January 13, 2021 • 37 mins
Clay Travis takes more calls from around the country, as he continues his discussion of the CBS writer who spread fear-porn. FOX's Shannon Spake joins Outkick and talks with Clay about the success of finishing both the college and NFL seasons, a lost year for some kids in school, and more. Plus, Clay addresses a story about Dan Le Batard and the former ESPN President starting a site that will be "the complete opposite of Outkick."
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Outkicked the Coverage with Clay Travis Live every weekday morning
from six to nine a m. E Stern three to
six am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio. Find your local
station for Outkicked the Coverage at Fox Sports Radio dot Com,
or stream us live every morning on the I Heart
Radio app by searching fs are you're listening to Fox
(00:23):
Sports Radio. We're taking your calls eight seven seven six
three six nine. In the wake of the college football
season being over, we now know definitively that the CBS
Sports dot Com article which we talked about earlier this year,
and I told you was total bunk. Uh, that they
(00:43):
guaranteed the quote is unbelievable. Uh. And I'm reading for
it again, and I'm wondering why CBS Sports dot Com
isn't acknowledging that they got this completely wrong. I guarantee
someone is going to die if FBS football is played.
That was a University of Illinois computer science professor that
(01:04):
was the focal point of a CBS Sports dot Com
article that came out on June and helped to drive
the idea that it was unsafe to play college football
this fall. Furthermore, not only would someone die, but the
FBS level would see three to seven deaths from COVID
from players playing. Of course, we saw none. We saw
(01:27):
no serious hospitalizations. A few of them could end up
in the hospital, and you'll have a small number who
could die this Uh computer science professor said, I don't
want to sugarcoat it for you. I just want to
give you the facts. The facts meaning things that are
not true, which is the opposite of facts. Speaking of which,
(01:48):
by the way, eight seven seven six three six nine,
I believe that CBS Sports dot com should come honest,
come be honest with their audience and apologize for running
this article featuring this expert who was a hundred percent wrong.
Another little story here. Uh did you see this? Well,
I'll do this story at the end of of the hour. Uh.
(02:09):
Fun story that's out there about about Dan Lebotard and
John Skipper. But I'll tease it for you here and
I'll talk about it a little bit at the end
of the hour. Uh. Front Office Sports had an article
up yesterday saying former ESPN president John Skipper and personality
Dan Lebotard are partnering on a politically progressive sports media company.
(02:33):
The new venture is described as the strategic opposite of
Clay Travis's out Kick, sources told Front Office Sports, Uh, so,
I guess instead of being capitalists, they're gonna be communist. Uh.
That makes sense given the sports media uh landscape right now.
I'll talk about that a little bit more at the
end of the hour, But first we got a lot
of people who went to weigh in. Catfish Jake is
(02:54):
on our outki v i P reminder, you can join
the crew the huge OutKick v i P community. All
you have to do is go sign up OutKick dot
com slash v i P. You get access to the
front of the line whenever we open up phone lines.
Catfish Jake, thanks for being an OutKick v I P. Yeah, man,
thanks for offering the services. Pretty cool. I appreciate it.
And uh two days real quick. First of all, thanks
(03:16):
to the guy Ohio is the ethan and the teacher
of my wife, the teacher in Williamson County. Um, and
what they're doing right now is pretty remarkable. Yeah, let
me let me cut you off there. I want to
I live in an area of the Nashville area, Williamson County.
If you're familiar at all with this region, it's Franklin Tennessee,
which is just south about fifteen miles from from Nashville, Tennessee.
(03:37):
Our teachers here have been incredible. They've been open, We've
had in person learning. My kids are in public school.
I feel incredibly thankful for all of the people who
are involved in Williamson County Schools UH and have kept
our schools open here. I've got a kindergartener and I've
got a fourth grader who've been able to go in person.
UH since school open back up in August. They've done
a fabulous job. The teachers have, the schools have, the
(03:59):
school board has keeping it open to such an extent
that I'm not sure I'm ever going to move out
of this county for the rest of my life. That's
how proud I am of how well they've responded to
COVID here in terms of keeping our kids in school
that I'm not sure legitimately whether I will ever leave
this county that I live in now for the rest
of my life. I'm so happy and thankful for what
(04:20):
they've done. Sorry to cut you off, but I do
think for a lot of places that are shut down
out there, UH, there are a ton of teachers who
have done what I think is the right thing, recognized
what their kids need to be, which is in school,
in person, fought hard to make it happen. It's not everybody,
but the ones who have done it deserved all of
our lasting commendation. Yeah, I agree, I agree. It's one
(04:40):
of the reasons why we moved to Nolan's. They also
get into winds to kind of schools and and she
was actually the teacher of the month in Williamson County.
Thanks for everything. She's doing a job. Yeah, uh yeah.
So the other point is, I think the most irresponsible
saying and the scariest thing about what Dennis DoD did
is what people do in the media now all over
the places. Their argument to what you're saying will be, well,
we just didn't know, and instead of just saying we
(05:02):
don't know, they make these crazy claims like people are
gonna die, that so many people are gonna die based
on nothing, and they admit that they don't know. Saying
you don't know and then saying something as outrageous as
that is just insight in all kind of madness, instead
of just waiting for data to come out. It's based
on nothing, it's not based on facts. It's based on
somebody's just trying to get a headline, and it's insane,
(05:23):
and those guys are incredibly responsible and should absolutely apologize
and retract the statement thank you. And what I would
reinforce is this is intentional by the writer because sometimes
people will say, well, that was the expert. How could
we have known that the expert was wrong? You chose
that expert because he gave you the worst possible forecast.
(05:47):
This guy, you're expert in quotation Marks said three to
seven FBS football players were going to die if the
football season took place, and he guaranteed that at least
one would die June. You ran that article because of
his guarantee. You chose the scariest, most fear porn ladent
(06:14):
prediction to lead with, and that makes your failure all
the more substantial. You were dishonest with your audience, and
you chose a expert in quotation Marks, who has now
been proven to be a hundred percent wrong, and you
trumpeted his quotes in an effort to get the college
(06:37):
football season canceled. That's what was going on. Don't in
any way pretend anything else. I guarantee someone is going
to die that was the quote, I don't want to
sugarcoat it for you. I just want to give you
the facts. That's not a fact. Predicting that something is
(06:59):
going to happen is the exact opposite of a fact.
A fact is me coming on and saying Alabama one
fifty two to twenty four in the National title game
against Ohio State. That has happened. It is an incontrovertible
truth that that was the score of the game. That
is a fact. Me coming on and saying I believe
(07:24):
Alabama will win or I believe Ohio State will win
is a prediction. It's not a fact. The game hasn't happened.
You can't quote somebody saying I don't want to sugarcoat
it for you. I just want to give you the facts,
and then say I guarantee someone is going to die.
(07:46):
That's not a fact. That's a prediction. That's an opinion.
This is a failure, and I'm seeing it happen across
media everywhere. I'm just using sports as the prism through
which to see at failure. CBS Sports dot Com lied
to their audience and they're hoping that all of you
(08:07):
just forget about this now. Opinions can be wrong, Okay,
I'm in fact, I'm not infallible. I mess up all
the time. What I try to always tell you is
my facts are gonna be wrong, We're gonna be right.
My opinions are going to be sometimes right, sometimes wrong.
Like every single one of you out there, apologize when
(08:30):
you get your facts wrong. You don't necessarily have to
apologize for an opinion, although people out there you want
to know. I've come on and said, hey, in the
early days of COVID back in March, I apologize to
my audience for believing the data that was coming out
of China and for trusting the World Health Organization and
(08:51):
using the data that they were providing to lead to
incorrect opinions. I trusted facts that we're not actually worthy
of being trusted. For that, I apologize to you. I
shouldn't have trusted China in the early days of COVID,
I shouldn't have trusted the World Health Organization. We now
know that the information they all gave us was not accurate,
(09:15):
and if you use inaccurate information, then your opinions are
not going to be as accurate as they should be.
So when I get things wrong, like that. I came
to you by April and I said, hey, this data
was wrong. I believed it. I trusted the w h O,
I trusted China. I shouldn't have done it. That's on me.
(09:36):
That's what adults do. That's what Dennis Dodd should do.
I should do into this. Dodould come out right a
piece and say, you know what, I was wrong. I
believed that it was not safe to play college football
this fall, and I was wrong. And I sought out
an expert, expert in quotation marks who said, quote, I
guarantee someone is going to die. And then I don't
(09:57):
want to sugarcoat it for you. I just want to
give you the facts. And he said the facts were
three to seven people were gonna die again. That's not
a fact, that's a prediction. That's an opinion, and it
was wrong. A lot of you want to weigh in
eight seven, seven, three six nine, dub who's up next?
We got Joshua and Missouri. Joshua, what you got for me? Hey,
(10:18):
good morning man, thanks for taking my call. I just
wanted to you know, I don't want to piggyback off
of what everybody else said, because we're all basically staying
the same thing. But one of my biggest pet peeves
is when someone screws up or messes something up and
they won't admit that they were wrong, because that's that
shows me the ability to learn from something, you know,
and and they're not gonna print a retraction. They're not
(10:41):
gonna do that because that would, you know, have all
their listeners realizing that they're wrong about things, and they
don't want you to think that. They want the attention
grabber to be hey, read it here, you heard it
here first, and maybe we're right, maybe we're wrong, and
if we're wrong, you're never gonna know about it. Um. So,
like everybody else has said, I listened to you every morning.
(11:03):
I start my morning at three am when you come on,
I'm excited because the honesty factor is what, um you
know makes me happy to listen because when you are wrong,
you'll say, hey, guys, look I messed that up. I
screwed that up, and and that gets so much more
respect from people than oh, there's gonna be three or
four people that are gonna die. I guarantee it, well,
(11:25):
it never happens, and we don't hear another word about it.
That I just can't respect somebody like that. So, UM,
thank you for being Clay Travis and being honest and
and um just doing what to do. Man, I appreciate you. Thanks,
I appreciate the call. Look, I mean, I think that is.
I value my relationship with my audience, all of you
out there listening right now. The reason why I didn't
(11:46):
take a day off for months when we didn't have
sports was because I know that, just like my guy
they're calling for Missouri, a lot of you start off
your morning with me, and I try to be as
honest as I possibly can with you every single day
for three hours a day. Doesn't mean you're always going
to agree with me. Doesn't mean that I'm gonna get
everything right. But when I get something wrong, I come
(12:06):
on and I tell you. And that, to me is
not a sign of of the fact that that I
can't be trusted to me if people aren't regularly looking
at their opinions and coming on and saying, hey, maybe
I got that a little bit wrong, maybe that data
is wrong. I care about my opinions, but I care
about my facts way more because an opinion can't be
(12:31):
valid if it's rooted in failed facts. And so I
mean that is to me, the very essence of what
I do, and the analogy that I've made that I
think a lot of you get is if I come
on and I tell you, hey, I don't think the
Bucks are gonna win the super Bowl this year. I
don't think Tom Brady is gonna beat Drew Brerees in
(12:52):
the game down in New Orleans. They've already lost twice
this year. We know that, right, the Saints of beating
the Bucks twice in the NFC South. But if I
said the reason why I don't think Tom Brady's gonna
win the super Bowl this year is because he's never
won the super Bowl before, you might agree with my conclusion,
but you should trust my opinion less because we know
(13:15):
Tom Brady has won six super Bowls already and he's
been to nine of them. So if I tell you
I don't think Brady's gonna win the super Bowl this
year because he's never won the Super Bowl before, you
might agree with me. Hey, I don't like the Bucks.
I like the Saints better. I like the Packers. I
like the Chiefs, I like the Bills, I like the Ravens.
There's a lot of different teams out there. You could
(13:35):
pick to win the Super Bowl right now with eight
teams remaining. But if I get a basic fact like
that wrong, which you know, you should trust me less,
even though you might have the same opinion as me.
One of the things that troubles me about America today
is people will support someone who has the same final
opinion as them, even if the data by which they
(13:59):
get there isn't supported by facts. Your opinion is only
as good as the facts upon which it is based.
Who's up next? Up? We got Matt and Phoenix. Matt,
what you got for me? Yeah? Hey, I think it
goes beyond just getting an article wrong. I think it
goes to the point of a misuse of the First Amendment,
(14:22):
to the point where in that situation it was like
somebody going into a theater and screaming fire. Yeah, people
lost were hurt mentally, emotionally, financially. And beyond that, even
which is even worse, is the next kind. There is
something serious and people come out and start saying you
need to be careful. Nobody will listen. I think that's
(14:43):
what makes it dangerous. They need to be sanctioned or fine,
there's something needs to be done where The next person
that thinks about doing this takes a second thought and says, well,
maybe I shouldn't do this. Guys get trouble. Thanks for God.
I don't know about sinkster fines. I think just being
honest with your audience. Right. If you're CBS Sports dot
com and you published this expert who was wrong, now
(15:05):
that the season is over, you should have to come
back and say, we got this wrong. We're sorry. Here's
why we got it wrong. Why did you pick that expert?
Why did you give him the opportunity to come on
your forum and get things wrong to such an extent
that that guy was instrumental in almost getting college football canceled.
Every single college commissioner in the country read that article
(15:29):
and was terrified that they were going to be accused
of having blood on their hands if a player died
because of COVID. Didn't even come close to happening, but
the fear was out there, and it was magnified by
that article. Who's up next, dub last one? Here we
got Joe in Arkansas? Joe in Arkansas? What you got
for me? My man? Hey man, it starts crackling. Joan Burro, Man,
(15:51):
I'll tell you what you know an here for sure
because the ticket comes on at seven, you'll be losing here.
And they love you. And one of the things I
do love you about they love you. Don't have all
this silpy mouth. These people love you around here, you
love they love your butanus. But our news a right here.
That's all they talked about. The COVID Queen's what I
call them. It's all COVID numbers right here on our
news all the time. Our schools are having a taste,
(16:13):
and we're spending twenty five and thirty kids home to
foreign thing with that one person. Yeah, play, I want
to say something to you what you're talking about on
this subject coming you know, maybe a driver with twenty
to be married in nurse thirty years. It's just one
of them things I can say back to my wife
every night before I lay honey, I'm gonna have wrecked out.
I won't be coming home. I mean, you don't know
what's gonna happen anymore in the world. But don't get
(16:33):
on there and tell everybody will We're gonna have a
bunch of people die today because of COVID. We want
y'all know that ahead of time. You don't say stuff
like that. You've got a lot of people running here
right now. I see all these mass furthers I call
him every now and all these masks where I stopped at,
and it's crazy, Clay. These people are not figuring that out.
What's going on. Yes, there's people dying, yes, but all
the sports plays you're not hearing very many for people
(16:56):
is actually note thank you for the Yeah, thanks, You're
gonna look. Here's what I would say. Think about how
often you hear athlete has tested positive for COVID. It's
been a story for a year almost now. You never
hear athlete has virtually no symptoms, comes back to play fine. Right.
(17:19):
That's been the story every single where athlete test positive,
pro athletes, college athletes. Athlete comes back, completes the season,
zero issues, right, I mean the story of testing positive,
big story. They come back, play perfectly fine, have zero issues.
(17:42):
Nobody talks about it. I just the number of high
school kids who didn't get to play sports this fall
makes me sick. The number of high school kids who
are not going to get to play sports this spring
makes me sick. The number of kids that are not
in school still legitimately makes me sick to the pit
of my stomach. And it's because of people like CBS
(18:04):
Sports dot Com using sports as a prism through which
to look at our larger context. If they can get
sports canceled, they can get school canceled. Right. If you
can play sports, then school can be open. Sports is
the wedge that allows normalcy to return. That's we've been
arguing for a long time. And the data, the data
reflects that for young people, people should be back at school,
(18:27):
back at sports. Everybody should be playing. And by the way,
I'm living this myself. My son's in two basketball leagues
playing right now. We're signed up for baseball. We had
flag football this fall, we had soccer this fall. All
my kids are playing sports in addition to being in school.
So what we gotta do. Be sure to catch live
editions about kicked the coverage with Clay Travis weekdays at
(18:48):
six am Eastern, three am Pacific to bring in Shannon
Spake at Shannon's fake on Twitter. Shannon, you're finished traveling
with the NFL. But I don't know that we've talked
about this. How much of a success story is it
for college football to complete its season? Crown and champion
Alabama thirteen and oh And for the NFL, knock on wood,
(19:10):
it appears to be set to have its four divisional
round playoff games that are taking place on Saturday and
Sunday completely on schedule. Again, I say, knock on wood.
It doesn't appear there are any major COVID issues right
now for those eight teams that are remaining the Elite
eight of the NFL. If we get those games in
(19:32):
on Saturday and Sunday, which all indications are would occur,
then we're down to two teams that will advance to
the Super Bowl. The a f C and the NFC
Championship Game will be played four teams in total. Like
this is a remarkable achievement that I feel like is
not getting enough attention for the NFL not only to
have played its season, but have to have played its
(19:52):
season in totality and to be it completely on normal
schedule is one of the great accomplishments I think in
sports history. Yeah, if you would have told me eight
months ago that we would have finished, but not only
the NFL season, but the college football season, the NBA season,
the Major League Baseball, the NASCAR, everything, right, I mean,
we were in such a state of unknowns and fear
(20:15):
and everyone hiding in their homes and and yes, absolutely,
I mean in Clay I was, you know right there
a part of it all. It was. It was so
drastically different this year. The players on the field, even
watching the National Championship with the lack of fans in there.
And you know, I still have friends with the Alabama
um s, I D s and PR folks, and so
(20:36):
you know, I send out a quick text to them
and let them know congratulations. And the first thing that
they said back to me was just that they were
so proud because of everything that the kids had done right,
because the kids had to buy in. They're the ones
that had to make this happen. And it was a
very different year. These kids are in college, you know,
they're they're supposed to be going out having a good time,
hanging with their friends, doing all of these things that
(20:57):
college kids do, and all of that stuff had to
stop in for for football, for for the bigger picture.
And I just think and and you know, even even
what Ohio State went through, all of the uncertainty that
they went through, not even though if they were going
to have a season, canceling games, I mean all of
the stuff that they went through. I don't know how
I would have handled that at nine years old in
(21:19):
terms of just kind of checking out and saying, nobody
else wants us to get this done, so why do
we want to get this done? But they stayed focus.
I talked to with us about my I talked with
this about with my wife about how you know we're
now adults, right for in quotation marks, right, um, But
I'm amazed like the number of the amount of discipline
that these college kids show, because if you think about it,
(21:42):
we had a babysitter over the other day and she
just finished her senior year last year, and she now
is a freshman in college. I think that's probably the
worst age to have to be experiencing COVID, because if
you think about in your own high school experience, and
everybody out there, imagine what March to May to June
(22:03):
is like for your senior year of high school. Typically
for anybody out there who's listening to us, it is
a transformative moment in your life, prom decisions on where
you might be going to college, graduation from high school,
what your plans are going forward in life. In the
last time that you will be as a high school
student in your life. Your senior senior year, those are
(22:25):
some of the most important moments of your life, to
say nothing of if you're playing basketball, if you're playing soccer,
if you're playing sports, whatever they might be in that
spring calendar, trying to finish that off right. And then
and then you go into your let's say you go
away to your freshman year of college. Usually your freshman
year of college for anybody out there who is fortunate
(22:46):
enough to get to go to college, is such a
transformative moment in your life as well as you enter
into adulthood, come to grips with what the rest of
your life might be like, and experience the challenges of
being a freshman in college. They are experiences for senior
year of high school and freshman year of college are
totally different than anybody throughout all of American history. And
(23:11):
yet many of those kids are able to handle that.
And she was an example, you know, like she was
saying she was going back to college. She goes to
college in the Midwest, in Chicago, and she said, yeah,
when I get back to college, I have to stay
in my dorm room for ten days and not leave
to quarantine before I'm allowed to do anything at all
on campus. And I'm just thinking, think about how awful
(23:34):
dorm rooms are for most people, and you're stuck inside
one of those tiny little dorm rooms for ten days
where you can't even go outside. I mean, I think
we're totally underrating the insanity that we are putting our
young people through. See you sit here and say it
like it's a bad thing for these kids to be quarantine,
I'm thinking that you probably would have been good to
be quarantined. It would have helped your g p A
(23:56):
exactly Like I can't go to the bars Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday when I'm freshman in college. Uh yeah, It's it's
completely different. And you think about like these four kids
that are seniors, they didn't get to have their prom,
they didn't get to walk across the stage. You know,
they're they're having you know, cars parade outside their home.
That's there, that's their graduation. It's it's a very odd everything.
(24:18):
And I agree with you the things that the kids
have experience. I couldn't imagine my kids being uh senior,
high school, freshman in college or even like you know,
towards the end of their career. You know, you're trying
to start your career and now you're doing zoom meetings.
You can't go into these interviews. You can't. You can't,
I mean, you can't start life. You know. I know
Howard Stern talks about it so much, so much. I
(24:39):
know you and I both listened to him about you know,
young musicians coming up who can't go to restaurants and
bars and play right now. It's stop everything, yeah, I
mean even my kids, even my kids, you know, this
year we look at this year is like a throwaway year.
I mean they're in a different school because we decided
to do that. You know, financially, we didn't want to
get locked into a tuition if there was going to
(25:01):
be virtual because then we would have to get a tutor.
And it's kind of like a throwaway year because everything
is so different, and I don't know how much they're
really learning in the classroom because there are so many
uncertainty as we continue to move forward. You know, I
talked to a teacher. Um, this was this was a
little while ago, um and uh, and he was an
(25:21):
AP teacher. He taught AP history and uh and in
a relatively poor school district. And for people out there
who are not familiar with the AP history plan, the
idea with AP Advanced Placement is that kids can get
college credit while they're still in high school. Did you say,
are you yeah, I'm letting you know out there. So,
so these are the kids that have been working the
(25:43):
hardest by the time they get to their junior and
senior years of high school. Uh. They then take an
exam at the end of the year. And what he
told me was, I mean, it was really just flat
out heartbreaking. He said, the number of kids that he
teaches that have access to reliable WiFi is minuscule. He
he taught in a rural area that did not have
(26:04):
it was a you know, low income, relatively speaking community,
and he's like, man, these kids have been busting their
butts for years to be able to get into these
AP courses. And he said, people say, well, you just
got to teach them remotely. He said, you know, I've
got kids showing up at seven am to sit in
the parking lot of a McDonald's on a highly unreliable
(26:29):
laptop that they might have if they're fortunate enough to
have in a laptop to be able to try to
get logged into class, and I just it is. It
is infuriating to me that we have so many people
out there obsessed, supposedly with equality and making sure that
everybody has an equal chance going forward, and yet we
(26:49):
pulled the poorest kids out of school, the kids without
WiFi at home, the kids without laptops, the kids without
parents who were able to help them, and we have
basically taken away a year of schooling from them that
they will never be able to recover. For the rest
of their lives. We are going to be paying the
consequences from shutting down our schools and not allowing kids
(27:10):
to be in person for the rest of these kids lives.
Many of them will never catch up. Right, you talk
about a kid who in six or seventh grade, or
god forbid, you know, kindergarten or first grade when they're
learning how to read. These kids, I mean, there are
there are kids out there that are never going to
achieve anywhere near their academic potential because we shut down schools.
(27:31):
And that's like nobody is even nobody is even talking
about this sha like this. There's all this social justice
warrior talk and all this you know, we've got to
make sure that we that we may mandated quality in
this country and and all these different things, and all
these athletes are supposed to be, you know, role models
and speaking out. I haven't heard a single athlete come
out and say, hey, we've got to make sure that
(27:52):
every kids in school. I mean, it's crazy to me.
I told you many times I was not a great student.
I could not imagine if I had to do virtual learning,
it would be there's no way that I would graduate
on time, you know, because I was a kid like
kind of showing up doing my homework, you know before school,
you know when we walked in, you know, looking off
other people like that's how I did my homework. But
(28:12):
that was because I was never taught like I didn't.
I pretty much raised myself. My mom worked three jobs.
We didn't have that guidance. We did not have someone
kind of showing us what we should have done at
a very young age. So that was where I was.
I was not a great student. I cannot even imagine
if I had to rely on myself sixteen seventeen years old. Yeah,
there's there's no way I would have been set back
(28:34):
so far and not only that, but but athletics, because
I've said I've said to you before, swimming is what
kept me on a straight line. Swimming is what kept
me moving forward and set goals for myself for the future,
and ultimately it's what helped me end up where I
am today in terms of everything in my life. And
so if I couldn't do that because swimming was canceled
(28:56):
or sports were canceled, So there's so many things at
these ports. And you think about kids that can't eat,
they don't that that's their one school lunch, school breakfast. Yes,
we go to a public school right now. They offer
free lunch, free lunch, and free breakfast, and that's like
the one place that some of these kids are able
to eat. There's so many long term effects that we
have no clue what's going to happen. You think about
kids that are abusive homes that like that, is there
(29:17):
one that's their one outlet is to go to school
and yeah, to to go sports. That's their family. It's
it's tragic when you think about it from that level,
and it's just wild to be that. Look, if you're
fortunate enough to be able to afford private school, a
lot of private schools are open. If you're fortunate enough
to be able to afford tutoring for your kids. There's
a lot of people who are doing this pod system
(29:39):
to allow their kids to continue to be educated. If
you're fortunate enough to have a parent who's able to
stay home and work with you. WiFi, reliable internet, computers
that work. All of those things are rarities for many
people in our country. Yet I hear nobody talking about them,
and I keep using sports as the prism. You're just
talking about swimming for you, Shannon, everybody out there listening
(30:00):
of me, right now, those kids might have been you
might have been somebody that you're friends with who stayed
eligible at school for sports, right Like, they had to
get their grade to be able to play football or
basketball or soccer or whatever it was. That's what they
lived for while they were in school. And the hope
is that eventually the light bulb comes on and you recognize, hey,
I'm gonna have to use this brain to make a living.
(30:22):
And but in the meantime, sports helped to drive you
to get that education. And we're just yanking that safety
net completely out from underneath everybody. Yeah, it's uh, we
talked about this many times, Clay, and that it's it's
so sad and so scary. I don't know. I mean,
there's there's a fine balance, you know, because I do know.
I mean we just had we just had a gym
(30:43):
teacher in this area forty something years old, died of COVID,
you know, and I know the people are surviving, and
then you get that one story. Thankfully, our our school
has been open, just like I heard you say earlier
in the show, that you're that you're thank god that
our school districts are open. You go mild on the
road though in Mecklenburg County, which is like the major
county for Charlotte, they're not They're still just intro virtual
(31:05):
or half and half. And and we just had we
just had a bulletin come out, I think yesterday here
in the Mecklenburg area that says like we have all
these rules now where we have to stay in between
this time and this time. And yeah, but thankfully the
sports has still been open. My kids dive and swim,
and so they're still doing that, and they're still in
school and they go to school every day, and it's
very different for them as well. But they're adapting. But
(31:28):
I do feel I feel worse for those high school kids,
all those kids that are that are trying to start
their lives and trying to form their lives somehow. Yeah,
and it's also crazy, Like you just mentioned Mecklenburg County,
which is Charlotte. Davidson County is Nashville. We're not far
from the county line. I was a public school kid
K through twelve in Nashville City schools. Those kids aren't
able to go to school right now. So I mean,
(31:49):
you're talking about the line the difference as if like
there's some massive difference in COVID from like, you know,
it's not like COVID can see the county line, right,
you know, Like and so on one county side kids
are able to go to school. I'm betting that the
county that you're in, the kids are probably more affluent.
The kids are more affluent in my county school, so
they already have advantages, and then we're magnifying those advantages
(32:12):
by those kids being able to go to school in person,
play sports, be able to live their lives, and the
kids that are less advantaged are not being able to
go to school. It's the exact opposite of what equality
should be. The richer getting richer, the poor getting poorer.
It should be a major issue. Yet nobody's talking about it. Nope.
And you know they're getting I mean our school thankfully,
like my kids are only in sixth fifth grade, so
(32:33):
they are able to get laptops and if you don't
have one, in chromebooks and all this stuff and they
send it home. But but yeah, I mean the Mecklenburg
the high schools. It's so overcrowded as it is in
this area. Like just like I said, one mile down
the road that a lot of those kids are not
logging on you hear all of these stories. Um, so
it's um, it's certainly, it's certainly going to be interesting
as we see it move forward. But you know, I
(32:53):
know Danny G told you I wanted to talk COVID
the whole time, right exactly what he said. We'll talk
to you. Great, we at a football didn't week did
we like we did? We did have an incredible weekend
of football on fire two days to So how about that?
That's pretty fantastic. I'll talk to you about that next week.
We'll be down to the a f C. In the
NFC Championship game that Shannon's bake. Uh. This is OutKick
(33:15):
on Fox Sports Radio. Fox Sports Radio has the best
sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our
shows at Fox sports Radio dot com and within the
I Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live.
I mentioned I was gonna talk about this. I'm reading
from Front Office Sports. Um, and sometimes, I mean, I
(33:37):
think it's interesting the amount of news stories that I
am mentioned in now. UM, I almost need like a
clip service to keep me a priest of everything that
everybody's saying. But the headline is uh John Skipper, who's
the former president of the ESPN. Dan Lebotard's progressive response
to out Kick? Uh So, Dan leabatar Art and John Skipper.
(34:01):
Here's the opening paragraph. Former ESPN president John Skipper and
personality Dan Lebotard are partnering on a politically progressive sports
media company. The new venture is described as the strategic
opposite of Clay Travis's OutKick. Sources told Front Office Sports, so,
I guess they will be communists as opposed to my capitalist.
(34:24):
But I think probably I should be flattered by this
because OutKick is dominating on so many different levels that
there are now media companies that are making decisions based
on our success, and certainly as a as a person
who owns a business, I welcome other people who decide
to start sports media companies. But is there a demand
(34:47):
in the marketplace for a more left wing version of
sports than ESPN? The reason why OutKick works is because
ESPN has gone so woke and so far left wing.
Is there really an opening for a further left wing
(35:09):
version of ESPN? It's already a knife fight in the
woke community to see who is the wocust, and now
having a left wing sports property is going to make
that even more so quickly around the horn, Should I
be flattered that they're basing their entire business model on me?
(35:30):
It's kind of crazy, right is your stock? I mean,
anytime you're mentioned like that, it's good. I mean literally
the opening pair, then the headline the headline John Skipper
Dan Lebotard's progressive response to OutKick opening paragraph. Former ESPN
president John Skipper and personality Dan Lebotard or partnering on
a politically progressive sports media company. The new venture is
(35:51):
described as the tragic opposite of Clay Travis's OutKick, So
they'll be opposed to the First Amendment and capitalism. We
are in favor of First Amendment in capitalism at an OutKick,
So I wish him well, Dub. Should I be flattered?
I think he might have crush on you, Clay. I
think they might. I mean, I'm kind of a lovable person.
I wouldn't be shocked. Yeah, not so much, Eddie. Would
(36:12):
you have ever believed when Outkicks started that people would
be basing their businesses on OutKick? Now, well, I guess so. Actually,
if you put it that way, Um, this has been
very successful for you, and yeah, I could see. I mean,
you built this up from from nothing, from scratch, and
now it is what it is. But I'm reading the
article that you were just reading from and I saw
the name Jamille Hill and Bamonti Jones. I'm like, they're
gonna get all the failures from for failing. That's what
(36:37):
they're gonna build this on. Good luck. Yeah, it doesn't
make sense to me that you would take the people
who already the marketplace has said we don't like this person,
and now you're going to give them theoretically lots of
money or equity bring them in to run as a
part of the company, and it's probably gonna fail again.
I I just don't get it. Good luck to him.
(36:58):
UH and by the way, if you want to be
the winner, you should be without Kick, who they're basing
their entire business model on. According to the front off
of Sports, we come back third hour, Joe Kinzie, one
of my writers at the wildly Successful now being modeled
after OutKick, will join us UH and we will also
dive into the NFL and college football playoffs and the
Thunderdome next on OutKick. This is Outkicked the coverage with
(37:22):
Clay Travis
Outkicked the Coverage with Clay Travis Live every weekday morning
from six to nine a m. E Stern three to
six am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio. Find your local
station for Outkicked the Coverage at Fox Sports Radio dot Com,
or stream us live every morning on the I Heart
Radio app by searching fs are you're listening to Fox
(00:23):
Sports Radio. We're taking your calls eight seven seven six
three six nine. In the wake of the college football
season being over, we now know definitively that the CBS
Sports dot Com article which we talked about earlier this year,
and I told you was total bunk. Uh, that they
(00:43):
guaranteed the quote is unbelievable. Uh. And I'm reading for
it again, and I'm wondering why CBS Sports dot Com
isn't acknowledging that they got this completely wrong. I guarantee
someone is going to die if FBS football is played.
That was a University of Illinois computer science professor that
(01:04):
was the focal point of a CBS Sports dot Com
article that came out on June and helped to drive
the idea that it was unsafe to play college football
this fall. Furthermore, not only would someone die, but the
FBS level would see three to seven deaths from COVID
from players playing. Of course, we saw none. We saw
(01:27):
no serious hospitalizations. A few of them could end up
in the hospital, and you'll have a small number who
could die this Uh computer science professor said, I don't
want to sugarcoat it for you. I just want to
give you the facts. The facts meaning things that are
not true, which is the opposite of facts. Speaking of which,
(01:48):
by the way, eight seven seven six three six nine,
I believe that CBS Sports dot com should come honest,
come be honest with their audience and apologize for running
this article featuring this expert who was a hundred percent wrong.
Another little story here. Uh did you see this? Well,
I'll do this story at the end of of the hour. Uh.
(02:09):
Fun story that's out there about about Dan Lebotard and
John Skipper. But I'll tease it for you here and
I'll talk about it a little bit at the end
of the hour. Uh. Front Office Sports had an article
up yesterday saying former ESPN president John Skipper and personality
Dan Lebotard are partnering on a politically progressive sports media company.
(02:33):
The new venture is described as the strategic opposite of
Clay Travis's out Kick, sources told Front Office Sports, Uh, so,
I guess instead of being capitalists, they're gonna be communist. Uh.
That makes sense given the sports media uh landscape right now.
I'll talk about that a little bit more at the
end of the hour, But first we got a lot
of people who went to weigh in. Catfish Jake is
(02:54):
on our outki v i P reminder, you can join
the crew the huge OutKick v i P community. All
you have to do is go sign up OutKick dot
com slash v i P. You get access to the
front of the line whenever we open up phone lines.
Catfish Jake, thanks for being an OutKick v I P. Yeah, man,
thanks for offering the services. Pretty cool. I appreciate it.
And uh two days real quick. First of all, thanks
(03:16):
to the guy Ohio is the ethan and the teacher
of my wife, the teacher in Williamson County. Um, and
what they're doing right now is pretty remarkable. Yeah, let
me let me cut you off there. I want to
I live in an area of the Nashville area, Williamson County.
If you're familiar at all with this region, it's Franklin Tennessee,
which is just south about fifteen miles from from Nashville, Tennessee.
(03:37):
Our teachers here have been incredible. They've been open, We've
had in person learning. My kids are in public school.
I feel incredibly thankful for all of the people who
are involved in Williamson County Schools UH and have kept
our schools open here. I've got a kindergartener and I've
got a fourth grader who've been able to go in person.
UH since school open back up in August. They've done
a fabulous job. The teachers have, the schools have, the
(03:59):
school board has keeping it open to such an extent
that I'm not sure I'm ever going to move out
of this county for the rest of my life. That's
how proud I am of how well they've responded to
COVID here in terms of keeping our kids in school
that I'm not sure legitimately whether I will ever leave
this county that I live in now for the rest
of my life. I'm so happy and thankful for what
(04:20):
they've done. Sorry to cut you off, but I do
think for a lot of places that are shut down
out there, UH, there are a ton of teachers who
have done what I think is the right thing, recognized
what their kids need to be, which is in school,
in person, fought hard to make it happen. It's not everybody,
but the ones who have done it deserved all of
our lasting commendation. Yeah, I agree, I agree. It's one
(04:40):
of the reasons why we moved to Nolan's. They also
get into winds to kind of schools and and she
was actually the teacher of the month in Williamson County.
Thanks for everything. She's doing a job. Yeah, uh yeah.
So the other point is, I think the most irresponsible
saying and the scariest thing about what Dennis DoD did
is what people do in the media now all over
the places. Their argument to what you're saying will be, well,
we just didn't know, and instead of just saying we
(05:02):
don't know, they make these crazy claims like people are
gonna die, that so many people are gonna die based
on nothing, and they admit that they don't know. Saying
you don't know and then saying something as outrageous as
that is just insight in all kind of madness, instead
of just waiting for data to come out. It's based
on nothing, it's not based on facts. It's based on
somebody's just trying to get a headline, and it's insane,
(05:23):
and those guys are incredibly responsible and should absolutely apologize
and retract the statement thank you. And what I would
reinforce is this is intentional by the writer because sometimes
people will say, well, that was the expert. How could
we have known that the expert was wrong? You chose
that expert because he gave you the worst possible forecast.
(05:47):
This guy, you're expert in quotation Marks said three to
seven FBS football players were going to die if the
football season took place, and he guaranteed that at least
one would die June. You ran that article because of
his guarantee. You chose the scariest, most fear porn ladent
(06:14):
prediction to lead with, and that makes your failure all
the more substantial. You were dishonest with your audience, and
you chose a expert in quotation Marks, who has now
been proven to be a hundred percent wrong, and you
trumpeted his quotes in an effort to get the college
(06:37):
football season canceled. That's what was going on. Don't in
any way pretend anything else. I guarantee someone is going
to die that was the quote, I don't want to
sugarcoat it for you. I just want to give you
the facts. That's not a fact. Predicting that something is
(06:59):
going to happen is the exact opposite of a fact.
A fact is me coming on and saying Alabama one
fifty two to twenty four in the National title game
against Ohio State. That has happened. It is an incontrovertible
truth that that was the score of the game. That
is a fact. Me coming on and saying I believe
(07:24):
Alabama will win or I believe Ohio State will win
is a prediction. It's not a fact. The game hasn't happened.
You can't quote somebody saying I don't want to sugarcoat
it for you. I just want to give you the facts,
and then say I guarantee someone is going to die.
(07:46):
That's not a fact. That's a prediction. That's an opinion.
This is a failure, and I'm seeing it happen across
media everywhere. I'm just using sports as the prism through
which to see at failure. CBS Sports dot Com lied
to their audience and they're hoping that all of you
(08:07):
just forget about this now. Opinions can be wrong, Okay,
I'm in fact, I'm not infallible. I mess up all
the time. What I try to always tell you is
my facts are gonna be wrong, We're gonna be right.
My opinions are going to be sometimes right, sometimes wrong.
Like every single one of you out there, apologize when
(08:30):
you get your facts wrong. You don't necessarily have to
apologize for an opinion, although people out there you want
to know. I've come on and said, hey, in the
early days of COVID back in March, I apologize to
my audience for believing the data that was coming out
of China and for trusting the World Health Organization and
(08:51):
using the data that they were providing to lead to
incorrect opinions. I trusted facts that we're not actually worthy
of being trusted. For that, I apologize to you. I
shouldn't have trusted China in the early days of COVID,
I shouldn't have trusted the World Health Organization. We now
know that the information they all gave us was not accurate,
(09:15):
and if you use inaccurate information, then your opinions are
not going to be as accurate as they should be.
So when I get things wrong, like that. I came
to you by April and I said, hey, this data
was wrong. I believed it. I trusted the w h O,
I trusted China. I shouldn't have done it. That's on me.
(09:36):
That's what adults do. That's what Dennis Dodd should do.
I should do into this. Dodould come out right a
piece and say, you know what, I was wrong. I
believed that it was not safe to play college football
this fall, and I was wrong. And I sought out
an expert, expert in quotation marks who said, quote, I
guarantee someone is going to die. And then I don't
(09:57):
want to sugarcoat it for you. I just want to
give you the facts. And he said the facts were
three to seven people were gonna die again. That's not
a fact, that's a prediction. That's an opinion, and it
was wrong. A lot of you want to weigh in
eight seven, seven, three six nine, dub who's up next?
We got Joshua and Missouri. Joshua, what you got for me? Hey,
(10:18):
good morning man, thanks for taking my call. I just
wanted to you know, I don't want to piggyback off
of what everybody else said, because we're all basically staying
the same thing. But one of my biggest pet peeves
is when someone screws up or messes something up and
they won't admit that they were wrong, because that's that
shows me the ability to learn from something, you know,
and and they're not gonna print a retraction. They're not
(10:41):
gonna do that because that would, you know, have all
their listeners realizing that they're wrong about things, and they
don't want you to think that. They want the attention
grabber to be hey, read it here, you heard it
here first, and maybe we're right, maybe we're wrong, and
if we're wrong, you're never gonna know about it. Um. So,
like everybody else has said, I listened to you every morning.
(11:03):
I start my morning at three am when you come on,
I'm excited because the honesty factor is what, um you
know makes me happy to listen because when you are wrong,
you'll say, hey, guys, look I messed that up. I
screwed that up, and and that gets so much more
respect from people than oh, there's gonna be three or
four people that are gonna die. I guarantee it, well,
(11:25):
it never happens, and we don't hear another word about it.
That I just can't respect somebody like that. So, UM,
thank you for being Clay Travis and being honest and
and um just doing what to do. Man, I appreciate you. Thanks,
I appreciate the call. Look, I mean, I think that is.
I value my relationship with my audience, all of you
out there listening right now. The reason why I didn't
(11:46):
take a day off for months when we didn't have
sports was because I know that, just like my guy
they're calling for Missouri, a lot of you start off
your morning with me, and I try to be as
honest as I possibly can with you every single day
for three hours a day. Doesn't mean you're always going
to agree with me. Doesn't mean that I'm gonna get
everything right. But when I get something wrong, I come
(12:06):
on and I tell you. And that, to me is
not a sign of of the fact that that I
can't be trusted to me if people aren't regularly looking
at their opinions and coming on and saying, hey, maybe
I got that a little bit wrong, maybe that data
is wrong. I care about my opinions, but I care
about my facts way more because an opinion can't be
(12:31):
valid if it's rooted in failed facts. And so I
mean that is to me, the very essence of what
I do, and the analogy that I've made that I
think a lot of you get is if I come
on and I tell you, hey, I don't think the
Bucks are gonna win the super Bowl this year. I
don't think Tom Brady is gonna beat Drew Brerees in
(12:52):
the game down in New Orleans. They've already lost twice
this year. We know that, right, the Saints of beating
the Bucks twice in the NFC South. But if I
said the reason why I don't think Tom Brady's gonna
win the super Bowl this year is because he's never
won the super Bowl before, you might agree with my conclusion,
but you should trust my opinion less because we know
(13:15):
Tom Brady has won six super Bowls already and he's
been to nine of them. So if I tell you
I don't think Brady's gonna win the super Bowl this
year because he's never won the Super Bowl before, you
might agree with me. Hey, I don't like the Bucks.
I like the Saints better. I like the Packers. I
like the Chiefs, I like the Bills, I like the Ravens.
There's a lot of different teams out there. You could
(13:35):
pick to win the Super Bowl right now with eight
teams remaining. But if I get a basic fact like
that wrong, which you know, you should trust me less,
even though you might have the same opinion as me.
One of the things that troubles me about America today
is people will support someone who has the same final
opinion as them, even if the data by which they
(13:59):
get there isn't supported by facts. Your opinion is only
as good as the facts upon which it is based.
Who's up next? Up? We got Matt and Phoenix. Matt,
what you got for me? Yeah? Hey, I think it
goes beyond just getting an article wrong. I think it
goes to the point of a misuse of the First Amendment,
(14:22):
to the point where in that situation it was like
somebody going into a theater and screaming fire. Yeah, people
lost were hurt mentally, emotionally, financially. And beyond that, even
which is even worse, is the next kind. There is
something serious and people come out and start saying you
need to be careful. Nobody will listen. I think that's
(14:43):
what makes it dangerous. They need to be sanctioned or fine,
there's something needs to be done where The next person
that thinks about doing this takes a second thought and says, well,
maybe I shouldn't do this. Guys get trouble. Thanks for God.
I don't know about sinkster fines. I think just being
honest with your audience. Right. If you're CBS Sports dot
com and you published this expert who was wrong, now
(15:05):
that the season is over, you should have to come
back and say, we got this wrong. We're sorry. Here's
why we got it wrong. Why did you pick that expert?
Why did you give him the opportunity to come on
your forum and get things wrong to such an extent
that that guy was instrumental in almost getting college football canceled.
Every single college commissioner in the country read that article
(15:29):
and was terrified that they were going to be accused
of having blood on their hands if a player died
because of COVID. Didn't even come close to happening, but
the fear was out there, and it was magnified by
that article. Who's up next, dub last one? Here we
got Joe in Arkansas? Joe in Arkansas? What you got
for me? My man? Hey man, it starts crackling. Joan Burro, Man,
(15:51):
I'll tell you what you know an here for sure
because the ticket comes on at seven, you'll be losing here.
And they love you. And one of the things I
do love you about they love you. Don't have all
this silpy mouth. These people love you around here, you
love they love your butanus. But our news a right here.
That's all they talked about. The COVID Queen's what I
call them. It's all COVID numbers right here on our
news all the time. Our schools are having a taste,
(16:13):
and we're spending twenty five and thirty kids home to
foreign thing with that one person. Yeah, play, I want
to say something to you what you're talking about on
this subject coming you know, maybe a driver with twenty
to be married in nurse thirty years. It's just one
of them things I can say back to my wife
every night before I lay honey, I'm gonna have wrecked out.
I won't be coming home. I mean, you don't know
what's gonna happen anymore in the world. But don't get
(16:33):
on there and tell everybody will We're gonna have a
bunch of people die today because of COVID. We want
y'all know that ahead of time. You don't say stuff
like that. You've got a lot of people running here
right now. I see all these mass furthers I call
him every now and all these masks where I stopped at,
and it's crazy, Clay. These people are not figuring that out.
What's going on. Yes, there's people dying, yes, but all
the sports plays you're not hearing very many for people
(16:56):
is actually note thank you for the Yeah, thanks, You're
gonna look. Here's what I would say. Think about how
often you hear athlete has tested positive for COVID. It's
been a story for a year almost now. You never
hear athlete has virtually no symptoms, comes back to play fine. Right.
(17:19):
That's been the story every single where athlete test positive,
pro athletes, college athletes. Athlete comes back, completes the season,
zero issues, right, I mean the story of testing positive,
big story. They come back, play perfectly fine, have zero issues.
(17:42):
Nobody talks about it. I just the number of high
school kids who didn't get to play sports this fall
makes me sick. The number of high school kids who
are not going to get to play sports this spring
makes me sick. The number of kids that are not
in school still legitimately makes me sick to the pit
of my stomach. And it's because of people like CBS
(18:04):
Sports dot Com using sports as a prism through which
to look at our larger context. If they can get
sports canceled, they can get school canceled. Right. If you
can play sports, then school can be open. Sports is
the wedge that allows normalcy to return. That's we've been
arguing for a long time. And the data, the data
reflects that for young people, people should be back at school,
(18:27):
back at sports. Everybody should be playing. And by the way,
I'm living this myself. My son's in two basketball leagues
playing right now. We're signed up for baseball. We had
flag football this fall, we had soccer this fall. All
my kids are playing sports in addition to being in school.
So what we gotta do. Be sure to catch live
editions about kicked the coverage with Clay Travis weekdays at
(18:48):
six am Eastern, three am Pacific to bring in Shannon
Spake at Shannon's fake on Twitter. Shannon, you're finished traveling
with the NFL. But I don't know that we've talked
about this. How much of a success story is it
for college football to complete its season? Crown and champion
Alabama thirteen and oh And for the NFL, knock on wood,
(19:10):
it appears to be set to have its four divisional
round playoff games that are taking place on Saturday and
Sunday completely on schedule. Again, I say, knock on wood.
It doesn't appear there are any major COVID issues right
now for those eight teams that are remaining the Elite
eight of the NFL. If we get those games in
(19:32):
on Saturday and Sunday, which all indications are would occur,
then we're down to two teams that will advance to
the Super Bowl. The a f C and the NFC
Championship Game will be played four teams in total. Like
this is a remarkable achievement that I feel like is
not getting enough attention for the NFL not only to
have played its season, but have to have played its
(19:52):
season in totality and to be it completely on normal
schedule is one of the great accomplishments I think in
sports history. Yeah, if you would have told me eight
months ago that we would have finished, but not only
the NFL season, but the college football season, the NBA season,
the Major League Baseball, the NASCAR, everything, right, I mean,
we were in such a state of unknowns and fear
(20:15):
and everyone hiding in their homes and and yes, absolutely,
I mean in Clay I was, you know right there
a part of it all. It was. It was so
drastically different this year. The players on the field, even
watching the National Championship with the lack of fans in there.
And you know, I still have friends with the Alabama
um s, I D s and PR folks, and so
(20:36):
you know, I send out a quick text to them
and let them know congratulations. And the first thing that
they said back to me was just that they were
so proud because of everything that the kids had done right,
because the kids had to buy in. They're the ones
that had to make this happen. And it was a
very different year. These kids are in college, you know,
they're they're supposed to be going out having a good time,
hanging with their friends, doing all of these things that
(20:57):
college kids do, and all of that stuff had to
stop in for for football, for for the bigger picture.
And I just think and and you know, even even
what Ohio State went through, all of the uncertainty that
they went through, not even though if they were going
to have a season, canceling games, I mean all of
the stuff that they went through. I don't know how
I would have handled that at nine years old in
(21:19):
terms of just kind of checking out and saying, nobody
else wants us to get this done, so why do
we want to get this done? But they stayed focus.
I talked to with us about my I talked with
this about with my wife about how you know we're
now adults, right for in quotation marks, right, um, But
I'm amazed like the number of the amount of discipline
that these college kids show, because if you think about it,
(21:42):
we had a babysitter over the other day and she
just finished her senior year last year, and she now
is a freshman in college. I think that's probably the
worst age to have to be experiencing COVID, because if
you think about in your own high school experience, and
everybody out there, imagine what March to May to June
(22:03):
is like for your senior year of high school. Typically
for anybody out there who's listening to us, it is
a transformative moment in your life, prom decisions on where
you might be going to college, graduation from high school,
what your plans are going forward in life. In the
last time that you will be as a high school
student in your life. Your senior senior year, those are
(22:25):
some of the most important moments of your life, to
say nothing of if you're playing basketball, if you're playing soccer,
if you're playing sports, whatever they might be in that
spring calendar, trying to finish that off right. And then
and then you go into your let's say you go
away to your freshman year of college. Usually your freshman
year of college for anybody out there who is fortunate
(22:46):
enough to get to go to college, is such a
transformative moment in your life as well as you enter
into adulthood, come to grips with what the rest of
your life might be like, and experience the challenges of
being a freshman in college. They are experiences for senior
year of high school and freshman year of college are
totally different than anybody throughout all of American history. And
(23:11):
yet many of those kids are able to handle that.
And she was an example, you know, like she was
saying she was going back to college. She goes to
college in the Midwest, in Chicago, and she said, yeah,
when I get back to college, I have to stay
in my dorm room for ten days and not leave
to quarantine before I'm allowed to do anything at all
on campus. And I'm just thinking, think about how awful
(23:34):
dorm rooms are for most people, and you're stuck inside
one of those tiny little dorm rooms for ten days
where you can't even go outside. I mean, I think
we're totally underrating the insanity that we are putting our
young people through. See you sit here and say it
like it's a bad thing for these kids to be quarantine,
I'm thinking that you probably would have been good to
be quarantined. It would have helped your g p A
(23:56):
exactly Like I can't go to the bars Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday when I'm freshman in college. Uh yeah, It's it's
completely different. And you think about like these four kids
that are seniors, they didn't get to have their prom,
they didn't get to walk across the stage. You know,
they're they're having you know, cars parade outside their home.
That's there, that's their graduation. It's it's a very odd everything.
(24:18):
And I agree with you the things that the kids
have experience. I couldn't imagine my kids being uh senior,
high school, freshman in college or even like you know,
towards the end of their career. You know, you're trying
to start your career and now you're doing zoom meetings.
You can't go into these interviews. You can't. You can't,
I mean, you can't start life. You know. I know
Howard Stern talks about it so much, so much. I
(24:39):
know you and I both listened to him about you know,
young musicians coming up who can't go to restaurants and
bars and play right now. It's stop everything, yeah, I
mean even my kids, even my kids, you know, this
year we look at this year is like a throwaway year.
I mean they're in a different school because we decided
to do that. You know, financially, we didn't want to
get locked into a tuition if there was going to
(25:01):
be virtual because then we would have to get a tutor.
And it's kind of like a throwaway year because everything
is so different, and I don't know how much they're
really learning in the classroom because there are so many
uncertainty as we continue to move forward. You know, I
talked to a teacher. Um, this was this was a
little while ago, um and uh, and he was an
(25:21):
AP teacher. He taught AP history and uh and in
a relatively poor school district. And for people out there
who are not familiar with the AP history plan, the
idea with AP Advanced Placement is that kids can get
college credit while they're still in high school. Did you say,
are you yeah, I'm letting you know out there. So,
so these are the kids that have been working the
(25:43):
hardest by the time they get to their junior and
senior years of high school. Uh. They then take an
exam at the end of the year. And what he
told me was, I mean, it was really just flat
out heartbreaking. He said, the number of kids that he
teaches that have access to reliable WiFi is minuscule. He
he taught in a rural area that did not have
(26:04):
it was a you know, low income, relatively speaking community,
and he's like, man, these kids have been busting their
butts for years to be able to get into these
AP courses. And he said, people say, well, you just
got to teach them remotely. He said, you know, I've
got kids showing up at seven am to sit in
the parking lot of a McDonald's on a highly unreliable
(26:29):
laptop that they might have if they're fortunate enough to
have in a laptop to be able to try to
get logged into class, and I just it is. It
is infuriating to me that we have so many people
out there obsessed, supposedly with equality and making sure that
everybody has an equal chance going forward, and yet we
(26:49):
pulled the poorest kids out of school, the kids without
WiFi at home, the kids without laptops, the kids without
parents who were able to help them, and we have
basically taken away a year of schooling from them that
they will never be able to recover. For the rest
of their lives. We are going to be paying the
consequences from shutting down our schools and not allowing kids
(27:10):
to be in person for the rest of these kids lives.
Many of them will never catch up. Right, you talk
about a kid who in six or seventh grade, or
god forbid, you know, kindergarten or first grade when they're
learning how to read. These kids, I mean, there are
there are kids out there that are never going to
achieve anywhere near their academic potential because we shut down schools.
(27:31):
And that's like nobody is even nobody is even talking
about this sha like this. There's all this social justice
warrior talk and all this you know, we've got to
make sure that we that we may mandated quality in
this country and and all these different things, and all
these athletes are supposed to be, you know, role models
and speaking out. I haven't heard a single athlete come
out and say, hey, we've got to make sure that
(27:52):
every kids in school. I mean, it's crazy to me.
I told you many times I was not a great student.
I could not imagine if I had to do virtual learning,
it would be there's no way that I would graduate
on time, you know, because I was a kid like
kind of showing up doing my homework, you know before school,
you know when we walked in, you know, looking off
other people like that's how I did my homework. But
(28:12):
that was because I was never taught like I didn't.
I pretty much raised myself. My mom worked three jobs.
We didn't have that guidance. We did not have someone
kind of showing us what we should have done at
a very young age. So that was where I was.
I was not a great student. I cannot even imagine
if I had to rely on myself sixteen seventeen years old. Yeah,
there's there's no way I would have been set back
(28:34):
so far and not only that, but but athletics, because
I've said I've said to you before, swimming is what
kept me on a straight line. Swimming is what kept
me moving forward and set goals for myself for the future,
and ultimately it's what helped me end up where I
am today in terms of everything in my life. And
so if I couldn't do that because swimming was canceled
(28:56):
or sports were canceled, So there's so many things at
these ports. And you think about kids that can't eat,
they don't that that's their one school lunch, school breakfast. Yes,
we go to a public school right now. They offer
free lunch, free lunch, and free breakfast, and that's like
the one place that some of these kids are able
to eat. There's so many long term effects that we
have no clue what's going to happen. You think about
kids that are abusive homes that like that, is there
(29:17):
one that's their one outlet is to go to school
and yeah, to to go sports. That's their family. It's
it's tragic when you think about it from that level,
and it's just wild to be that. Look, if you're
fortunate enough to be able to afford private school, a
lot of private schools are open. If you're fortunate enough
to be able to afford tutoring for your kids. There's
a lot of people who are doing this pod system
(29:39):
to allow their kids to continue to be educated. If
you're fortunate enough to have a parent who's able to
stay home and work with you. WiFi, reliable internet, computers
that work. All of those things are rarities for many
people in our country. Yet I hear nobody talking about them,
and I keep using sports as the prism. You're just
talking about swimming for you, Shannon, everybody out there listening
(30:00):
of me, right now, those kids might have been you
might have been somebody that you're friends with who stayed
eligible at school for sports, right Like, they had to
get their grade to be able to play football or
basketball or soccer or whatever it was. That's what they
lived for while they were in school. And the hope
is that eventually the light bulb comes on and you recognize, hey,
I'm gonna have to use this brain to make a living.
(30:22):
And but in the meantime, sports helped to drive you
to get that education. And we're just yanking that safety
net completely out from underneath everybody. Yeah, it's uh, we
talked about this many times, Clay, and that it's it's
so sad and so scary. I don't know. I mean,
there's there's a fine balance, you know, because I do know.
I mean we just had we just had a gym
(30:43):
teacher in this area forty something years old, died of COVID,
you know, and I know the people are surviving, and
then you get that one story. Thankfully, our our school
has been open, just like I heard you say earlier
in the show, that you're that you're thank god that
our school districts are open. You go mild on the
road though in Mecklenburg County, which is like the major
county for Charlotte, they're not They're still just intro virtual
(31:05):
or half and half. And and we just had we
just had a bulletin come out, I think yesterday here
in the Mecklenburg area that says like we have all
these rules now where we have to stay in between
this time and this time. And yeah, but thankfully the
sports has still been open. My kids dive and swim,
and so they're still doing that, and they're still in
school and they go to school every day, and it's
very different for them as well. But they're adapting. But
(31:28):
I do feel I feel worse for those high school kids,
all those kids that are that are trying to start
their lives and trying to form their lives somehow. Yeah,
and it's also crazy, Like you just mentioned Mecklenburg County,
which is Charlotte. Davidson County is Nashville. We're not far
from the county line. I was a public school kid
K through twelve in Nashville City schools. Those kids aren't
able to go to school right now. So I mean,
(31:49):
you're talking about the line the difference as if like
there's some massive difference in COVID from like, you know,
it's not like COVID can see the county line, right,
you know, Like and so on one county side kids
are able to go to school. I'm betting that the
county that you're in, the kids are probably more affluent.
The kids are more affluent in my county school, so
they already have advantages, and then we're magnifying those advantages
(32:12):
by those kids being able to go to school in person,
play sports, be able to live their lives, and the
kids that are less advantaged are not being able to
go to school. It's the exact opposite of what equality
should be. The richer getting richer, the poor getting poorer.
It should be a major issue. Yet nobody's talking about it. Nope.
And you know they're getting I mean our school thankfully,
like my kids are only in sixth fifth grade, so
(32:33):
they are able to get laptops and if you don't
have one, in chromebooks and all this stuff and they
send it home. But but yeah, I mean the Mecklenburg
the high schools. It's so overcrowded as it is in
this area. Like just like I said, one mile down
the road that a lot of those kids are not
logging on you hear all of these stories. Um, so
it's um, it's certainly, it's certainly going to be interesting
as we see it move forward. But you know, I
(32:53):
know Danny G told you I wanted to talk COVID
the whole time, right exactly what he said. We'll talk
to you. Great, we at a football didn't week did
we like we did? We did have an incredible weekend
of football on fire two days to So how about that?
That's pretty fantastic. I'll talk to you about that next week.
We'll be down to the a f C. In the
NFC Championship game that Shannon's bake. Uh. This is OutKick
(33:15):
on Fox Sports Radio. Fox Sports Radio has the best
sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our
shows at Fox sports Radio dot com and within the
I Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live.
I mentioned I was gonna talk about this. I'm reading
from Front Office Sports. Um, and sometimes, I mean, I
(33:37):
think it's interesting the amount of news stories that I
am mentioned in now. UM, I almost need like a
clip service to keep me a priest of everything that
everybody's saying. But the headline is uh John Skipper, who's
the former president of the ESPN. Dan Lebotard's progressive response
to out Kick? Uh So, Dan leabatar Art and John Skipper.
(34:01):
Here's the opening paragraph. Former ESPN president John Skipper and
personality Dan Lebotard are partnering on a politically progressive sports
media company. The new venture is described as the strategic
opposite of Clay Travis's OutKick. Sources told Front Office Sports, so,
I guess they will be communists as opposed to my capitalist.
(34:24):
But I think probably I should be flattered by this
because OutKick is dominating on so many different levels that
there are now media companies that are making decisions based
on our success, and certainly as a as a person
who owns a business, I welcome other people who decide
to start sports media companies. But is there a demand
(34:47):
in the marketplace for a more left wing version of
sports than ESPN? The reason why OutKick works is because
ESPN has gone so woke and so far left wing.
Is there really an opening for a further left wing
(35:09):
version of ESPN? It's already a knife fight in the
woke community to see who is the wocust, and now
having a left wing sports property is going to make
that even more so quickly around the horn, Should I
be flattered that they're basing their entire business model on me?
(35:30):
It's kind of crazy, right is your stock? I mean,
anytime you're mentioned like that, it's good. I mean literally
the opening pair, then the headline the headline John Skipper
Dan Lebotard's progressive response to OutKick opening paragraph. Former ESPN
president John Skipper and personality Dan Lebotard or partnering on
a politically progressive sports media company. The new venture is
(35:51):
described as the tragic opposite of Clay Travis's OutKick, So
they'll be opposed to the First Amendment and capitalism. We
are in favor of First Amendment in capitalism at an OutKick,
So I wish him well, Dub. Should I be flattered?
I think he might have crush on you, Clay. I
think they might. I mean, I'm kind of a lovable person.
I wouldn't be shocked. Yeah, not so much, Eddie. Would
(36:12):
you have ever believed when Outkicks started that people would
be basing their businesses on OutKick? Now, well, I guess so. Actually,
if you put it that way, Um, this has been
very successful for you, and yeah, I could see. I mean,
you built this up from from nothing, from scratch, and
now it is what it is. But I'm reading the
article that you were just reading from and I saw
the name Jamille Hill and Bamonti Jones. I'm like, they're
gonna get all the failures from for failing. That's what
(36:37):
they're gonna build this on. Good luck. Yeah, it doesn't
make sense to me that you would take the people
who already the marketplace has said we don't like this person,
and now you're going to give them theoretically lots of
money or equity bring them in to run as a
part of the company, and it's probably gonna fail again.
I I just don't get it. Good luck to him.
(36:58):
UH and by the way, if you want to be
the winner, you should be without Kick, who they're basing
their entire business model on. According to the front off
of Sports, we come back third hour, Joe Kinzie, one
of my writers at the wildly Successful now being modeled
after OutKick, will join us UH and we will also
dive into the NFL and college football playoffs and the
Thunderdome next on OutKick. This is Outkicked the coverage with
(37:22):
Clay Travis
Hosts And Creators
Brady Quinn
LaVar Arrington
Jonas Knox
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