centaur Design.

Please drink responsibly.

Looks good right there, right?

Is that you grabbing my bosom as you suckle my nipple again?

All right, I think we're good to go, guys.

For free?

It's always free.

Free titty milk I'm giving to all of the metal arc.

Goodness, girl.

We're rolling on free titty milk, I hope.

Very good.

I love suckling a Dominique's teeth.

Okay, so if you don't know the bountiful resume of Dominique Foxworth, host of the Dominique Foxworth Show, you should know that he was a cornerback for a half dozen years in the NFL, the youngest vice president in the history of the NFL Players Association, the president of the Players Union, and then a graduate of Harvard Business School, and then the chief operating officer of the NBA Players Union, and then, among still other things,

a deeply overqualified gas bag at ESPN.

which means that Dominique has personally negotiated multi-billion dollar collective bargaining agreements against some of the richest, most powerful people in America.

And that he is also a fantastic person to talk to about all of the trade-offs between sanity

and

incredible ambition.

All right, back to the CBA negotiations.

You want to know who was not impressive?

Yeah.

I don't know if there are specific people.

I think just the experience was not what I thought it was.

Well, there's a cult of the billionaire, right?

Right.

Whenever I talk about this, it's almost, it always sounds like a jab, but I don't mean it as a jab.

It's just like, no, they're normal.

And so, like,

by the way, I, this is my parallel experience to going to Harvard.

Yeah.

It wasn't, I went there and I was blown away.

I mean, a little, a little, um,

I wish I had the look at me, Louis Button here.

But the point being that when we went there, Dominique, our takeaway collectively was not, holy shit.

Yeah.

This is where they're keeping all the geniuses.

It's holy shit.

There's a dude vomiting into a sock and throwing it out his dorm room window and that dude is me but the point is lots of other people did that too yeah the that was my experience at business school is like there's a there's a standard deviation of intelligence and i think the center of that standard deviation is higher than average society but

Average society is

it's demystifying.

Yeah.

There's a demystification.

Yeah.

And I guess the fact that I use standard deviation suggests

of demystification that I was going.

But the point I was making is there were certainly people in there that I was like, wow.

I also run into people in everyday life where I'm like, wow.

Part of what I am so fascinated by

is the question of confidence,

right?

I consider you a confident person.

Anyone who's just listened to you considers you a confident person.

Like you played in the NFL,

and at some point, you had to reckon with the fact that you are not a hall of famer.

The

business school experience for me has been,

was

a turning point in my life.

And

I bring up business school often, not because it's cool to say I went to Harvard, although when I'm with my fancy, rich white neighbors, I do drop it on them every time because most of the time they're just like, oh, oh, the football player is here.

And like, yeah, I am the football player, but I also am am incredibly insecure about the fact that

you think I got to this neighborhood because I can tackle.

Yes, it's true.

That's why I'm here.

That's why my kids can't afford to go to this school without scholarships.

And that's why my house is on the same street as yours.

And I think that sometimes they believe that theirs is there because they are smart and capable.

And my belief is you probably are, but also.

There are some other connections in most place.

But anyway, the point is, I was and always have been hyper competitive from the time, which like you would expect of an athlete, from the time I was a kid all the way through life.

And there's a

always a goal to work towards.

And when I was six, I said, I want to be a professional football player.

And from then on, it's like, all right, let me reach that next goal.

Your screen name, your AOL screen name is an important detail in your story.

NFL Bound 36 was my AOL screen name my freshman year in college because I graduated high school early and went to college for the second half of my senior year and they gave me number 36 but I wasn't aware of that that's ugly I changed the six in training cam once they got rid of the riffraff

the fing

fact that you called your shot that early branded yourself as such yeah speaks to a earlier than that actually um

my brother we were on black planet in high school message board yeah i mean no it's like like a social media.

Black Planet was like

MySpace before MySpace.

You should say that I've not logged into Black Planet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It wasn't a message board.

It was like a social, it was original

MySpace, but

I don't know.

We came up with it and y'all took it and we didn't get nothing for it.

It's the way of the world or the way of this world at least.

But anyway, so you had to have a screen name.

Yeah, yeah.

And I had a picture of myself

and like playing some music in the the background.

A picture of myself with a book bag on and shorts in front of Disney World with my little high school abs.

And my name was just NFL Bounds.

Oh my God.

You were that guy.

Yeah.

Somebody could probably find that.

It's probably incredible.

We're going to find this.

We're going to find this.

We're going to go to the internet archive the way back machine.

I'm going to put it on there.

I've been trapping since a young age.

We really have.

Trap, trap, trapping.

We really have been.

But you prophecied this.

You fulfilled your own self-prophecy in a way that is in defiance of just like any standard probability, right?

Like you beat odds to do the thing.

Is everybody who's listening to this already subscribed to my podcast?

The Dominique Foxford Show.

Thank you.

Since we're talking about media and our egos and how it's all wrapped up in it, I can't have you passing me and subscribing to it.

www.pablo.show.

Nah, don't do that one.

Do mine.

I'm going to start advertising, promoting on Black Planet.

Start a burner account.

I wonder, yeah.

I'm surprised you haven't Googled it already.

But anyway, I was explaining what happened at business school by pointing out that I always was competitive every step of the way.

And it was from the time I was a kid.

I remember losing.

You know, we had field day and stuff at elementary school.

I remember being in the third grade and losing the race.

And we would, like, I lost the race.

to the fifth grader, which I had to cry and I was upset, but it wasn't a big deal because it's like, he's a fifth grader.

And then

Wayne, I forgot his last name, light-skinned kid named Wayne, beat me in a race the next year.

And he was in the third grade.

That shit is still.

It is very obvious.

It ate me up.

I had a crush on Chanel Knox.

She was a really good basketball player, but I didn't have the confidence to let her know I had a crush on her because I lost the race.

Like the plan was to holler at Chanel after I won the race.

I lost the race.

She deserved deserved better than that.

What are you after losing?

Cooked his ass in the fifth grade.

Cooked him.

But wait, wait, wait, wait.

So you have to exact revenge because you lost this race.

But in the aftermath of the race, I want you to describe what it was that you were reckoning with.

I lost.

I cried.

You cry when you lose, when you're a kid, or when you're as caught up in...

Because it was, I guess, you're asking a good question that allows me to turn this into a much more cinematic moment that I'm not sure that it was, but we will anyway.

I was losing my identity, Pablo, and I was losing, I was going to be a professional football player.

I was going to be a Heisman trophy winner.

You know what Heisman trophy winners don't do?

Lose races in the fourth grade to Wayne.

I lost another race in

seventh grade, I think it was.

I'm glad you can finally come out

of the closet on this.

Yeah, I've never told anybody this.

You're at a 4-2-40 at the combine.

4-3-5.

Relax.

It was actually 4-3-2, but Stephen Miller was his name.

He was a really, really good basketball player.

Yeah, it is.

He was a really good basketball player, and he was like in the AAU circuit, and people thought he was going to be like an NBA player.

He was 6-3

in dunking in middle school.

And his stride length got me.

I never did.

Never did get revenge on Stephen Miller.

I cried all the time when we lost.

We didn't lose much.

My Pop Warner football team, we won a couple championships.

We went all the way down to Disney World and got our asses kicked by the Winston-Salem tiny Vikings.

I have not let that go yet either.

Tiny Vikings.

Yeah, they were called the Winston-Salem Tiny Vikings.

It's great when your nightmare is definitionally infantilized.

In my mind, it's just a bunch of like Muppet babies.

No, they're

monsters.

Monsters.

But yeah, then we lost in triple overtime to a team from California, which

my team obviously was all black and the tiny Vikings were all black.

This California team, no black kids.

That really hurt.

It really hurt.

I mean, we went out.

It's a different sort of cinema now.

I'm realizing.

I mean, there's, we can all pretend like this doesn't exist, but

there is,

I think Josh Allen was on the busing with the boys podcast, and he pointed out that when he sees a white linebacker covering

a slot receiver,

he makes a milk check, which means we got a mismatch.

And we all know that Larry Bird will be be offended when they put a white person on him to guard him.

Anyway, I'm finally going to get to this point at some point.

No, I want you to relive every defeat on the way to this point.

They hurt.

My freshman year, I was on JV.

My high school, I wanted to, my homeschool was Randallstown.

My mom wouldn't let me go there because it was a bad school.

We went to

a magnet school that only had a football program for two years prior to showing up.

And so my first year as a stardom varsity as a sophomore, we won one game.

Then the next year, next year, we went eight and two.

And then final year, I think we were seven and three.

Anyway, the point I was trying to get to fast forward through all of this is that every step of the way, it's like very clear in a way that I think is, I didn't recognize as unusual, but was probably unusual for most kids where it's like, all right, this needs to be done.

Like I have to do this.

And it's very clear motivation, very clear to purpose and very clear determination and gave my life purpose in some ways.

Like I didn't drink or smoke until I was 35 years old because I believed that like I had a goal and a purpose.

And

then the reason why I brought up business school is that was the first time that I stopped and had a moment to reflect and like look in the mirror and ask myself, who am I?

Or ask myself, who, what do I want?

And there was a specific.

touchy filly class where we always have like serious quantitative classes and serious business theory and strategy classes and then there's like these soft classes that are about your feelings that no one really respects or cares about that shit worked on me what was this class called do you remember um I don't remember I remember I did not like the professor I took like positive psychology

was it as soft as that or no it was phrased as something no no no they gave it some weird acronym to make it sound cool but it was really just let's feel our feelings yeah it was like let's have therapy with each other and let's feel our feelings and um clayton Clayton Christensen was not teaching that class, but he's like a renowned, he's dead now, RIP, but he's a renowned business strategist and writer and whatever.

And he

was, he contracted a fatal illness.

And in that, he was motivated to like assess life in the same way that he assessed business.

And the his big walkaway from that was like, how will you measure your life?

And that was kind of the basis of

the class.

And it was something that I had never considered because like, I don't need a life scoreboard.

Like I have an actual scoreboard, like how much money will I?

The one thing you had was clarity of scoreboard.

Right.

And so like when I, even though I stepped away from football, it was clear.

Oh, now I will become a CEO.

Now I'll go to business school.

I'll be the best at business school and among the best at business school.

And then I'll start a company or I'll work at a company and I'll work my way up and I will or I'll invest.

Like I honestly said to my wife and family and everybody

that I was going to take the millions I made playing football and turn it into hundreds of millions.

You were now billionaire bound.

Yeah.

That was your new screen name.

These motherfuckers.

Like, they all right.

Like they, I mean,

I could do that.

But yeah.

So this class was the first time that I was like, oh, okay.

Let me think about this.

What else do I want?

And so out of business school, the NBA PA fired their executive director, the Basketball Players Association, fired their executive director, Billy Hunter, who was a former NFL cornerback.

Yes.

So obviously they want to get another cornerback.

So I was a candidate for that job.

I was, I don't know, 30.

And so I remember having interviews with Chris Paul and Andre Igodala and Steph Curry.

I didn't know you interviewed for the executive director job.

Yeah.

I mean, I made it all all the way to the finalists.

And I didn't know this.

Yeah.

The reason why, I mean,

the reason I was given for why I didn't get it was because I'm just too young.

And, but they liked me a lot.

And so when they hired Michelle Roberts,

they introduced us and was like, we really think that you should hire him.

I met her.

She liked me.

She hired me.

I moved to New York.

My wife got pregnant with our third child.

I worked there for a year, but I was like, we can't do this anymore.

I got to go back home because this isn't working for my family.

Yep.

All right, we can't do this.

I quit.

I came home.

While they were at school, it was the first time in my life where I was like, I don't have like a clear direction.

Like, I'm not working towards something.

I'm not working towards being the best executive director or being the best chief operating officer.

I'm not working towards getting to business school.

I'm not working towards winning a championship or getting my next contract.

I was like, I'm here.

Fuck am I going to do?

What do I?

And then that's when those classes started to like ring in my head.

Like, you you have a luxury in that you've made enough money to live comfortably

and

The clarity that comes from needing to pay your rent is a different type of clarity and while it sucks there is some reward to it where

you got purpose you got drive, you know, like there's something that you're like, hey, I got to get up and do this and as much as it sucks, there's there's a clarity of mission.

Right.

And I was at home like

that clarity of mission i don't have anymore and then it's like so then what motivates you you already and i remember thinking my entire career post football sucks for a lot of players it's not going to suck for me i'm the smart football player i wrote a weekly column i'm smarter than all of them i'm going to be all right

but

It's transition is what it is because I didn't miss football.

I didn't want to be playing football.

But I was in a transition and it's like, it's like puberty or it's like midlife crisis.

It's like retiring from your job.

It's all those points.

It's like going to a new school.

It's all those points of transition.

You're looking for a new mythology

to commit to, a new story to tell yourself that you believe that you can actually make again into reality.

Yeah.

And it's like, it's the purpose.

It's the reason to get the f up.

It's the reason to work.

It's the reason to show up.

It's the reason to do everything.

And

when I was still playing, my wife was

in Harvard law school.

And I concocted in my mind, you know what?

I'm going to be a stay-at-home dad.

Before the whole business school thing, it was like, she's going to this fancy law school.

She's obviously going to like go make a bunch of money and I'll be a stay-at-home dad.

She was finishing up law school and studying for the bar.

the year that our first daughter was being born.

And so I, and my ACL was being torn, or my ACL was torn, and we had a lockout.

So I was home a lot.

And I was a stay-at-home dad with an infant.

That wasn't going to be me.

Cause like the, the, the competitiveness in me, I hadn't figured out that I need to do something about it.

And I would wake up and be like, but you're not walking yet.

Let's work on walking.

Like, I'm not that type of dad anymore.

I've come around, but like figuring out that transition and finding an outlet for all of these urges or also like making a decision that it's like trying to diet or trying to lose weight where it's like, I know I'm not supposed to eat this.

And that's how I felt.

It's like, I know I'm not supposed to be this competitive monster, but it's like, it's innate.

The same way you feel when you walk past a donut shop.

I feel when I was when I see anything.

I'll crush that thing.

If you have.

diabetes of the ego

if your blood sugar if your competitiveness your sense of self is too rich, and you know that you're supposed to get off of the stuff that is making you eventually to torture this metaphor, like eventually amputate some stuff to save your life.

Kill that metaphor.

Right.

You torture this shit with that metaphor.

I'm possibly pre-diabetic, so I forgot about that.

But the point is

the competitiveness that you have inside of you, and you're looking for an outlet, and the outlet becomes at first your kit.

And then you realize, okay, that's not healthy either.

So then it turns to eventually the thing we started talking about, which was

what we are doing here in some form, right?

And competition in a field that is not explicitly scoreboard driven is a fascinating thing.

And I think about this all of the time

because the way I think to do this job the best,

what I've learned is that I think competition is both healthy and necessary and also one of the most toxic corrosive things when your job is actually teamwork.

Confusing your teammates for your enemies, confusing your goal for,

I don't know, just an insecurity around the story you want to be told.

Trade-offs.

If I were to write a book, it would be another book because I already did that once.

That's right.

But if I were to write a book, it would be

one page and it would say trade-offs because I think that that is

the best thing and that again came from time at business school is understanding that in through business strategy you can't have it all and

if you are deciding to be a fast-moving company there will be mistakes made trade-offs when I get stressed out about something that my wife isn't doing

I accept I try to take the time before I bring it to her

and mad about it.

I try to take the time to think about all the great things

that are also directly connected to the

thing that she's doing that annoys me.

And it's like, well, I do love that, so I got to take this.

And I say that, and I try to do that in all of aspects of my life.

It's been one of the healthier practices that if I were to share it with someone again in my book, my one-page, one-sentence,

two-word book, or actually, it's one word, trade-offs is, yeah, they're always trade-offs.

All right, a lot more words from Dominique after the break.

If you're looking to add something special to your next celebration, try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

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 Conyak, Veen Champagne, Force and Alcoholic Volume 40 by Remy Control, USA Incorporated in Europe, New York, 1738.

Centaur Design.

Please print responsibly.

Oh, this is where I wanted to eventually get to: is the idea that your story you're telling yourself now is not the story of of a person who is

conceivably

a hall of famer, billionaire, best person in this field.

And it's not mine either.

And so the question then becomes, well, what are we telling ourselves that gives us some sense that our purpose is correct, that we are living our lives in a way that does not undersell our talents, our ambitions.

We talk about this, Dominique, we talk about this all the time.

Like you and I, I would say, have a conversation that is one of the more vulnerable genres of conversation that I ever engage in, which is the whole

by us sitting at this table, are we wasting

the potential that someone else believed in that we decided to discard because we chose a path of, let's just call it less resistance to be less charitable.

Right.

That's the sh that keeps me up at night.

Should I be in an alternate world,

a Supreme Court clerk like a lot of my friends?

It would really be nice right now.

Should I be a

presidential candidate like some of my classmates?

Yeah.

And I'm not saying that I want to do that.

I don't, you know, no, I don't walk around harboring delusions of I need to be running the world, but it just makes me wonder if I am living correctly.

And we know from us both being at these places, we know that we were on those specific tracks.

Yes.

And there might have been some randomness or luck that would have put us wherever we wanted to go.

But we knew that if we would have just stayed straight on the track, everything would have worked out, and we possibly would have been more like fulfilled and proud of what you're doing.

And that's the thing I struggle with the most that I've started to wrap my head around.

And again, I bring up the trade-offs.

It's like, yeah, I gave up that job at the Players Association, which like Michelle Roberts stepped down a couple of years ago.

I would have been in line to take that over.

The

NFL Players Association,

DeMore Smith, left the, or hasn't left the union officials yet, but he's moving the job.

Executive director role was available.

If I wouldn't have been in line to take the basketball job, obviously I would have been in line.

Like I was president, like I'd have been in line for that job.

I could have gone to...

like a company and worked there.

I could have like these are things that I think about.

And I only think about those in a way that makes me feel upset when

I am looking at what I am doing and am not proud of it.

But I also

remind myself, you know what?

Trade-offs.

Like, I don't have to deal with that stress.

And that's like, that's part of the stories you're telling yourself is because there's a version of me that's like, that's a cop-out.

You're copping out.

You should be completely maximizing everything

that you've had access to.

Yeah, you're letting Wayne beat you in a race again.

But

that's how I process this too.

And I look, on some level, this is all deeply

egotistical because the idea is we have untapped potential that is special.

And we are reckoning with that specialness.

I'm sorry.

It's not wasted.

It's not just that.

It's that we got into.

We got into the inner circle and then decided to get out.

We saw what it was like inside the room with the locked doors with the real expensive ass mahogany.

And we saw the map.

And we decided to enter this room.

And we were like, no, let's not.

And for me, at least it wasn't a conscious decision, which is why sometimes I feel a little burn of regret because it was like, I'll get back to it eventually.

I'll get back to it eventually.

Just the right opportunity.

Yeah, just the right opportunity.

And I just started to accept that I'm not.

But I also like.

One of the things that Dan told me a long time ago that stuck with me and it's good because

it sounds like I'm not proud of what I do, but I am.

Same.

And it sounds like I wish I should be doing something different, but I don't.

These are the thoughts.

Like the same way when you climb to a top of a building, you step out on a balcony, it crosses your mind, what if I jump?

You don't actually ever intend to jump.

It crosses my mind, what if I'd done something different?

And like, what, I guess that's a bad analogy because we know what would happen if you jump.

But, you know, I was trying to think of that thing where no one actually is really considering it.

But you're, you're almost morbidly curious.

What would it be like if I did the thing I refused to do?

And also, I think for me,

it's about confronting insecurity and personal pride because there are plenty of people.

I think it's also about, again, it goes back to when I go into these school functions.

or I'm in these circles because my

football successes afforded me opportunities to get in circles that my parents didn't even know existed and I was unaware of.

And like, I am now in those rooms.

And then when we talk about what we're doing,

I'm like,

but,

but I could do what you're doing better.

And there's like some,

and this is just insecurity, but there's values that I'm like, when I look at a lawyer or there's people who work for the State Department and there's people who are politicians or started their own companies and sold it.

When I look at them, I

have like social media insecurity that teen girls have when they're, when they're, when it's like, I am body dysmorphia.

Yeah, there's like,

yeah, they look at all these photoshopped thirst traps and they're like, I should be prettier.

I look at all of these people and I was like,

but I have to tell you that I talk about sports for a living when I know that I'm more capable or as capable.

So that's part of it.

And like confronting that and recognizing, and also, I think

understanding that what we do has value.

Cause the weird thing is, no one is judging me.

They all think I'm cool.

You know, like all these parents or all these people that are in these communities, like maybe they think I'm dumb, but they think I'm cool.

You know, they're like, you're on TV.

You played in football.

All their kids think I'm cool, but I still, it's not about the way that they look at me.

It's the way that I look at myself when I have to talk to them.

Yes.

Yes.

And so now what I'm wondering is,

what is the thing that we're chasing?

Yeah.

Right.

Like, let's say we have peace with this job being something that is, as a net, net concern, worth it.

And I think it's obvious, right?

A lot of people, I think, are probably listening to this and saying to themselves, you guys have the jobs that I want on some level.

Like you guys have fun professionally, it seems.

You can talk about yourselves endlessly, it seems.

And make it entertaining.

And make it good.

Yeah, I mean, it's the Dominique Foxer show.

Subscribe to that thing, rate, review it, all that stuff.

Get my numbers up so I don't lose my job at the next time that people get fired.

But what I mentioned before about positive psychology is

significant here because what I'm really talking about is like

happiness.

Yeah.

Right?

Like, are we in agreement that that's the thing we're actually trying to maximize?

Cut through all of the bullshit, the metaphors, all of the scoreboards, and the clarity, and the missions, and the rooms that we've all constructed.

It really really is about happiness, isn't it?

Or are you going to push back on that?

I mean, isn't that what everybody's trying to get?

And I think

I talk like this a lot, and I, because I think like this a lot, in like philosophical ways that make me insecure to talk to people about because it sounds like I think I'm smarter than everyone else, or it also sounds like I'm high or whatever.

This is this is basically the RSS feed description of my show.

But it's like

we believe I had this conversation with Dan and some people in the shipping container not too long ago because I was listening to the show and they were talking about what celebrities life they'd like to have.

Yes.

And

I was.

David Sampson said Dan.

Yeah.

Wow.

We laugh, but we're also in Dan's studio kind of trying to do what Dan does ourselves.

Yeah, but we also know Dan very, very personally.

Okay, give me the pics that you respected.

None of them.

I think, I don't remember the picks, honestly, but I think the reason why I brought that up is because the way that they talk about

what they're looking for is the way

that you would is the, it's, I want a life of little friction.

And this is about your point of happiness is

I don't know that we know what we need.

And I would challenge everyone who's listening and challenge you to do the same thing is, I don't know if think about when you were your happiest is the right way to put this because that's hard to do.

But if you can, go right ahead.

And my guess is that

the story that you would tell is in relation to struggle.

And it may be during the struggle.

It may be immediately after the struggle.

It may be be right before the struggle.

And so

the interesting thing that I found in that time when I had nothing to do

didn't, it wasn't great.

And if you asked me when I was the saddest or closest to depression, again,

it was around the struggle.

When you had the freedom to do whatever.

I didn't have the clarity of purpose.

I don't know that I was sad, but I was like

lost.

I think is the right word.

Um, unmoored.

Yeah.

I think I was

and, and there was,

and I get conceptually,

just buy some nice stuff, go on vacation, do whatever.

I get that conceptually, but I don't know that we appreciate

relativity.

If I give you

a white piece of paper and I take a black pen and start to write on it.

What you're appreciating is in whatever I'm doing, I start to draw or scribble on it.

What you're appreciating in whatever I'm doing is the contrast between the white of the paper and the black of the marker or the pen.

And then you add more colors and you appreciate different contrasts and different combinations.

And I think that when, and I could understand how annoying it is to hear people who, to hear rich people say money's not the answer to happiness.

I can understand how fundamentally important.

I can understand how ridiculous that sounds.

However, you know what?

If you just don't have a purpose, you know what it is?

It's a white piece of paper.

No matter how high you are on a mountain, if there are no dips and no valleys, you're just on a plane.

We'll be right back.

This is the other thing you learn when you go into these rooms, right?

To go back to that metaphor, you learn that people are not happy.

Yeah.

The rooms you want to get into, as much as they have many benefits and perks and all sorts of crazy, you know.

I think, I mean, although psychological researches can be problematic, I think most of the research suggests like diminishing returns on happiness when you get to a certain level of

that it does matter

to a level.

But once you get past that level, there's diminishing level of returns.

And if you like measure, and while we are all caught up in this consumer Western culture, there are people in other parts of the world and probably people in

America and in this country and in this part of the world in the Western hemisphere who don't have as much.

But

the ways that we measure happiness are just as happy or happier.

Yes.

And I think about this, even take money out of it, right?

But take

the scarce resource of

accomplishment, of whatever trophy it is that we are ostensibly chasing, a medal, whatever it is, the distinction, the genius grant, right?

Whatever we think is most validating.

Michael Jordan's miserable.

Charles Barkley seems thrilled.

Like the game that Charles is playing, right?

Like I find myself, there are people who are Jordan stands.

That's my goat.

I am more and more a Charles Barkley guy.

It's interesting.

And I know that he is a bundle of things too.

I'm not.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I get what he represents.

I'm not talking about Charles Barkley's political opinions or anything else.

He has opted out of that competitive frame in a way that has resulted in him having more fun than anybody else.

who played the game at that elevation.

And that to me is just like, that's why I joined Meadowlark.

Yeah.

That is why I am trying to disengage with the standard ways of scorekeeping.

Right.

It's because if I can actually feel, if I can express, if I can genuinely enjoy the shit I'm doing, it feels like I'm actually hacking the game to get to the thing at the center that we're really chasing.

It's funny because when big jobs come up around sports, my name is occasionally still.

Yes, you were a candidate to run the NFL Players Association.

Yeah.

We talked about this

in secret when you were contemplating this.

Right.

If I can say that now.

This was a forever sort of a job.

You could have asked me first, but it's fine.

We can put it out there.

It was

Pablo Torrey show exclusive.

It was a job that you considered, because of course it is, a forever sort of job.

I think a lot about like the deathbed test.

You know, and I think about this in times of actual grief, but also in times of

pressure.

I'm trying to figure out, am I handling this moment?

Is my anxiety a function of evolutionary adaptation?

Or is it the opposite?

Is it a thing that I need to eliminate to survive?

And what I keep on thinking about is how, in the end,

we're not going to, of course, on our deathbed, worry about, ah, I should have.

had more viral tweets.

But then I think about how

if if we're concerned about our accomplishments, about greatness, of historic achievement,

what do you know about William Howard Taft?

Nothing.

He's fat,

stuck in a bathtub.

That's it.

He was the president.

Yeah.

We're going to get like

one thing.

If that...

Yeah, we're not going to get anything.

That's the president getting stuck in bathtub.

We're probably going to get a vague echo of a memory occasionally.

This is where you lose me.

I don't care at all about how I'm remembered.

Honestly.

Like I don't.

Like when my body decomposes and it re-enters all of the elements that make me up, re-enter the earth in some capacity.

I don't.

care at all.

Like I'm not worried about my eulogy.

I'm not worried about how many people write stories about me or how many people come to

so the game just to be very clear because this is this is important context the game that you're trying to compete in and win as an existential matter is only meaningful insofar as you are there yeah to win it yeah i don't so you actually care i don't i don't think of myself as like I want to be like Genghis Khan.

I want my lineage to survive me.

But I do wonder, like, what's the actual value of doing stuff that is supposed to stand the test of time?

Nothing.

I don't care.

I'm dead.

Read my phone.

See all the embarrassing stuff.

Check out my porn history.

Knock yourself out.

I'm dead.

All the stuff that I care about, all I care about is like what's happening when I'm here now.

And so like me being embarrassed about my lack of accomplishment.

Now is a now thing.

And I do think like that, that deathbed test is something that uh whether it's a coping mechanism or a true thing like i i feel like that scoreboard i feel great about it like i i spend so much time with my kids and my family yes and like i spend an amount of time that i would not be able and that's not to say like i was a candidate for that nflpa job and when they first asked me to be a candidate i told them no-offs yeah because they're trade-offs i'm not interested in that and then i gave it more thought and honestly, I couldn't get it out of my head because

there's only been one thing in my life that I've ever felt passionate about.

And it's sports unions.

Like outside of being an athlete, the one thing that I felt professionally passionate about is sports unions.

And like people had called me many a times over the years, complaining about DeMorris Smith agents and whatever.

It's like, you should challenge him.

And I was like, no, I won't do that.

Like if the players want to get him out, they'll get him out.

If he wants to retire, he he retire.

I'm not doing no backdoor shit

and

all the sneaky political stuff that people have done.

It's like I refuse to participate in any of that.

But I then was like, all right, this opportunity is here.

This is one.

This is a deathbed regret.

This was the first time that on a professional side, I would look up and be like,

man, I should have done that.

And so I won't have that regret now because they

i did not make it to the um i got interviewed as saying for that's my take yeah you can have your take i don't i don't i mean as someone who was on executive committee in this process before and whose uh decision making in that time was considered insane i refuse to participate in that like i obviously think whatever but

Because I'm biased towards me and I could come up with all the reasons why I think I would have been great at that job.

I think that they chose the person that they thought was right.

And like I have regrets about the interview that I did with the executive committee because I leaned in on the stuff that I told you that

I had learned from my time at the NBA Players Association.

And my story about the NBA Players Association was I was coming fresh out of business school and I was super

business consultant guy.

And I would create the most complicated and elaborate, I mean, not complicated is the wrong word, elaborate plans and strategies for everything that we needed to do and then present them in our

in our C-suite meetings, like all the executive present them in the meetings and

no one could poke holes in them.

They were outstanding, but nobody believed in them.

So we didn't do them.

And

I would be furious and I'd complain to my wife, wife, complain to my friends.

It's like, this is what we need to do.

And to the point that I was talking about before, that none of that matters.

I'd rather, to use a sports analogy, is I'd rather have a mediocre game plan that everyone believes in.

And then have a flawless game plan that no one is on board with.

And my mistake was my ego is like, let me bring this flawless game plan.

It doesn't work nearly as well as constructing a game plan with people.

And I think that I regret,

I don't regret, but I

made the point that I can sit here and go through all this stuff.

And I can wow you with my understanding of the league.

I can wow you my understanding of the union.

I can wow you with my understanding of the legal

strategies that we can use.

I can wow you with all these strategies and anybody who comes in here, I can probably do better at this than any of them.

I worked at the basketball union.

I was the president of this union.

Exactly.

minority of this union.

I was a paralleled vantage point.

And I was like, went to business school.

Like I can do all that.

Trust me, I can do all that.

But let me explain something to you.

That does not matter

even more in this case than in most businesses because

We are outmatched as a union against the league.

No matter what people say, we're outmatched.

It's an uphill battle.

It's a David Goliath situation.

The only strength that we have is in our solidarity.

And the solidarity, in my view, comes from

people on the outside not sniping, which is why I will never do that.

And I won't do it now.

I won't do it in the future, no matter what the hell the new executive director does or what anybody in union does.

You won't find me on the outside saying any bullshit that.

I'll snipe.

You can snipe all you want, but I will never.

But what we have is the solidarity.

And the solidarity is all about relationships.

And that was my point.

Was like,

whatever you do, whoever you hire, their number one purpose needs to be building relationships outside in the locker rooms, which is why the former player thing, I think, does have some value in building connections amongst the players, because it's a lot easier to cross a picket line, or it's a lot easier to be weak when you don't know anybody, when you don't know who's relying on you, when you don't have like, those are the things that matter.

So again, no matter

what I, like I said, I don't regret it, but I think where part of what I lost in that, in that presentation was not demonstrating that I understand it.

But in my view, you don't need to understand it.

It doesn't matter.

What matters is can we be strong?

And you build strength in part by delivering that you understand all of this, but also empowering people to develop their own strategies and plans because they will believe in that more often.

I should say that while we were discussing this

off the record for a while, when you were thinking about doing this job, that

I also

had a conflict of interest because I was in favor of, of course, like supporting my friend, my brother.

You are not.

Yes, I will snipe at all of the people who got this job because obviously you're the most deserving person.

I genuinely believe.

Only one person got the job.

You can't snipe at all the people who got the job.

But

I'm also very glad you did not get the job.

Hater, you know, my friend.

I needed you at this table.

You would have left this business.

You would have left this business behind, and I would be here coping by myself.

So I am glad that you did not get to fulfill this one deathbed mission that you would have enjoyed because this means that I can

make jokes about porn history.

God's plan.

I'll just say it is God's plan.

I just want people to know that you cannot look at my porn history when I die.

Yeah, they can look at my dad.

I'll make is

is an open book i am oh no books closed until i'm dead when i'm dead i don't give a damn you look at whatever you want i'm just on incognito mode good luck finding my history

i have convinced myself that i won't i mean i'm sure the incognito mode you believe that nonsense okay

um are you an incognito mode truther i'm not an incognito mode truther but yeah i guess i am you think that they don't have a history of your searches anywhere.

This is the story I need to tell myself about myself.

You gotta think about where to put this show.

It's gonna be your best show ever, obviously.

I mean, when I find your Black Planet profile,

I shouldn't have told you that.

It's gonna be a whole like video treatment.

Shouldn't have told you that.

Thank you for eventually letting me see your porn history.

Is that a metaphor or just literal?

It's both.

All right.

Bye, Baba.

Love you, buddy.

Love you, too.

So, sitting down at my keyboard here at the end of today's show,

I do want to admit that I need help.

I need help finding Dominique Foxworth's old Black Planet profile.

Cortez and I have spent an embarrassing amount of time scouring the internet for it.

No luck.

And so, if anybody has seen the profile page of NFL Bound 36,

please alert us here at Pablo Torre Finds Out immediately.

But what I really found out today, most importantly, is truly disturbingly simple.

I should

probably

stop trusting incognito mode

while

privately browsing the internet.

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Metal Arc Media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.