Best of Outkick the Coverage: 06/19/2020

Clay Travis reacts to Dr. Fauci’s comments about there possibly being no football this season, and gives a better solution for how to handle players contracting the ‘Rona. Clay discusses President Trump’s comments about Colin Kaepernick and says the NFL just needs one team to make an offer to Kap, for them to have the edge. Outkick.com’s Bobby Burack and Ryan Glasspiegal join the show to talk about their Top 50 Sports Media list that is currently on the website. Plus, Dr. Chao is in the house, where the medical world meets sports. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for listening to the best of out Kick the
Coverage podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weekday
morning from six to nine am Eastern three to six
am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio. Find your local station
for out Kick the Coverage at Fox Sports Radio dot com,
or stream us live every morning on the I Heart
Radio app by searching f s R. This is the
best of out Kick the Coverage with Clay Travis on

(00:22):
Fox Sports Radio. Welcome on Friday edition of the program.
I hope all of you are having fantastic Friday's. We
are off and we are rolling here and there are
several different stories that are worth paying attention to. But
to me, uh, the one that kind of took over
yesterday was Dr Anthony Fauci talking about whether you're gonna

(00:47):
be able to play football or not. And honestly, it
was a little bit of the same thing that the
Surgeon General of the United States told us on this
program when we had him on man. I would guess
that was back in April or May I don't remember
the exact date. Maybe all the way back in April,
as we were talking about the coronavirus with him and

(01:07):
maybe we need to get the Surgeon General back on again.
But this thing kind of took on a life of
its own. And UH, the challenge that Dr Fauci was
talking about was because of all the contact that you're
going to get into in a football context, it's a
bit different than say baseball. And also there remains a
concern about the quote unquote second wave whenever or what

(01:31):
if that's going to happen in UH in the fall
and the winter as we move into into the new
UH into the new year potentially, and how that could
impact the football season. UM. And look, I think Dr
Fauci has done tremendous amounts of good work in his
career UH, and I think he has been very helpful

(01:52):
in his ability to reach out and talk to so
many different people out there. The challenge has been he's
given a lot of different opinions over time, UH, and
he's basically taken every different angle of every different story.
And I think a big reason for that is he's
just done so much media. He gets asked, He gets

(02:13):
asked so many different questions that the way he answers
them is not always the exact same in terms of
his UH, in terms of his mindset, and so I'm
just here to tell you, and we'll talk with Lance
Taylor a little bit more about that. If you were
telling me that I had to take a bet right

(02:35):
now on whether we will see NFL football or whether
we would see a a season in the SEC, I
think you would have to give me fifty to one
or more in order for me to bet against football.
Right I'm on a gambling TV show, un Lock It In,

(02:56):
and I have been telling you from the get go,
based on all the conversations that I am having, I
would be stunned if we didn't have a college football
season now. Lots of things can still happen between now
in September, and lots of things can happen in the country.
And certainly it was we've seen in it's been chaotic
from the start of this year. Whether it was impeachment,

(03:19):
we moved from impeachment right into the coronavirus. We moved
into from the coronavirus right into everything surrounding the protests,
and then the media buying large decided Okay, we gotta
go from the protest back into the coronavirus. And what's
wild to me is during the protest, the media took
all of the coronavirus numbers off television, and now I'm

(03:44):
starting to see them sneak the coronavirus numbers back onto
the television, because there is this desire for there always
to be something for you to be terrified of. And
so if they can bring back the idea of the
coronavirus after abandoning it for like ten days, for like

(04:04):
two weeks, all everybody talked about was the protest and
that ticker that's been in the corner of the screen,
it disappeared, and then they managed to work it back
into the screen, so it disappeared. For a long time.
You didn't see any coronavirus stories. You had hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, of people out marching in the streets,

(04:28):
and then boom, all of a sudden, the coronavirus comes back.
And it feels almost entirely manufactured to me. And I'm
not saying, like yesterday, I told you that I went
and got my own coronavirus test. I've tried to be smart.
I've tried to follow directions as best I can. I've
tried to share only factual information with you guys. But

(04:51):
it's hard for me to understand how all these public
health professionals can come out and say, Okay, it's fine
for hundred of thousands of people to be protesting in
the streets, but it's not okay for us to be
able to play college football or the NFL. I mean,

(05:11):
just on its most basic level, that is a major
disconnect in terms of what you're saying from a public
health perspective. And truthfully, we have not seen a skyrocketing
rate of infections across the country as a result of
the protest, which to me is a positive sign because

(05:34):
it means it's possible to do football, even potentially with
crowds present, without having to worry about the rates of
infection skyrocketing. Now, a couple of things that are worth noting.
The biggest, and we're gonna talk to Dr David Chow
about this, The biggest and most important part of all

(05:56):
of this is players are gonna test negative, sorry and positive.
The negative test is good. Players are gonna test positive.
Some people out there on your teams, like we're seeing
with Ezekiel Elliott right now, are the best players. Some
of them are going to test positive for this virus.

(06:17):
What you can't do is quarantine everybody who came into
contact with them. You've just got to keep testing, and
as guys test positive, you need to pull them out
of competition and keep testing them and get them healthy
until they get well. And it seems like people have
forgotten about this to me. The protocols are pretty straightforward.

(06:41):
When you arrive at the facility, you take temperature of
everybody as they enter the facility. If you have a temperature,
you don't come into the facility. You go into a
place where you can receive medical treatment. If you don't
have a fever, you come into the facility, and you
need to be able to do a lee and UH

(07:01):
and rapidly test to see whether anybody has the coronavirus,
because some people are not gonna have a fever and
they're gonna be asymptomatic, and you just have to do
that every day. And the reality is the more guys
who test positive, the less the coronavirus is going to
spread inside of the locker room because you're starting to

(07:24):
get some form of her immunity. And I think when
most of these infections would happen would be during training camp,
when you're gonna have a ton of guys physically working
together in close proximity, and arguably that's the time that
you want these infections to happen. So you may have

(07:45):
it that fifteen or twenty guys on a team are
testing positive and you have to pull those guys out
and you have to get them healthy, and then eventually
they're gonna be able to return into their credit. I've
seen the NFL talking about expanding the potential roster. Now
we've been talking about this for a while. I think
the biggest complicating factor is how do you deal with

(08:07):
the player who tests positive like the day before a
big game. And I don't think there's an easy answer
for this because I'll just give you an example. Let's
pretend Patrick Mahomes is about to play in the Super
Bowl with the Kansas City Chiefs, and the day before
the Super Bowl, on his test, he tests positive for

(08:28):
the coronavirus. Well, the first thing they're probably gonna do
is test him like a hundred times, because they're probably
gonna look for him to test negative on one of
those tests so they can argue that he doesn't have
the coronavirus. And, by the way, I'm saying, test positive
without any major symptoms. Right, So it's not as if

(08:48):
you're like looking at him and he looks super sick,
or he suit looks super healthy or anything else. What
are the doctor's gonna do with a situation like that.
That's the challenging part to me, because then suddenly you
have to put in a backup quarterback, he fills a
fine and he's not gonna be able to play. Those

(09:09):
are the challenges that I think we could face in
both college football and the NFL, where you're testing daily
and suddenly the day before a huge game, boom the
quarterback test positive for the coronavirus or frankly it's another player,
which is why I've argued the best thing, arguably that
could happen is for a lot of young and healthy

(09:32):
players who aren't gonna have significant issues. By and large,
the best thing that could happen is for players to
be able to get tested and not have any issues
going forward. So, uh, you know, like if players get
tested um and they get negative, I mean they're positive

(09:55):
early in training camp. The whole team getting tested and
being positive at the same time, I'm would actually be
fantastic as long as nobody had a serious health condition,
which it doesn't seem likely a young, healthy athlete would
because theoretically the players are not under more risk from

(10:15):
their lifestyle as football players then most other people out
there who are going out and about and working in
jobs would be. Otherwise. Let me give you an example.
We're talking a lot about, oh, how are you going
to play in the NFL. The average NFL player doesn't
come into contact with that many people at their NFL job.

(10:36):
The average person working in a grocery store or working
in a department store comes into contact with far more
people on a day to day basis than the average
NFL player does. So what's interesting to me, and I
don't ever hear doctors really explain this very well, is
why is it okay for everybody to go to the

(10:59):
same grocery store or the same Walmart in a community?
Literally everybody, because that's an essential place to work. And
if you work there, and certainly if you're in a
small town and you work at let's say a Walmart
or a Kroger grocery store, over the course of a week,
you're gonna see almost everybody who lives in your town
coming through there. Now, you're not getting tackled but by

(11:24):
and large, you are interacting with far more people than
an average NFL player would, and nobody's like, oh, we
gotta shut down. Never, even during the height of the outbreak,
nobody was like, Hey, we gotta shut down every grocery store,
we gotta shut down every department store. So I just
feel like much of the discussion surrounding sports is not

(11:46):
very intelligent when you actually look at the data, and
I don't see any way that you could actually be
in a scenario where the NFL and college foot ball
aren't playing. The business imperatives are massive, But I also
think in the grand scheme of things, the health risk

(12:08):
for an NFL or college football player is not really
that much compared to a lot of other people that
are working that nobody's even talking about. And by the way,
a lot of those people who are working are listening
to me right now as you start your day. If
you can work, and the vast majority of Americans now

(12:28):
can work, and it's important to get our country back
to work, then I think the message we need to
send with the NFL is that it's time to go
back to work, regardless of the risk. You can't eliminate
all the risk. The data shows us the young and
healthy athletes are under a very low amount of risk.

(12:48):
I'm gonna talk with Lance Taylor next. He's at the
Lance Taylor you can hear him every single Friday. We
try to get him on. He'll be on with this next.
I'll ask him about this. I also want to ask
him about Ozark uh television show by the way, to
be a lot less serious, because I'm fascinated by that show.
I just finished it. See what he thought about it.
This is Outkicked the coverage with Clay Travis. Alright, So

(13:13):
we talked about this some on yesterday's program because it
officially went up yesterday morning, but it's gotten attention all
day Thursday. Lots of readership, lots of discussion. Huh. And
the list is the fifty most valuable people in sports
media from the perspective of Bobby Barack and Ryan glass Pigle,

(13:33):
who are two writers at OutKick dot com that do
fantastic jobs. I was not involved in their list. In fact,
I was pulled out of their list. Jason Whitlock was
pulled out of their list, so nobody who works at
out kicked could be included. And these guys went through
and came up with their lists. So before we get
into the list itself, first of all, thank you both

(13:55):
for being on with me. We rarely do a double interview,
but because you both wrote, we're attempt this. We'll see
how it goes. Everybody out there who listens knows all
the tumult that usually we have with phones, although knock
on wood, things have been better on the phones of late.
So let me start with you, Ryan, and then I'm
gonna come to you Bobby to get a similar answer
to the question. Kind of give me half of the

(14:16):
story on how you go about coming up with the list.
Obviously part of it is your opinion, but who else
do you talk to to come up with a reliable
idea of what a list like this should resemble. Thank
you for having a song, Clay. Yeah, we talk with agents,
We talked with talents, We talked with some network executives,

(14:37):
although this time I don't think we did that as much, because, um,
if you talk to too many people on the background
on these stories, then the like competing agendas just become
almost impossible to reconcile. But the way that we went
about this list was um with three criteria. Part one

(14:59):
how important are they to the company's content that employs them.
Um number two, how much would it hurt their company
and help a competitor if they jumped in the free market.
And then you can also kind of look at part
two and part one as if all the like networks
and sports media brands had a draft for talents, what

(15:23):
would the order be? And then number three, because there
there's such a differentiation, as you know as a radio host,
between people who are part of the games, like as
played by play broadcasters or color commentators or then on
the studio shows that directly accompany the games. Nobody's going
to dispute that way. More people watch the games than

(15:47):
any of the than any of the like radio shows
or sports debate shows. But at the same time, most
of the audience is there for the people in the
games as opposed to the broadcasters. It's just in the
same The broadcasters aren't important because they're the face of
billion dollar properties. But with regards to radio and TV

(16:09):
hosts that are away from the direct coverage of the games,
how successful are they galvanizing audience metrics? And then we
also gave a bonus to people like Dave Portnoy and
Bill Simmons, who have proven that they can drive that
audience on their own away from a flagship media brand.

(16:29):
And also, I mean to be fair, that's a rough
approximation of market value that's much more reliable than anything
else any of us could come up with, because if
you sell a company to anyone, then in theory, there
are a lot of people out there who have the
opportunity to decide to buy this company, and that actually
gives you a direct sense of value overall. Right, so

(16:53):
that's also an interesting component. Now, let me bring in
that's Ryan glass Pieogle. Let me bring in Bobby Barack,
the other author of this list, And again I would
encourage you to go read it at OutKick dot com.
You can scroll through. It's fifty different names. It's a
good way to spend a lot of time. Bobby, what
would you add to to what Ryan just said about

(17:15):
how you went at guys went about compiling your list
ranking people from one to fifty. Yeah, the process for
this begins as soon as you finish up the previous
years because so much of it is what a talent
had during their contract negotiations, meaning did they have outside offers,
Like we look at someone like Will Kane, who made

(17:36):
our list, his contract expired uh this year around mark.
He still worked with the ESPs, but he elected the
lead because he had options outside of the SPS. And
we've been covering contract negotiations at OutKick and previously at
the Big Lead for the past year, so we have
a good sense of who is stuck at their current
network and who has interest elsewhere and what kind of

(17:59):
money are they they get elsewhere. Because this list is
not something you can say, Okay, the next three weeks,
we're going to break down the market breakdowns and industry
look at all the different networks and companies. It takes
a lot of time to know the value that executives
put in each of these talents. And like Ryan said,
when you consult all these different people, you start to

(18:19):
at some point get a consensus. Like someone like Joe Buck.
Whether you're an agent that represents Joe Bucks competition or
you rep him or you you wrap people around him,
everyone will admit that he has tremendous value to Fox.
Then the open market, almost every single network with line
up for Joe Bucks. That's when you start to see
a census. And there's other talents that maybe you're Ryan

(18:42):
or I am high on let me start talking to
each other, talking to people around the industry, and they're like, yeah,
but what can they do outside of the ESPN? What
can they do outside MBC, outside of Fox? When you
sit back and say, wow, are they just a product
of maybe the time slot, maybe the show, or whether
they're at in the lineup? Alright, so uh, let's start

(19:03):
here because there's a lot of different angles we can
go into. And by the way, you can reach out
to us all the time. At out kick you can
find Ryan Glass, Pigle and Bobby Barack. I will tweet
out and regularly tweet out their Twitter handles so you
can react with them. But I thought this is such
a fun list. There are a lot of different angles
I want to start with, and the first one I'm
gonna start with is from you guys perspective. The most

(19:26):
valuable right now announcer in all of sports is Tony Romo.
You have him at number three on your list of
the fifty most valuable in sports media. How much of
that Ryan is a function of the seventeen million dollar
per year contract he just got, which, to be fair,
is a pretty good approximation of value and how much

(19:49):
of that is your own personal belief that he is
the best at calling NFL games. How would you assess
his spot at number three on your list? I mean,
I think it's seventeen million per cent. The reason why
these number three because um, look got he he got
the biggest contract ever in UM sports broadcasting, like John Madden.

(20:13):
Maybe he adjust some of his years in the nineties
spur inflation, you can get it higher, but as far
as a growth number, Tony Romo, seventeen million was the highest.
And I mean like ESPN was bidding for him. If
you gave the executives at Fox truth serum about who
they would rather have over the next ten years, Tony

(20:35):
Romo or Troy Aikman, or you gave the NBC executives
truth serum, who would you rather over the next ten
years Tony Romo or Chris Collins. Feeling the need to
bring ESPN back into this equation because we don't even
know who their color analysts on Monday Night Football is
going to be this year. But I think that he

(20:56):
is just he really solidified himself as a genius in
those playoff games where he somehow knew what plays were
coming like he had done that a little bit in
the regular season, and as Bobby said before, we were
at the Big Weed at the time, and that we
got a lot of quick um compilation videos of Tony

(21:17):
Romo predicting Plaise. But then all of a sudden, he went,
like the fourth quarter. I don't remember who the Patriots
were playing, but I know they were in the game,
and he was just saying what they were going to
do before every play, and then they did it. And
I've never seen anything like that from a broadcaster in
any sport. It was like he was like tapped into

(21:39):
Bill Belichick's headset or something. And when that happened, it
just completely solidified himself as the top tier game color commentator,
not just in the NFL, but all of sports today. Okay, Bobby,
you just heard Ryan talking about why Tony Romo is
the most valuable as an announcer for any sport right

(22:02):
now anywhere in the media. Would he be your first pick?
It's kind of we're all a little bit colored by
the fact that we know he made seventeen million dollars
and how much people are bidding on it. Do you
think he is truly the best story. Did he hit
the market at just the perfect time. I mean, yeah,
I would not draft him number one overall. Talking to people, UM,

(22:24):
I can confetantely say I think if everybody in the
media sports media industry was a free agent and the
executives did a draft NFL draft style, I think Joe
Buck goes number one all networks except maybe CBS because
they already have Tony Romo. But if you're Fox, I
think you'd rather have Joe Buck because not only does

(22:46):
he call NFL games, he also called the World Series
and major MLB playoff games. You get a lot more
out of that. ESPN, as desperate as they are for
color commentator Trusty regularly have Joe Buck called Monday Night Football,
play Baseball or whatever else they can use him in. UH. NBC.
They love Michael, they love Treaka, but Joe Buck is

(23:06):
a better game color than both of them. Uh And
I think rolmost unprecedented contra that negotiations will bold well
for Joe back when he's up. I expect him has
several offers, and I think his salary is going to
go up substantially. Rob will probably be the second tick
off the board. Some of that is because he only
works one store where Joe Buck you can get with football, baseball,

(23:31):
and golf and whatever else. I think you could probably
call anything at this point. He's that talented and that
much of a train sendent broadcaster. Also, to me, played
by play more impactful than color commentary. Uh hes getting
had a lot of problems in the boot the past
couple of years. A lot of attention went to bigger McFarland,
Jason Litton. But it really is the play by play

(23:53):
that flows, the game narrates, and that's what people remember.
When I mean time you look at a big play
David Tyree catch uh from the Seattle and Russell Wilson
through the interception, you remember the play by play guy's
worth what he said to the motion. You don't really
remember what the color commentator said. So play by play
just a more valuable aspect of the industry. All right,

(24:15):
I'm gonna give the top ten now so people can
hear it. And obviously this is a fifty person list.
Uh So there are a lot of different names on here.
I would encourage you to go check it out. This
kind of like a fun debate that your average person
gets into with his buddies during football basketball season. Like, Okay,
let's pretend you were having a media fantasy draft. Who

(24:36):
would you take effectively? These guys have done it, Ryan Glass,
Bagel and Bobby Barack, and we just talked about Romo
as the most valuable. A guy that has been on
your list I bet for a long time is Charles Barkley. Um,
how good is Barkley at what he does? You have
him at number seven overall, which makes him the highest,

(24:58):
the highest rated after Buck Tariko. Then you go to
Charles Barkley. How valuable is Barkley in your mind? Ryan?
To what TNT does with the n b A, he's
immeasurably valuable. Clay, I mean, look that whole inside the
NBA show. You gotta give Ernie Johnson, Shack and Kenny

(25:19):
Smith a lot of credit too, But it's queer that
Barkley is the focal point of it. And he's nearing
sixty years old, he's fifty seven, he's been out of
the NBA for twenty years, and sports networks across the
board are still trying to chase the dragon of trying
to find somebody who is a combination like he is

(25:43):
of a star, former athlete, likable, funny, and then also
fearless in his candor, Like, there aren't too many people
who can just get away with saying whatever they want
or frankly, whatever Charles Barkley says. But he's so valuable
that he has like kind of a license to just

(26:05):
cross these I guess unpolitically correct lines that so few
people have the ability to do without any fear of
either being forced into like a hostage apology or losing
their jobs. Yeah. No, I mean the best example of
that with Charles Barkley is he was arrested driving drunk

(26:27):
in Phoenix Air Scottsdale, Arizona, UH and the police asked
him where he was going. He said he was going
to why he was driving drunk. He said he was
going to whoever gives the best sexual favors will put
it in all of Scottsdale. It's in the police report.
He missed one day of work because people were like, yeah,
I can kind of What I always say is people

(26:48):
get upset when what they expect of you is different
than what your real life is like. But if you
fulfill the expectations, this is the difference. For while Brian
Williams lost his job allegedly for lying about being under fire,
whereas other people, politicians, lots of them, can regularly lie

(27:10):
and they keep their job. It's because on some level
we expect for Brian Williams, we're holding him to a
higher standard than we are a politician, which is its
own story in and of itself. All right, Uh, let's
go take a break here. When we come back, I'm
gonna go to number one and number two on your list,
and I'm gonna ask you guys to explain how exactly

(27:31):
you reached the idea of these guys being number one
and number two on the list. We are breaking down
a fun group the fifty best in their business, Uh,
the Sports Media Business Power Rankings m v P list,
whatever you wanna call it, With Ryan Glass, Pigle and
Bobby Barack. This is outkicked the coverage with Clay Travis.

(28:00):
We're gonna be joined by Dr David Chow coming up
here in a little bit. Usually joined us on Thursday,
but we bumped him to Friday because we had Marco
Rubio's senator from Florida on the show in his spot
on Thursday. And so I'm interested to ask Dr Chow
about what he thought about all the attention given to

(28:20):
Dr Fauci's comments yesterday about whether or not football was
gonna be able to be played, and uh, and all
of that discussion should be pretty interesting, as well as
what he thinks about the NBA bubble and the potential
return of Major League Baseball with the coronavirus ongoing. So
that conversation will be in the next part of the program.

(28:43):
But right off the top here, Uh, we had and
it's didn't get as much attention as I thought it would.
Yesterday I asked Marco Rubio about Colin Kaepernick coming back
to the NFL, and that was built on the fact
that Donald Trump had discussed it recently, and Donald Trump's
comments didn't get very much attention. I didn't think at all.
Here was what Trump said about the idea of Colin

(29:05):
Kaepernick coming back to the NFL. When it comes to
sports and kneeling. Do you think Colin Kaepernick should get
another shot in the NFL if he deserves that. He should,
if he has the playing ability he was. He started
off great and then he didn't end up very great
in terms of as a player. He he was terrific
in his rookie year. I think he was very good

(29:25):
in a second year, and then something happened so his
playing wasn't up to snuff. The answer is absolutely I
would as far as kneeling, I would love to see
him get another shot, but obviously has to be able
to play well. If he can't play well, I think
it would be very unfair. All right, that's Donald Trump
talking about the idea. Look, if Colin Kaepernick is good enough,

(29:45):
he certainly deserves a chance to play in the NFL.
And while Trump has sent some tweets out kind of
going after the NFL, it doesn't seem like he has
kind of ratcheted up those tweets to the same extent
that he did in T sixteen. And maybe that's because
he's got good relationship with Robert Kraft and other NFL
owners that they seem to get along pretty well. But

(30:08):
I actually think the NFL this this might sound crazy
to you, but let me explain why. I think the
NFL is in a phenomenal position as it pertains to
Colin Kaepernick. The NFL needs one team to make an
offer to Colin Kaepernick, and they need that team to
do so in a public manner, because the minute that

(30:29):
Colin Kaepernick gets an offer, the NFL has painted him
into a corner. And let me explain why. If Colin
Kaepernick accepts the NFL offer, then he has effectively ended
his martyrdom. The only reason why Colin Kaepernick is relevant
is because he is able to argue because of my politics,

(30:51):
I can't work in the NFL. Now, look, there are
tons of reasons why I believe Colin Kaepernick doesn't necessarily
deserve an opportunity in the NFL. Uh. He has consistently,
consistently said all sorts of things that the vast majority
of the NFL has absolutely NFL fans have absolutely no

(31:15):
agreement with. He called police, for instance, modern day slave
catchers his girlfriend, which he magnified, called Steve Bushotti, the
owner of the Baltimore Ravens, a slave master, and said
that Ray Lewis was an Uncle Tom. When it seemed
like the Baltimore Ravens might be close to actually signing

(31:38):
Colin Kaepernick, he praised Cuba and said that Fidel Castro
had a better country than the United States. He refused
to stand for the national anthem, and while everybody wants
to say, oh, his protest was never about the national anthem.
After he refused to sign for the anthem, he said,

(32:00):
I'm not going to stand up to show pride in
a flag for a country that oppresses black people and
people of color. So people who say, oh, it's not
about the flag, it's not about the anthem, his immediate
response when he was asked why he didn't stand for
the anthem was to directly reflect that he refused to
stand to show respect for the country. So that's the

(32:23):
reason why he did it. So when people are like, oh,
Drew Brees said it's disrespectful, that's actually disrespectful. No, no, no,
Drew Brees was directly responding two quotes from Colin Kaepernick. Now,
the media will convince you very often that what is
actually true is not true. They're pulling the wool over
a lot of people's eyes when it comes to Colin Kaepernick, because, again,

(32:46):
immediately after he began his protest, direct quote, I am
not going to stand up to show pride in a
flag for a country that oppresses black people and people
of color. The reason why he protested during the anthem
was because he didn't want to show respect for the
United States flag. That's why he wasn't standing up, and
it's like everyone has suddenly forgotten that that was what

(33:07):
directly Colin Kaepernick said. But if the NFL wants to
give him a second chance, I think the NFL paints
Colin Kaepernick into a corner here because once they offer
him a job, his moral authority vanishes, his martyrdom vanishes.
The NFL is then extending him an opportunity to play.

(33:29):
If he takes that opportunity, he's probably gonna stand on
the sideline and not actually get on the field, which
makes him, like most backup quarterbacks in the NFL, not
particularly relevant unless the starter gets injured or the starter
is awful. I don't think anybody is gonna go bring
him in if they've got an awful starter, because I

(33:49):
don't think they want a quarterback debate. So he's standing
on the sideline with a clipboard, getting paid several million
dollars and he's not particularly relevant. And if he turns
down that offer, then he can no longer argue that
he's being blackballed by the NFL. So if I'm Roger

(34:11):
Goodell or I am the NFL, I would welcome a
team offering Colin Kaepernick a job, because I can then
leak the fact that he is being offered a job,
maybe even leak how much money he's being offered. And
if Colin Kaepernick doesn't accept that offer, then his moral

(34:32):
authority is gone because he can no longer argue that
he's being discriminated against by the NFL for his political opinions.
He's not a martyr anymore. He's just another guy on
the sideline who has chosen not to play the game.
And I think that would severely curtail any sort of

(34:52):
interest that would exist in Colin Kaepernick, because by and large,
the people who are interested in Colin Kaepernick now are
not really big sports fans, Like I'm sure his jersey
would sell decently if a team signs him, and then
you would immediately see everybody going on social media and
being like, see, look how popular calling Kaepernick is with
NFL fans. No, Colin Kaepernick is popular with woke people,

(35:18):
and by and large, the most woke people that you
know are not waking up super excited to sit down
in front of their television to watch the NFL on Sunday.
Most of the people who are huge Colin Kaepernick fans
aren't NFL fans and won't actually watch the games. If
you remember the protests back in the day around Colin
Kaepernick not being employed. You just look at the people

(35:39):
who are marching around outside of NFL State studio, outside
of the NFL offices. Those are not the people who
are die hard NFL fans. They were activists. Now are
there some people who are activists and also die hard
NFL fans. Yeah, that overlaps, but it's not a substantial
amount of people. I just think the NFL could play
chess here with Colin Kaepernick and really put him in

(36:03):
a spot where his options are limited and his overall
more authority declines in a hurry. We will talk about
that here coming up in a little bit, but in
the meantime, Up next, Dr David Chow is with us.
What is the latest on the NFL returning, What did
you think of Dr Fauci's comments, and where are we
going from here as it pertains to the world of sports.

(36:25):
That's next. Be sure to catch live editions about Kicked
the coverage with Clay Travis week days at six am
Eastern three am Pacific. We bring in now Dr David
Chow at Pro Football Doc on Twitter. I appreciate him
being flexible. Senator Marco Rubio's office reached out and asked
if he could come on on Thursday in your usual
spot to talk about a Name, Image and Likeness bill

(36:47):
that he was introducing. And I texted you and I
was like, Hey, are you okay bubbing to Friday. So
I appreciate you being flexible. Yeah, I think the Senator
is entitled to bubing. No, no worry. Uh yeah, I
mean it's interesting conversation and you are part of this
and our guests and and and everybody out there listening.
As the profile of the program continues to grow, we
get a lot more people asking to come on to

(37:08):
reach our audience, and we try to be flexible to
make that happen. But that's a credit to people like
Dr David Chow who are on regularly with us, and
so Dr Chow, we now, like you, probably never anticipated
that what began as a career of Hey, if somebody
hyper extends their knee or somebody tears their a c
L and you watch the video during the game and

(37:30):
you go and analyze it. As a team doctor for
the then San Diego Chargers and now as a media
analyst talking about injuries. I don't imagine if we had
talked a year ago or a couple of years ago,
we first met and you started coming on the show,
and I had said, hey, what's your knowledge of pandemic diseases?
That you would have ever thought that this would end

(37:50):
up being, uh, the focal point of much of sports
conversation for basically the last hundred days or so, No question.
But you have to be flexible, you know. One of
the things I prided myself as a head team position
is that I felt like there was some responsibility for
the medical happenings overall for the team, not just knees

(38:11):
and shoulders, you know, whether it was Mersa where there
was infections in a different way, obviously the concussion things.
Even though I wasn't the examiner of concussions, I felt
like the protocol and being on top of things was
part of the job. And I think my thoughts on
COVID are just the reflection of what I might have
done to stay on top of things as a head

(38:33):
team position, etcetera. All right, so let's start in the NBA,
because there's been a ton of talk all this week.
They put out a hundred and thirteen page manual on
what living in the NBA bubble is going to be like.
And this is one of those things where I think,
theoretically people might have set around and said, Okay, let's
pretend there's going to be a pandemic, and then how

(38:54):
would we play sports? Oh, we'll play in a bubble.
What here's what that would look like. And it's almost
all theoretical, right, It's some sort of hypothetical, imagine scenario.
And now it appears to be becoming a reality in Orlando.
As you have seen this story develop, as you've seen
the way the story is covered, what has jumped out
to you other than just the profound strangeness of this

(39:17):
being our current reality that the NBA might be coming
back at the end of July living in some ways
in a bubble. Well, you know, obviously, Uh, the NBA
sort of spearheaded some of the COVID awareness when we
canceled the season. Was Rudy Gilbert. But remember Rudy Gilbert
as opponent the night before the Toronto Raptors. None of

(39:38):
them tested positive. So let's keep our fingers crossed that
the infectivity remains low. But The bubble concept UH, you know,
in theory makes a lot of sense, but I think
practically is very difficult to pull off the number of
people we come into contact in our lives. And not

(39:59):
only that, but you know who's inside the bubble and
who's not a family member is or isn't inside the bubble.
And let's say they're not inside the bubble, but they
get ill, God forbid, or something happens, then you have
to break quarantine, et cetera. Lives are very complicated, and
when you're talking about this many lives in the NBA

(40:21):
and teams, even for a short period time, the bubble
concept in theory works great, but I think there are
some risks and there's just so many unthought of different
scenarios which will cause complications. And the other thing is
with a bubble concept, as long as everything remains good

(40:41):
and there's no infections, it is great. But what happens
if the bubble is somehow pierced? UH. It's like having
UH instead of having a power grid, having one power
line to an entire city, what happens if that power
line is somehow disrupted? Are just some of my theoretical
worries we're talking to Dr David chow Um. So when

(41:06):
you look at the NBA and the bubble concept, let
let me take a step back, because a lot of
people are asking questions, and I think it's a fair one.
All of the Vegas casinos are starting to open back up.
So it's Friday. Let's say you want to hop on
the road and you're listening to us this morning in
l A and I'm sure some people are probably gonna
do this at the end of the day on Friday,

(41:26):
or maybe during the day on Friday. You can hop
in your car. You can drive right down to Las Vegas.
You can go into a casino, you can stay in
a hotel, you can eat in a restaurant, you can gamble,
you can do all those things. Let's say some of
you are listening to me right now and you're on
the East Coast and you're like, Hey, I'm interested in
going down to Florida. I want to go to Lego Land,
I want to go to Universal Studios, to Sea World.

(41:48):
You can do all those things. You can do them
right now. In Bristol, they're talking about having thirty thousand
fans on July. The NBA being in a bubble for
all of August, for all of September, and for much
of October as they finish out their season. Feels a
bit strange now based on how open our society is

(42:09):
going to be by September, isn't it potentially gonna look
even more wild? Well, I think there's a lot that's
going to change. I mean, uh, you know, we're further
away from September, as you point out today then we
are from the pandemic starting slash late February March. So

(42:32):
there's a lot that's going to change. Look at what's
changed in the last few weeks about surface transmissions and
what have you. So, yeah, it's gonna be hard to
predict the future. And uh, there's just so many different
complications related to the bubble. And it's not just the
players being in the bubbles, or the referees or the media.
You know, you're talking about hotel employees and everyday life necessities.

(42:55):
Are all those workers that potentially come in contact with
people in the bubble, are they in the bubble too?
You know though, the under my understanding, it's it's a
great point, Like you talked about puncturing the bubble, which
sounds like such a ridiculous phrase. But yeah, my understanding
is that all of the employees at Walt Disney World
are not living in the bubble too. Now you've talked

(43:17):
about this, and I think it's an important part of
this overall conversation that every person you come into contact
with you wouldn't have to contact trace because most conversations,
or you know, if you're walking down a grocery store
aisle and there's somebody stocking things and you look up
to them and you say, hey, where are the marshmallows?
And I asked that question because I was just in

(43:38):
the grocery store recently buying marshmallows so we could do gross,
so we could do some moores, right, And Dad's not,
at least at my household. Dad is not the expert
on where to go to find things in the grocery store.
But you know, guys up on a ladder, you ask
a question, It's not as if I came into substantial
contact with that employee, even if he tested positive. It's
not like people be like, oh my god, Clay Travis

(43:58):
talked to this guy. It usually requires sustained contact, but
some people who are in the bubble could have sustained
contact with employees, and if everybody's not being required to
stay there, it kind of punctures the bubble idea from
the get go. Yeah, and and if the UH as
you mentioned, if we're following the contact tracing ideas UH

(44:21):
and we're saying the occasional employee running is going to
be okay, then it brings into question why do you
really need the bubble if you can just get players
buying or sign off to UH to live a little
bit of a socially distanced life. It's not like they're
crowding in a two bedroom home with with with six

(44:43):
family members. Yeah. No, there's no doubt. Now. I did
something interesting yesterday and I talked about it on the program.
We now have full on ability for anybody, whether they
feel sick or not, to go get tested for the coronavirus,
at least in the state of Tennessee where I live.
And so as much as I've been talking about testing
and the coronavirus and all the protocols, I just decided,

(45:04):
you know what, I'm gonna go do this drive through
testing so I can be able to talk about what
it's like and feel like I'm more informed than I
would be otherwise, And maybe you think that's ridiculous. Maybe
you think that's crazy. If you're out there, I feel
perfectly fine. I feel a percent healthy. But for as
many people as I'm talking to on a day to
day basis, and as often as we're gonna be talking

(45:25):
about athletes getting tested, I went and I did the
no swab testing. Have you been tested yet? Doc? And
what do you think about that idea? For somebody like
me to go through? It took fifteen minutes. It was
incredibly smooth, no charge. They took all of the all
the information down from me, and now, uh, they said,
in the next several days, I'll get a call after
they do my lab work and tell me whether or

(45:46):
not I tested positive. Well, you know, the more popular
test in my practice, and we have a primary care
person in our practice who does all this, and we
don't do drive through we do comprehensive medical exam and testing.
The more popular tests from our patients is the antibody test.
People aren't well, yeah, they're not as interested in knowing

(46:08):
if they have coronavirus. The second, because they feel healthy,
they want to know if they're immune because they had
the flu or what seemed like the flu a month
ago or three months ago or whatever. And every patient
that comes in that I come in contact with that
wants to get the coronavirus test, they all swear and

(46:29):
would bet money that they have it, and that they
had it, and and and quite honestly, and I can
understand the vast, vast majority nine plus percent out there
are disappointed when they test negative for the antibody test,
because you know, I get it that people want the
golden ticket right to have had it and be fine

(46:52):
and in theory have antibodies that would protect you at
least for a bit going forward. And everyone comes in
thinking that they have it, and it's been very low
number single digit. What are you seeing in southern California
right now as we head into a weekend in terms
of numbers, I know California has seen what appears to

(47:12):
be an increase in the overall number of people who
are testing positive. That might also sometimes be a function
of the number of tests that are being done, so
that factors in as well. But we've been asking you
for several weeks about what you're seeing on the ground,
and you're in the San Diego area, what do you
see there. Well, the numbers are still relatively low. You
can certainly argue that they're higher than before the region

(47:35):
opened up, and some of that is due to the
cross border activity as we've talked about. But one of
the things I wish media would start doing is being
a little more active in using the words and descriptions
of COVID nineteen versus coronavirus. COVID nineteen is an abbreviation
for coronavirus disease, and that's you can call that equivalent

(47:58):
to a needs whereas coronavirus is equivalent to the HIV virus.
So there's a difference between having a virus or having
had the virus, or having the disease itself. And so
for example, this week there was a big stir created
when Ezekiel Elliott was reported to have COVID. I think
it's more accurate that he tested positive for for coronavirus

(48:23):
or having had it, because he said he had no
symptoms in it and had no active disease later on,
it was more of a screening test when he returned
to the facility. Is the way that I'm hearing it,
And uh, we've talked about how it's going to be
very unlikely that any NFL team this year goes through
the whole season without having players or coaches test positive

(48:44):
in some way. But I wish the reporting would be
a little more accurate because there seemed to be a
little hysteria when oh my gosh, Ezekiel Elliott has COVID,
but that wasn't completely accurate. And also, as you have said,
and as I've talked about on this program, when these
guys are coming back into contact with their facilities and
they are tested and some of them are testing positive,

(49:08):
most of these guys are asymptomatic or they don't have
significant health risks, they wouldn't have otherwise been going to
get a test at all. So in many ways, catching
this is just a sign of one the prevalence. But
also in young people, how often it can be not
that serious of a condition. But in catching it, arguably

(49:30):
that's better. Right, Like being back on campus and finding
out you have this and being able to isolate yourself
in theory, is better than you continuing to circle circulate
around in your hometown feeling fine and potentially infecting somebody else. Yeah,
it's you know, it's not just about the players infecting

(49:50):
other players, or it's it's about society in general, how
many people they might infect, you know, they'll be at
grandparents or people in the community or other I so, yeah,
there's there is some social responsibility there. We're talking to
Dr David Chow at Pro Football Doc. Alright, So Dr
Fauci came out uh and talked yesterday about the fact

(50:11):
that he was not optimistic that football would be able
necessarily to be played. Um, what as somebody who was
a former team physician, and granted you are not an
expert in you know, infectious diseases or communicable diseases or
certainly this particular virus, are you optimistic that football will

(50:31):
find a way to get played? You know, I've been
optimistic since we started talking about this in March that
football will start on time in September, and I've been
less optimistic that football will finish unfettered come December. In January,
so there is some worry. So some of I can

(50:52):
echo some of Dr Faucci's comments. I'm not an infectious
disease expert like he is, but from a tactical standpoint,
I do see some of his concerns. However, his saying
that the bubble is the answer. I don't know how
practical that is quite You know this when the Titans,

(51:14):
where any NFL team goes on the road, they travel
with team security minimum to usually for security guards. And yes,
there is some modicum of providing protection to players against
opposing fans potentially and just overall security, but a lot
of their role to is bed checks at night, including

(51:36):
the night before a game, either Friday, you know, if
the West Coast teams travels the East Coast, or certainly Saturday.
And let me tell you that bet check is an
important part of it, and it's not always that players
are in bed etcetera. So if on a road trip
on the night before a game, there needs to be
security to enforce some of this. What's the reality of

(52:00):
a bubble for four months anyways, for an NFL team
without a true police state in terms of what's going on. Yeah,
and and also, I mean, I guess in some ways
it's it's crazy to think about the bubble concept for
the NFL because at least in an NBA or Major

(52:21):
League Baseball environment, And by the way, I'm not hearing
Major League Baseball talk about the idea of putting players
in a bubble at all. But they're playing every day,
and so there's a cond there's a game kind of
taking place. I guess the one positive about the NFL
is unlike these other locations where you theoretically would have
to travel a lot, you know, I think it's fair

(52:42):
to say the NFL preseason is not going to be
four games and it's not going to exist like it
ordinarily would. I think you look at the at the
overall NFL situation and you say, well, at least they
only have to go on the road eight times, and
they only have to be on the road for one
day every time, So the travel compone in it to
the NFL is not as substantial. Yeah, no question, the

(53:04):
travel coin is not as substantial. But what baseball has
going for it, and quite honestly, I think most people
are disappointed that they haven't gotten it together yet to
even agree to play is the game itself is relatively
socially distant, and so that you know, they have a
huge advantage here to try and get back and play,
and so far they haven't taken advantage of it. As

(53:25):
far as uh is a football is concerned, there's no
question that with fewer games that that is better, And
in terms of your preseason, I think you're right, it's
not going to look the same. There's already no combined
team practices. I think there will be two preseason games though,
and not for to I think they're going to get
rid of the first one to give players more of

(53:45):
a chance for acclamation to decrease injury, and they're going
to get rid of the fourth one because that's relatively
meaningless for most teams anyways. But also because if you're
if you contract coronavirus from playing an opponent that at
final preseason game number four, that likely means you miss
Week one. So no one wants that risk of that.

(54:08):
But why do you need to even two preseason games. Well,
because players, coaches, stadium personnel, referees, chain gangs, TV, they
kind of need a run through. And so my thought
is you can have one home game preseason game number
two and one away game preseason game number three, or
vice versa, and that's probably the sweet spot number that

(54:29):
will happen for the NFL. You mentioned that you're more
concerned about the season finishing. Do you think it makes
more sense if, in an ideal world, they just gave
you a magic one, and they said, you're in charge
of the NFL and the college football season to actually
start like the first week of August as opposed to
the first week of September. Well, that's in theory. Uh

(54:49):
what a lot is happening anticipating a potential second wave,
and colleges, you know, have kind of done that. But
they've done that for two reasons. The colleges South Carolina
where Mike agoes, North Carolina, Notre Dame, a few other schools,
And part of it is also because they don't want
the travel of of of the students. It's partly second wave,

(55:10):
but partly the idea of finishing by Thanksgiving is they
know people are going to go home at Thanksgiving, but
they don't want them going home at Thanksgiving and coming
back for two weeks or three weeks before they go
home again for for Christmas vacation and then come back again.
I think it's the intermingling that they're trying to stop
as much as there is trying to stop a second wave.

(55:32):
So that's part of the equation. I don't know that
the magic wand of of starting it earlier will guarantee success.
I think everyone has to stay stay fluid. Uh you
know to to to sit here and say, oh, this
is humanly impossible, as one coach said, No, it's gonna
look very, very different. It's humanly possible. It's not gonna

(55:55):
look like traditional football practice and the way facilities handle things, etcetera.
There's gonna be a lot of changes this Yesterday there
was some talk of expanding the practice squad to sixteen
players because of coronavirus. I think that's a good step,
but they probably need to also, parallel with that, create
a roster exemption. So if someone on your team test

(56:16):
positive for coronavirus, they're likely out two weeks, maybe longer.
Give you a roster exemption, why not? Only gives you
flexibility to field the team and call up the sixth
one of the sixteen players from the practice squad or more,
but it also reduces the temptation from the player or
the team to rush someone back from coronavirus because we're

(56:38):
so shorthanded. And I think that's another step that the
NFL should take. Last question for you. We're talking to
Dr David Chow at Pro Football Doc, and I've asked
you this question before. I do think it's instructive. As
we head into the weekend, would you go with one
of your kids, and I know you've got young kids
to an NFL game in September if you were, if
the crowds are able to go, well, Uh, I probably

(57:04):
wouldn't go on Sunday. I'm too busy analyzing all the
games other than your other than your job. Let's pretend
it's a Thursday night or a Monday night game and
you feel like, hey, I can still be just as
efficient and effective otherwise, assuming that the crowd control issues
and social distancing seem reasonable to me. It's always been

(57:24):
an annual thing that my son and I do, and
I would look forward to doing that in the right
set of circumstances. Outstanding stuff is always love working with you.
Thank you for everything you do for the program, and
I think we're gonna have some stuff where we do
even more this fall. We're gonna talk about soon. But
that's Dr David Chow at Pro Football Doc app. Shake
the time, my man. Thank you