Outkickin’ Media Coverage

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome in podcast listeners. I appreciate all of you for
making an out Kick so insanely popular in June. I
want to say, right off the top, you go give
us five star review. We are going to be reading
tomorrow five star reviews Danny g Is, and we're gonna
be sending books to the ones who have written the
smartest and the wittiest reviews. Go give us five stars. Today,

(00:23):
I am fired up talking about Bubba Wallace, the failures
of NASCAR, Bubba Wallace and his team himself, as well
as the sports media that obviously is our jumping off point.
We will talk about the return of baseball with our
Major League Baseball insider John Morosy, and the return of
the NFL. Jeff Schwartz swings by to hang out and
discuss that. All of that still to come. But get

(00:44):
your popcorn hot fire for me and it begins now.
I'll Kick the Coverage with Clay Travis live every weekday
morning from six to nine a m. E stone three
to six am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio. Find your
local station for OutKick the Coverage it Fox sports radio
dot Com, or stream us live every morning on the
I Heart Radio app. By searching fs Are you're listening

(01:10):
to Fox Sports Radio. I hope you do, because we
are water in the middle of a desert. We are
an oasis for many people across the country who believe
the country has gone insane. I know many of you
feel like you're dying of thirst, You're parched, You're walking

(01:32):
around saying, my god, what has happened to basic common sense?
What has happened to all segments of normalcy? Another story
where sports is absolutely proven to be ludicrous? Now Bubba Wallace,
this story again, I would say anywhere in the country,

(01:57):
I think out Kick covered it better than anyone did.
People say why, why would you say that? And the
answer is because everybody else, it feels like in sports
media and certainly in the media in general, wants to
react before we know what the actual facts of a

(02:17):
situation are. No one takes the time to take a
step back and think, Okay, let's work through the process.
If you listen to the show yesterday, I told you
that I believed there were three potential outcomes, and by
and large, people were only talking about one of those outcomes.

(02:40):
When it came to the Bubba Wallace investigation. We had
a good interview yesterday with Shannon's fag where we got
a lot of factual information. Then I walked through it
and it's like people are afraid to consider any of
the actual possibilities here because it's racist. If you don't say,
everything that happens in the univer verse is racist, right.

(03:01):
I said, Look, it's possible that there is a racist
person at NASCAR who put a noose in Bubba Wallace's garage.
That's possible. That's option one, option two, which is what
I said I thought was the most likely, and it
appears that I was correct. I said, is there is

(03:23):
not a negative connotation that this is just if you
go back and listen, I said that this is just
potentially the pull rope in the garage. There's evidence that
suggests that pull rope has got it's not a noose.
It's got a circle at the bottom of it to
allow someone's hand to get inside of the circle and

(03:46):
pulled up and down the garage door easier than it
would be if you just had a plane rope. And
then also I said, it's possible this is a hoax
designing to get as much attention for Bubba Wallace as possible.
I still believe that it is the misunderstanding. But I'm

(04:10):
going to dive into this in a big way and
explain to you why it's all total lunacy when you
really look at all the details. But for those of
you out there who had not heard the news yet,
yesterday afternoon, the FBI announced that there was nothing to
the allegation that there had been a racist act and

(04:32):
that NASCAR immediately putting out this story as if there
had somehow been a news that was left for Bubba Wallace,
was wrong and that there was no way to actually
defend it in any way. And uh, here was the
here was the statement. Uh that the FBI put out

(04:57):
joint statement from the U. S. Attorney's Office and the
FBI Special Agent in Charge. On Monday fifteen, FBI special
agents conducted numerous interviews regarding the situation at Talladega Superspeedway.
After a thorough review of the facts and evidence surrounding
this event, we have concluded no federal crime was committed.

(05:21):
The FBI learned that Garage number four, where the news
was found, was assigned to Bubba Wallace last week. The
investigation also revealed evidence, including authentic video confirmed by NASCAR
that the news found in Garage number four was in
that garage as early as October. Although the news is

(05:42):
now known to have been in garage number four in nineteen,
nobody could have known Mr Wallace was going would be
assigned to Garage number four last week. The decision not
to pursue federal charges as proper after reviewing all available
facts and all applicable FED oral laws. We offer our
thanks to NASCAR, Mr Wallace and everyone who cooperated with

(06:05):
this investigation. It's a total made up story, and what
NASCAR should do is tell us why this investigation took
longer than ten seconds. When you look at the pictures
of the garages, this is nowhere near a noose. It

(06:26):
is a freaking garage pull door with a handle on it.
The FBI even referring to it as a noose is
absolutely ridiculous as well. This should have taken thirty seconds,
fifteen seconds, eight seconds of actual investigation. Oh this is
what you're concerned about. Let me look at the rest

(06:48):
of the garage. Oh there are a ton of these
as well. Yeah, this is not a racist act. We
don't need to put out a statement on Sunday night.
That's filled with historyonics and then I have to throw
everybody under the pus here. To me, this is a
fundamental failure of almost the entire cottage industry of sports.

(07:10):
First of all, it's a failure by NASCAR. There was
no reason for this statement to ever go out on
Sunday about a news found in Bubba Wallace's garage. This
could have been privately investigated for like a very limited
amount of time, dismissed, and gone ahead with normalcy. Instead,
NASCAR put out a statement which made it sound like

(07:34):
there was a noose there, and it makes me wonder
whether NASCAR was doing whatever it could to get as
much publicity as possible. It was a bad look for NASCAR.
It was stupid of NASCAR to put out that statement
on Sunday. The only way you can argue that it
made any sense at all is if you believe NASCAR

(07:55):
was complicit in trying to drive attention to its overall product.
If you are Bubba Wallace, if somebody tells me that
this happened, I want to see it for myself before
my crew chief takes it to the public. I'm in
charge of the overall UH decisions that are made by

(08:16):
my crew. If you're going to come to me and
you're going to create a story that is this substantial
and this large and this massive, I would want to say, hey,
I want to see this for myself. Can you take
a video of it? Have you looked at the rest
of the nooses in the garage to see whether or
not they are similar to open and close a garage?

(08:38):
Bubba Wallace should have made that decision. People say, oh,
Bubba Wallace did nothing wrong. If somebody comes to me
on my staff and says that they have found something
that's inappropriate, I want to see it. I don't want
to immediately have it go public nationwide. I want to
know the details for myself, as opposed to allowing this

(09:03):
to be spread nationwide talking about it going on the
Freaking View television program, as well as going on with
with Don Lemmon last night on c an N, doing
interviews with Fox Sports on the racetrack about this news
and your response to it when it was all a

(09:25):
hoax and it wasn't real. I'm sorry. If you're going
to ask me to comment on something like that, I
need to see it. I need to know for myself
with my own eyes what actually has happened. This is
on Bubba Wallace too as much as it's on Nascar.
And finally, the sports media is an utter joke. You

(09:48):
can't trust most members of the sports media because they
are so far left wing. They are desperately rooting for
awful things to happen, and they give up all of
their journalistic integrity. It used to be that the entire
point of being a journalist, of being a member of

(10:09):
the media was to pursue the facts before you started
to share your opinions. Now everybody gives their opinions before
they even know what the facts are, and they give
their opinions based on what they want the facts to be.
And the sports media as a collective group is so

(10:30):
far left leaning that they want awful things to be
true about America because deep down they believe America is awful.
That's the truth. That's the essence of this. That's how
stories like this spread. Nascar, Bubba Wallace, and the sports
media all failed completely. Let me just say this, if

(10:52):
you look at all of these big, huge racism stories,
they get all of the attention. If the best thing
that can happen to your career is that you are
a victim of a racist incident. Shouldn't we hit pause
and say, wait a minute, let's actually wait for the

(11:14):
facts to come out, because now we've got three different
stories that are just like this. We've got Michael Bennett.
Remember when Michael Bennett said that he was the victim
of racial profiling in Las Vegas, and then the Las
Vegas police and a casino came out with a hundred

(11:34):
and twenty different versions of camera footage which proved that
Michael Bennett's story was all a lie. It was the
lead story on every NFL pregame show. Oh my god,
so bad for Michael Bennett that he was victim of
a racist attack. And then the story wasn't true at all,
and it's just disappeared. Everybody felt the need to talk

(11:58):
about it. Everybody felt the need to fill so sorry
for Michael Bennett. Oh I'm so sorry you had to
deal with this, Michael Bennett. And then all of the
details come out and it's a complete lie. There's zero
evidence to support anything that he said. Nobody calls him
on it, The media that interviews him never brings it up.
The story just went away. He lied to everyone. Video

(12:20):
came out that proved that he lied to everyone, and
Michael Bennett doesn't have to suffer any consequences at all.
Remember Lebron James. The racist graffiti on Lebron James's gate,
There's a camera right beside it that was mysteriously turned off.
They called the police, but when the police arrived at
Lebron James's Brentwood Area l A mansion, the racial slur

(12:43):
had already been painted over. There was zero evidence that
had happened. The l A Police Department investigated, it closed
the case without determining that any crime had been committed.
You probably never even heard about. That goes completely away
after everybody visit, after Lebron James compares himself to Emmett

(13:03):
Till after all of that process plays out, nobody even
calls Lebron James on the fact that the whole story
may well have been made up. No crime. L A
p D just dismisses it. They show up a few
minutes after the alleged incident happened. It's already been painted over.
There's a video camera right there, nobody been mysteriously wasn't on.

(13:25):
There's no footage to show us who did it. No
Lebron James is the is the recipient of racist vandalism,
fact that it didn't happen, that the l a p
D can't confirm it just disappears. And now Bubba Wallace
at least the fifteen freaking FBI agents who investigated a
garage pull door rope. Fifteen FBI agents showed up and said,

(13:53):
oh my god, what is this. It's a garage pull
door rope. It's utterly insane. All three of these things
proven either to not happen or to be lies. Michael Bennett,
Lebron James, Bubba Wallace. Media got ahead of it. All
of the media covered as if this was a true.

(14:15):
Why should you in the media presume that anything is
a true. I'm fired up about the failures in the
media because I'm a part of him. And honestly, this
actually works to my benefit because every time one of
these hoaxes blows up, my audience explodes because so many
of you feel like, and you're right, you can't trust

(14:37):
the media that covers stories. And you may not agree
with me. A lot of you may even hate some
of my opinions, but the number one thing you know,
if you listen to out kick is you can trust
what I am telling you. I desperately try to make
sure that I get the facts right. And everybody else
on Monday, and we had Jason Whitlock on the show.

(14:58):
I encourage you to go listen to it. Everybody else
on Monday is talking all about this awful racism before
we even knew whether there was any true to it
at all. And the and the the added part here
is a lot of people on social media will call
you racist if you question or say let's wait until

(15:22):
all the facts are in. We have so expanded the
definition of racism that if you say, okay, well that's
an allegation, let's wait and let the investigation take place
before we determine what happened, then people out there will
be like, oh my god, that's racist. There are people

(15:42):
right now who will tweet me after this opening and
they will say it was racist of you not to
believe that Bubba Wallace had a news put in his
garage the minute that the story came out. I'm sorry,
Michael Bennett, Lebron James. Now, Bubba Wallace, do you even
remember just Smollett juicy small yeah, as he's called by

(16:03):
Dave Chappelle. The minute you hear some of these stories,
I would just ask you, wait a minute, Is this
the best thing that could ever happen to just small
Ya's career? Is this what he would want to happen
if he could set out anything. Does this make him
more relevant? Is this going to make him more money?

(16:26):
Does this make him more of a celebrity. If the
answer to all of those questions is yes, why would
you presume that anyone is telling the truth without any
investigation into the facts actually taking place. I'm gonna open
up phone lines eight seven, seven nine, six three six nine.
I will bring in the crew again. This is a

(16:49):
fundamental failure on the part of NASCAR, on the part
of Bubba Wallace, and on the part of the sports media.
I'm not giving anybody a pass here. This is a
failure of all three on every possible level. There was
no reason for this story to play out like it did.

(17:10):
And I know some of you out there, probably who
were gonna want to talk to me on the phone,
are going to say I think this was a complete,
uh complete rig job by NASCAR in an effort to
try to get more attention. I don't think that. I
think This was a failure systemically because I believe NASCAR
gets the complaint and they are so petrified that if

(17:33):
they don't take it serious, they're gonna be considered racist.
So they drastically overreact by putting out that statement on
Sunday instead of allowing the investigation to take place first.
This was a failure by Bubba Wallace because if somebody
on your crew reports that, how is your first thought?

(17:53):
Not I want to see it for myself. This was
a failure of whoever is on Bubba Wallace's crew and
didn't take the time to actually walk around in the
garages and recognize that this wasn't a noose, it was
a pull rope for garage doors. And this was a
failure by the media to put the cart before the horse,

(18:15):
to race in the direction of covering this as if
it were a hundred percent true before we knew the
investigation had actually taken place. All of this failure failure,
failure all right, eight seven, seven, three six nine. If
you want an antidote to the disease, a vaccine to

(18:39):
the virus that has taken over the entirety of sports
media and the entirety of this country, I'm telling you
you need to be reading out Kick every day. We've
hired Jason Witlock, we have an incredibly talented group. We're
gonna have millions of people reading our website this June,
gonna be one of the ten biggest sports websites in
the country by July. Go to OutKick dot com. You

(19:03):
can sign up and be a v I P. You
get access to comment to all of our articles, you
get a phone number to call this show, a v
I P direct line, and most importantly, you're gonna have
access to all of the events that Jason Whitlock and
I are going to be doing, including in the city
of Nashville, a college football and NFL kickoff party that

(19:26):
is coming in the month of August. So for everybody
out there who is desperate for sanity to return to America,
I am the king of reasonable nous. I am the
king of sports media sanity, and so is my company, OutKick.
Go check out OutKick dot com bookmarket. If you feel

(19:47):
like everybody else has lost their mind. We are the
water in the desert, the oasis that you have been
searching for. You can sign up and be a v
I P as well and be involved on an even
higher level OutKick dot Com. We'll take your calls. I'll
bring in the crew when we return. Shame on you, NASCAR,
Shame on you, Bubba Wallace, Shame on you Sports media.

(20:09):
I feel like this is Game of Thrones and we
need the Searcy Walk where everybody screaming shame, shame, shame.
This was a failure all around of all three major
party actors here. This is Outkicked the coverage with Clay Travis.
I'm working right now on crafting our poll question for

(20:30):
the day, and the question is who looks the worst
in the wake of the NASCAR noose debacle, Nascar, Bubba
Wallace or the sports media. And I know all three
look bad, but I need you to pick who looks
the worst. I just tweeted it out. You can go
vote at Clay Travis. You should also go follow me

(20:51):
at Clay Travis on Twitter. You can go follow out
kick as well at OutKick. If you think that the
world has gone insane, like many of you do, I
am here for you to provide at least some small
measure of sanity. Danny g You've been on the show
for a while. People get mad at me because I
don't tow the corporate line because I don't always say

(21:14):
what everybody else says. But guess what, Michael Bennett, I
was right. Michael Bennett was lying Lebron James and the
racist graffiti incident. I was right. I didn't come out
as aggressively in saying Bubba Wallace was lying, but I
was like, I really don't believe that this story is
as it has been reported. I'm sure you guys sometimes

(21:35):
get tagged. People are like, oh, I don't know how
you work on this show. Sometimes such a racist? How
dare you be on the radio? Oh my god, Oh
my god. I'm like, I'm sorry, I just don't believe it.
Jesse small Yeah, Juicy small Ya, same thing, Jesse small At.
There is more of a demand for high profile racism
than there is a supply of high profile racism, and

(21:58):
so people jump to inclusions. They spread stories that oftentimes
are not very true. I'm not saying racism doesn't exist.
I'm just saying you gotta be skeptical when the best
thing that could happen to somebody's career is that they
are a victim of racism. And this is in the
world of sports. The third straight huge racist incident that

(22:21):
has not had any substance to it. And if you
want to count, like four years ago, what started my
sort of questioning of everyone in the sports media. People
may remember this was the Missouri hoax protest over things
that were supposedly going wrong on the University of Missouri's campus,
which just weren't true. But Danny g yesterday you heard

(22:43):
us with Shannon's fake You heard me kind of walk
through the possibilities, and this is basically what we said
on the program yesterday that I thought this was a
pull rope on the on the on the garage door,
and that there wasn't gonna be a lot to this,
and that it was misunderstanding, and then what happens boom.
I'm right your thoughts. Well, I give our entire show

(23:06):
a lot of credit because we were all asking lots
of questions about this yesterday rather than reacting super emotional.
We do take a lot of machine gun bullets daily
for working with you in this case. Yesterday, when this
news came out, I did feel bad for Shannon and
some other people who work for with NASCAR UM and

(23:27):
and I kind of felt the pressure. You mentioned it
in your opening segment there that NASCAR had to have
felt pressure when that crew member reported it to them,
so they were in a tough Yeah, he's the one
that should be in your pool, I think, Clay because
of what's going on in the times right now, I
can see why NASCAR overreacted, although they shouldn't have never

(23:48):
put out that statement. It's that crew member that I'm
upset with. Yeah, but Bubba Wallace has to be responsible
for that too. To me, because if you're going to
make an allegation that's that significant, I want to see
it for myself. It's easy to do. Like, think about
what I would say to you if you were going
to make an allegation like that about Fox Sports Radio studios.

(24:12):
There's no way that I would say, Hey, just report it.
Let's go ahead and release a huge statement. I would say, hey,
can you take a video of this thing? Can you
take a picture? Can you send it to me? When
did this happen? How long has it been there? How
does it compare to other incidents? Like I would ask
all of those questions because you work with me, and

(24:33):
I know as soon as you say something publicly on
some story that it's going to be directly connected to me,
and I need to know what the basis for the
complaint is before we allow all of it to just
take off. So yes, Bubba Wallace, uh, and the crew
member whoever reported this is an idiot, and we should

(24:53):
know who that person is. It started this entire process rolling.
But when you are the person who makes the money,
Bubba Wallace is the boss of his crew chiefs and
his crew employees, and so ultimately he has to be
the person who looks at this and says, wait a minute,
can you go look at every other garage pull door.

(25:14):
Isn't that Petty though? Shouldn't this crew member of sent
this to Richard Petty even really now? But I will
first of all, that might happen, But Richard Petty is
in the same spot as NASCAR. If you're a white
guy who overlooks a racist complaint, then you get accused
of racism. Bubba Wallace has to be smart enough to

(25:34):
know that he's the guy who's going to have this
connected to his name for the rest of his career,
fair or foul. There are a lot of people out
there that are going to call Bubba Wallace just Smollett
for the rest of his sports career, and he's not
right now a talented enough driver to be able to
rise above all of this and just go out and perform.

(25:59):
Once this alley gaition came out, and once Bubba Wallace
leaned into it right, because he's just not just that
it occurred right, that this complaint was made, it's that
Bubba Wallace accepted it as fact. He went on the
freaking view he was scheduled to be on Don Lemon.
He did his interview with Fox Sports talking about how

(26:19):
he wasn't gonna start stop smiling because he's not gonna
let some racist win. He one hundred percent accepted that
this was true and leaned into it for the benefit
of his brand. And by the way, credit to the
other NASCAR drivers and the other NASCAR staff who made
it clear that they don't support and will not tolerate racism.

(26:44):
But the whole thing was a sham. And all this does.
If you are a person out there and you are
desperately of the opinion that we don't spend enough time
talking about racism and that the country is fundamentally unjust,
you're entitled to whatever opinion you want to have. But
stories like these the Boy Who Cried Wolf are going

(27:06):
to make stories like these in the future even less believable.
The minute this came out, there were a lot of
people on social media who flat out said the minute
this allegation was made, I don't believe it. And the
reason why so many people said that was because of
Jesse Smallett, was because of Michael Bennett, was because of
Lebron James. Because all of these high profile sports cases,

(27:30):
as well as the Jesse Smallett one, have just completely
evaporated and they blow up. So it's just like the
Boy Who Cried Wolf. The people who allege fake acts
of racism detract from actual racism because people stop looking
if you scream something and it proves to not be

(27:51):
true that many times. Any other thoughts from you, Just
wondering how some of the media reacts today, because thank god,
we don't have off to moonwalk like Michael Jackson. But
over the past couple of days, I had to listen
to some radio shows and watch some TV shows where
they were damn nearly in tears and playing dramatic music

(28:11):
underneath the segment. And I'm just wondering when you come
back on television or radio today how do you you know,
how do you go backwards from that? I don't know.
And then, thankfully, I don't think we've ever had to
do that in the history of this show, because I
always say the facts, the facts, the facts are what matters.
And that can mean sometimes that in this era of

(28:31):
hot take performance art, my hot takes are not that hot.
And this is me putting my lawyer hat on. But
I've just seen too many cases that don't stand up
when you actually look into the evidence. And so I
would feel awful if I had to come on with
you and say, hey, sorry, you know the last two days,

(28:53):
all the screaming and yelling and ranting and opinions that
I've been giving you, I would love to hear a
show like that. Well it turns out it. I mean, honestly,
I've never had to do it in my entire career.
It doesn't mean I don't get my opinions wrong sometimes,
but I've never reacted and accepted as fact something that's
proven to not be factual. I just I I can't

(29:16):
imagine what that feels like to spend days ranting like that.
And what you should do is everybody out there listening
should vote with their time. Who can you trust ultimately?
I think that's what everything comes down to. Who is authentic,
who is trustworthy? Who do you believe that you can
listen to like you do for this show potentially for

(29:37):
three hours every day. I'm not gonna be perfect. I'm
gonna be flawed like everybody else. But I'm going to
get the facts right and I'm not going to jump
to conclusions. Dub is out today. I'll go next to
Eddie Garcia. Eddie, you've been doing updates for a while.
You were skeptical too, but it's like if you're skeptical

(29:57):
and then the sports media, oh, it's racist not to
believe that a racist act happened. The minute you got
to get on your hands and knees and beg for forgiveness.
You didn't do it. We didn't do it. We were right. Well,
I said yesterday, I'm glad I work at a place
where you could have differing opinions because we know the
other network, there's no one over there who who was
even allowed to give a different opinion than what was

(30:19):
being said. So I'm glad, Like I said, I'm glad
we have different opinions here, um than what people want
us to believe. I guess at times I do kind
of understand how NASCAR handled this in a way because
the crazy environment that we're living in, there was no
way they could dismiss this, even if there were some
people in NASCAR or at Talladega who thought this is ridiculous.

(30:40):
It's just uh, you know, it's just a pull rope.
They they may be overreacted, but they handled it in
a way that they couldn't dismiss Bubba Wallace what he said,
or else they be killed. They you know, they get
the FBI to come out and announced that obviously nothing
had happened. FBI agents investigated a garage door rope. I

(31:01):
did see. And this is on USA Today right now.
It's the headline is NASCAR avows to continue investigation into news.
What is there to continue to investigate? I think it's
been wrapped up. The fact that they're even still calling
this a noose is pure idious and bubble rope for
a garage door that has a handle, like the the
idea of the news like nooses exist everywhere, Like if

(31:26):
you are a cowboy and you're trying to catch a
trying to catch a cow or a bull, or whatever
the heck it is. That's a noose, it's a it's
a circle that I mean, like if you have a
it's a slip knot right like, I mean, this is
so utterly ridiculous. I really was disappointed because Bubba Wallace
did go on CNN with Don Lemon last night and

(31:49):
he still sounds like he doesn't believe this. Uh. He said,
it's a news, it's a news is news, over and
over and over and he said he's never seen something
like that in the garage before. It's so it sounds
like he doesn't believe what the FBI has said. And
I thought he had a chance to say, look, under
the circumstances, we reacted this way, but in hindsight now
it was a misunderstanding. It was an overreaction, and just

(32:12):
come correct with that. And but he's still he's not
doing that apparently. And the sports media is just unbelievable
how they've covered this. There aren't reporters anymore, uh, in
certain in certain places, there are most places. I mean,
she hadon Spake came on with us, and she gave facts,
she didn't give her opinion. She didn't get on a
soapbox and start preaching to anyone, and reporters are supposed

(32:33):
to go by evidence and facts and report what they know,
not what not their opinions on you know these things.
And the sports media, to me, is on top of
the pole. Unfortunately. Yeah, right now, four thousand of you
have voted in the first ten minutes. You can go
vote at Clay Travis. Who looks the worst in the
wake of the NASCAR news debacle, Nascar, Bubba Wallace or

(32:55):
the sports media? And I said, I know all three
look bad. I need you to pick who looks the first.
The sports media is getting fifty two percent of the vote,
Bubba Wallace, Nascar, so media bubble. I think that's the right.
I think that's the right trajectory as well. We'll see

(33:16):
how the numbers continue. You can go vote at Clay Travis.
This is out kicked the coverage with Clay Travis. I'm
gonna take some of your calls. Move fast here. Who's
up first? We're taking the calls in l A. Danny
Geez got them. Troy in Houston, Troy, what you got?
How's it going to Clay? I just wanted to make

(33:37):
it quick. While I was waiting, I was thinking about
when you were saying who should take responsible and as
a young black male in America, I chose Bubba Wallace.
And my only reason is this because you know, I
was in corporate America now I'm in trucking. That's why I, uh,
you know, stormed upon your show. But for me, I
would have want to wanted to see the acts first

(34:01):
clearly articulate how I feel for myself, man, before I
let people dictate on my life. Because Bubba Bubba Wallace
isn't even that good. And now it seems like me
kind of chose all publicity is good publicity instead of
trying to really work towards something that's long, you know,
and uh that's going to continue to go for his career.

(34:21):
So I think he kind of screwed itself. But uh um,
I want to give a shout out to your crew
man in your show. Keep doing what you're doing. But
and I also want to say, I just want to
hear you say that we are dealing with a spiritual
thing in America and we do have a racial issue.
But I agree with you everything is not. Racism is real.
By the way, I appreciate you saying that, Yeah, racism
is real. But you are like me, if your name

(34:44):
is going to be attached to something, don't you want
to see it for yourself before it goes out because
people aren't gonna judge the crew member, They're gonna judge you,
And I want to know a hundred percent that it's
valid before I put it out there. We might have
lost him because we gotta get a bunch of calls.
Who's up next, Danny, Let's go with Chris and Kentucky. Chris,
what you got? Thanky? Thanks for taking my call. I

(35:07):
think you hit it. Yeah. But Avery Bradley do where
he's not playing? Uh? Saying he is the one go
to the bubble because of his son. First off, this
was the guy who was like the ringleader with Kyrie
Irvy and saying, we don't want to take constraction away
from from what's going on right now in the country
and uh, so we're not gonna play for that reason.

(35:29):
And now, um, all of a sudden, his son and
if it was my son, Yeah, thanks for We haven't
even talked about Avery Bradley, Like, why are you calling
about Avery? I haven't even spent any time on that story.
The number of people in America who care about Avery
Bradley right now, compared to the bubble Wallace story is
a fraction. Get that guy out of here. Who's up next?
And another Chris in l A. This time Chris and

(35:50):
l A. What's up, hey, Clay, it's frit I'm on
the Picktor Threeway driving into l A. I'm an l
A p D cop. I want to thank you for
bringing the fact. I want you to take over calling
cal Spot. I want to call I want to call
BS on that there is a racial racial issue in
the United States. I'm a Hispanic Mexican. I don't deal

(36:11):
with it anyways. Let's let's go. Let's go with the
buffal by the First of all, I'm glad you called
it and said you are a police officer. How much
tougher is your job as a police officer now than
it was six heay, check this out, check this out.
Don't believe the fake news. Okay, don't the fake news
wants to build this, this whole fake story that everybody
is against the police. Okay, the Black Lives Matter organization

(36:34):
is a terrorist organization. Listen to me, Listen to me.
The love for the police is there. What you're believing
now is the fake news. Okay, the fake news is
gonna pick up a story that that another l apd
Cup went to a Starbucks and a Target here and
got a tampon put in his in his uh, in
his Venti latte on Sunday. They're not gonna pick that up.
They're gonna they're gonna run with his bubble fake bubble

(36:55):
wallets story. I want to give you props though, for
always bringing it fat over feelings all day long. Appreciate you,
Thanks for the service, Stay safe, uh and thanks for
calling in. Who's up next? All right? Jose and Fremont? Jose?
What you got hey? Claim? Ma'am? I appreciate your brother,
because you know what out here, your affiliate out here.
If you even say that you're you're Republican, they cut

(37:17):
you off the radio and they label you as a
racist broke. Can you believe that? Hey? Check this out.
I the bubble blast thing. I think it's a huge
pr grab by NASCAR and Bubba Wallace. They got rid
of the Confederate flags. They're grabbing there, trying to grab
an audience bait that they don't have. That they see
money signs. That's all they're doing. In my opinion, and
I'm gonna till you that cop that called a minute ago,

(37:38):
there's a lot more of us to support and appreciate
what you guys do within the Nate say are stay
strong and be stay fellas. Appreciate that. Who's up next, Dub, Yeah,
it's l A today. I'm I'm gonna reload all the
lines right now the top of you. You don't have
as many lines in l A as we do in Nashville,
So Dubs out. We're taking calls in l A. Appreciate
all of you eight seven seven nine, six three six nine.

(38:00):
You can weigh in there. Uh. And when we come back,
by the way an hour to we're gonna talk with
Jeff Schwortz. An our three we're gonna be talking about
the return finally of Major League Baseball with John Morrossy,
our Major League Baseball Insider. Be sure to catch live
editions about Kick the Coverage with Clay Travis week days
at six am Eastern three am Pacific. You're listening to
out Kick the Coverage. I hope all of you are

(38:22):
having a fantastic start to your Wednesdays, wherever you may
be across this great country or this great land. Major
League Baseball officially coming back. The players are gonna report
on July one. We'll be talking about that with John
Morrosy next hour. Our Major League Baseball Insider games will
read commence on July sixty games season. That is finally

(38:46):
a positive after months of talking about when Major League
Baseball would come back, now we have official dates. But
we are unpacking the absurdity of the Bubba Wallace story,
which has fallen a part NASCAR, Bubba Wallace, the sports media.
Everybody's got egg on their face. The latest in the

(39:07):
fake racial incidents in the world of sports. Michael Bennett
lies about the Las Vegas police, proven to be a
liar about their racism against him. Story disappears, Lebron James
racial slur on his gate, l ap D investigates, there's
no evidence that actually happens. Story disappears. Bubba Wallace and

(39:28):
his crew say there is a news in his garage
at NASCAR fifteen FBI agents investigate there is no news
in his garage yet. Which one of those is the
most to blame. Your answer may change when we play
the audio for you here. You can go vote at

(39:48):
Clay Travis and tell us what you think in terms
of who looks the worst in the wake of this story,
the sports media, Bubba Wallace or NASCAR. Sports media getting
fifty two percent of the vote, Bubba Wallace getting percent
of the vote, NASCAR getting twenty one percent. We are
taking your phone calls allowing you to react. We only

(40:11):
have five lines instead of our usual ten because dub
is out of the studio in Nashville. So I'm gonna
ask you to be fast as we moved through. But
first let me play you the audio. Bubba Wallace went
on the View yesterday in the morning before this story
went out, and then once the FBI had debunked the
idea that there was any race issues here, any hate crime.

(40:33):
Bubba Wallace then went on Don Lemon after the FBI
had already released their statement, and he continued to argue
that something was going on here. Listen to this. The
image that I have and I have seen of what
was hanging in my garage is not a It's not
a garage pool. I've been racing all my life. We've
we've raced out of hundreds of garages that never had

(40:56):
garage pools like that. So people that want to call
a garage pool and put out old videos and photos
of of of knots being as their evidence go ahead.
But from the evidence that we have, I mean that
I have, it's a straight up noose. The FBI has
stated it was a news over and over again. NASCAR
leadership has stated that it was a news. I can

(41:17):
confirm that I actually got evidence of what was hanging
in my garage over my car around my picker guys
to confirm that it was a noose and never seen
anything like it. This to me makes Bubba Wallace the
number one blamer because this sounds like he did what
I would have done, which is say send me pictures
of this thing, and then he ran with the idea

(41:39):
that this was a noose, even though it's a knot
with a handle so it's easier to pull down the
garage door. It's a freaking slip knot. Somebody said. Somebody
said in the comments here, uh that that I think
is is a good one. Um that this is just

(42:01):
the most basic of knots that you're learned and taught
in the military. This is I mean, people are sending
me pictures of their garages with similar setups because it's
easier to put your hand in. If you have a
rope to up to lift up and down your garage door,

(42:24):
it's easier to do it with a handle with a
loop than it is without. I mean, this is crazy.
It's like, it's like people don't realize what ropes exist
for and Bubba Wallace to go on CNN and continue
to spread a falsehood even after it's been debunked. And again,

(42:46):
you guys agree with me. It sounds like because he
tried to say, oh, I didn't know anything about this,
this wasn't me, it sounds like he's basically taking ownership
of this report now, which honestly makes more sense because
if the black driver on NASCAR says there's a noose
in my garage and you don't take it seriously, if

(43:06):
you're NASCAR, then you get called racist. So they have
to call in fifteen FBI agents to investigate a garage
pull door because Bubba Wallace is saying that that is
the truth. This is a bad look for Bubba Wallace. Man.
He is going full Jesse Smollett here, and he's not

(43:28):
good enough for this story to just disappear. This is
for most people who care about NASCAR going to define
him for the rest of his career as a race
car driver. He's NASCAR's own version of Jesse Smalett. If
he continues to lean into this like he did last
night with Don Lemon, We'll take your calls eight seven

(43:50):
seven six three six nine. As somebody drops off, you
can call in. Who's up first? Uh? Danny G I'm
used to say in Dub Dubs out today, Greg and Florida? Greg,
what do you think? Hey, first and foremost you guys
on an awesome show. Thanks for for doing it right. Um, listen,
I got a couple of quick points. Number one. Doesn't
it seem like we're living in a really bad movie

(44:11):
that the National Enquiry is directing or something? You know
that the media is like it is trying to cut
everybody's cohen age and saying this is the way it
has to be if you don't think this way. But
then we're just gonna keep saying whatever we want to
say because they have no repercussions. They answer to no one,
and it seems like the more shocked value jock garbage
they get, they get promoted for that, where they should

(44:32):
be fired for not having How do they how do
they not look in the mirror in the morning and
not cute? And now that's where my biggest point is.
But also a quick thing on the on the race
deal and Bubba, Oh my gosh, he's gonna he's gonna
take that line to his death. He's gonna defend it
to his death. I mean, it's unfortunate, but the ego
on some of these sports guys, you know, he's gonna
take it to his death. He's taking that route. But

(44:54):
I was, I was driving on my car one day
and way back to the day I just realt quickly, uh,
the park Land thing and happened, and I listened to
stephen A. You know what he said. He actually said,
I can't believe he has a jug. He said on
the radio. You know when they took that man out,
that boy out that killed it, but he was a
black man. He had been coming out in a body bag.
Just keeping it real. Do you know how racist and

(45:16):
a hot hallful that is to the police force, to
anybody that has a soul. And I'm thinking myself, this
is a guy who's got a voice, and how horrible
that is. And there's no repercussions. Thanks for the calling look,
I think people need to vote who they listened to
and what content they consume based on who they can trust,

(45:37):
because I think we live in a low trust society
right now, where there are a lot of people trying
to manipulate you all day long. And what I try
to do, because I think it really a hundred billion
percent matters, is make sure that the facts are right.
And if that means that, I'm not really going into

(45:57):
the bubble Wallace story in an aggressive way with a
really strong opinion until Wednesday, instead of having one on
Monday and Tuesday when everybody else is rending their garments
and screaming and yelling and having strong opinions. I'm willing
to take that risk because we didn't know the facts.
I mean, if you go back and listen, and I'd
encourage you to do it, go back and listen to

(46:19):
the podcast on Monday and Tuesday. I wish there was
somebody smart enough in the media to write these stories
and compare how people cover stories today. I don't have
egg on my face. I'm not coming on saying hey,
sorry about the two days of ranting I did. Turns
out none of what I was talking about was actually true.

(46:42):
I'm willing and I think most audience members are willing
to to wait. We got plenty of time to figure
out what happened. You don't need to have an opinion.
I mean, look, if you're teaching the journalism course, go
back and listen to our interview yesterday with Shannon's Bake.
I mean, Shannon was great on the show. She covers NASCAR,
But what I wanted to talk about her talk about

(47:03):
with her was the specific details. What does the garage
look like? What does the poll rope look like? In
this case, you go back and listen. Uh, there was
evidence out there that this was gonna be a poll
rope related incident. Um, you know what, how do you
determine what birth you get? Like? All as a garage?
All of these different questions that are important. These are
questions that lawyers would ask in a trial. A good question,

(47:28):
in my opinion, is better than a good opinion, because
a good question will make you think about a variety
of different angles. That's why I like to put up
the poll questions, and I always say, hey, if we
have a poll question that's almost fifty fifty, like yesterday's
poll question, thirty five thousand of you voted what was
dumber renaming the Masters? Or Brett Farve comparing Colin Kaepernick

(47:51):
to Pat Tillman. It's nearly fifty fifty. A really good
question has equal parts on both sides. People are like, well,
now that you think about it that way, you can
make an argument on both sides. We're talking about a
lot of times hard choices, and the facts are important
and trust in an era when you can't trust people politicians, media,

(48:12):
people with public profiles, athletes, they often share falsehoods. And
I believe that trust is important for me to talk
to you every day and try to get my facts
wrong right. And sometimes I get facts wrong, but it's
never been a case where I've come on and had
to apologize for two days of my show because I

(48:33):
was completely wrong, like so many people in my industry are.
And I don't know how they come out and do
their show Wednesday. I don't know what it would feel
like to be that wrong. Who's up? Who's up next? U?
I mean, Dad, you'll get it by next hour? All right,
let's go with Jermaine in North Carolina, Germaine. What you
got Hey, Good morning man? First time called the man.

(48:54):
I'd be very quick. I won't say. First, um, I
think I'm one of the best shows. Thing you agree
ie a lot you um you say, But let me
be real quick. First comment the question the comma is
as uh sami, old black man, I think we've gotten
gonna crazy. As far as always long jump to a
conclusive far as racism, what you said, things you say

(49:17):
to more's been on point on that. But um, but
the question I won't get and now take off the air.
Um if you think if NASCAR have had like better
race relations in your past, they wouldn't have to be
so reactionary. And now I want to take you out
there man God yeah, well, thanks for listening to Maine.
Appreciate the feedback. Look, I think that's a part of this.

(49:38):
I do think if NASCAR had had better race relations
in the past, maybe they would if NASCAR had more
black drivers, maybe they wouldn't have felt the need to
drastically overreact. Here's what I think NASCAR did that wasn't overreaction.
I think calling in the FBI and investigating it, while
it sounds ridiculous, is smarter for NASCAR than doing their

(49:59):
own and investigation. Because people could say, oh, of course,
NASCAR came up with that conclusion. I think that was
a super smart move. Even though I find it a
bit ridiculous that we have fifteen different FBI agents, our
tax dollars investigating a rope used to pull down a
garage door. I mean that that is kind of ridiculous.
But from a NASCAR perspective, I think that was smart.

(50:21):
Where I think NASCAR aired was in putting out that
statement on Sunday night. Can one of you pull up
that statement on Sunday night and read it, because the
way that NASCAR statement read on Sunday night, it gave
us a conclusion to an investigation that had not yet
been completed. That is the flaw I think that NASCAR

(50:44):
made was in believing, hey, this is a noose the
minute the complaint was made. If they had come out
on Sunday night and said, hey, we're conducting an investigation,
we read that statement to me right now. Late this afternoon,
NASCAR was made aware that a noose was found in
the garage stall of the forty three team. We are
angry and outraged and cannot state strongly enough how seriously

(51:07):
we take this heinous act. We have launched an immediate
investigation and will do everything we can to identify the
person or persons responsible and eliminate them from our sport.
As we have stated, there is no place for racism
in NASCAR, and this act only strengthens our resolved to
make the sport open and welcoming to all. Yes, So,
they in their statement on Sunday night, tell us what happened? Right?

(51:32):
I read that first like two sentences again from that statement,
they don't say, like, what's the purpose of an investigation
if you already know what happened? They put the cart
way before the horse. That would be the flaw here.
NASCAR statement is, now we know rooted in a lie,
and if you're an organization, you can't put out a
statement like this before you even know what happened. Read

(51:55):
that opening again. Late this afternoon, NASCAR was made aware
that a noose is found in the garage stall of
the forty three team. We are angry and outraged and
cannot state strongly enough how seriously we take the fanous act.
We have launched an immediate investigation, and we'll do everything
we can to identify the person responsible and eliminate them
from the sport. Yeah. So I mean that is basically

(52:18):
telling us this was a racist act without ever knowing
that that was the case at all, which sets in
motion all of the ridiculousness that now NASCAR has to wear.
And that's their fault. But the the investigation. If they
had just come out and said, hey, we've been made

(52:38):
aware of a alleged racial act involving Bubba Wallace, we
are making sure that he's safe, and we are conducting
an investigation into whether or not it is true. We
will update you at some point in the future when
the investigation is correct. NASCAR condemns all, Hey, whatever you
know you want to say at the end. I don't
know why the statement wouldn't say that if you feel

(53:00):
the need to put out a statement now. Jason Whitlock
in his column yesterday at OutKick raised a good point,
which is why in the world would NASCAR put out
a statement before they even have conducted any of the
investigation at all. And the answer is, I think NASCAR,
to Jermaine's point, who just called the NASCAR, is so
afraid of being called racist that they're gonna go way

(53:22):
over the board in the opposite direction. But that's why
I think, as a group on the show if we
were casting who's the most to blame here? I think
Bubba Wallace and his crew is to me starting to
look like the most blame worthy. Based on his comments
to Don Lemon, it sounds like he legitimately believes this
was a noose and that he looked at images of

(53:43):
it and he wanted this story to be put out there.
So to me, it starts to feel like Bubba Wallace
and his crew are the biggest blame worthy here. But
certainly we know the sports media is because most people
in the sports media didn't wait for the facts. They
went ahead and ran right to the right to the reaction.
And that's a big problem that goes on in America
today right because of social media, which I think has

(54:07):
accelerated our news cycle. People want to react to a
story before they even know what the story is. Until
you know what the facts are, it's hard to have
a smart and intelligent opinion about things. And I always
say that in every case, you know, but athlete gets
accused of of a crime. Remember Ezekiel elliott I. I

(54:28):
was probably the biggest defender of Ezekiel elliott in the
entire sports media. Guy gets accused of domestic assault investigation
takes place, charges aren't brought, he still gets suspended by
the NFL. I'm sitting around saying, wait a minute, did
you look at this evidence. I think the guy, I
think the girl lied. One of the big flaws we

(54:49):
have is based on identity. People decide whether or not
they believe someone before they even know the facts. It's like,
right now, in this Me Too era, woman come is
out and says, hey, I was sexually harassed or I
was I was sexually assaulted. People believe the woman immediately

(55:10):
because she's a woman, And I'm like, wait, wait, wait,
wait a minute, that's fundamentally wrong me as a lawyer,
you can't believe anyone that women lie, men lie, humans lie.
Why in the world would you believe someone based on
their identity as opposed to what the facts are. So

(55:32):
I don't care what race you are. I don't care
what religion you are. I don't care what sex you are.
I don't care whether you're rich or poor. The law,
if you study it, tells tests, tells us over and
over and over again that you have to wait on
the facts and not just believe someone because they look
like you or because you want their story to be

(55:53):
true because it confirms your worldview. The sports media has
fallen into this trap where they believe someone because they
want the story to be true. That's what I said
about the sports to me, and they want awful things
to be true. Let me try to get too bunch
more of your calls here. Who's up next? Brent in Kentucky? Brent?

(56:13):
What you got? What's going on? Play A? I've got
a lot going on in my head right now. I'm
piste off about all this. I hadn't heard that take,
uh that comment that he made the limit, so I'd
like to change my vote. But um, one of the
things that really aggravates me is the fact that they
say that that door pool had been there since what

(56:34):
last October? That's at least since lots of last October.
It might have been there longer, but they have evidence
that it was there at least in October. So all
this was, you know, first happen in decent I mean,
I'm sorry, on Sunday, and then it got reined out
and delayed till Monday. And then they pulled the spectacle
with all of these garage guys and all these drivers

(56:55):
pushing his car out two, you know, into the front forward,
his little healthy What actor range mean is you're gonna
try to tell me that not one of those Gridge guys,
if not multiple Griage guys, hadn't seen that before. And
they just go along with this spectacle and doesn't call
out say hey, no, no no, no, no, we're not doing this.
We're not going along with this. This was not directed

(57:18):
at him. This has been here for eight months, so
we're not gonna be a part of this spectacle going
out here and having a selfie. To me, it feels like,
now I may be way off here. You know. The
him being compared to Justice Smolette is I think almost accurate,
simply because you've got a D list actor that wasn't

(57:38):
getting enough attention. Now you've got a third rate driver
that couldn't finish in the top I think he finished
seventh at Daytona last year or year and four, I
think in eighteen or nineteen. And it almost seems like
he is gonna take this, like the other guy said,
as hard as he can and possibly, I don't know,
come become the Colin Kaepernick of Nastar. I know what

(58:00):
his his motives are here, but NASCAR needs to have
some backbones and say, hey, listen, our investigation has been completed.
It wasn't directed. You quit going on major networks and
trying to make this look like somebody in NASCAR's racist,
and I'm going to get off here and listen. What's
get things. It's a good call on so many different levels. Uh,

(58:23):
And I think the analogy of the guys not a
good enough race car driver, so he wants to get
attention and sponsorship dollars. Remember, I mean NASCAR is a
sport driven by sponsorship dollars. There's probably a lot of
companies that want to sponsor Bubba Wallace now because he's
more well known. I mean, heck, he's getting talked about
on this radio program and we haven't talked about a

(58:43):
NASCAR driver on this radio program hardly at all, regularly
as a lead story. What do you think Danny g
in five years? Yeah, not since you interviewed that one nastar.
But I'm saying we've had interviews with NASCAR, but I'm
talking about like we come on and our story. Yeah,
just as a headline story. I don't think we've done
it in five years. So I mean, he is relevant

(59:07):
even if he's relevant for a bad reason, and he
might lean into that. Who's up next? Alright, Mike in Maryland, Mike,
what you got going on? I'm a black guy, I'm
a former prosecutor, so obviously I have my own my
own stance with But what's actually just what said? I
think it's actually ironic because Colin Kaepernick the whole issue

(59:27):
with him. It's not because I'm a totally a First
Amendment guy. I kind of like you in that respect.
But when thins are based on content is where I
have my issue of Colin Kaepernick with neeling because he
was anti abortion. The people who support him with a
totally flipped and this is a great argument. I'm glad
you called in as a lawyer. That's that's what people
who say a lot of times, people say I'm a

(59:47):
First Amendment absolutist. That's what I say, but they immediately
then back off if somebody says something else. So you're right,
if Colin Kaepernick neils because he's against abortion, or if
Colin Kaepernick neils because he's opposed to gay marriage, the
same people who are like, thank god he's using his
voice to speak out would be like, no, no, No,
this guy can't do that in uniform at work. The
NFL has to has to blame him, has to do

(01:00:10):
something too. I'm sorry to cut you off, but it's
a really good point. Yeah, and to put the bupple lost.
And the only thing I think is interesting is I
don't know how many garages there are if there's been
an investigation to see if there's also a similar like
tyrope on other garages, because I get that there's a
likely there's a likelihood that this was not a racial

(01:00:30):
incident at all, and that's probably that's what's been found
by the FBI. But if there's no other garages that
have a similar tyrope, it could be obviously misinterpreted, which
would obviously lead to this result. And it's not illogical.
But I'm not going to say that there's a racial incident. Um.
But there was also racial incidence with people find Confederate
flags and having the Confederate flag rally before that race,

(01:00:51):
I believe in Talladega, which in itself could have been
a justificate justification for them having the whole little pit crew. Um.
I don't know, right, but I don't really watched Nascar.
I'm not gonna start watching NASCAR because this is not
gonna lie. But I think that saying that NASCAR does
not have a Confederate flag or or racial issue because
I mean, honestly, my issue is the Confederate flag is

(01:01:14):
a flag of treasons um and there's just no other
way to look at it. So I don't really understand
the justification of why a flag that's basically saying I'm
anti American is it's something that people would, uh would
be trying to espouse. But thanks for taking my call. Yeah,
it's a it's a smart calling a lot of different levels.
The Confederate flag is an interesting uh. We could probably
do an entire show on the Civil War. And my

(01:01:37):
position on the Confederate flag is you should have to
have basic Civil War knowledge in order to fly it.
And and what I mean by that is most people
who are involved in arguing one side or the other
don't have very much historical knowledge. And I'm a Civil
War buff, so one of the things I like to
do is read about American history. This is outkicked. The

(01:01:59):
coverage with Clay Travis callers have been good so far.
Don't screw it up. Jeff Short's gonna join us in
the next segment. Let's be fast here. I'll try to
get everybody an opportunity to react. We're talking to Bubba
Wallace pull rope that was not a noose? Uh in
the garage door in Tuscal loose. FBI investigation finds no
hate crime. Who's up next? Chris and North Carolina? Chris,

(01:02:21):
what you got for me? Clay Man? Look, I love
your show first and foremost. Hats off to wake Forest
demon Deacons here and once in North Carolina where it's
Charles Davis sown. Need to hear his voice. Man Uh.
I love Petros Frank Solo. Get those guys on a
lot more, man Uh. I think we have an issue
with just love. Man uh. We don't love enough people

(01:02:43):
in this country, no matter who they are. I don't
really have much to say about the Bubba Wallas man.
I think it's just not a lot of truth involved there,
and that's why I listened to your show appright, man,
I do think we can use a little more love
in the country. I think the attack here. Who's up next?
Appreciate Chris being in favor of love. Let's go with

(01:03:04):
Bill in Orlando. Bill, what's up? Hey, Hey, Clay, great show.
What's going to happen when they find these big heavy
chains in some of these garages? Is there a chain
also a symbolism of slavery and and just racism? So,
you know, you're just totally right on. I think one
of the things we may look at is the back laps.

(01:03:26):
You know, some of these drivers are all the drivers
that we're doing that coronation on Sunday. It looks ridiculous
now just looking at the whole thing, how much resentment
or some of these drivers are gonna have now say
thanks for the call. I don't know what happened there
was that his phone or our phone? Sorry for cutting
off Bill there couldn't run the phones. This said, there's

(01:03:47):
a lot going on here. There's a lot going on
for people who used to who don't know. Danny g
we had come. We literally had to hire a guy
to answer the phones because Danny. For those of you
that don't know, if the podcast doesn't go up immediately,
Clay complains about that. So I work on I work
on the podcast to bring the show be up faster.
You should have the podcast thirty seconds after this. Well,

(01:04:10):
that's why Dove is here to help. Yeah, who's up next? Uh? Mike.
By the way, the reason I complain is because all
you jerks out there blow up my phone if the
podcast isn't up as soon as the show is over.
Welcome to my life. Yeah, Mike and St. Louis is
up next, Mike? What's up? Mary? Travis? How are you well?
My name is Clay, so I'm better if you remember. Sorry. Hey,

(01:04:33):
first and foremost, thanks for doing all your fact finding always, uh,
making my drive such a great drive, best show, hands down,
without a doubt. Um. Hey, I just want to say, Um,
I'm kind of repeating what everybody's saying. I'm really ashamed.
I'm more ashamed of NASCAR for for drinking the kool aid.
I mean, they didn't do their fact finding ahead of time. Um.

(01:04:55):
And it's embarrassing up in a NASCAR fans since I
was a little kid. And uh, it's just it's just
it's really sad. What do you think this does to bubble?
You're a NASCAR fan, so I I candidly do not
watch a lot of Nascar. What does this due to
Bubba Wallace for average NASCAR fans? Oh? Without a doubt. Um,
all they're gonna do now is that he's gonna get

(01:05:16):
made fun of. Uh, he's people aren't gonna root for him.
They're gonna, you know, people are gonna wish he he
you know, slams into the wall or his car breaks down. Uh,
it's just he's a villain. He's a villain now in
your mind in the world of Nascar. Absolutely, absolutely, And
and he got everybody else to jump on board. And

(01:05:39):
you know, nobody had a chance to do any fact finding.
They just you know, it's just how the system works.
I guess nowadays, it's just it's it's just really sad.
So yeah, a villains. You took the words right out
of my mouth. Yeah for sure. Um so yeah, that's
about all I got to say. And hey, uh before
I jump off, I just wanted to ask you if

(01:05:59):
you're podcast numbers have jumped up. I know everybody was
supposed to be jumping on this wagon last week, and
I hope they've done that. Yeah. Thanks, yes, the number
of people who download the podcast. Thanks for the tease there.
I would encourage his search out Clay Travis or out
kick and also Danny g is reviewing all of your
podcast reviews. So if you give us five Stars and

(01:06:20):
they're smart and or funny. Tomorrow, remind me, Danny, we
need to read some more of the reviewed I read
like a hundred new ones last night. They are so good. Yeah.
So we're gonna be giving away autograph copies of the
latest book if you subscribe to the podcast and take
the time to give us five Stars one last call
before we get an update from Eddie Garcia. Who's Donnie
and Richmond? Donnie and Richmond, what you got for me?

(01:06:42):
Glare has always you the man. I'm the fan. NASCAR
went public up with a story that should have never existed.
Bubba Wallace calls anyone that doubted the story simple minded
on the show, full of simple minded, and instead of
back and down when the fact came out, they went
full jackass on Don Lemon. They both oh everyone an
apology publicly, and I'm not watching another race until I

(01:07:04):
get one thanks to the call. I mean, I think
this is uh, this is a mess. I don't think
there's any doubt for NASCAR, for Bubba Wallace, for the
sports media members who ran with this and treated it
as if it were a serious and legitimate story. Um,
it's ugly. I don't think there's any doubt this is

(01:07:25):
outkicked the coverage with Clay traffics. Jeff Shortz is with us, Jeff,
how ridiculous on a scale of one to ten, was
the entire Bubba Wallace mess? You could out there for
a second, what was it? How ridiculous was the entire
Bubba Wallace mess? I mean, it wasn't great for Nascar. Um.

(01:07:52):
You know obviously you know Bubba Wallace at first deal
was told about it, which I understand his reaction initially,
you know, obviously after finding out um that it wasn't
intentional and it really was that garage pull, I mean,
doubling down on it doesn't seem like the best way
to go about it. Um Ok. I understand why NASCAR

(01:08:13):
reacted the way they did and why there was an investigation,
which is the way it should be. They determined that
nothing was intentional. Nothing um was done, you know to
Bubba Wallace, and they announced to find me. Of course,
the reaction is going to be the way it went down.
But I just I think doubling down on it after
it was, you know, showing that it wasn't intentional probably
wasn't the way to go um in in this. I

(01:08:35):
just it's I know people upset the media and when
they handle it, But like I saw the initial I
woke up and saw on Saturday morning, Sunday morning, whenever
the news broke, and I mean I just was like, oh,
that's not good. Um, I don't know how the media
is supposed to react to that when you know you
have a sports lead cloud of statement like that. I mean,

(01:08:56):
if the NBA or NFL or made baseball, but that
was a similar statement, I think we would all agree that, Um,
it's very serious to handle it the same way. I
don't know what else the media was supposed to do.
And then when they were presented with facts otherwise, they said, hey,
we we were wrong about it. I don't I don't
know what else was supposed to be done from NASCAR
or the way the media handle went. Let's go to

(01:09:17):
the NFL because I think there's a lot of people
ready for football to be back. Uh. Tom Brady basically
seems to be saying to the NFL Players Association, Yeah,
I understand we're not supposed to have workouts. Screw you, guys,
I'm getting ready with my teammates. Uh. And uh, what
do you think of Brady's decision basically to continue to
work out regardless even though the nfl p A is saying, hey,

(01:09:37):
because of the coronavirus, you shouldn't be working out. He's
not the only one. Everyone's still working out. It's like that.
No one stop because look the season, training camp begins.
What's say the transpoting fourth, right, So training camp begins
in about four and a half weeks around there for
mostly the whole of Fame game. Those guys report even
sooner than that. They were reporting about about three and

(01:09:58):
a half weeks. And you have to be ready to play,
like there's no excuse. You can't say, you know, you
know to your team when you're out of shape or
when you're struggling and you know, and you don't make
a roster. Hey man, you know the pH ol Man
couldn't work out with my friends, and I couldn't prepare
like I wanted to. Don't just I'm just not in shape.
Like that excuse doesn't fly. So players will continue to

(01:10:20):
work out because you need to prepare. You know, they
have a need right now. Their their bodies have a clock,
right and then their clock is telling hey, I gotta
get in shape. I need to be ready to play
in just four weeks. And so that's what I just
continued to do it. I mean, like the p I
can put out all they want, but they're outside, which
the CDC says is generally fine. Right, Um, you know

(01:10:44):
they're throwing a ball obviously with their touching, I get it,
but just don't put your hands in your mouth or
avoid that that's as possible. But they're gonna continue to
work out. The players are not going to be afraid
of of getting COVID A at least, like you know,
the healthy players, the ones that don't have family members
that could be effective. We've seen in the NBA, like
like every Bradley said, I'm not go on the bubble,
well he has kids that that could possibly, you know,

(01:11:07):
be affected by COVID I get that. But the NFL
players generally speaking whatever, Like if I get it, I
get it. You know, data showing that for our age
rains is not going to be that um, you know
that will be deadly of course, but you know we
we we we we probably won't see that many symptoms.
So our NFL players are gonna prepare like they should
and be ready to go in four weeks. When you

(01:11:28):
hear about college players like l s U and Clemson
and Kansas State, there's been a variety of different teams
that have had outbreaks, and almost all of those outbreaks
have not been from working out. They have been from
college age guys getting back on campus and going out
to bars and house parties for at parties wherever they
a're going because there are girls. They're not surprisingly and

(01:11:52):
you when you were playing at Oregon, if you had
been cooped up in your house for several months and
you suddenly got back on campus, do you think you
and your teammates would have stayed away from crowds and
would have stayed away from going out to parties with girls. No.
I mean, if you're in college like you're, you're not
gonna listen to your coaches when they tell you that,
or when you or the CDC whoever is who're taking

(01:12:15):
your your information from. I understand that you know it's
it's safer to not do that, But I don't know
how you tell a college kid they can't go. I
know one school said that they're gonna make it a
team rule, and then if you violet the team rule,
you can lose your scholarship, it might have been. Even
Canada State has said that, UM, you know, if you
violate your team, you know the team where you're gonna
lose your scholarship. And that just sounds very tough to

(01:12:36):
enforce and almost unfair, right, I mean, I don't know
how you can control what players do off campus. There's
ways to help, UM, you know, force players to stay
inside at night, which is you schedule early morning workouts.
If you work out to say and every morning. UH,
most guys that the better players are gonna not go
out the night before because they want to get a
good workout in UM. It's kind of fascinating to me,

(01:12:58):
Clay because the West Coast, who was hammered UM on
early on in March and in April for being more restrictive.
In other states, they seem to be doing fine with this.
Players are back across uh most campuses in the Pack twelve,
not all of them, but coming back in tears. Only
one school so far they had a couple of players
test positive, that's it. And in other states right now

(01:13:20):
we're seeing a boom of cases where players came and
work out on campus. And so it's kind of fascinating
to me how the West Coast is now maybe ahead
on their players getting prepared for the season, and other
states might be, you know, might be lagging behind. I
think it's just a reflection of being able to have
a normal life. It doesn't surprise me that l s
U college kids, and I think the athletes are just

(01:13:42):
a reflection of other college kids. It's gonna happen when
everybody gets back to campus. Everybody has been cooped up.
All these kids eighteen ninety years old, been staying at
home with their moms and their dads. Suddenly they're back
on campus. They can go out to the bar, they
can go out to a house party. They're gonna be
out and the and the coronavirus is going to run
rampant through college campus is really fast. Uh and uh

(01:14:04):
and it's gonna be almost impossible to stop. And we
can't panic because most of those cases are gonna be asymptomatic.
And what I've been saying is if you're going to
go out to bars and restaurants, if you're a young
person who's listening to me right now, just stay away
from your elderly parents or grandparents and uh and and
make sure that when you come back home. You're getting tested,
so you don't pass it on to somebody who's more

(01:14:25):
and more danger Uh. For the return of the NFL,
what do you think they're gonna do about preseason football?
How many games do you need to play in the
NFL in order to be ready for the regular season
when you flip that light switch, Well, most guys only
play two preseason games anyways. I mean the starters only
play to um. You know that, so probably too is

(01:14:48):
what they need. I want to go back one quickly.
I'm not. Aren't you more worried about like the coaching
staff of Alabama than you are the players of Alabama.
I'm worried about Nick Saban, who was sixty years old
getting sick. I am the players, right, Isn't that? In
my opinion of the concern is not really the players,
it's the support staff, right? Yeah? I think that. I
think the coaching staffs are going to have to make decisions,

(01:15:09):
and I think you have to pay their full salary
if they think that their health conditions are such that
they can't coach. But yes, I think the risk factors
would be there now. I don't think Nick Saban would
be for instance, your typical sixty five year old or
sixty eight year old or whatever the heck he is
because he's working, you know, ninety hour weeks going full speed,
so he has to be you know, from a health perspective,

(01:15:32):
I would think a guy like Nick Saban would be
the equivalent of a forty five year old more than
he is a sixty five year old, right, So it's
it's not just age, But yeah, I think that's the dangerous.
Same thing for college professors. You know, the people who
are teaching the college kids are under more danger than
the college kids themselves. Yeah. And to me, the reason
why I'm rooting so hard for football to come back,

(01:15:53):
obviously there's a financial for me, is that I want
to work, obviously, Um, and I love watching football back.
But you know, when this, when this the shutdowns happened
in March, Um, you know, I looked at football, you know,
multiple months later, as being a way to signal that
we have normal life again. And and if football is

(01:16:13):
not back in September, then we're really a long way
away from getting back to normal. And that's why I'm
rooting so hard for football to be back. I just
think that that signifies Hey, even without fans. Yeah. Look,
there's no doubt football is back for many people. It's
gonna be a sign of normal SI when we come back.
Reacting to Bubba Wallace, Fox Sports Radio has the best
sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our

(01:16:36):
shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the
I Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live.
Oh my goodness, so the charade has finally come falling
down all around Bubba Wallace and NASCAR. The alleged incident
of racism in his garage in Talladega was actually just

(01:17:00):
a garage pull door rope. This is an embarrassment to
everyone who took this seriously. Everyone out there listening to
me right now, and I know there are a lot
of you, you need to start to ask yourself this question.
Why was it necessary for everyone out there in the

(01:17:21):
media to have such aggressive, strong opinions on Sunday, Monday,
and Tuesday up until the FBI announced that a fifteen
person team had determined this was just a rope used
to pull down the garage door and it had been
there since at least October of last year. There was

(01:17:43):
nothing to any claims of racism involving a noose. There
are so many people that I believe are in the
wrong here, but in particular, I have put up a
poll question and I have asked you who looks the
worst in the wake of the NASCAR news debacle, NASCAR,
Bubba Wallace or the sports media. The answer certainly can

(01:18:05):
be all three. But I am of the opinion that
maybe is starting to shift a bit as our show
has gone on. I think that Bubba Wallace and NASCAR
both bear a lot of blame. Let me explain why,
in addition to the sports media. First of all, the
statement that is out from NASCAR on Sunday, NASCAR said this, Okay,

(01:18:31):
late this afternoon, NASCAR was made aware that a noose
was found in the garage stall of the forty three team.
We are angry and outraged and cannot state strongly enough
how seriously we take this heinous act. We have launched
an immediate investigation, and we'll do everything we can to
identify the person or persons responsible and eliminate them from

(01:18:56):
the sport. Okay, that is the statement from NASCAR. Do
you note anything interesting about that statement? This sentence, we
have launched an immediate investigation. But before they even have
begun or know what the investigation is going to uncover.
They say they're angry, outraged, and cannot state strongly enough

(01:19:20):
how seriously we take this heinous act. So before NASCAR
has even investigated this case, they have already told you
they're angry, outraged, and how seriously we take this heinous act.
They then say, we're going to identify the person or

(01:19:41):
persons responsible and eliminate them from the sport. They told
us on Sunday night that a heinous act had happened,
that they were angry and outraged, and they told us
that they were going to suspend whoever was responsible for
this for um the sport for life before they even

(01:20:04):
knew what had happened. This statement is everything that's wrong
with the way we respond to incidents in America today.
We are skipping right over the facts a k a.
What happened and immediately going to the reaction. You can't

(01:20:26):
react accurately until you actually know what has happened. NASCAR
labeled this a heinous act and said they were gonna
suspend people for life for doing it. And then we
get a record scratch moment on Tuesday afternoon where the
FBI comes out and says, hey, wait, actually there's absolutely

(01:20:50):
nothing that happened here. NASCAR has their whole moment with
Bubba Wallace taking a selfie, everybody pushes his car out,
and it's all based on a lie. Bubba Wallace is
the Justy Smalett of NASCAR. Now, some people are like, well,

(01:21:11):
you can't blame Bubba Wallace because NASCAR said he didn't
know about it. But last night Bubba Wallace went on
Don Lemon's show on CNN and said he did know
about it. In fact, rather than say, oh sorry, this
was a whole misunderstanding, he doubled down on the fact

(01:21:32):
that he believed this was a noose. This is a
bad look for Bubba Wallace. Listen, the image that I
have and I have seen of what was hanging in
my garage is not a It's not a garage pool.
I've been racing all my life. We've we've raced out
of hundreds of garages that never had garage pools like that.
So people that want to call it a garage pool

(01:21:53):
and put out all of videos and photos of of
of knots being as their evidence, go ahead. But from
the Evan, it's that we have that I have. It's
a straight up noose. The FBI has stated it was
a news over and over again. NASCAR leadership has stated
that it was a news. I can confirm that I
actually got evidence of what was hanging in my garage

(01:22:15):
over my car around my picker guys to confirm that
it was a noose and never seen anything like it.
All right, So that is Bubba Wallace on CNN several
things that are important there. He is now saying that
he saw this, which makes me again my first thought
when they said Bubba Wallace had nothing to do with
this was well, Bubba Wallace is to blame because if

(01:22:37):
a member of my staff is reporting something that's going
to be directly attached to my name, I want to
see the picture. I want to see the video. So
Bubba Wallace here is actually acknowledging something that NASCAR said
wasn't true, which is he's actually seen this. And that
helps to explain why NASCAR may have way over re

(01:23:00):
acted to this, because it seems like Bubba Wallace is
refusing to acknowledge that this is a rope pull door,
the quote unquote noose and the nooses in quotation marks
is a circle, not at the bottom to allow you
to grip it with your hand so that you can
pull a garage door down easier. Now, maybe the question

(01:23:22):
here is why are there not automatic garage doors in
the in the in the NASCAR talladega garages. Why can't
you just push a button? But somebody just crafted this
so that instead of having to pull a rope and
having to constantly be moving your hand. You know, if
you think about the way you pull a rope down,

(01:23:42):
you just stick your hand in the circle and you
pull it down. It appears that many of the garages
have identical designed rope pulls. This is not a noose.
It's a rope pull and by the way, a noose
is anything that could be created that has a circle. Right.
This is a common boat, not if you tie your boat.

(01:24:04):
This is not an uncommon way that you would do it.
A boat is tied with a noose. You could put
your head inside of a noose and you could be
hung with it. But you could also go out and
be a cowboy and catch a cow or a bull.
You could tie your boat with a noose like this.
If you're in the military and they teach you or

(01:24:24):
the boy scouts, how to tie knots. This is a
very common way to craft a knot using a rope.
I I my kids were in boy Scouts. We had
how to tie not training where you learn how to
make a noose, not to do something racist with it,
but just to create the rope so that you can

(01:24:45):
tie something to it anyway. This is so ridiculous. Bubba
Wallace is sounding absurd. The media cannot escape blame here.
And by the way, we're gonna take a few more
of your calls eight seven seven nine six three six
nine A sports media, people that you listen to, people
that you watch on Monday and Tuesday, were an embarrassment

(01:25:06):
to our industry. They went out and they told you
a bunch of different lies. I would encourage you to
remember who lied the most, and you ask yourself this,
why do I trust these people? Why do I trust
people who are in the media talking to large audiences
to be honest with me if they couldn't be honest
and just wait on this show, you encourage you to

(01:25:28):
go back and listen. Listen to everything we said about
this case on Monday and Tuesday, intelligent reasoned waiting for
the facts. There's plenty of time to give you a
reaction once we know what actually happened. But if you
remember yesterday, if you listen to my interview with Shannon Spake,
I said, there were three things that could happen here.

(01:25:51):
I said, this could be a racist act, and if
it happened, person needs to be uh charge of the
crime and needs to be excommunicated from NASCAR, I said,
And if you listen to the show, this is what
I thought was the most likely. This could be a misunderstanding.
Somebody could be overreacting because of a heightened sense of
racial awareness, and ultimately they took something which was innocuous,

(01:26:13):
something that was not in any way racist in nature,
and they treated it as such. I said, I thought
that was probably a decent chance of that happening. In fact,
we even talked with Shannon Spake yesterday about the rope
in this garage and whether or not that might be
what was being classified as a NEOs. And then I

(01:26:33):
also said it was possible this was a hoax that
somebody wanted to get attention, because there have been a
bunch of the stories that have blown up surrounding racism
in America in the last year. Obviously, a lot of
you immediately think of Justse Smollett and the alleged hate
crime which was blown up as a lie in Chicago.

(01:26:56):
But in the world of sports, we had Michael Bennett
in Las Vegas. Do you guys remember on this show
when we talked with you about Michael Bennett and Las
Vegas and how ridiculous those allegations were. Once a hundred
and twenty different videos were reviewed, Michael Bennett's racism allegation,
which was a lead story in the NFL, was debunked
as a lie. The lie got a fraction of the

(01:27:19):
attention being debunked as it did when it was initially told. Also,
Lebron James, remember the racist graffiti that was on his Brentwood,
l A. Area mansion. Totally didn't happen, according to the
l A p D. Everybody just forgets about it. And
now we have Bubba Wallace. I asked you the question
who is to blame here the most? And the results

(01:27:43):
in our poll question are interesting. You can go vote
in this right now if you would like. Who looks
the worst in the wake of the NASCAR news debacle, NASCAR,
Bubba Wallace or the sports media. A lot of you
in the wake of Bubba Wallace going on Don Lemon
and continuing to argue there's something racist here. Are starting
to say Bubba Wallace is the answer. But initially fifty

(01:28:04):
percent of you are blaming the sports media. Thirty two
percent of you are blaming Bubba Wallace. NASCAR is getting
percent of the blame for looking the worst in this situation.
I want to allow a few more callers to weigh in.
We're taking calls in l A this morning because Dub
is out, Danny g Let's roll, all right, Andrew in Florida, Andrew,

(01:28:26):
what you got? Good morning. I was looking at the
statements that you guys had read earlier, and one of
the things I think we've glanced over is that NASCAR
was going to make someone responsible and eliminate them from
the sport. Yeah, and you touched on that. So what
I was thinking was NASCAR should put out a statement
that says that, as we have stated unequivocally, there is

(01:28:47):
no place for false claims of racism and NASCAR and
this act only weekends are resolved to make the sport
open and welcoming to all. So but my point is
that had they found that this news had actually been
left by someone. That person will be gone. Yeah, but
the fact that they haven't found anything, is it over

(01:29:08):
or is somebody that made this up gonna be gone? No,
they're not gonna thanks for the call. They're not going
to have any consequences. When you falsely scream racism and
it's proven that it isn't true most of the time,
you get away scott free. Now you've devalued the overall
claim of racism. And that's why so many people were

(01:29:29):
immediately skeptical of Bubba Wallace, because you can make an
argument that you should be incredibly skeptical of a racism
claim when claiming racism advances someone's career. If Bubba Wallace
had been a victim of racism, it's the best thing
that could ever happen to his career. Gives him more sponsors,

(01:29:49):
gives him more attention, keeps him more relevant. He's a
media I'm not a NASCAR guy, but NASCAR people tell
me he's at best a mediocre driver. He has struggled
to stay on the NASCAR circuit because he almost never wins.
He's just not very good at being a race car
driver relative to the people who are the best and

(01:30:12):
so the best thing that could happen to his career
is what has happened, even though it's now proven to
be a lie. Bubba Wallace is a lot better known
now than he was a month ago. And if being
a victim of a racist act is the best thing
that could ever happen to your career, I think you

(01:30:32):
have to be skeptical initially about the claims. I think
you should be skeptical about the claims. Anyway. People get
mad at me because when this whole METO thing blew up,
people are like, believe all women. And I came on
the radio show and I'll say that, I said, to
hell with that. Why would I believe all women? I
don't believe all men. You can't believe someone based on
what they look like. That defeats the entire purpose of

(01:30:54):
justice being blind. I'm not saying that our justice system
is perfect. It's created by men. It's going to be flawed.
But if you look at the American justice system, Lady Justice,
scales of justice, her eyes are blind. You shouldn't give
added weight to somebody because they're a woman, or because
they're a man, or because they're black, or because they're

(01:31:15):
white or Asian or Hispanic, or gay or straight. Yet
that's what goes on in America today. The usual suspects
all make determinations based on what they believe, based on
what people look like and what they want America to
look like. The sports media is overwhelmingly far left wing,

(01:31:36):
so they believe America is an awful place, and anytime
there's an awful story, they believe it. And they got
egg on their face, all over their face again, just
like they did with the Lebron James Gate racist graffiti
graffiti incident, and just like they did with Michael Bennett
and the larger American media just got just smolletted all
over again. Who's up next? Will? In New York City?

(01:31:59):
Will what you got? Hey, Clay, thanks for taking my
call him A longtime NASCAR fans, I'm pretty invested, uh
in this. I think Bubba wall Is. The first thing
you should do is fire his whoever tells him to
go on airs publicist to double down was absolutely idiotic.
There's any time just to put out a statement that
was the time on Twitter, not double down. It's just

(01:32:22):
it doesn't make any sense because he's just gonna dig
himself a deeper hole at this point. I don't think
he had anything to do with it, but when you
double down, you basically put yourself in That's right, and
just just another point, um Nascar. I I kind of
defend them on this. I don't know what else they
could have done, because if they if they didn't say
anything and and then something came out leaked, then it

(01:32:43):
would have looked like they were sweeping out of the
rug and everybody would have been like, gulf. This is
the same old NASCAR that we thought they were. So
I think you fat, Yeah, it's a good point. I
think you fault NASCAR for saying this is a heinous
act and basically presuming that it was a hate crime
before were the evidence actually reflected that it was a
hate crime? Does that make sense? Like their statement that

(01:33:05):
they put out was so over the top before they
had even had an investigation done that That is where
I think NASCAR is to blame. You say you're a
NASCAR fan, By the way, is he's still with us? No?
He dropped all right. I'm actually curious for NASCAR fans
what Bubba Wallace's reputation is going to be like in
the sport going forward. Our fans basically going to consider

(01:33:25):
him the the Just Smallett of of racing. And and
unlike let's say the Lebron James, who's the best basketball
player in the world, a lot of people forget about
his racist gate graffiti incident because he's so good at basketball.
Bubba Wallace doesn't have his overall sports talent to take
away the story here. Who's up next? Lucas driving a

(01:33:49):
big Rig through Virginia? Lucas, what you got for me?
I'm a NASCAR fan, so I can take a little
bit of this. Uh we young ride here Virginia were
raised for years the road inns event. I find it
hard to believe based on your's so limited access to
that garage, especially during the red flag situation. Nobody's allowed

(01:34:11):
back then, So I don't know how when we started
the race on Sunday, this is what the story. That's
my problem with the whole thing. You would have seen
that when you order started the whole race weekend, well
time out. How did somebody get in here to see
this room? Nobody is allowed back here. Um. And as

(01:34:34):
far as Bubble Wallace, his reputation and his sport, he's
a great kid. Uh he going to a local track nearby.
He was, respectfully, he's a great kid. He's a good ug,
young and upcoming talent. But a lot of people, because
of things like this going on in NASCAR, they're getting
away from m and you're right, huh, mediocre at best.

(01:34:55):
Bubba's got talent. Sometimes he hadn't had the equipment. Um,
but when you talk about access to the garage and
things going on, you start to think, all right, does
he need a sponsor to do do people this? Did this
get out so Bubba Wallace's name can get out there

(01:35:15):
a little more? Is he losing us? You know a
lot of times in NASCAR you'll find out halfway through
the year that a sponsor is dropping out, kind of
like last year with Jimmy Johnson, the biggest name in
NASCAR we've had in the last fifteen years, all of
a sudden, loves pulls out. But two years ago, I'm sorry,
um and you're you're kind of shop that's just seven
times Champ all of a sudden sponsor kicks out. So

(01:35:37):
you kind of get worried, like, Okay, did this happen
with Bubba? Is he need a sponsorship now? I didn't
see the don Lemon interview. Um, I'm kind of I'm
kind of surprised at that with Bubba because, yeah, I'm
gonna ask our van. When everybody come out and said this,
I was taking him back. Um, I can't listenbody will
do this in the sport. Get the evidence. I'm thinking, well,
you know the roads, we got them in our troop shops.

(01:36:00):
That's how you get the doors down. Because you know
you made a point about the automatic doors. Those things
are expensive. Um our, our fourteen foot doors cost us
about eight hundred dollars a piece, and we we can't
afford to put the elector left your motor on it.
You get the counting of how many garage doors that Talladega.
That's too much. That's a lot of money. But you
could you pay attention to the score. I guarantee you

(01:36:23):
every track now will put in the automatic doors because
of this instant An instantent was probably harmless at best.
I don't think. I don't think anybody in the score
thought hey, let's do that, and then what might have
been chance it's the one African American driver in the sport. Yeah,
everything just does not add up to somebody like myself.

(01:36:43):
That is a big time race fan. We've raced ourselves.
You don't know what garage that man is gonna gets
all of us just fob onto met too many questions,
too many quests. Thanks for the call, Appreciate you a listening.
Be safe on the road. Who's up next, Danny g
all right, last one before we get to John MORROSSI
Chip in North Carolina? Chip, what you got? Hicklay Bubba

(01:37:06):
Smalett goes on Don Lemon and he says, I've been
in garages all my life. I've never seen a rope
tide like this, and then in the next sentence he says,
so stop sending me old videos and pictures of the
similar types of rope type this way at all the
racetracks I've been at that I've never actually seen these
at and on Jeff Schwartz saying that what else was

(01:37:27):
the media is supposed to do? He says, well, once
the truth came out, they they came clean and said, okay,
it was that's not true at all. The media is
now saying, well, this actually was the news. It's just
been there since October or whenever last year, which also
kind of based on what the last caller says, how
did nobody notice this until Sunday? It's been sitting there,
These guys were there for days and nobody noticed the noose,

(01:37:48):
and now all of a sudden, Oh, well there's actually
a noose here. This rope. We've seen this whole time. Yeah,
the whole thing is ridiculous. Uh, this entire story is
an indictment of sports media. When we come back, positive news,
major League baseball is returning. This is outkicked the coverage
with Clay Travis. John Morrossi, our major League baseball insider

(01:38:12):
and expert John I. I just, first of all, the
positive is baseball player is gonna be back July one. Theoretically,
the game gonna be back July. What actually happened? What
have we done over the last couple of months. Why
couldn't the commissioner have just mandated a sixty game season
a long time ago? Or even more, what take us

(01:38:35):
behind the scenes here? How did we get to this resolution? Yes,
it is a good morning for baseball. The sport is
coming back. And and your question is a very important
one because I really believe that in many cases both
sides had points they wanted to make over the course
of bargaining that pertained largely to the next c B

(01:38:59):
A and the future labor relations as it's going to
be constructed in and beyond. So really, unfortunately, it was
a matter of staking out some of those positions and
and communicating those messages and principles to one another. And
you're right that certainly, had things unfolded differently than in
many cities in the country at the moment, that it

(01:39:22):
would have been safe to play. But at the certainly, uh,
at the way things unfolded that that was not meant
to be in this particular circumstance. But at the very least,
we will have sixty games, and sixty, my friend, is
better than zero. That's right into your credit. You have
remained optimistic that this was going to get worked out
on this show for the past several months. So let's

(01:39:43):
go to those sixty games. Do we know where the
games will be played right now, Clay, According to the manual,
reportedly that's been circulated among teams and the union and
decided upon by the union and in MLB. Initially the
plan will be for teams to begin their seasons in
their home ballparks. So wherever you play your regular season

(01:40:06):
games you will be starting a week from now. However,
MLB does reserve the right to move those teams and
those games to neutral sites or alternate sites if it
is deemed to be necessary because of laws or local
ordinances as it pertains to COVID nineteen. Well, we don't

(01:40:27):
know at the moment, Clay the on. The one team
that I really don't know what's gonna happen with is
the Toronto Blue Jays because we still have have obviously
a lot of the international border restrictions at the moment,
and it's unclear if the Jays are going to be
able to be in Toronto travel in and out because
of the moment there's there are two week quarantines mandatory
there as it pertains to the Canadian border, so that

(01:40:49):
that is a massive question mark. But the other teams play,
I think the simple answer is that if it is
safe to play and to abide by the regulations as
set forth in the manual, as it pertains to getting
to the ballpark and safely safely being there, safely having
a gathering even of the size that requires to play
a Major League game within your own team, as long

(01:41:11):
as those rules are able to be followed. In the
context of baseball, I think we are going to see
a majority of teams, uh and maybe even a strong
majority of teams playing their games during the regular season
at their home ballpark. That's quite a bit different than
the NBA, because the NBA is basically setting up this
quarantine bubble. How will Major League Baseball respond in the

(01:41:34):
event players test positive? Will they be testing every day?
Do we know what that process will look like? Well,
there will be the temperature checks every day, and and
that that level of testing. We don't know if it's
going to be that the sort of the still in
the process of of innovating some of the rapid testing
that is really just under development as we speak today. Um,

(01:41:55):
that part is unclear. But there will be testing done
a very kinds every day, including of course temperature checks
at the very at the very least um and then
in terms of whenever a player test positive, the the
hope will be that if if there's not a massive
team wide outbreak, and this has not been deliberately spelled

(01:42:17):
out from what I can ascertain yet, but if there's
not a team wide outbreak where you've got all of
a sudden ten players both testing positive and symptomatic that
you can probably still continue playing. And there is a
player pool of up to sixty people, which is intentionally
larger than than the normal forty man roster that you
would see. UH, they're gonna begin the season with thirty

(01:42:39):
players actively. Reportedly, according to Joel Sherman yesterday, there's not
going to be a minimum number of days or max
number of days set on being on the injured list
for COVID reasons. That that's almost gonna be a separate
list where if you test positive and and and you're
you're gonna have to be on the COVID UH restricted
list or or whatever it's going to be called for

(01:43:00):
a period of time. You don't necessarily have to stay
there for a six number of days, nor is there
a minimum maximum number of days that you could be there.
So their baseball is going to do, I think, a
very comprehensive job of making sure that the very UH
that every health detail is being abided by to ensure
that there is as low of a chance of an

(01:43:22):
outbreak within then believed population as possible. There's gonna be
d H universal Right, Why is that a big deal?
What have you heard fans in terms of responding. Obviously,
the big difference between the American League and the National
League has been UH that the National League continues to
have a picture and pictures have to bat. Is this
a long term change? What's the reaction been that you

(01:43:43):
have seen from fans, Well, Claire, I I believe we
have seen the last of the n L rules and
that that's a very uh. For as many times as
you and I have had conversations about baseball in the past,
that is always a hot button issue. You're probably gonna
have people calling it on both side that issues today,
but you're it's probably topic number five or six and
in the overall um situation of baseball coming back. But

(01:44:06):
I I do believe we have seen the last of it.
I really do. I think that the union likes it
in general because dhs tend to be better paid than
than your average last picture on the roster or your
average last position player on the roster. So in that situation,
I think you're gonna see higher salaries, higher payrolls, UH,

(01:44:27):
and it will actually be a positive change from the
standpoint of the players. And I think to MLB has
generally been of the mind that that having a universal
DH gives you more flexibility and scheduling if if you
want to have a different structure to your divisions where
you've got tighter geography. Uh And also as you look

(01:44:47):
to the future, I know it's still off there in
the distance, but the possibility of expansion your hometown Nashville
has been mentioned in that conversation too, So the if
you expand to thirty two teams, it makes everyth a
lot easier if you have a universal DH and you
can align divisions that way. What will the schedule look
like when it comes out? There was initially this idea

(01:45:08):
of these different pods where everybody was going to be
traveling and playing local teams. We might do away with
American and national leagues for purposes of this season. What
have you heard about that it's gonna be a highbred?
Reportedly Clay of those two circumstances where you would have
uh forty games within your division, so you would play
ten games apiece against your four divisional opponents, of course

(01:45:32):
each division still based on not as five teams, and
then you would play the remaining twenty games of the
sixty games schedule against the opposite division within your own
third of the country. So you are right in that
we we are going to see largely divisional play and
then crossover play, and we will not be seeing the

(01:45:52):
Yankees play the Angels or the Yankees playing the White
Sox this year. We're gonna see teams stay within their
g graphic third, which makes sense. It's less expensive um
when you stay within that group. Theoretically from a standpoint
of infection control, it's it's a it's a little bit
of a safer endeavor from from that standpoint with travel

(01:46:13):
that you're staying within your same geographic third of the country.
So I think that makes intuitive sense and it's going
to be a little bit easier from a travel standpoint
as well. How many players are going to sit out
and will any of them be quote unquote superstars. That's
a great question. We don't know. The first answer is
with with with the information being so fresh just from yesterday,

(01:46:33):
we don't know. I think there is going to be
a number of players who do sit out Clay, but
I don't think it's going to be huge. What we
we saw Terry Francona say on FS one in an
interview with our colleagues from MLB Whip around there recently
that he had not spoken with a single player in
the Cleveland organization or coaching staff member who had said

(01:46:56):
at that point in time that they plan to not play.
So that's just one team, one data point. But I
think that probably contradicts some of the thought that you
that you would have players in large numbers across the
sport deciding not to play. The interesting question, Clay is
going to be for the players who that they received

(01:47:16):
their advanced money earlier in the season. If you're making
under a million dollars per year in terms of your
initial salary, so basically now we're down to a little
more than a third. If you're making a million, of
course now you're down to you know, around the three
grand range, the three under grand range, but whatever would be.
And and you're now, uh, that player is basically going

(01:47:39):
to be playing for a very very small amount of
additional salary this year, based on the pro rated portion
of it. But I do wonder play that a lot
of those players will probably still play because they have
to set themselves up for their future career. Well, we're
seeing a time where the league is is is somewhat
the spending I believe will be somewhat depressed this winter

(01:48:01):
for obvious reasons, because teams revenues are gonna come down,
and and you are now fighting for your spot in
the league and your future paychecks, which which I think
will be enough. Even if the players are only going
to get an additional grand for the balance of the
year or a little more than that, I still think
a lot of those players are gonna want to be
part of it and set themselves up for the future

(01:48:22):
home cities, home stadiums. Will there be fans present at all?
So that is a great question, And to you the
example of of Texas right now. Obviously for a while
they were allowing gatherings of of recent days, there have
been a spike in COVID nineteen cases in Texas um
so that for now, Clay, it appears that it's going

(01:48:45):
to be largely a subject of the local ordinances and
and laws in those areas that I think MLB has
has structured the league right now in a fashion that
that they will not be expecting that they're going to
be fans at least that they're not counting on that.
But I don't think we're gonna see an express prohibition
against that at least as we get underway, and of

(01:49:07):
course the important thing to point out is we are
still a month away from regular season games, and as
we have seen with COVID nineteen, a lot can change
in the span of a month. Final question for you,
and we're talking John Morosey. Go follow him on Twitter.
Are major League Baseball insider as we look ahead, one
being the least contentious, tend being the most contentious. What

(01:49:30):
is the relationship like now between the Major League Baseball
Players Association and the owners? I think it's still at
about a seven play it is. I'm encouraged that they
were able to to come together on some details of
the return to play last night, and in fact I
was even told by one source that perhaps some issues
that were not dealt with constructively in the course of

(01:49:53):
the last several months may still be dealt with in
a positive way in the in the next as as
everybody gets a handle on what the season is going
to be. So I think there there is more conversation
than not. I think that's very good, but it's certainly
still contentious, and it would be disingenuous on my part

(01:50:13):
for me to say, though we've we've got a deal
and everything is back to being great and where there's
there's zero acrimony. Now that's that is not where we're at, unfortunately,
and I still think we've got a lot of difficult
conversations in the months to come as it pertains to
what the sport is going to look like after season.
But at least for now, Clay, my friend, the reality
is we're going to have in all likelihood season and

(01:50:37):
that is worth celebrating here this morning. Amen, thank you
for joining us, Thank you for staying strong and staying optimistic.
Baseball is back, John Morosi, we'll talk to you next week.
Sounds great, Clay, thanks so much. This is outkicked the
coverage with Clay Travis. We now can celebrate the return

(01:50:58):
of major League baseball. John Morosey has been a great
guest with us, updating us along the process. I still
think it's very strange that it was so contentious, so contentious,
and then we just get the Major League Baseball Commissioner,
Rob Manford. He comes out and says, hey, everybody's supposed
to show up on July one, and we're starting games
on July. Everybody's like, okay, here we go. Uh, it

(01:51:20):
doesn't really make sense to me why that process took
as long as it did. Want to play a or
hit you with the results so far of our poll question.
I put this up in the second hour of the program.
Who looks the worst in the wake of the NASCAR
news debacle? Nascar, Bubba Wallace or the sports media? And again,
I know all three look bad, but I need you

(01:51:42):
to pick who looks the worst. I actually now, the
more I think about it and hearing it, I'm gonna
go with Bubba Wallace as looking the worst and his
team because of what Bubba Wallace said when he went
on Don Lemon last night. It sounds like he knew
this picture was there. It sounds like he knew exactly
what that uh that rope was designed to do to

(01:52:02):
pull down a garage door, and he's continuing to spread misinformation.
I think NASCAR, in their initial statement put out a
bad statement to sports media, I think is always bad
by and large on stories such as these. But over
the course of the show, I have convinced myself, based
on looking at the data and listening to that Don

(01:52:24):
Lemon interview, that Bubba Wallace looks pretty bad in this
scenario as well. Who would you say, looks the worst
final bit of the show. Here has your opinion changed,
Danny g it was the media. Now it seems like
a tie with Bubba Wallace's pr rep um. Yeah, and
and I loved watching him drive, so it bugs me. Man,
he should have just said, look, it was a misunderstanding. Period,

(01:52:47):
let's move on. I don't know why he doubled down
on CNN. He's gonna be on Dan Patrick by the
way for Fox Sports radio listeners later today, so maybe
he'll walk back what he said with CNN last night.
But he had a lot of time. It's not like
that story came out, uh, you know, five minutes before
he went on CNN. He had plenty of time to
come up with an answer to these questions. And when

(01:53:09):
he says that he still believes it was a news
that's not a good look for Bubba Wallace. What about you, Eddie,
I'm still sticking with the media, but I see Bubba
is a close second. Yeah, and Roberto, how would you
assess this? H The overall looks worse to Eddie there
setting NASCAR, but yeah, the the interview, Bubba isn't a
really good man. Yeah, there's no doubt all right, I
want to encourage you guys to get your five star reviews,

(01:53:31):
and Danny g you're gonna read some five star reviews tomorrow. Yeah,
I'm gonna pick some winners tonight, all right, so you
will be able to get an autograph copy of my
book if you get a five star review. Out encourage
you to go subscribe to the podcast. Thank all of
you who've been listening on satellite radio, who've been listening
on our three hundred plus affiliates in all fifty states.
Thanks for making out Kick such a rollicking success even

(01:53:53):
while you've been dealing without sports. And thankfully, as we
move closer and closer to July, sports is geting infinitely
closer to returning. NBA. I know there's some players who
are gonna play Major League Baseball. I know there's some
players who are going to play MLS. The only sport
now that we need to hear a return date on
is the NHL, and we will finally be back to

(01:54:15):
a form of normalcy in this country when all of
those sports are back and rolling. Appreciate all of you.
What I would tell you is the last three days
should be evidence of why you listen to this program
in the first place. Callers, by the way, today, we're fantastic.
It's why I would argue that OutKick has the smartest
group of listeners of any sports talk radio show in

(01:54:36):
the country. And I trust you, guys and value giving
the right information to you. It's why I'm never going
to be the guy who's the hot take artist, overreacting
before all the facts are in, and that's why we
are soaring as others are falling. Thank you so much
for making OutKick of success. Thanks for participating in our
show as well. Share it with the friends and family.

(01:54:58):
Will be back tomorrow, same bad time, him saying bout channel,
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