June 22, 2020 • 57 mins
Clay Travis reacts to the latest Coronavirus "fear porn" and explains why we all went into quarantine in the first place. Jason Whitlock joins Clay and they discuss the disturbing Bubba Wallace story and the Florio twitter decapitation. Plus, Clay takes Whitlock back to his days at Ball State with an interesting question about COVID-19.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for listening to the best of out Kick the
Coverage podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weekday
morning from six to nine am Eastern three to six
am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio. Find your local station
for OutKick the Coverage at Fox Sports Radio dot com,
or stream us live every morning on the i Heart
Radio app by searching f s R. This is the
best of OutKick the Coverage with Clay Travis on Fox
(00:22):
Sports Radio. I'm gonna dive into the coronavirus here in
a minute, because I think there's a lot of good positivity,
But first negativity that came last night in the world
of sports and allegation that someone hung a noose in
Bubba Wallace's garage at Talladega. There was a rainout at Talladega,
(00:46):
and it's gonna be much discussed surrounding the race and
certainly NASCAR because Bubba Wallace was involved in the flashpoint
of the Confederate flag being banned in NASCAR. We've got
Jason Whitlaw on the program and I'm going to discuss
that with him in detail, So we will get to that,
we will discuss it, and we will have a contemplation
(01:08):
on that story as it is developing. But first, the
biggest story I would say that has been afflicting the
world of sports in general has been the coronavirus. Whether
it's the NBA, Major League Baseball, college football, the NFL.
There are a ton of different angles to hit coming
out of the weekend, and I want to dive into
that before we talk with Whitlock as our first guest
(01:30):
coming up shortly, so let's talk coronavirus. In the meantime.
I know there's a lot of nattering, nave obs of
negativity as they were once characterized in the nineteen seventies
out there in the media who want to scare you
to death every single day, and I know it infiltrates
in many ways into the world of sports, where over
(01:50):
the weekend you saw a lot of people spreading what
I call fear porn. It is Oh my god, l
s U. Look at what happened. Look at how many
years got tested positive. Look at Clemson, look at the
look at the teams down in Major League Baseball. Oh,
the NBA is scared now about the idea of being
in the state of Florida. All of these stories just
(02:13):
constantly hitting you and assaulting you can at times be overwhelming.
And what I have been trying to do, and by
the way, you guys are responding insanely positively to it,
is share actual facts with you and let you use
them in an intelligent way. And so as we walk
(02:34):
through here, I tweeted this out on Sunday night. I
tweeted on Sunday, just two hundred and ninety seven people
in the entire country died of the coronavirus. That's the
lowest number of deaths nationwide since March. So that's almost
(02:56):
right after when Rudy Gobert walked off the basketball court
in the NBA shut down, and the n C Double
A tournament shut down, in the and and and and
the NHL and every sport basically shut down. From a
team sport perspective, we're almost back to their now. If
you look at the chart of deaths, we are way
(03:17):
down on the back end of that chart again. Just
two hundred and ninety seven deaths today, the lowest number
of deaths since March. We had a peak number of
deaths that were set in late April in this country.
Since that time, deaths from the coronavirus in this country
(03:40):
are now down since that peak was set in late April. Okay,
those are facts which should be the number one story
in all of America. It should be the number one
story for everybody out there who's worried about sports coming back.
It's should be the number one story about the NFL
(04:02):
and college football and the NBA and Major League Baseball
in the NHL and everything else out there. It should
be a huge story that just two d and ninety
seven people died nationwide today. That's the lowest number of
deaths since March. And also the fact that deaths are
(04:23):
now down n since the peak was set in late April. Yet,
I want you to keep track of this. You are
hearing me talk about it on Monday morning to start
your day. I want you to keep track of this.
How many other people in media will share those facts
with you, as opposed to the number of people out
(04:46):
there who will share how many people from Clemson have
tested positive or how many people from l s You
have tested positive, or any of those stories. And again,
I want to dive into those numbers as well, because
I think it's important that context be put into perspective
on the coronavirus here. And I still see so many
(05:07):
people in media choosing to embrace fear over embracing facts.
All right, here are some facts for you for college kids.
Just focusing on college kids right now. College kids are
more likely to die of the flu or pneumonia than
they are to die of the coronavirus. It's gonna stun
(05:29):
a lot of you out there. If you are under
twenty four years old in this country, you are more
likely to die from the flu or pneumonia than you
are from the coronavirus. It's some big, massive stat as
it pertains to the return of college athletics. Again, we
(05:50):
don't ever shut anything down for the flu or pneumonia.
If you are under twenty four years old, you are
more likely to die for the flu or pneumonia than
you are from the coronavirus. Most college kids who are
playing football or basketball or any other sport are more
likely to die driving to campus then they are from
(06:14):
the coronavirus on campus. I talked to a lot of
people this weekend. I said, what's the story behind this
Clemson and l s U uptick in the overall number
of infections, And what I heard was it's college kids
being college kids. They got back on campus there are
girls they know that live in these college towns, and
(06:37):
they went out to the bars, and they went to
the parties, and they were wherever the girls were. It's
a story as old as time. If you went to college, heck,
if you went to high school, heck, if you are
a heterosexual man who is listening to me right now,
you probably remember being eighteen and nineteen and twenty years old,
(07:00):
and what did you spend the vast majority of your
free time doing? Chasing girls? And that's particularly the case
if you have been off campus four months and you
haven't been around any girls at all, and suddenly you're
back on a college campus. Mom and dad, you're not
in their house. You don't have to play by their rules.
(07:20):
You've got your own apartment, you got your own dorm room,
and you are going to go out and have a
good time. That's where these infections are coming from. They're asymptomatic.
A lot of times people want to talk about what's
going on in Florida. The governor of Florida came out
and he said the average age of people now that
(07:41):
are testing positive is super young. They have gone from
the average age being sixty five to the average age
being thirty seven. Florida is gonna get a lot of
attention because it's where the NBA is planning to be.
It's because it's where the MLS is planning to be.
(08:02):
And Ronda Santis, who came on this program recently, the
governor of Florida, he tweeted out some data points here
that I think are pretty interesting. He said, this week,
Florida has seen a large number of new cases from
those eighteen to thirty five. Here's the average age of
people testing positive for the coronavirus in all these different
(08:25):
places in Florida. Broward County thirty two, Duval you, Jacksonville
people twenty nine years old, Hillsboro, which I believe is
Tampa thirty years old, Orange County, which is where Orlando is,
twenty nine year olds, Panellis County twenty nine year olds,
(08:45):
Seminole County twenty seven year olds. All Right, these are
super young people. That's the median age of new cases
UH for June nineteen in the Florida counties that Rhonda
Santis shared with us. Okay, why is that? It's because
(09:06):
young people are going out and living uh, and they've
been cooped up and they want to go to bars,
and they want to go to restaurants, and they want
to chase after other young people. Right stats here for
you about Florida. There are now twice as many of
beds available right now in Florida then before this pandemic began.
(09:29):
There are way fewer COVID nineteen patients. And I see
you and on ventilators in Florida right now than in April.
And this is important. Every time somebody goes to the
hospital now in Florida, they test you to see whether
or not you have the coronavirus, which is another reason.
(09:50):
As you have started back up elective surgeries, the overall
numbers have surged again. This is actual data from this
A to Florida that they put out yesterday. Okay, so
now anybody can be tested at any age and regardless
of their symptoms. And I told you guys this last week.
(10:12):
I went and got tested because I was like, man,
I want to know what it's like to get tested
for the coronavirus, and so I did it. Here in Nashville,
they have drive up coronavirus testing. I went in the car,
pulled right up, got the swab in the nose that
felt super weird because I was like, you know what,
I want to know what this experience is like, because
(10:34):
I think a lot of athletes and coaches are gonna
be going through it on a regular basis, and I
feel like I should be talking about it from a
position of having experienced it. I didn't want to do
it earlier because I didn't want to take away any
of the medical resources from people who needed it. But
in lots of states. I can't speak specifically to your state,
(10:54):
but certainly in the state of Florida, where I've spent
a lot of time and where, by the way, I'm
gonna be next week for July four week, and in
the state of Tennessee, where I live, you can just
go right up. You don't have to have any symptoms
at all. You can get tested. It took me fifteen minutes,
pulled right up, didn't even have to get out of
the car. The efficiency and uh and smoothness of that
test blew my mind. Now I did it. Also, I
(11:17):
didn't want to say this beforehand, is I don't want
to put them you know, you know sometimes uh, you
don't necessarily want to talk about your family. I know
that's ironic. Coming for me. But my wife and one
of my sons got tested in the car too, and
they call you. And they called my wife and my
son on Friday, they said, you're perfectly fine, don't have
the coronavirus at all. They haven't called me yet, but
(11:41):
they just called the phone number and tell you the results.
So I'll let you guys know when I get officially
my results. But there were three of us in the car,
my wife and one of my sons. We were like,
let's go try it out. Let's see what it's like
to be tested. And two of them have already gotten
their results back. They were negative. My results haven't come
back at all yet. But I obviously feel great. I
(12:03):
don't feel like I have any issues at all. But
that's what's happening now with a lot of these young people.
They're asymptomatic and they're getting tested to go back to work,
or they find out that one of their friends got
it and so they decided to go in and get
tested and they find out that they've got it as well.
So why does that matter. Well, you're hearing a lot
about the total number of cases. What you're not hearing
(12:24):
a lot about is how many of these cases are
actually severe. And what typically has happened is half of
the people that have died of the coronavirus have been
in nursing homes. Well, only point six percent of the
American population is in nursing homes. So if we can
keep this thing out of nursing homes, then the chances
(12:44):
of death occurring for young and healthy people is downright menuscule.
As I just said, flu in pneumonia is more likely
to kill you, and we never shut down any sports
for fluent pneumonia. And we're talking about super healthy people, right.
Athletes are young and the healthiest people on the entire planet.
(13:07):
It's not to say that one or two of them
could not have serious issues. But what you're not hearing
about the l s U and the Clemson situation is
you're not hearing anybody talk about those players having to
be hospitalized. And honestly, this is where we've talked about
some of this on the show. This is where I
kind of wonder if there's a diabolical coach out there
(13:28):
who's like man, I would rather my entire team get
exposed to the coronavirus now in the preseason so that
we'll never have a guy missed the game for the
coronavirus once the actual season starts, and arguably these guys
testing positive asymptomatic before training camp even starts is good regardless,
(13:49):
because it starts to give herd immunity to the locker room.
Because you want to be able. The more people who
have been exposed to it, the less rapidly it spreads
the locker room because a lot of guys have had
it already. Now. To be fair, immediately, anytime you share
data like this, people say what about older coaches or
(14:10):
what about older people who might be on campus. This
is where you have to be smart. This is why
I think the data matters. You have to give the
real data to people out there, and you have to say, hey,
based on your age and based on your health conditions,
would it be smarter for you not to coach this year?
Would it be smarter for you not to be a
(14:32):
professor this year on campus? Would it be smarter for
you to do this remotely? Would it be smarter for
you to continue to quarantine yourself by and large and
keep yourself from interacting with younger people. If you are
a younger person and you are listening to me right now,
and you say, Clay, I have been cooped up for
so many months. I just want to get out and
(14:53):
have a life. I understand that. What I would encourage
you to do is if that is your choice, stay
away from your grandparents, Stay away from your older aunt
or uncle, Stay away from your mom and dad if
they are older, talk to him on the phone. Social
distance from older people in the event that you are asymptomatic,
(15:15):
don't know you're sick, and then you don't want to
take it and give it to somebody else. So if
you are of the opinion, you know what, Clay, and
I know some of you who are listening to me
feel like this. You're like, I'm ready to go back
to campus. Man, Clay, I'm twenty years old. I am
over this coronavirus thing. I want to be back out
hanging out with my friends. I've been sitting in my
(15:37):
house with my parents forever. You don't know how tough
it is. I feel like I'm totally socially isolated. I've
got a girl I've been talking to. She wants to
meet up. I think we can hook up. That's what's
going on. That's why young people are off the charts
testing positive right now. Now. If you believe in her
(16:00):
an immunity, as I do, that's not all a bad thing,
because what it means is we don't we can't stop
a virus from spreading. Right. If you remember when they
told us to go into our houses back in March,
it wasn't with the idea that we were gonna be
there forever. It was with the idea that we were
going to flatten the curve. What we have, we haven't
(16:22):
seen any hospital in America overloaded and having to turn
patients away. Hasn't happened most of america hospitals. We actually
nearly bankrupted them because we stopped elective surgery and there
weren't enough patients to keep doctors and nurses employed. But
that's a whole another story. But flattening the curve worked,
(16:44):
so you can't stop the virus from spreading forever. Arguably,
what we would like to do is have the virus
spread among young, healthy people who are not gonna need
to be hospitalized until we can start to get some
sort of hurt immunity out there. But again, what I
would say is, I would implore you, if you are
(17:05):
young and you spent this weekend out chasing girls, or
you spent this weekend out chasing boys, or whatever you
did to spend your weekend. If you were out in bars,
if you were out in restaurants, if you were at
house parties, if you were in a big group of people.
Stay away from your grandparents. You may feel perfect and
take the virus to them. But overall, the media should
(17:30):
not be trying to terrify all of you to death.
And the NBA and the MLS and Major League Baseball
in the NHL, and college football in the NFL, they
need to look at the data and recognize that by
and large their athletes are under greater danger from the
flu and pneumonia every single year. And we don't shut
(17:51):
down anything. And so overall, I'm very frustrated at the
inability to share basic facts and let you eyes make
smart decisions about your lives. And so this is this
is disappointing, uh to me when I see this data
and I see it not being shared in an intelligent fashion. Again,
(18:15):
I would just ask you this, as we roll through
the program here, how many people in media are going
to tell you that our national death rate on Monday morning,
as you start off your day is down from the coronavirus,
or that we had just two hundred and ninety seven
deaths from the coronavirus nationwide today, so people say we'll
(18:36):
put the two seven in perspective clay okay. Every single
day in America, on average, seventy people die of a
variety of different causes. So right now in America on Sunday,
it stinks. I wish nobody died. I know a lot
of people constantly have had issues with people with a
(18:57):
variety of their family being ill throughout this year. But
seventy two hundred people on average died of something other
than the coronavirus on Sunday. Putting that into percentage of terms,
nine percent of all deaths in America on Sunday, based
(19:18):
on these numbers were from something other than the coronavirus.
You would think coronavirus deaths being down by n since
April would be a huge story. You would think that
it would be everywhere the number one story in America. Instead,
this morning, I bet from just about every media source,
(19:40):
the number one story is gonna be talking about Florida.
It's gonna be talking about Arizona. It's gonna be talking
about Texas. That's where the story is gonna be. And
I'm not saying that I that I'm that this is
totally a non story. Certainly, I wish there were no
coronavirus deaths or cases out there at all. But what
we are seeing is opening back up states, letting people
(20:03):
go back to work. It's impossible to stop the virus.
It's going to continue to spread. What we need to
do is make sure that it doesn't spread among the
population that's the most vulnerable. So I wouldn't be nervous
if I'm in charge of the NBA. I wouldn't be
nervous if I'm in charge of the MLS or Major
League Baseball, or college football or the NFL, because the
(20:27):
data doesn't reflect that I should be nervous. But I
would be nervous if I looked at the way the
media is covering this by and large, and the degree
of fear porn that they are trying to embrace. This
is outkicked the coverage with Clay Travis, we bring in
(20:48):
now Jason Whitlock, my partner at out Kick. You can
find him on Twitter at Whitlock Jason and so as
a preliminary before I even get to the question, whoever
this with NASCAR is able to find out who did it?
And you would think with a lot of cameras and
limited access, particularly in the coronavirus era two garages, if
(21:11):
someone is is not on camera, that would be a
huge surprise. I would think this would be something where
the person could be caught and whoever the perpetrator is
would presumably be banned for life from NASCAR, among other things.
There are a lot of details we still don't know.
This is very fluid in terms of the way it's
(21:32):
being covered and all the details coming out, but a
lot of people are obviously discussing it. Jason Whitlock, when
you heard about this, what were your thoughts? What would
you have in terms of analysis at this point? Well,
I just heard about it this morning, and so I
(21:52):
want to be careful here what I say, but I've
been a uh somewhat passionate supporter of Double Wallace and
his efforts to get sponsorship within NASCAR to really be
able to go for it on the NASCAR Cup Series.
And I'll say this, I tend to agree with you.
(22:13):
I think they'll be able to find out exactly who
did this and remove them from any involvement with NASCAR,
because something like this, to me probably had that been
the work of someone within NASCAR. I just can't imagine
the outsider being able to get access UH to his garage.
(22:33):
And so I hope we find out who the perpetrator is,
and I'm sure NASCAR will take tough action, but I
just I'm just hearing about this this morning. I want
to take some more time to think about it before
offering up a really, really super strong opinion. I totally
get that, and there are a lot of people obviously
who immediately have hot takes on a variety of different subjects.
(22:57):
This is a serious one, and to me, the storyline
is if NASCAR can figure out who did this, and
certainly you would think that if it is done, it's
probably done by someone inside of NASCAR. If they figure
out who did this, it's a lifetime band situation. And
I mean, it's just an awful situation for NASCAR, which
(23:17):
is trying to expand its audience right now. Yeah, I
think Bubba Wallace and you know NASCAR's recent decision UH
to ban the Confederate flag. It does tensions are running
high and for someone to try to intimidate Bubba Wallace
(23:38):
at this time, given the racial tensions throughout the country,
and then given the actions NASCAR, this may Bannon be
a Confederate flag. I can't say something like this was
bound to happen, but I'm not shocked. And honestly, those
tensions are a big part of why we decided to
start out Kick because we thought and believe, I think, Jason,
(24:00):
both you and I that sports should be a unifying factor,
not a point of disunity. And so, uh, we had
the first week of OutKick. I thought it went really
really well. But this is one of the things that
we think it's important to address, right is that you
obviously are a black guy, I'm a white guy, and
there are a lot of different people of different backgrounds
(24:21):
listening to us right now, but what we're united in
is a common love of sports. Yeah. I think that
was a big part of the draw for me to
one be a part of a really really honest conversation
because I think the lack of honesty is actually driving
us apart, and you know, people aren't having real conversations
(24:47):
and people are getting very frustrated by it, and I
think it increases the racial divide, and so you know,
I tried to start out this first week and OutKick
trying to produce as much content as I could on
these topics that right now are hot button issues and
providing a lot of tension and negativity in the sports world.
(25:09):
And so, you know, wrote seven days in the first week.
I actually thought, Clay I was going to write even
more often, but the columns I ended up writing were
so much longer and more involved and on such sensitive
topics that I ended up just writing one column a day.
But you know, I'm proud of what we accomplished the
(25:31):
first week. I think we sent out a message to
sports fans that this is going to be a place,
uh for a more honest conversation and analysis of what's
going on in the sports world, even on these very
difficult topics related to race. And you know, I hope
we're going to be a leader in that discussion because
(25:53):
you know, I think we're open to all responsible conversation,
and I think that we're open and we're just gonna
be more honest forthright, uh than the rest of our
media competitors can be. Jason, you have written eight columns now,
and I'd encourage people to go check out the column
(26:14):
that you wrote this morning, which is already up at
OutKick and is pretty outstanding. But one of the ones
over the weekend, I can't even remember if it was
Saturday or Sunday, was about a pretty powerful idea, the
idea that uh, Lebron James should bring his shoe being
made back to the United States. And you built it
(26:36):
up on talking about your mom and your dad both
working in unions and how incredibly impactful Lebron bringing his
shoe back to the United States could be. And again
I would encourage people to go to OutKick dot com
to read about this. This is a discussion that doesn't
occur that often. It's super smart idea. What to you
(27:00):
makes it such a good idea for Lebron and uh
and what he represents well, I just think for Lebron,
for Colin Kaepernick, these guys that say, and again I'm
not gonna question their legitimacy of their passion, but they say,
therefore helping the disenfranchise want to help the black community.
(27:25):
I don't think there's anything they could do more powerful,
particularly Lebron James, who has a billion dollar contract with Nike.
I don't think there's anything he could do more powerful
than put some pressure on Nike to bring some manufacturing
jobs back from Asia where they rely on slave labor,
and put those manufacturing jobs in like a city like
(27:49):
Akron or a city like Oakland, and empower families and
parents and adults to help them be come self sufficient. Because, again,
I came from a family of union workers. My mom
was a factory union worker for Western Electric, A, T
(28:10):
and T. My dad started out at Chrysler Motor Company
working on the assembly line, union worker. Then he squit
started his own business, first of barbershop and then a
neighborhood taverns that catered to factory workers union factory workers.
And that was how my parents achieved the American dream
(28:35):
of lifting up their two sons, me and my brother
and pushing us farther along in life. My dad didn't
graduate high school, Me and my brother both graduated from college.
We both have put together professional careers. We've both taken
the next step forward for our family, and we did
(28:56):
it off the backs of factory workers. And I just
think there needs to be a place for unskilled labor
in America to be able to achieve the American dream.
So many of our manufacturing jobs have been moved overseas
and they need to be moved back because not everyone
(29:18):
wants to go to college. A lot of people are
like Lebron James, they really don't want to go to college.
There needs to be a place and a career, a
job for those people to live out their American dream
to be self sufficient. So I just don't think there's
anything more powerful than Lebron can do or any of
(29:40):
these athletes. Instead of gestures, promote jobs and promote the
companies that you work for, your primary employers, to bring
those jobs back to America so they can help other
people improve their lives and improve the lives of their kids.
That's why I think Lebron these athletes should go get
(30:01):
away from gestures and get into the promotion of jobs.
This is Outkicked the coverage with Clay Travis hanging out
with Jason Whitlock, my partner in crime at OutKick, and
we've been doing this now for a full week. We
(30:22):
announced it last week on the program. He wrote seven columns.
I'd encourage you to go read his columns. Just basically
bookmark OutKick in general if you're sitting around at work,
you're sitting around on your phone, you're standing in line somewhere,
you've got time to kill. Uh, just check out the
stuff that we're putting up on a regular basis. We
got a lot of smart, talented people putting out a
lot of content on a daily basis at OutKick dot com. Um.
(30:44):
And I don't want to speak exactly for you, Jason,
but I know that we have talked a lot about
how we want to use OutKick as an opportunity to
lift up younger voices than us. Right, Uh, you're fifty,
I'm in my forties now. Uh, there is a lot
of younger people out there that maybe want to be
(31:05):
the next generation the people like us who are in
you know, they're twenty one or twenty two now, they're younger,
they're a little bit older, or whatever the case may be,
and they're trying to find their way in this world.
And we want to have a lot of different younger
voices that we start to develop as a part of
out Kick. And uh, I know that's important to me.
I think it's also very important to you. And as
(31:27):
a part of that, we don't want people who just
have the exact same thoughts as us. I mean, granted,
if you're listening out there, you can have a different
opinion than me or Jason Whitlock. You're probably wrong because
we probably have thought through it better than you have.
We probably make a better argument. I say that to
everybody in the country except my wife, who I immediately
acknowledge is always right and I'm always wrong. But even
on Father's Day weekend, and by the way, belated Happy
(31:49):
Father's Day to a lot of dad's out there. Um,
but one of the things that happened over the weekend,
I wake up on Saturday and you were pointing out
going after a writer on the website called Pro Football
Talk Mike Florio, who is who is newly woke, right,
He's everything is super woke to him, and he was
(32:10):
criticizing Donald Trump because Donald Trump had not tweeted I
can't believe this is a real world, had not tweeted
about June tenth. And somebody pointed out to Mike Florio, hey,
wait a minute, You've been on this website on Twitter
for you know, fifteen years or whatever the heck it is,
and you never mentioned Juneteenth until this year either, And
then you took it from there and what happened, Well,
(32:34):
I just pointed out that I saw the guys tweet
and and I just pointed out, look, Mike Florio in
fifteen years of owning NFL Talk and then converted into
Pro Football Talk, selling it to NBC in two thousand
and nine, Mike Florial is now on Sunday Night Football's
pregame show. He's made millions of dollars through talking about
(32:58):
the NFL on different webs right on television and and
now in the digital space. And he's never hired a
black writer ever in fifteen years. And I just get
tired of hearing all of this support of every woke
gesture and him calling out different people for not doing
(33:21):
a gesture that he believes in or not showing support
in whatever little symbolic way that he thinks support should
be shown for black people. And I just think it's phony.
And I think I've asked Mike for at least three
years publicly over social media. I was like, Hey, Mike,
(33:43):
when are you gonna hire someone black? Legitimize these criticisms
of everyone else that you're leveling out there, legitimize your
support of Colin Kaepernick by hiring someone black at Pro
Football Talk. You've made millions of dollars, You have incredible
amount of power and influence. Hire someone black, make me
(34:05):
believe you're serious about this and that this woke stuff
isn't a beard covering up what you really think. And so,
you know, I challenged even that way. This is not
the first time I've done it. I've done it several times,
and you know, he offered up some weak response and
(34:25):
it just made me fire back on him and even more.
And then all of a sudden, you came in a
third man into the ring, off the top rope and
just started clubbing him, and uh, you know, he started
going back and forth with you, and it just infuriates
(34:45):
me because I think Mike's I followed the NFL Talk
and Pro Football Talk and Mike Florio for a long
time and and Mike, and one of his tweets said,
when I called him out about not hiring a black writer,
the guy said something about, well, you may not remember,
but I asked you about writing for Pro Football Talk
(35:08):
years ago, and you said I couldn't afford you. And
I was just blown away by that response because I'm
not the only black sports writer in America. Uh, I
think you know. I'm gonna sound arrogant here, but the
fact that you couldn't land possibly the best sportswriter in
America is proof that I shouldn't pursue anybody else. Is
(35:33):
a joke. I mean again, When I started The Undefeated,
we hired some young people that we had to develop.
When I went to Speak for Yourself and doing that
television show, we hired some young people that had to
be developed and nurtured. You don't have to start at
the top. If you have a real commitment to empowering
(35:56):
people and trying to help them improve their lot and
helping them pull themselves up by the bootstraps, you may
have to reach down and help someone develop and give
him an entry level a job rather than, Oh, you know,
Jason Whitlock, who works for ESPN and the Kansas City
Start has been recognized all over the country, is one
(36:17):
of the best sports triers in America. If I can't
get him, my search for black talent stops there. That's
a joke. He's also not been able to explain it
right you You point out that he wants to be
super woke and he wants to come after other people
for not being woke enough and everything else. And he's
never hired anybody to write for him who's black. He
(36:40):
responded to me, this is a direct quote. You're a
smart guy, or at least you believe you are. Take
a step back. Look at how many people we employ.
Look at how little turnover we've had. One of my
four full time writers is female. Have you ever hired
a female? Does this mean you're a misogynist? See how
easy that is? And I don't know. I mean, he's
(37:01):
not a very smart guy. I think that's one of
the things that he thinks he's smarter than he is.
But he just walked right into a haymaker because he
could have done a little bit of research. I had
a female editor for four years on OutKick. She literally
ran the site. So I responded, Yeah, the editor of
OutKick for four years was a woman, So yes, we've
hired a woman. She ran the site. But back to you,
(37:24):
he was bragging about how many people read his site
and everything else. I said, Hey, with all those page
views and the huge success you've been bragging about, you
still couldn't afford to employ a single black person in
fifteen years. Interesting and then then to be fair. All
the OutKick community was just I mean, he was trending
right on Saturday. If you missed all this, and if
(37:45):
you want to see a recap of it, you can
go read it at OutKick. But he was trending. And
he still hasn't responded to any of this because people
started going back into his archives at Pro Football Talk
and he called, I mean, he insulted Mike Tarrico pretty aggressively.
I don't even think I can say what he said
about Mike to Rico on the radio these days. Uh.
(38:08):
He also said that Michael Strahan was gay. Uh. He's
got all sorts of wildly not woke comments that he's
made about gay people that are just like, way over
the top, and he still hasn't responded to any of that.
But this goes to the thesis that you and I
have in general here and by the way, appreciate all
the people who researched that it's not like I'm going
(38:29):
back through And by the way, I'm not a believer
in cancel culture. But it is often the case that
the people who are the most woke now publicly are
terrified of their past being uncovered and often trying to
hide something right, Like they're trying to be something that
they haven't been before because they're afraid the Twitter mob
(38:52):
is gonna come after them. And look, you can agree
or disagree with me. You can agree or disagree with you.
I've known you for a long time. Now, you've known
me for a long time. We can put my wife
on the radio. She'd say, I say the same thing
off the air that I say on the air. You
might not like me, but I am pretty much the
exact same person sitting on sitting at the bar having
a beer watching a game. You are too within FCC restrictions, right,
(39:15):
we can't curse things like that. Uh, but but this
is what happens, right. A lot of these guys are
hiding something, and I don't even think they believe a
lot of what they're saying. And then they're like, oh,
there's no way somebody else could believe what they're saying. Now, Now,
I've been pretty consistent for fifteen years as a public figure.
I've had the same kind of beliefs. This guy is
just a fraud. He's a fraud, and I just want
(39:37):
to be clear. Mike Mike Florio can run Pro Football Talk, However,
he sees fit to make it successful. He has no
uh burden to hire someone to please me or to
please some racial quota or whatever. My point is, just
(39:59):
don't y'aut here hammering other people and pretending like their
racist and big at it because they won't support kneeling
during the national anthem. Let's quit trashing NFL ownership because
there's only three black NFL head coaches because again, and
(40:21):
maybe they deserve some criticism for it, But if you're
Mike Florio who's owned a business for fifteen years and
hasn't been able to accidentally hire a black person, I
just don't think you're a credible critic of the NFL
ownership because they only have three black employee black head
(40:42):
coaches at the time. I just think the hypocrisy level
is just way too off the charts and it just
drives me crazy. We need to be having a more responsible,
fair conversation about all these issues that I think will
lead us to a better place than to have someone
like Mike Royck Mike Florio using these issues to try
(41:06):
to make himself look good rather than try to improve
and make things better actually for disenfranchised people. And all
that's well said, it also factors in to me, at
just its most basic level of hypocrisy. Right, you want
to publicly say that you're doing one thing while privately
(41:27):
you're doing the opposite. And I think we were talking
in the first hour about the idea of Lebron James,
and to me, the purpose of media that covers sports,
or really media that covers anyone, should be to speak
truth to power, right, And by what I mean by
that is your job as a media member should not
(41:50):
be to be clubby with every single person that you cover.
Doesn't mean he can't be friends with people, you can't
get to know them, things like that. But in sports
there is a lot of protection, it seems to me,
of incredibly powerful people. And I thought what you were
saying about Lebron is really well said. The guy's worth
a half billion dollars. You don't need to protect him
(42:11):
from anyone else, right, We don't try to. I don't
think there's very many people out there who are trying
to protect Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or other people
who are worth Elon Musk for sure, Right, guys who
have the resources to be able to hire and protect
themselves like crazy because they're hundreds of millionaires or their billionaires.
(42:31):
The average sports fan out there isn't going to have
access to Lebron to ask him to live the way
he speaks, and the average person in the media doesn't
have access. And so to me, this is just it
goes to the very essence. Believe whatever you want to believe,
but don't be a hypocrite. I tend to find myself
these days with Locke going after hypocrites more than I
(42:54):
do people who I disagree with. There's no question about it.
That again, particularly the dangerous kind of hypocrisy we're seeing
now in terms of when you start smearing people as racist,
that's like the ultimate level of character assassination. It's hard
(43:17):
to recover from that when you start uh portraying on
on Lebron stage, when you start portraying America as UH
as just unrepentantly racist and unfair, when particularly someone like
(43:38):
Lebron who has traveled the globe and should recognize, like
hey man, America is flawed, but it is light years
ahead of the rest of the globe when it comes
to racial relationships, and particularly if you just Lebron's number
one market outside the US is China. If you compare
(44:00):
America to China in terms of how black people are treated,
it's not even in the same ballpark. That does not
mean you can't criticize America and for some of its
misgivings and mistakes and flaws and the improvements that we
need to make, but damn it, be consistent. Don't sit
(44:21):
there and fall silent on China and Hong Kong and
the abuses that Again, if you just open your eyes
some of that when you're over in China collecting millions
of dollars for selling your shoes, just open your eyes
and see how the average black person who steps foot
in China is treated in China. Have some of that
(44:43):
when you come over here and start denigrating America and
talking about how bad things are over here. I just
need a little perspective and nuance from people that should
know better. The hypocrisy drives me crazy. That is not
a defen to America. Like everything we do here and
have done here is perfect. But let's just be fair
(45:06):
and let's be respectful of a country that has We
have a descendant of a slave who was the U. S. President.
We have Lebron James Michael Jordan's people at the top
of American culture. I take myself. I started out in
(45:28):
the ghetto and just and my father didn't graduate high school.
My mother was a factory worker straight out of high school.
And just where I was, I've been able to ascend
where my brother has been able to ascend. Other countries
just don't afford these kind of opportunities. We got some
(45:50):
things we need to improve, but let's not kid ourselves.
America is the greatest place on earth if you happen
to be black. I'm sorry, I believe that. And and
if people want to be upset with me about it,
bring me the proof that I'm wrong, and I'll bow
to your proof. But no one brought me the proof yet.
(46:12):
Be sure to catch live editions of out Kicked the
Coverage with Clay Travis week days at six am Eastern
three am Pacific. This is Outkicked the Coverage with Clay Travis.
What like are you? I don't know if you pay
as much attention to it as I do. I think
the answer is no. I don't think very many people
(46:33):
in sports media are paying as much attention to it.
But on Monday I just laid out the data. We
are now nine of the deaths that were occurring at
the end of April are gone. Right. We are down
to two d and nine seven deaths from the coronavirus
nationwide on Sunday, which is the lowest number we have
(46:56):
had since all the way back. I think it was
March fourth or five. Um, I don't have the data
sitting in front of me like I just did a
second ago. And yet you have everybody in the NBA,
Major League Baseball, NFL, college football. How do you think
you would be dealing with the coronavirus if you had
been a college kid? And I just talked about the
(47:18):
fact that I talked to people at l s U
and Clemson who said, hey, the guys came back without
the coronavirus. But then there are a lot of girls
on campus and they want to go out to the
bars or restaurants or go out to the club or
wherever they're gonna go. Like a lot of eighteen, nineteen
twenty and twenty one year old guys are gonna do
and chase girls, and a bunch of them are getting
(47:39):
asymptomatic coronavirus cases. So pretend I'm gonna ask you if
you were a coach and also to go back in
time and pretend that you are a college football player.
You've been cooped up in your apartment back in Indianapolis
four months, and you suddenly get to go to Ball
State and they're girls everywhere all around. Again, what would
(48:02):
your mindset be, Go get drunk at the tub and
see if I can get lucky. Right, That's whatever, that's what,
and that's what's happening, right. And so the guys are
not getting it from working out with their teammates or
from getting back in shape. They are, you know, they're
working out however many hours they are a day. But
then their college age guys, and there are parties that
(48:24):
are going on. There are bars that are open, and
so they're going out at Clemson or l s U
or anything else. So when I hear that, I'm like, yeah,
you know, if I were eighteen or nineteen and I've
been cooped at home in my parents house and I
hadn't been able to go out, and suddenly I got
to go back to college and Washington, d C. And
they're girls everywhere, and it's summer and they're not wearing
very much clothes and their bars open. I'm gonna be
(48:48):
out like I I'm sorry. I would look at the
day to realize that I'm not gonna die of the
coronavirus and I want to have some fun. And I
think that's what's going on. But it's obviously getting a
lot of media attention these positive tests and also theoretically
potentially a danger for the NFL. I think you can
dial this back a little bit, although they'll have their
own issues, but those are pro athletes. They understand maybe
(49:09):
a little bit more. But for college age kids, this
is tough to keep from happening, right, I think it's
very tough. And listen, the other thing about college as kids,
it's not just the party. Again. It's been a long
time since I was young, but I remember it well
and you just feel bulletproof. There was so many things
that you did and things that literally I have a
(49:31):
reoccurring nightmare about the most irresponsible thing I ever did
in my life. It was when I was in college.
I got liquored up with my friends and we drove
to another party. And I say we because I was
behind the wheel, but it took a group effort for
me to drive. And I literally have nightmares about, oh my,
(49:52):
it's the dumbest thing. I could have killed myself, teammates, friends,
some innocent bystand or whatever changed my whole ruined other
people's lives. But that's how bulletproof you felt as a
young person. You did really foolish things. And so I
think it's gonna be very hard to get young people
(50:12):
to quarantine themselves or feel like they're in some sort
of jeopardy because of Corona. Part two of that, though,
is I'm not sure I haven't made up my mind.
I'm not as I don't spend as much time looking
at this as you do. But I just think that
perhaps we have exaggerated the threat of corona, and that
(50:35):
perhaps I don't want to compare it to a common cold,
but I do think that someone getting corona, particularly a
young person, isn't what we're making it out to be.
It's not they're not avoiding death by contracting corona or that.
Just data wise, if you are under were years old,
(51:01):
and I said this said to open up the hour,
and I also tweeted this out on Saturday night, you
are more likely to die of pneumonia or the flu.
If you are under twenty four, then you are the
coronavirus the immune system is strong, and so I think
a lot of the guys see this stuff. So step
beyond what you might have done or what I might
(51:22):
have done in college. Now, let's pretend that you are
a college coach. How do you handle this from a
college coach perspective so that your guys take it serious
enough that you are able to actually have a season,
Because that's what they're risking right now, right in theory.
If enough of these guys get sick, people are gonna panic,
(51:43):
and a lot of people are gonna say, oh, we
just gotta shut down the whole thing. Now. I hope
that that's not what ends up happening. But this media,
this panic, this fear porn that is shared out there,
especially with social media. We were just talking about how
emotional it can be. What would you tell your guys
if you were a coach? You sit, I'm gone, I'm
gonna answer different because I can't answer the question of
(52:04):
what I would tell my guys. I know what I
would do if I were in college coach, And I
say this in all seriousness, and and this is not
the answer you're looking for, But if I were a
college coach, I would not want to coach the season.
I would want the season to be canceled because I
think so many coaches are going to lose their jobs
(52:26):
over how they handle Corona. Any kid that gets Corona,
and if God forbid again, because the way Corona deaths
are counted, if you have Corona and then die in
a car accident, they're gonna blame it on Corona. Well,
he would have never lost control of the car if
he didn't have Corona, and so Corona killed him. And
then somewhat some coaches going to get blamed for the
(52:49):
kid having Corona. Or a kid said he was a
little sick, the coach still wanted him to practice. Lord,
oh my god, he had Corona and therefore a lawsuit
or I just think it's so dangerous and what just
happened or what is happening to Chip Kelly with his
team is going to happen across the board. I've heard
(53:10):
from college coaches that are trying to figure out what
the hell do we do? Things are changing, So there's
fear of Corona, and there's fear of being smeared along
racial lines, and I think coaches are scared to death
right now. You can't this whole thing has changed in
(53:32):
the balance of power has changed in such a dramatic
fashion that coaches are scared. And if I were coach
me individually, I haven't told to coach this. I haven't
A coach hasn't told me this. But if I were coach,
I want to restart things in after some of this
craziness has passed. It is interesting, uh So from the
(53:55):
perspective of the power dynamic. If you're Mike Gunde and
you wear an O A N shirt, right, or if
your Chip Kelly, and the media is so quick because
somebody hops on Twitter one of your players says something
and then it's not a surprise, right, you were on
a football team. But also if you're in a fraternity
or whatever else, you tend to have your guys back, right, Like,
(54:16):
even if you don't a percent agree with him, once
he goes public, you're like I always say, like when
you play pick up basketball, there's always a guy you
play pick up basketball with that would start a fight
and you'd be like, I, you're the you're in the
wrong here. But if you're on the team, you have
to step up and defend your teammate, right. I feel
like you see a lot of that on social media,
and it does create immediate stories which aren't necessarily rooted
(54:40):
always in the truth. But if you're a coach, it's
like you just want to create. You don't want to
create any disturbance anyway, but the last thing you want
to do is find a reason why you are the
target now right. And it definitely has changed the power
dynamic and put a lot of people on wobbly ground.
Look at I was talking to a coach as we
can about what happened at the University of Iowa. I
(55:02):
don't know all the details on the strength coach Kirk
Ferrens had for twenty somebody ears it just got fired
because his player said he was mean to him and
and I'm just like, the media is never gonna tell
this story properly because what just happened to that strength
coach of the EU sphere of Iowa can happen on
(55:22):
every college campus in America because the head coach and
the strength coach are tied at the hip. The strength
coach is really the number one assistant for a head coach.
He's the bad guy. The head coach is the good guy.
The strength coach is the guy that's the bully that
says all the things the head coach would love to say.
(55:44):
And then the head coach gets to be the good
guy and the friend of the players. That's the job,
and that guy at Iowa just got fired for doing
his job to be the bad guy, to be the jerk.
Every football team has a strength coach who job is
to be the jerk, say inappropriate things, push the kids
past the limits that they think they can go, to
(56:07):
be the jerk for the head coach. I'm telling you
what just happened. That Iowa guy has shaken college coaches
to their core. They know it can happen to them.
Finish it up with Jason Whitlock here. What should people
look forward to from you this week? At out Kick?
We already said you gotta call him up for Monday,
that people should go check out You wrote seven straight days,
(56:29):
make it eight straight days. What do you hope to
be able to get into in a big way this week? Well,
I think, obviously as more information comes out, Clay, I'm
gonna get into the bubble wallass situation and and the
news incident at Talladega. But you know, at some point
(56:49):
I want to transition into just getting back to taller. Hey,
Dak Prescott is gonna sign sign his franchise tender, and
you know, I just want to write about just straight
sports stuff. But right now, while this racial stuff is
royally in our country and dividing our country, I want
to be a voice of reason out there. I want
(57:09):
to be some water in the desert for people that
want to hear more honest conversation and more fair conversation
about these issues. So I plan on getting into that
and a lot more this week on out Kick. Always good.
Go read him, follow him on Twitter at Whitlock Jason.
I'm excited to have him as a partner at out Kick,
and we're gonna have a lot of good stuff for
(57:30):
you this week. I'll talk to you later, man. 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.
Thanks for listening to the best of out Kick the
Coverage podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weekday
morning from six to nine am Eastern three to six
am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio. Find your local station
for OutKick the Coverage at Fox Sports Radio dot com,
or stream us live every morning on the i Heart
Radio app by searching f s R. This is the
best of OutKick the Coverage with Clay Travis on Fox
(00:22):
Sports Radio. I'm gonna dive into the coronavirus here in
a minute, because I think there's a lot of good positivity,
But first negativity that came last night in the world
of sports and allegation that someone hung a noose in
Bubba Wallace's garage at Talladega. There was a rainout at Talladega,
(00:46):
and it's gonna be much discussed surrounding the race and
certainly NASCAR because Bubba Wallace was involved in the flashpoint
of the Confederate flag being banned in NASCAR. We've got
Jason Whitlaw on the program and I'm going to discuss
that with him in detail, So we will get to that,
we will discuss it, and we will have a contemplation
(01:08):
on that story as it is developing. But first, the
biggest story I would say that has been afflicting the
world of sports in general has been the coronavirus. Whether
it's the NBA, Major League Baseball, college football, the NFL.
There are a ton of different angles to hit coming
out of the weekend, and I want to dive into
that before we talk with Whitlock as our first guest
(01:30):
coming up shortly, so let's talk coronavirus. In the meantime.
I know there's a lot of nattering, nave obs of
negativity as they were once characterized in the nineteen seventies
out there in the media who want to scare you
to death every single day, and I know it infiltrates
in many ways into the world of sports, where over
(01:50):
the weekend you saw a lot of people spreading what
I call fear porn. It is Oh my god, l
s U. Look at what happened. Look at how many
years got tested positive. Look at Clemson, look at the
look at the teams down in Major League Baseball. Oh,
the NBA is scared now about the idea of being
in the state of Florida. All of these stories just
(02:13):
constantly hitting you and assaulting you can at times be overwhelming.
And what I have been trying to do, and by
the way, you guys are responding insanely positively to it,
is share actual facts with you and let you use
them in an intelligent way. And so as we walk
(02:34):
through here, I tweeted this out on Sunday night. I
tweeted on Sunday, just two hundred and ninety seven people
in the entire country died of the coronavirus. That's the
lowest number of deaths nationwide since March. So that's almost
(02:56):
right after when Rudy Gobert walked off the basketball court
in the NBA shut down, and the n C Double
A tournament shut down, in the and and and and
the NHL and every sport basically shut down. From a
team sport perspective, we're almost back to their now. If
you look at the chart of deaths, we are way
(03:17):
down on the back end of that chart again. Just
two hundred and ninety seven deaths today, the lowest number
of deaths since March. We had a peak number of
deaths that were set in late April in this country.
Since that time, deaths from the coronavirus in this country
(03:40):
are now down since that peak was set in late April. Okay,
those are facts which should be the number one story
in all of America. It should be the number one
story for everybody out there who's worried about sports coming back.
It's should be the number one story about the NFL
(04:02):
and college football and the NBA and Major League Baseball
in the NHL and everything else out there. It should
be a huge story that just two d and ninety
seven people died nationwide today. That's the lowest number of
deaths since March. And also the fact that deaths are
(04:23):
now down n since the peak was set in late April. Yet,
I want you to keep track of this. You are
hearing me talk about it on Monday morning to start
your day. I want you to keep track of this.
How many other people in media will share those facts
with you, as opposed to the number of people out
(04:46):
there who will share how many people from Clemson have
tested positive or how many people from l s You
have tested positive, or any of those stories. And again,
I want to dive into those numbers as well, because
I think it's important that context be put into perspective
on the coronavirus here. And I still see so many
(05:07):
people in media choosing to embrace fear over embracing facts.
All right, here are some facts for you for college kids.
Just focusing on college kids right now. College kids are
more likely to die of the flu or pneumonia than
they are to die of the coronavirus. It's gonna stun
(05:29):
a lot of you out there. If you are under
twenty four years old in this country, you are more
likely to die from the flu or pneumonia than you
are from the coronavirus. It's some big, massive stat as
it pertains to the return of college athletics. Again, we
(05:50):
don't ever shut anything down for the flu or pneumonia.
If you are under twenty four years old, you are
more likely to die for the flu or pneumonia than
you are from the coronavirus. Most college kids who are
playing football or basketball or any other sport are more
likely to die driving to campus then they are from
(06:14):
the coronavirus on campus. I talked to a lot of
people this weekend. I said, what's the story behind this
Clemson and l s U uptick in the overall number
of infections, And what I heard was it's college kids
being college kids. They got back on campus there are
girls they know that live in these college towns, and
(06:37):
they went out to the bars, and they went to
the parties, and they were wherever the girls were. It's
a story as old as time. If you went to college, heck,
if you went to high school, heck, if you are
a heterosexual man who is listening to me right now,
you probably remember being eighteen and nineteen and twenty years old,
(07:00):
and what did you spend the vast majority of your
free time doing? Chasing girls? And that's particularly the case
if you have been off campus four months and you
haven't been around any girls at all, and suddenly you're
back on a college campus. Mom and dad, you're not
in their house. You don't have to play by their rules.
(07:20):
You've got your own apartment, you got your own dorm room,
and you are going to go out and have a
good time. That's where these infections are coming from. They're asymptomatic.
A lot of times people want to talk about what's
going on in Florida. The governor of Florida came out
and he said the average age of people now that
(07:41):
are testing positive is super young. They have gone from
the average age being sixty five to the average age
being thirty seven. Florida is gonna get a lot of
attention because it's where the NBA is planning to be.
It's because it's where the MLS is planning to be.
(08:02):
And Ronda Santis, who came on this program recently, the
governor of Florida, he tweeted out some data points here
that I think are pretty interesting. He said, this week,
Florida has seen a large number of new cases from
those eighteen to thirty five. Here's the average age of
people testing positive for the coronavirus in all these different
(08:25):
places in Florida. Broward County thirty two, Duval you, Jacksonville
people twenty nine years old, Hillsboro, which I believe is
Tampa thirty years old, Orange County, which is where Orlando is,
twenty nine year olds, Panellis County twenty nine year olds,
(08:45):
Seminole County twenty seven year olds. All Right, these are
super young people. That's the median age of new cases
UH for June nineteen in the Florida counties that Rhonda
Santis shared with us. Okay, why is that? It's because
(09:06):
young people are going out and living uh, and they've
been cooped up and they want to go to bars,
and they want to go to restaurants, and they want
to chase after other young people. Right stats here for
you about Florida. There are now twice as many of
beds available right now in Florida then before this pandemic began.
(09:29):
There are way fewer COVID nineteen patients. And I see
you and on ventilators in Florida right now than in April.
And this is important. Every time somebody goes to the
hospital now in Florida, they test you to see whether
or not you have the coronavirus, which is another reason.
(09:50):
As you have started back up elective surgeries, the overall
numbers have surged again. This is actual data from this
A to Florida that they put out yesterday. Okay, so
now anybody can be tested at any age and regardless
of their symptoms. And I told you guys this last week.
(10:12):
I went and got tested because I was like, man,
I want to know what it's like to get tested
for the coronavirus, and so I did it. Here in Nashville,
they have drive up coronavirus testing. I went in the car,
pulled right up, got the swab in the nose that
felt super weird because I was like, you know what,
I want to know what this experience is like, because
(10:34):
I think a lot of athletes and coaches are gonna
be going through it on a regular basis, and I
feel like I should be talking about it from a
position of having experienced it. I didn't want to do
it earlier because I didn't want to take away any
of the medical resources from people who needed it. But
in lots of states. I can't speak specifically to your state,
(10:54):
but certainly in the state of Florida, where I've spent
a lot of time and where, by the way, I'm
gonna be next week for July four week, and in
the state of Tennessee, where I live, you can just
go right up. You don't have to have any symptoms
at all. You can get tested. It took me fifteen minutes,
pulled right up, didn't even have to get out of
the car. The efficiency and uh and smoothness of that
test blew my mind. Now I did it. Also, I
(11:17):
didn't want to say this beforehand, is I don't want
to put them you know, you know sometimes uh, you
don't necessarily want to talk about your family. I know
that's ironic. Coming for me. But my wife and one
of my sons got tested in the car too, and
they call you. And they called my wife and my
son on Friday, they said, you're perfectly fine, don't have
the coronavirus at all. They haven't called me yet, but
(11:41):
they just called the phone number and tell you the results.
So I'll let you guys know when I get officially
my results. But there were three of us in the car,
my wife and one of my sons. We were like,
let's go try it out. Let's see what it's like
to be tested. And two of them have already gotten
their results back. They were negative. My results haven't come
back at all yet. But I obviously feel great. I
(12:03):
don't feel like I have any issues at all. But
that's what's happening now with a lot of these young people.
They're asymptomatic and they're getting tested to go back to work,
or they find out that one of their friends got
it and so they decided to go in and get
tested and they find out that they've got it as well.
So why does that matter. Well, you're hearing a lot
about the total number of cases. What you're not hearing
(12:24):
a lot about is how many of these cases are
actually severe. And what typically has happened is half of
the people that have died of the coronavirus have been
in nursing homes. Well, only point six percent of the
American population is in nursing homes. So if we can
keep this thing out of nursing homes, then the chances
(12:44):
of death occurring for young and healthy people is downright menuscule.
As I just said, flu in pneumonia is more likely
to kill you, and we never shut down any sports
for fluent pneumonia. And we're talking about super healthy people, right.
Athletes are young and the healthiest people on the entire planet.
(13:07):
It's not to say that one or two of them
could not have serious issues. But what you're not hearing
about the l s U and the Clemson situation is
you're not hearing anybody talk about those players having to
be hospitalized. And honestly, this is where we've talked about
some of this on the show. This is where I
kind of wonder if there's a diabolical coach out there
(13:28):
who's like man, I would rather my entire team get
exposed to the coronavirus now in the preseason so that
we'll never have a guy missed the game for the
coronavirus once the actual season starts, and arguably these guys
testing positive asymptomatic before training camp even starts is good regardless,
(13:49):
because it starts to give herd immunity to the locker room.
Because you want to be able. The more people who
have been exposed to it, the less rapidly it spreads
the locker room because a lot of guys have had
it already. Now. To be fair, immediately, anytime you share
data like this, people say what about older coaches or
(14:10):
what about older people who might be on campus. This
is where you have to be smart. This is why
I think the data matters. You have to give the
real data to people out there, and you have to say, hey,
based on your age and based on your health conditions,
would it be smarter for you not to coach this year?
Would it be smarter for you not to be a
(14:32):
professor this year on campus? Would it be smarter for
you to do this remotely? Would it be smarter for
you to continue to quarantine yourself by and large and
keep yourself from interacting with younger people. If you are
a younger person and you are listening to me right now,
and you say, Clay, I have been cooped up for
so many months. I just want to get out and
(14:53):
have a life. I understand that. What I would encourage
you to do is if that is your choice, stay
away from your grandparents, Stay away from your older aunt
or uncle, Stay away from your mom and dad if
they are older, talk to him on the phone. Social
distance from older people in the event that you are asymptomatic,
(15:15):
don't know you're sick, and then you don't want to
take it and give it to somebody else. So if
you are of the opinion, you know what, Clay, and
I know some of you who are listening to me
feel like this. You're like, I'm ready to go back
to campus. Man, Clay, I'm twenty years old. I am
over this coronavirus thing. I want to be back out
hanging out with my friends. I've been sitting in my
(15:37):
house with my parents forever. You don't know how tough
it is. I feel like I'm totally socially isolated. I've
got a girl I've been talking to. She wants to
meet up. I think we can hook up. That's what's
going on. That's why young people are off the charts
testing positive right now. Now. If you believe in her
(16:00):
an immunity, as I do, that's not all a bad thing,
because what it means is we don't we can't stop
a virus from spreading. Right. If you remember when they
told us to go into our houses back in March,
it wasn't with the idea that we were gonna be
there forever. It was with the idea that we were
going to flatten the curve. What we have, we haven't
(16:22):
seen any hospital in America overloaded and having to turn
patients away. Hasn't happened most of america hospitals. We actually
nearly bankrupted them because we stopped elective surgery and there
weren't enough patients to keep doctors and nurses employed. But
that's a whole another story. But flattening the curve worked,
(16:44):
so you can't stop the virus from spreading forever. Arguably,
what we would like to do is have the virus
spread among young, healthy people who are not gonna need
to be hospitalized until we can start to get some
sort of hurt immunity out there. But again, what I
would say is, I would implore you, if you are
(17:05):
young and you spent this weekend out chasing girls, or
you spent this weekend out chasing boys, or whatever you
did to spend your weekend. If you were out in bars,
if you were out in restaurants, if you were at
house parties, if you were in a big group of people.
Stay away from your grandparents. You may feel perfect and
take the virus to them. But overall, the media should
(17:30):
not be trying to terrify all of you to death.
And the NBA and the MLS and Major League Baseball
in the NHL, and college football in the NFL, they
need to look at the data and recognize that by
and large their athletes are under greater danger from the
flu and pneumonia every single year. And we don't shut
(17:51):
down anything. And so overall, I'm very frustrated at the
inability to share basic facts and let you eyes make
smart decisions about your lives. And so this is this
is disappointing, uh to me when I see this data
and I see it not being shared in an intelligent fashion. Again,
(18:15):
I would just ask you this, as we roll through
the program here, how many people in media are going
to tell you that our national death rate on Monday morning,
as you start off your day is down from the coronavirus,
or that we had just two hundred and ninety seven
deaths from the coronavirus nationwide today, so people say we'll
(18:36):
put the two seven in perspective clay okay. Every single
day in America, on average, seventy people die of a
variety of different causes. So right now in America on Sunday,
it stinks. I wish nobody died. I know a lot
of people constantly have had issues with people with a
(18:57):
variety of their family being ill throughout this year. But
seventy two hundred people on average died of something other
than the coronavirus on Sunday. Putting that into percentage of terms,
nine percent of all deaths in America on Sunday, based
(19:18):
on these numbers were from something other than the coronavirus.
You would think coronavirus deaths being down by n since
April would be a huge story. You would think that
it would be everywhere the number one story in America. Instead,
this morning, I bet from just about every media source,
(19:40):
the number one story is gonna be talking about Florida.
It's gonna be talking about Arizona. It's gonna be talking
about Texas. That's where the story is gonna be. And
I'm not saying that I that I'm that this is
totally a non story. Certainly, I wish there were no
coronavirus deaths or cases out there at all. But what
we are seeing is opening back up states, letting people
(20:03):
go back to work. It's impossible to stop the virus.
It's going to continue to spread. What we need to
do is make sure that it doesn't spread among the
population that's the most vulnerable. So I wouldn't be nervous
if I'm in charge of the NBA. I wouldn't be
nervous if I'm in charge of the MLS or Major
League Baseball, or college football or the NFL, because the
(20:27):
data doesn't reflect that I should be nervous. But I
would be nervous if I looked at the way the
media is covering this by and large, and the degree
of fear porn that they are trying to embrace. This
is outkicked the coverage with Clay Travis, we bring in
(20:48):
now Jason Whitlock, my partner at out Kick. You can
find him on Twitter at Whitlock Jason and so as
a preliminary before I even get to the question, whoever
this with NASCAR is able to find out who did it?
And you would think with a lot of cameras and
limited access, particularly in the coronavirus era two garages, if
(21:11):
someone is is not on camera, that would be a
huge surprise. I would think this would be something where
the person could be caught and whoever the perpetrator is
would presumably be banned for life from NASCAR, among other things.
There are a lot of details we still don't know.
This is very fluid in terms of the way it's
(21:32):
being covered and all the details coming out, but a
lot of people are obviously discussing it. Jason Whitlock, when
you heard about this, what were your thoughts? What would
you have in terms of analysis at this point? Well,
I just heard about it this morning, and so I
(21:52):
want to be careful here what I say, but I've
been a uh somewhat passionate supporter of Double Wallace and
his efforts to get sponsorship within NASCAR to really be
able to go for it on the NASCAR Cup Series.
And I'll say this, I tend to agree with you.
(22:13):
I think they'll be able to find out exactly who
did this and remove them from any involvement with NASCAR,
because something like this, to me probably had that been
the work of someone within NASCAR. I just can't imagine
the outsider being able to get access UH to his garage.
(22:33):
And so I hope we find out who the perpetrator is,
and I'm sure NASCAR will take tough action, but I
just I'm just hearing about this this morning. I want
to take some more time to think about it before
offering up a really, really super strong opinion. I totally
get that, and there are a lot of people obviously
who immediately have hot takes on a variety of different subjects.
(22:57):
This is a serious one, and to me, the storyline
is if NASCAR can figure out who did this, and
certainly you would think that if it is done, it's
probably done by someone inside of NASCAR. If they figure
out who did this, it's a lifetime band situation. And
I mean, it's just an awful situation for NASCAR, which
(23:17):
is trying to expand its audience right now. Yeah, I
think Bubba Wallace and you know NASCAR's recent decision UH
to ban the Confederate flag. It does tensions are running
high and for someone to try to intimidate Bubba Wallace
(23:38):
at this time, given the racial tensions throughout the country,
and then given the actions NASCAR, this may Bannon be
a Confederate flag. I can't say something like this was
bound to happen, but I'm not shocked. And honestly, those
tensions are a big part of why we decided to
start out Kick because we thought and believe, I think, Jason,
(24:00):
both you and I that sports should be a unifying factor,
not a point of disunity. And so, uh, we had
the first week of OutKick. I thought it went really
really well. But this is one of the things that
we think it's important to address, right is that you
obviously are a black guy, I'm a white guy, and
there are a lot of different people of different backgrounds
(24:21):
listening to us right now, but what we're united in
is a common love of sports. Yeah. I think that
was a big part of the draw for me to
one be a part of a really really honest conversation
because I think the lack of honesty is actually driving
us apart, and you know, people aren't having real conversations
(24:47):
and people are getting very frustrated by it, and I
think it increases the racial divide, and so you know,
I tried to start out this first week and OutKick
trying to produce as much content as I could on
these topics that right now are hot button issues and
providing a lot of tension and negativity in the sports world.
(25:09):
And so, you know, wrote seven days in the first week.
I actually thought, Clay I was going to write even
more often, but the columns I ended up writing were
so much longer and more involved and on such sensitive
topics that I ended up just writing one column a day.
But you know, I'm proud of what we accomplished the
(25:31):
first week. I think we sent out a message to
sports fans that this is going to be a place,
uh for a more honest conversation and analysis of what's
going on in the sports world, even on these very
difficult topics related to race. And you know, I hope
we're going to be a leader in that discussion because
(25:53):
you know, I think we're open to all responsible conversation,
and I think that we're open and we're just gonna
be more honest forthright, uh than the rest of our
media competitors can be. Jason, you have written eight columns now,
and I'd encourage people to go check out the column
(26:14):
that you wrote this morning, which is already up at
OutKick and is pretty outstanding. But one of the ones
over the weekend, I can't even remember if it was
Saturday or Sunday, was about a pretty powerful idea, the
idea that uh, Lebron James should bring his shoe being
made back to the United States. And you built it
(26:36):
up on talking about your mom and your dad both
working in unions and how incredibly impactful Lebron bringing his
shoe back to the United States could be. And again
I would encourage people to go to OutKick dot com
to read about this. This is a discussion that doesn't
occur that often. It's super smart idea. What to you
(27:00):
makes it such a good idea for Lebron and uh
and what he represents well, I just think for Lebron,
for Colin Kaepernick, these guys that say, and again I'm
not gonna question their legitimacy of their passion, but they say,
therefore helping the disenfranchise want to help the black community.
(27:25):
I don't think there's anything they could do more powerful,
particularly Lebron James, who has a billion dollar contract with Nike.
I don't think there's anything he could do more powerful
than put some pressure on Nike to bring some manufacturing
jobs back from Asia where they rely on slave labor,
and put those manufacturing jobs in like a city like
(27:49):
Akron or a city like Oakland, and empower families and
parents and adults to help them be come self sufficient. Because, again,
I came from a family of union workers. My mom
was a factory union worker for Western Electric, A, T
(28:10):
and T. My dad started out at Chrysler Motor Company
working on the assembly line, union worker. Then he squit
started his own business, first of barbershop and then a
neighborhood taverns that catered to factory workers union factory workers.
And that was how my parents achieved the American dream
(28:35):
of lifting up their two sons, me and my brother
and pushing us farther along in life. My dad didn't
graduate high school, Me and my brother both graduated from college.
We both have put together professional careers. We've both taken
the next step forward for our family, and we did
(28:56):
it off the backs of factory workers. And I just
think there needs to be a place for unskilled labor
in America to be able to achieve the American dream.
So many of our manufacturing jobs have been moved overseas
and they need to be moved back because not everyone
(29:18):
wants to go to college. A lot of people are
like Lebron James, they really don't want to go to college.
There needs to be a place and a career, a
job for those people to live out their American dream
to be self sufficient. So I just don't think there's
anything more powerful than Lebron can do or any of
(29:40):
these athletes. Instead of gestures, promote jobs and promote the
companies that you work for, your primary employers, to bring
those jobs back to America so they can help other
people improve their lives and improve the lives of their kids.
That's why I think Lebron these athletes should go get
(30:01):
away from gestures and get into the promotion of jobs.
This is Outkicked the coverage with Clay Travis hanging out
with Jason Whitlock, my partner in crime at OutKick, and
we've been doing this now for a full week. We
(30:22):
announced it last week on the program. He wrote seven columns.
I'd encourage you to go read his columns. Just basically
bookmark OutKick in general if you're sitting around at work,
you're sitting around on your phone, you're standing in line somewhere,
you've got time to kill. Uh, just check out the
stuff that we're putting up on a regular basis. We
got a lot of smart, talented people putting out a
lot of content on a daily basis at OutKick dot com. Um.
(30:44):
And I don't want to speak exactly for you, Jason,
but I know that we have talked a lot about
how we want to use OutKick as an opportunity to
lift up younger voices than us. Right, Uh, you're fifty,
I'm in my forties now. Uh, there is a lot
of younger people out there that maybe want to be
(31:05):
the next generation the people like us who are in
you know, they're twenty one or twenty two now, they're younger,
they're a little bit older, or whatever the case may be,
and they're trying to find their way in this world.
And we want to have a lot of different younger
voices that we start to develop as a part of
out Kick. And uh, I know that's important to me.
I think it's also very important to you. And as
(31:27):
a part of that, we don't want people who just
have the exact same thoughts as us. I mean, granted,
if you're listening out there, you can have a different
opinion than me or Jason Whitlock. You're probably wrong because
we probably have thought through it better than you have.
We probably make a better argument. I say that to
everybody in the country except my wife, who I immediately
acknowledge is always right and I'm always wrong. But even
on Father's Day weekend, and by the way, belated Happy
(31:49):
Father's Day to a lot of dad's out there. Um,
but one of the things that happened over the weekend,
I wake up on Saturday and you were pointing out
going after a writer on the website called Pro Football
Talk Mike Florio, who is who is newly woke, right,
He's everything is super woke to him, and he was
(32:10):
criticizing Donald Trump because Donald Trump had not tweeted I
can't believe this is a real world, had not tweeted
about June tenth. And somebody pointed out to Mike Florio, hey,
wait a minute, You've been on this website on Twitter
for you know, fifteen years or whatever the heck it is,
and you never mentioned Juneteenth until this year either, And
then you took it from there and what happened, Well,
(32:34):
I just pointed out that I saw the guys tweet
and and I just pointed out, look, Mike Florio in
fifteen years of owning NFL Talk and then converted into
Pro Football Talk, selling it to NBC in two thousand
and nine, Mike Florial is now on Sunday Night Football's
pregame show. He's made millions of dollars through talking about
(32:58):
the NFL on different webs right on television and and
now in the digital space. And he's never hired a
black writer ever in fifteen years. And I just get
tired of hearing all of this support of every woke
gesture and him calling out different people for not doing
(33:21):
a gesture that he believes in or not showing support
in whatever little symbolic way that he thinks support should
be shown for black people. And I just think it's phony.
And I think I've asked Mike for at least three
years publicly over social media. I was like, Hey, Mike,
(33:43):
when are you gonna hire someone black? Legitimize these criticisms
of everyone else that you're leveling out there, legitimize your
support of Colin Kaepernick by hiring someone black at Pro
Football Talk. You've made millions of dollars, You have incredible
amount of power and influence. Hire someone black, make me
(34:05):
believe you're serious about this and that this woke stuff
isn't a beard covering up what you really think. And so,
you know, I challenged even that way. This is not
the first time I've done it. I've done it several times,
and you know, he offered up some weak response and
(34:25):
it just made me fire back on him and even more.
And then all of a sudden, you came in a
third man into the ring, off the top rope and
just started clubbing him, and uh, you know, he started
going back and forth with you, and it just infuriates
(34:45):
me because I think Mike's I followed the NFL Talk
and Pro Football Talk and Mike Florio for a long
time and and Mike, and one of his tweets said,
when I called him out about not hiring a black writer,
the guy said something about, well, you may not remember,
but I asked you about writing for Pro Football Talk
(35:08):
years ago, and you said I couldn't afford you. And
I was just blown away by that response because I'm
not the only black sports writer in America. Uh, I
think you know. I'm gonna sound arrogant here, but the
fact that you couldn't land possibly the best sportswriter in
America is proof that I shouldn't pursue anybody else. Is
(35:33):
a joke. I mean again, When I started The Undefeated,
we hired some young people that we had to develop.
When I went to Speak for Yourself and doing that
television show, we hired some young people that had to
be developed and nurtured. You don't have to start at
the top. If you have a real commitment to empowering
(35:56):
people and trying to help them improve their lot and
helping them pull themselves up by the bootstraps, you may
have to reach down and help someone develop and give
him an entry level a job rather than, Oh, you know,
Jason Whitlock, who works for ESPN and the Kansas City
Start has been recognized all over the country, is one
(36:17):
of the best sports triers in America. If I can't
get him, my search for black talent stops there. That's
a joke. He's also not been able to explain it
right you You point out that he wants to be
super woke and he wants to come after other people
for not being woke enough and everything else. And he's
never hired anybody to write for him who's black. He
(36:40):
responded to me, this is a direct quote. You're a
smart guy, or at least you believe you are. Take
a step back. Look at how many people we employ.
Look at how little turnover we've had. One of my
four full time writers is female. Have you ever hired
a female? Does this mean you're a misogynist? See how
easy that is? And I don't know. I mean, he's
(37:01):
not a very smart guy. I think that's one of
the things that he thinks he's smarter than he is.
But he just walked right into a haymaker because he
could have done a little bit of research. I had
a female editor for four years on OutKick. She literally
ran the site. So I responded, Yeah, the editor of
OutKick for four years was a woman, So yes, we've
hired a woman. She ran the site. But back to you,
(37:24):
he was bragging about how many people read his site
and everything else. I said, Hey, with all those page
views and the huge success you've been bragging about, you
still couldn't afford to employ a single black person in
fifteen years. Interesting and then then to be fair. All
the OutKick community was just I mean, he was trending
right on Saturday. If you missed all this, and if
(37:45):
you want to see a recap of it, you can
go read it at OutKick. But he was trending. And
he still hasn't responded to any of this because people
started going back into his archives at Pro Football Talk
and he called, I mean, he insulted Mike Tarrico pretty aggressively.
I don't even think I can say what he said
about Mike to Rico on the radio these days. Uh.
(38:08):
He also said that Michael Strahan was gay. Uh. He's
got all sorts of wildly not woke comments that he's
made about gay people that are just like, way over
the top, and he still hasn't responded to any of that.
But this goes to the thesis that you and I
have in general here and by the way, appreciate all
the people who researched that it's not like I'm going
(38:29):
back through And by the way, I'm not a believer
in cancel culture. But it is often the case that
the people who are the most woke now publicly are
terrified of their past being uncovered and often trying to
hide something right, Like they're trying to be something that
they haven't been before because they're afraid the Twitter mob
(38:52):
is gonna come after them. And look, you can agree
or disagree with me. You can agree or disagree with you.
I've known you for a long time. Now, you've known
me for a long time. We can put my wife
on the radio. She'd say, I say the same thing
off the air that I say on the air. You
might not like me, but I am pretty much the
exact same person sitting on sitting at the bar having
a beer watching a game. You are too within FCC restrictions, right,
(39:15):
we can't curse things like that. Uh, but but this
is what happens, right. A lot of these guys are
hiding something, and I don't even think they believe a
lot of what they're saying. And then they're like, oh,
there's no way somebody else could believe what they're saying. Now, Now,
I've been pretty consistent for fifteen years as a public figure.
I've had the same kind of beliefs. This guy is
just a fraud. He's a fraud, and I just want
(39:37):
to be clear. Mike Mike Florio can run Pro Football Talk, However,
he sees fit to make it successful. He has no
uh burden to hire someone to please me or to
please some racial quota or whatever. My point is, just
(39:59):
don't y'aut here hammering other people and pretending like their
racist and big at it because they won't support kneeling
during the national anthem. Let's quit trashing NFL ownership because
there's only three black NFL head coaches because again, and
(40:21):
maybe they deserve some criticism for it, But if you're
Mike Florio who's owned a business for fifteen years and
hasn't been able to accidentally hire a black person, I
just don't think you're a credible critic of the NFL
ownership because they only have three black employee black head
(40:42):
coaches at the time. I just think the hypocrisy level
is just way too off the charts and it just
drives me crazy. We need to be having a more responsible,
fair conversation about all these issues that I think will
lead us to a better place than to have someone
like Mike Royck Mike Florio using these issues to try
(41:06):
to make himself look good rather than try to improve
and make things better actually for disenfranchised people. And all
that's well said, it also factors in to me, at
just its most basic level of hypocrisy. Right, you want
to publicly say that you're doing one thing while privately
(41:27):
you're doing the opposite. And I think we were talking
in the first hour about the idea of Lebron James,
and to me, the purpose of media that covers sports,
or really media that covers anyone, should be to speak
truth to power, right, And by what I mean by
that is your job as a media member should not
(41:50):
be to be clubby with every single person that you cover.
Doesn't mean he can't be friends with people, you can't
get to know them, things like that. But in sports
there is a lot of protection, it seems to me,
of incredibly powerful people. And I thought what you were
saying about Lebron is really well said. The guy's worth
a half billion dollars. You don't need to protect him
(42:11):
from anyone else, right, We don't try to. I don't
think there's very many people out there who are trying
to protect Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or other people
who are worth Elon Musk for sure, Right, guys who
have the resources to be able to hire and protect
themselves like crazy because they're hundreds of millionaires or their billionaires.
(42:31):
The average sports fan out there isn't going to have
access to Lebron to ask him to live the way
he speaks, and the average person in the media doesn't
have access. And so to me, this is just it
goes to the very essence. Believe whatever you want to believe,
but don't be a hypocrite. I tend to find myself
these days with Locke going after hypocrites more than I
(42:54):
do people who I disagree with. There's no question about it.
That again, particularly the dangerous kind of hypocrisy we're seeing
now in terms of when you start smearing people as racist,
that's like the ultimate level of character assassination. It's hard
(43:17):
to recover from that when you start uh portraying on
on Lebron stage, when you start portraying America as UH
as just unrepentantly racist and unfair, when particularly someone like
(43:38):
Lebron who has traveled the globe and should recognize, like
hey man, America is flawed, but it is light years
ahead of the rest of the globe when it comes
to racial relationships, and particularly if you just Lebron's number
one market outside the US is China. If you compare
(44:00):
America to China in terms of how black people are treated,
it's not even in the same ballpark. That does not
mean you can't criticize America and for some of its
misgivings and mistakes and flaws and the improvements that we
need to make, but damn it, be consistent. Don't sit
(44:21):
there and fall silent on China and Hong Kong and
the abuses that Again, if you just open your eyes
some of that when you're over in China collecting millions
of dollars for selling your shoes, just open your eyes
and see how the average black person who steps foot
in China is treated in China. Have some of that
(44:43):
when you come over here and start denigrating America and
talking about how bad things are over here. I just
need a little perspective and nuance from people that should
know better. The hypocrisy drives me crazy. That is not
a defen to America. Like everything we do here and
have done here is perfect. But let's just be fair
(45:06):
and let's be respectful of a country that has We
have a descendant of a slave who was the U. S. President.
We have Lebron James Michael Jordan's people at the top
of American culture. I take myself. I started out in
(45:28):
the ghetto and just and my father didn't graduate high school.
My mother was a factory worker straight out of high school.
And just where I was, I've been able to ascend
where my brother has been able to ascend. Other countries
just don't afford these kind of opportunities. We got some
(45:50):
things we need to improve, but let's not kid ourselves.
America is the greatest place on earth if you happen
to be black. I'm sorry, I believe that. And and
if people want to be upset with me about it,
bring me the proof that I'm wrong, and I'll bow
to your proof. But no one brought me the proof yet.
(46:12):
Be sure to catch live editions of out Kicked the
Coverage with Clay Travis week days at six am Eastern
three am Pacific. This is Outkicked the Coverage with Clay Travis.
What like are you? I don't know if you pay
as much attention to it as I do. I think
the answer is no. I don't think very many people
(46:33):
in sports media are paying as much attention to it.
But on Monday I just laid out the data. We
are now nine of the deaths that were occurring at
the end of April are gone. Right. We are down
to two d and nine seven deaths from the coronavirus
nationwide on Sunday, which is the lowest number we have
(46:56):
had since all the way back. I think it was
March fourth or five. Um, I don't have the data
sitting in front of me like I just did a
second ago. And yet you have everybody in the NBA,
Major League Baseball, NFL, college football. How do you think
you would be dealing with the coronavirus if you had
been a college kid? And I just talked about the
(47:18):
fact that I talked to people at l s U
and Clemson who said, hey, the guys came back without
the coronavirus. But then there are a lot of girls
on campus and they want to go out to the
bars or restaurants or go out to the club or
wherever they're gonna go. Like a lot of eighteen, nineteen
twenty and twenty one year old guys are gonna do
and chase girls, and a bunch of them are getting
(47:39):
asymptomatic coronavirus cases. So pretend I'm gonna ask you if
you were a coach and also to go back in
time and pretend that you are a college football player.
You've been cooped up in your apartment back in Indianapolis
four months, and you suddenly get to go to Ball
State and they're girls everywhere all around. Again, what would
(48:02):
your mindset be, Go get drunk at the tub and
see if I can get lucky. Right, That's whatever, that's what,
and that's what's happening, right. And so the guys are
not getting it from working out with their teammates or
from getting back in shape. They are, you know, they're
working out however many hours they are a day. But
then their college age guys, and there are parties that
(48:24):
are going on. There are bars that are open, and
so they're going out at Clemson or l s U
or anything else. So when I hear that, I'm like, yeah,
you know, if I were eighteen or nineteen and I've
been cooped at home in my parents house and I
hadn't been able to go out, and suddenly I got
to go back to college and Washington, d C. And
they're girls everywhere, and it's summer and they're not wearing
very much clothes and their bars open. I'm gonna be
(48:48):
out like I I'm sorry. I would look at the
day to realize that I'm not gonna die of the
coronavirus and I want to have some fun. And I
think that's what's going on. But it's obviously getting a
lot of media attention these positive tests and also theoretically
potentially a danger for the NFL. I think you can
dial this back a little bit, although they'll have their
own issues, but those are pro athletes. They understand maybe
(49:09):
a little bit more. But for college age kids, this
is tough to keep from happening, right, I think it's
very tough. And listen, the other thing about college as kids,
it's not just the party. Again. It's been a long
time since I was young, but I remember it well
and you just feel bulletproof. There was so many things
that you did and things that literally I have a
(49:31):
reoccurring nightmare about the most irresponsible thing I ever did
in my life. It was when I was in college.
I got liquored up with my friends and we drove
to another party. And I say we because I was
behind the wheel, but it took a group effort for
me to drive. And I literally have nightmares about, oh my,
(49:52):
it's the dumbest thing. I could have killed myself, teammates, friends,
some innocent bystand or whatever changed my whole ruined other
people's lives. But that's how bulletproof you felt as a
young person. You did really foolish things. And so I
think it's gonna be very hard to get young people
(50:12):
to quarantine themselves or feel like they're in some sort
of jeopardy because of Corona. Part two of that, though,
is I'm not sure I haven't made up my mind.
I'm not as I don't spend as much time looking
at this as you do. But I just think that
perhaps we have exaggerated the threat of corona, and that
(50:35):
perhaps I don't want to compare it to a common cold,
but I do think that someone getting corona, particularly a
young person, isn't what we're making it out to be.
It's not they're not avoiding death by contracting corona or that.
Just data wise, if you are under were years old,
(51:01):
and I said this said to open up the hour,
and I also tweeted this out on Saturday night, you
are more likely to die of pneumonia or the flu.
If you are under twenty four, then you are the
coronavirus the immune system is strong, and so I think
a lot of the guys see this stuff. So step
beyond what you might have done or what I might
(51:22):
have done in college. Now, let's pretend that you are
a college coach. How do you handle this from a
college coach perspective so that your guys take it serious
enough that you are able to actually have a season,
Because that's what they're risking right now, right in theory.
If enough of these guys get sick, people are gonna panic,
(51:43):
and a lot of people are gonna say, oh, we
just gotta shut down the whole thing. Now. I hope
that that's not what ends up happening. But this media,
this panic, this fear porn that is shared out there,
especially with social media. We were just talking about how
emotional it can be. What would you tell your guys
if you were a coach? You sit, I'm gone, I'm
gonna answer different because I can't answer the question of
(52:04):
what I would tell my guys. I know what I
would do if I were in college coach, And I
say this in all seriousness, and and this is not
the answer you're looking for, But if I were a
college coach, I would not want to coach the season.
I would want the season to be canceled because I
think so many coaches are going to lose their jobs
(52:26):
over how they handle Corona. Any kid that gets Corona,
and if God forbid again, because the way Corona deaths
are counted, if you have Corona and then die in
a car accident, they're gonna blame it on Corona. Well,
he would have never lost control of the car if
he didn't have Corona, and so Corona killed him. And
then somewhat some coaches going to get blamed for the
(52:49):
kid having Corona. Or a kid said he was a
little sick, the coach still wanted him to practice. Lord,
oh my god, he had Corona and therefore a lawsuit
or I just think it's so dangerous and what just
happened or what is happening to Chip Kelly with his
team is going to happen across the board. I've heard
(53:10):
from college coaches that are trying to figure out what
the hell do we do? Things are changing, So there's
fear of Corona, and there's fear of being smeared along
racial lines, and I think coaches are scared to death
right now. You can't this whole thing has changed in
(53:32):
the balance of power has changed in such a dramatic
fashion that coaches are scared. And if I were coach
me individually, I haven't told to coach this. I haven't
A coach hasn't told me this. But if I were coach,
I want to restart things in after some of this
craziness has passed. It is interesting, uh So from the
(53:55):
perspective of the power dynamic. If you're Mike Gunde and
you wear an O A N shirt, right, or if
your Chip Kelly, and the media is so quick because
somebody hops on Twitter one of your players says something
and then it's not a surprise, right, you were on
a football team. But also if you're in a fraternity
or whatever else, you tend to have your guys back, right, Like,
(54:16):
even if you don't a percent agree with him, once
he goes public, you're like I always say, like when
you play pick up basketball, there's always a guy you
play pick up basketball with that would start a fight
and you'd be like, I, you're the you're in the
wrong here. But if you're on the team, you have
to step up and defend your teammate, right. I feel
like you see a lot of that on social media,
and it does create immediate stories which aren't necessarily rooted
(54:40):
always in the truth. But if you're a coach, it's
like you just want to create. You don't want to
create any disturbance anyway, but the last thing you want
to do is find a reason why you are the
target now right. And it definitely has changed the power
dynamic and put a lot of people on wobbly ground.
Look at I was talking to a coach as we
can about what happened at the University of Iowa. I
(55:02):
don't know all the details on the strength coach Kirk
Ferrens had for twenty somebody ears it just got fired
because his player said he was mean to him and
and I'm just like, the media is never gonna tell
this story properly because what just happened to that strength
coach of the EU sphere of Iowa can happen on
(55:22):
every college campus in America because the head coach and
the strength coach are tied at the hip. The strength
coach is really the number one assistant for a head coach.
He's the bad guy. The head coach is the good guy.
The strength coach is the guy that's the bully that
says all the things the head coach would love to say.
(55:44):
And then the head coach gets to be the good
guy and the friend of the players. That's the job,
and that guy at Iowa just got fired for doing
his job to be the bad guy, to be the jerk.
Every football team has a strength coach who job is
to be the jerk, say inappropriate things, push the kids
past the limits that they think they can go, to
(56:07):
be the jerk for the head coach. I'm telling you
what just happened. That Iowa guy has shaken college coaches
to their core. They know it can happen to them.
Finish it up with Jason Whitlock here. What should people
look forward to from you this week? At out Kick?
We already said you gotta call him up for Monday,
that people should go check out You wrote seven straight days,
(56:29):
make it eight straight days. What do you hope to
be able to get into in a big way this week? Well,
I think, obviously as more information comes out, Clay, I'm
gonna get into the bubble wallass situation and and the
news incident at Talladega. But you know, at some point
(56:49):
I want to transition into just getting back to taller. Hey,
Dak Prescott is gonna sign sign his franchise tender, and
you know, I just want to write about just straight
sports stuff. But right now, while this racial stuff is
royally in our country and dividing our country, I want
to be a voice of reason out there. I want
(57:09):
to be some water in the desert for people that
want to hear more honest conversation and more fair conversation
about these issues. So I plan on getting into that
and a lot more this week on out Kick. Always good.
Go read him, follow him on Twitter at Whitlock Jason.
I'm excited to have him as a partner at out Kick,
and we're gonna have a lot of good stuff for
(57:30):
you this week. I'll talk to you later, man. Fox
Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in the nation.
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