Clay Talks With Will Cain

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome in Wins and Lost his podcast. I'm Clay Travis,
appreciate all of you hanging out with us. Excited to
bring in Will Kine now, who is now I think
officially a part of Fox News. Prior to that, he
was with ESPN for several years. Will, thanks for joining us,
my man. I've been watching you for for years and
been impressed with your radio show UH and UH and

(00:20):
your career in general. How excited are you to be
going back to the future, I guess a little bit
and going back into the political realm a little bit
more than the sports realm. We'll get to both, but
tell everybody what your newest gig is going to be.
I am only a little more excited to be joining
Fox News than I am to be talking to you

(00:41):
Clay Travis today. You and I have known each other,
talked offline, met in person, want and I have certainly
read your stuff, watched your material, listen to your radio
show over the years. I think you do an awesome job.
You're one of the few rational people in media, and
I'm excited, I think, for the first time, for you
and I to ever be talking on the air. But

(01:04):
just a little bit more excited than that I am
joining Fox News. I will be the new weekend co
host of Fox and Friends on Saturday and Sunday mornings
six at ten am Eastern Time. So that is awesome. Um,
And obviously for people out there who know, that's been
a prominent launching ground. Right, So you've got a great
gig now, and I'm sure you're gonna do an incredible job,

(01:26):
and I think you're gonna be very good at it.
But when you're part of that family, there are other
opportunities that could arise. So I'm sure you'll be used
and utilized in a wide variety of ways across all
of Fox News at different times. Right. That may be,
but I will say claim my priority walking through that
door is to continue to make Fox and Friends one

(01:49):
of the best shows in cable news. I know you
saw this because it's a fascinating stat a resounding win.
But Fox News primetime opinion shows eight to eleven are
not just beating their quote unquote competitors at CNN and MSNBC,
not just the most watched television shows in cable news,
but now they are beating network prime time shows on

(02:12):
the ABC in CBS. It shouldn't happen, Clay, It's beyond well.
It simply should not be happening because you and I
both know network television is distributed to more homes than
cable television. My goal is to make that same thing
happen for Fox and Friends on the weekend, may get
the most watch program in all of television. That's an
amazing goal, and it's one that a lot of people

(02:34):
would have said was crazy when Fox News was founded
so many years ago. We'll get to your current gig
and how you got there, but on wins and losses,
I like to talk with people about where they started
and how they ended up where they are. So let's
go back in time two years and years ago. You
were born in the state of Texas. What was your

(02:55):
growing up experience like there and how important was sports
to your overall development into what you became. I grew
up in a small town outside of Dallas, Sherman, Texas.
It's a town of about thirty five thousand people. It's
not a suburb of Dallas. It is a standalone rural
community about sixties sixty five miles north of Dallas. I

(03:18):
loved the way I grew up. It was one town
with one high school, with one middle school, and everybody
was integrated. When I grew up Clay that basically meant
black and white. We all went to school together. My
dad was an attorney. He was a plaintiffs lawyer. He
essentially then worked on contingency fiezas entire life. I told

(03:40):
your colleague Bobby Burak, this, that means if you win,
you make money, and if you leave, you make nothing more.
So that built me. That framed me when I made
my career choices. I knew that I wanted to hit
home runs. Everything I thought about when it came to
my career was if there is a ceiling. I'm not
that interested. Now We'll tell you as I've gotten older

(04:01):
and I've learned from others successes, and the truth is,
I think it's a big part of your success story.
Singles and doubles stacked up over time are the real
secret to success. Yes, people hit it over the fence. Yes,
people create Internet startups that they flip for billions of
dollars overnight or in six months. But most of the
time success is built the way Tom Brady built it.

(04:23):
It's built the way where Warren Buffett built it, and
I've come to appreciate that that's how my career will
be as well, because this has been a long time
in the making. It has been working for free on
numerous occasions. It's been working for less than my market
rate for most of my career. And those sacrifices are
essentially the singles I'm stacking up at some point for
what I hope adds up to a big run on

(04:44):
the scoreboard. Yeah, you know what, it's It's an interesting
part and I want to unpack that a little bit. Um.
One of the things I love about these conversations and
wins and losses is there's a lot of young people
who listen, right because a lot of people look at
the final destination and say, oh, I want to go there,
but they don't necessarily look at all of the steps
along the way to the final destination. And uh. And

(05:07):
I always like to ask people where they got their start.
What was the first media job you had? And do
you remember what you got paid to do it? So
you used two words, and I'm gonna have to answer
the question two ways because of the use of those
two words. You said media and job. I didn't have
a job for quite some time, but I was in

(05:28):
media for quite some time. So the first thing I
did out of law school, Clay is I wanted to
get involved in media, but at that time it meant
write a book. So the first thing I did after
my formal education is I set out to write the
Great American novel. Yeah, I can spare you it was crap.
It wasn't Great American. So that was fascinating. So where
did you What was your day to day like? So

(05:50):
when you graduate, let me go back for a minute,
because I want to circle bling around to the American novel.
So you went to if I'm correct, you went to Pepperdine.
So you talked about growing up in in this kind
of not a big city in Texas. That's a big trip.
What was your experience like, because I'll tell you mine.
I grew up in Nashville, which is, you know, a
decent sized city, but I went away to college at

(06:10):
George Washington, d C. It was a total culture shock.
I can't even imagine for you what going from Texas
to Pepperdine for people who don't know out in Malibu
must have been like for a Texas kid to find
himself in l a it was total culture shock. You know,
I later in life and we'll get there if we
need to move to New York City with my wife.

(06:31):
And it wasn't half the culture shock of an eighteen
year old movement from Sherman, Texas to southern California. And
here's why it was such a shock. Um College for
me was about athletics and it was about friendship. Eventually,
all my buddies went to Baylor in Texas and Texas
A and M, and they were doing the fraternity and

(06:52):
college football thing, and I felt like I was missing
out incredibly. On top of that, I was playing water
polo at Pepperdine and it was an absolute exercise over
four years in humility. Bottom line, man, I just wasn't
very good. I walked on and I'm proud of myself
for sticking through it and never quitting. But every day
it practiced. It was ego crushing humility, which is an

(07:15):
awesome life lesson. But in the beginning it was really
hard for me. After a year of being with my
teammates and making friends and relationships and putting in the
application to transfer to the University of Texas or s
m U, I decided I'm gonna stick this out. I
have the relationships I want to be on the team.
So I stayed at Pepperdine and I do think it

(07:35):
was personally a growth moment. But I would encourage anybody
out there, whatever your final education destination is, be it
medical school, law school, college, high school, make that be
in the place that you want to live. You should
finish your education where you want to start your career.
That's fascinating. So it's interesting you said that about your

(07:58):
sort of cultural disconnect and how tough it was. I
felt the same way. I put in applications after my
first year at George Washington. I was like, man, I
don't like this. Uh it's very East Coast um. People
are kind of assholes. It's very different than what I
was used to in the South. And I think in
retrospect also, I was soft, right, I mean I was.

(08:21):
I think like a lot of eighteen year old kids,
you think you're tough, you think you're smart, but then
you kind of get punched in the face a little
bit with the reality of life, and not that the
reality of life necessarily is reflected on a college campus
where you're still in a little bit of a cocoon,
but I was I'll be straightforward, I think I was
kind of a pussy at eighteen and nineteen years old
and being in a city setting and having to grow

(08:43):
up a little bit at least, and living in a
in a decent sized East Coast city. I came to
love Washington, d C. But I almost came back South
after my freshman year because I was like, this just
isn't a traditional college experience. And I've always been glad
that I was tough enough to stick it out and
that I didn't bail and transfer somewhere else. Not to

(09:05):
say that everybody out there who thinks about transferring it's
the wrong decision, but it sounds like for you and
for me, there was a there was a positive in
sticking it out and being tough enough, even if it
wasn't necessarily the same perfect experience that maybe we saw
others seem to be having. I love one thing you said.
You indicted yourself you were soft, and I felt the

(09:27):
same way, and that's guided me through a lot of
decisions I've made later in life. I just believe in
challenging yourself. I believe in being challenged intellectually in debate,
physically moving around, being around people are different than you.
That's why I went to California the first place. It's
why I moved to New York. It's why I send
my sons to school in Harlem. I think life should

(09:47):
be fairly hard. I think you should be put in
uncomfortable positions. I think you should be challenged, and I
think you should learn to grow through that. This is
probably why you and I agree on so many things
happening in this country. Where everybody protects themselves not just
from uncomfortable, unchallenging concepts, but from disagreement. We're creating generations,
and I use plural, generations of soft people unprepared for

(10:12):
the real world. Yeah, and look, and it's not necessarily
those people's fault either. Because you mentioned the parenting decision,
and we'll get into stead. There's all sorts of fascinating
decisions there for how you raise your kids. But I
think so much of our culture is about safety, is
m and bubble wrapping kids, and certainly the coronavirus is
this story in many ways writ large, what is like

(10:32):
I jotted down, uh, yesterday I was talking about in
my radio show, and I kind of keep notes you know,
one of the most essential questions that seems to come
up over and over again with the coronavirus is what
is acceptable risk and who gets to determine what that
acceptable risk is because you and I may feel, hey,
we're willing to take risk. I said this, Uh, you

(10:54):
know earlier today I took my kindergartener and walked him
to school. Physically in school. I think it's important for
my kids to be physically president school. I think it's
important for college football to be happening. But more important
than that, I think kids in college need to be
in school. They need to learn how to handle risk
and assess it and not constantly like be told that

(11:16):
it's brave to quit right like. That troubles me when
I hear people say, oh, it's so brave of the
Big Ten and the Pact twelve to quit and not
play sports this fall. Well, when did we start definding
bravery as the absence of something as opposed to the
action of something? Right? Um, So that that troubles me.
I'm gonna let you kind of get into this too,
But I think that's where we have very many agreements on. Now,

(11:40):
you went to law school, you came back to Texas.
I came back home and went to UH, went to Vanderbilt,
so we're somewhat similar in that respect. How did the
law school help you? How did it challenge you? How
did it help you to grow in UH? In your career?
Would you advise kids who are probably a lot of
them listening to us out there? Like I get this
ask question all the time. I bet you two as well.

(12:01):
Would you go to law school? I say yes because
of how much I learned? What about you? So this
conversation is awesome because we're bouncing all over the place
and following our curiosity. I'm afraid I'm leaving questions unanswered.
I never want to do that. You asked about my
career path, I'm always happy to return to it, but
this one is something I'm also very interested in your response.
So I have become very pessimistic on the future of

(12:25):
higher education. Clay, I am all talk right now because
my oldest son is twelve. I still have six years
to figure out if I'm going to commit to paying
for college, but right now I have serious, grave doubts
about paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year or
seeing my son's going to debt at the levels of
hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to go to

(12:46):
an institution that brainwashes them into ideas that I do
not believe. And I don't care, as I've stated, if
they're exposed to ideas that I disagree with. What I
care about is whether or not they're getting to be
exposed to any form of disagreement, because that's out college
is turned into a place of one sidedness and safe
spaces and protection from any form of disagreement. So I'm

(13:07):
generally pessimistic about higher education in the United States. But
that being said, Man law school was invaluable. It helps
me and everything I do. I know it does the
same for you because I listened to you, and I
hear how you think through things and how you frame conversations.
Law school simply organized my thoughts. I had a lot
of different thoughts going in different directions when I came

(13:29):
out of college. I kind of thought I knew what
I thought about certain issues, but I never had them
nailed down, and I never understood how they connected to
each other, if I was being inconsistent or hypocritical, or
if I was contradicting myself. Law school helped me build
a framework, both an obvious one when I learned constitutional
law and the founding principles and documents of this country,

(13:51):
but also just philosophically what makes sense, like what values
connect with each other and which ones undercut the others.
Law school, to me, absolutely informs everything I do on television,
everything I do behind the scenes, and how I've organized
my career when I've been entrepreneurial. Yeah. Look, I mean,
I think you just nailed it on so many different levels.
What I would say about law school is I think,

(14:13):
and I bet you kind of in many ways to
do as well. A good judge knows that he has
to decide the case in front of him, but he
also has to think about the precedent that he's setting.
I think a lot of people in our industry of
sports media, and I know you're you can also broaden it,
and you're in the audience of media as well, but
a lot of people solve the case in front of

(14:33):
them right now, and they don't think about the precedent
that they are setting going forward. So what I always
think about is if you listen to my radio show,
or you read out kick, or you listen to my
opinions or any of those things, there is a line
of consistency that runs through them, much like occurs with
a good judge, whether you're a liberal leaning judge, conservative

(14:55):
leaning judge, more down the middle, whatever it is, you
understand that if you're gonna make this argument about this
athlete on Monday, that on a year from now, the
logic still needs to be the same and the way
I picked up on it in my career. And I'm
curious if there was an AHA moment for you when
I started doing sports talk radio, I realized that most

(15:15):
people are such homers for their team that they can't
take it outside of what their team is doing and
be logical. And I'll give you an example. I started
doing sports talk radio in Nashville, Heartbeat of the SEC.
Here everybody has favorite teams and there's always an n
C double a infraction, or always a player getting in
trouble or a coach of foul of some form or fashion.

(15:37):
And I'd go on the radio and I'd be like, Okay,
here's what I think. And you know, Tennessee fans will
be upset, or Florida fans or Alabama fans, And I said, hey,
why can't you guys just pretend that this act, instead
of being done by the team that you root for,
was done by the team that you hate the most.
If your response to what should happen to them from

(15:59):
a consequence show basis is different whether it's a Tennessee
guy or an Alabama guy. That's the very definition of bias,
and to me, it's such an instructive lesson to apply
everywhere else. If I'm thinking differently about someone or something
or some situation, then I would be if somebody was

(16:21):
on quote unquote my team. That's a bias, and I
try to avoid it like the plague and sports isn't
interesting to me metaphor to use that. If you hate
a rival and arrival did something bad and you're like, oh,
you gotta throw that guy can never play in this
league again, and you wouldn't say the same thing about
your team, that's bias in its essence. That I had
that kind of crystal ball moment at eight years old

(16:44):
doing television, and that's been one of the guiding ethos
is behind basically every opinion I have is I have
to be consistent like a judge. I can't show bias.
So you're touching on one of my favorite things about
being a sports fan. Certainly with big issues, issues that
involve criminality, or issues that involved deep societal issues, you

(17:05):
want to accomplish that consistency regardless of your fandom. But
I love narrow minded tribalism and blind fandom in sports.
Yes it is. Here's the thing. Human beings are inherently tribal.
We are, and it's an ugly side of our nature
most of the time. It is something that you have

(17:28):
to overcome, and you do it. I believe through the
principles you and I are alluding to, you overcome racial tribalism,
gender tribalism, religious tribalism, and geographic tribalism by being a
man of principle. But sports man that's exempt from all
of it. I can think that Dallas Cowboys can do
no wrong, and I can see you all day long.
The Texas Longhorns should be and it's a travity. They

(17:51):
aren't a top tier program in the United States. Over
and overtime blue in the face because the truth is,
it's a harmless area of our culture and our society
where we can just be blind fans just have base allegiances.
I love that about sports. I think it's fun. I
don't think it's ugly. I love busting balls with somebody

(18:11):
over their team versus my team. It's really one of
my favorite things about sports. Be sure to catch live
editions about Kicked the Coverage with Clay Travis week days
at six am Eastern three am Pacific. We're talking to
Will Kaine. This is the Wins and Losses Podcast. I'm
Clay Travis. One of the great things about sports, I
think probably the greatest thing is what you just hit on.
It unites us. Right, we all have different tribes. But

(18:34):
what I always like to say is, whether you're a
janitor or a neurosurgeon, if you're at the hospital break room,
you can sit down and talk about what happened with
the local team, and you're on an equal footing with
each other. Right, are we giving that up by this
is a big question, but by allowing politics basically two
in many ways infect our fandom. Depends on who you

(18:59):
mean by we. I don't think the average American and
the average fan is giving that up by looking at
their fellow fans and saying, I wonder what his politics are.
But I think most in sports media are doing that,
they're totally incapable of extricating from each other whatever political
disagreements they might have, and enjoying this unifying section of

(19:19):
our culture that is sports. It's a truly massive miscalculation
by the sports media industry, and it's sad because culturally,
sports is a massive part of our society. That's what's
so sad about college football being canceled. Clay or at
least the Big Ten in Pact twelve. We have no

(19:40):
idea yet what we've lost. And I don't just mean economically,
because those that might disagree with you or me would
say your habit is sacrificed to others for your dollars.
I mean in terms of mental health. I mean in
terms of the future prospects in these athletes careers. I
mean in terms of our ability to have these space

(20:00):
where we can be unified and come together and have fun.
I don't think we fully know the cost of canceling
college football. It's going to be huge. I don't disagree
at all. We both went to law school, and I
think one thing that that you learn in law school
is certainly how to make an argument. What I love
about being in sports media is unlike when I was

(20:20):
a practicing attorney, which I didn't like very much. And
I don't know if you practiced at all. Uh, And
I'm curious on that. But you have to argue whatever
side is paying you. And sometimes you're on the wrong
side of an argument, and you're like, about halfway through
you know the case, or halfway through the argument, you're like, man,
I'd a lot rather be on the other guy's side.
I can pick which sides of arguments I want to
be on. Did you practice and how much do you

(20:43):
think in terms of arguing about sports, your legal training
has been invaluable. You know, it's funny you bring that up,
because I am the same as you. I don't ever
have to compromise what I believe for my argument. Nobody
is paying me to say anything in nor what you
take I don't belief. But you know, if I had
gone on to be a lawyer and I didn't practice

(21:04):
either very much either. Um, my father died when I
was twenty five, and I went to wind up his
practice and I clerked in law school for a criminal
defense firm, I would have wanted to be a trial lawyer.
And you and I aren't that far apart in age.
The day in the age of the civil trial lawyer
is almost gone. So that would have meant be a

(21:25):
criminal lawyer, which would have meant being a prosecutor or.
If you want to make some money in life, go
be a criminal defense attorney, in which case I really
would have had to take money and defend people when
I really would have rather not. Now I have buddies
who do this, and I think it is truly noble.
You have to fall back on the principle that the

(21:46):
United States is a country where there is a burden
of proof. The Constitution affords everyone representation, and you are
truly doing a service by giving them the best representation
that you can. The federal government or the state government
or their county government has a ton of resources at
its disposal, and they should be able to prove their
case if it's coming to trial. I would have probably

(22:07):
told myself all that. I gotta tell you, Clay, I'm
a little happy I never had to make that that decision.
So you I want to circle back around now, and
I know I try to move in a linear fashion,
but time sometimes like things stand out. You said you
started to write a novel, So what happened with the
novel writing? How long did you commit to it and
when did you think, Man, I'm not very good at this,

(22:28):
and where did that lead you next? So when I
graduated law school, I decided I was going to write
this novel, and if I was going to do so,
I was going to move somewhere, live somewhere that it
always wanted to be. It basically came down to two
different places for me, Hawaii or Montana. I chose to
go to Montana. I drove with my dog up north
with no real destination. I got to western Montana. I

(22:51):
didn't know a guy in the area. He put me
up for a couple of days and I started looking
in the paper for a cabin to rent. I rented
this cabin and the I think then seventy five year
old lady said do you know horses? Do you need
a job? And I said, I know a little bit,
and I do need a job. So she put me
in touch with her son who had a ranch in

(23:11):
the area. He was a hunting outfitter in Montana. He
took tourists or hunters on big elk and ram and
moose hunts up in the mountains of Montana. I worked
for him for a year and spent my off time
writing this horrendous novels. I did finish it, not unlike
what we were talking about earlier. I committed myself to

(23:31):
the project. And then, as I mentioned, after my dad
died and I moved back on the oldest of four
my youngest brothers, ten years younger than me, I wanted
to be around as he was graduating from high school.
I went ahead and finished that novel. But in that process,
Clay not only that I realized my novel was crap,
but I also realized this is a really terrible way
to make a living. But I had also started to

(23:53):
develop this entrepreneurial bug. So I wanted to marry writing
and media and business together, and that meant for me.
In the beginning newspapers. I didn't come from the kind
of money will you go say, I'm going to buy
a radio station, But I was capable of learning the
business and scrapping together enough money to buy small town

(24:13):
weekly newspapers in Texas. And I started to do that
and built a little business of three, four five community
newspapers that I eventually sold to a conglomerate. All Right,
I want to get back to that. But I'm fascinated
by the Montana experience because this is like yellow Stone
writ large. I've never been to Montana. I've never been
to what I would call the real West uh and,

(24:35):
and I mean, you know, outside of California, Washington, Vegas,
you know that area, even Colorado. I really want to
get up there. What what time of year did you
go to Montana? What was it like? You lived in
a cabin by yourself, writing writing a novel? Like did
you know anybody? Did you make any friends? Like? What
kind of social interactions did you have there? So I
took the bar, which, as you know, was probably in

(24:57):
about July. I went home and hung out my buddies
for the month of August, or at least part of
that month, and I moved to Montana in August early September,
and I lived there for a year. My friend was
the rancher that I worked for, a year old cowboy.
I had another buddy who was his nephew, and I
hung out with his son some. But the truth is,
I'm pretty comfortable spending time on my own. You know.

(25:20):
I look back sometimes Clay at my twenties and I go, Wow,
what if you'd been in New York City? Then what
if you had been in Los Angeles at that time?
Might have had some fun. And so I do look
back hunting go well. I made some choices to be
alone and work on a ranch, but I honestly I
wouldn't trade it for that that that momentary. What did
you do on the ranch? Like? Were you riding a

(25:42):
horse around like a cowboy? Like? What was your day
to day when you were living in Montana? Build fences, um,
throw bales of hay, stack him in the barn. And
then we were shoe horses, and then we were a
hunting outfitter. So in Montana and supposed to growing up
in Texas the way deer hunting was, and I don't

(26:03):
know what it's like in Tennessee, probably the same as Texas.
It's pretty small land. It's often a feeder. You sit
in a box of blinds and wait for the deer
to come. In Montana, you ride back into government land.
I believe the land in Montana is government land. You ride,
in our case, thirteen miles back into a camp. We

(26:24):
had you stay back in there a week and my
job was to pack the mules, take everything on and off.
Learn how to saddle everybody's horse, put it together. Learn
how to pack a mule, bring him into camp, stay
for four or five days, take him out of camp.
I wasn't a hunting guid. I didn't know the area
well enough to be that. But I was essentially like
the low man on the totem pole. Hey, get the horses,

(26:44):
saddle the horses, pack the mules. Do you ever have
any grizzly bear experiences? Man, I have never seen a
grizzly bear. And I just did this trip fifteen states,
seven thousand miles, hit every state in the West, including Yellowstone,
and I've never seen a grizzly So I mean, was
that a fear when you guys were taking people into
the into the camping area where you cognizant of the

(27:06):
danger of grizzly bears? Was that talked about at all?
It was definitely talked about. I don't know that it
was a fear. I remember when I moved to Montana.
I was talking this old guy and I have a
three seven. I have a lot of guns, not in
New York, but I had at seven and I carried
up there to kind of have his my side arm.
Should we go out into the mountains. And this whole
guy said to me, you know what you can do

(27:27):
with this gun? Will I was like, what, you need
to file the sights off so that you can get
a bear. It's useful with a bear because it file
the sights off. Why would I do that? He said,
So when that grizzly takes it to you and takes
it from me and shoves up your butt, it won't
hurt of that. That's pretty fantastic, all right. So I'm
fascinated by the entire like the Montana experience, because I

(27:49):
graduated from law school and moved to the Caribbean, which
is obviously a different experience. But you said you talked
about Hawaii potentially. I got married, took the bar, we
moved to the Caribbean. I spent a couple of years
down there in the US Verse in Islands as an attorney.
I'm still licensed down there. And that was a crazy
unique life experience that my wife and I had. We
didn't have kids yet, all those things. So you come

(28:10):
back and how successful is this business to start to
buy small newspapers because this is before the internet was
taken off. But did you start to look around and say, hey,
maybe the print paper business is not necessarily the wave
of the future. Yeah. So I picked two niches that
I thought insulated me from circulation to claim. So the

(28:30):
first was I wanted to buy community newspapers in the
growth path of Dallas. Dallas is an absolutely booming metropolis
to this day and has been for about twenty years.
I mean, fortune companies situating their headquarters in suburbs north
of Dallas, Homes going up everywhere. I mean, by default, Clay,

(28:52):
my circulation should go up because thousands of people are
moving in on a monthly basis. So I picked suburban
growth path cities to buy newspapers to insulate myself from
circulation decline. And in the other niche I was interested
in was the Latino market because it was also a
demographic that was absolutely booming. So, knowing that print was declining,

(29:15):
I wanted to find some demographics and markets that were
growing to offset that. How many business how many employees
did you have? How would you assess the overall success
of the business. Because you're a young guy to be
doing this, Yeah, I mean I had I think, uh,
probably at most somewhere around ten a dozen employees. It
was definitely a small business, but it was an absolute success.

(29:38):
I mean I didn't get generationally wealthy or set myself
up for life, but you know, I quadrupled my money
and quadrupled my investment on the in and out over
a three year period. It was it was a good idea. Okay,
so you finded your quadruple your money, You've done a
small business, you've graduated from law school. What then? So

(30:00):
I had made some money and I was entrepreneurly inclined.
So then that brings me to the Latino market. The
other market I wanted to be involved in was the
Hispanic market. Actually switched terms there for a reason. So
the word Hispanic is a government since this created term,
it doesn't mean a lot. It actually masks over the
differences of people from Chile to Puerto Rico, Mexico to

(30:21):
Argentina and pretend that they're all the same. What more,
it treats everybody who is a first generation immigrant to
a third generation immigrant exactly as they are the same.
So I had to find something what is truly applicable
appealing to everybody in the quote unquote Hispanic market, and
sports doesn't even actually qualify because Caribbean nations are more

(30:44):
into baseball where Latin American nations are more into soccer.
So what could I find? It truly appealed to everyone.
My wife is from West Texas. In West Texas there's
much bigger Latino population there is where I grew up,
at least at that time. Now most of Texas has
a very large Latino population. So one of the few
things that everybody from Mexico to Puerto Rico, or actually

(31:07):
Puerto Rico's to one outlier, but Mexico to Cuba to
South America do is when a young girl turns fifteen,
she has the Kington era. It's a big coming of
age party. It's like a bot mitzvah if you're Jewish,
or a debutante ball if you're from the South. It
looks like a wedding. It's a huge consumer event. It's
massively important. And at that time, or just prior to that,

(31:29):
I had gotten married. My wife brought home The Knot.
Do you remember the Not? The magazine and website that
helps you play it's a great business. And I used
to see that she brought home that magazine. I was like,
look at this thing. It's at the editorial content is
the advertisements they're getting paid to fill out their home pages.

(31:50):
So I modeled the business on the knot and started
this magazine, website and event company to help young Latina
girls plan their Kensan era. How about that? That is amazing?
So how successful were you as a Keen signior And
was this around the time that wasn't there a MTV
show like the Keenson Era like concept? Was this before

(32:13):
that or around the same time? I think I was
a little before that, and then you were like a
kes era. Uh so, how I mean? It sounds like
it's a crazy idea, but also one that was likely
to work. Did it work? So here's this business story.
I raised outside financing from this from a hedge fund,
some guys that I truly respect. The business got off

(32:35):
to a great start. We got it off the ground,
quickly acquired a place in the market with the consumer
and the advertisers. I made plenty of my own entrepreneurial mistakes,
and I believe any entrepreneur has to own their own failures.
Two thousand nine happens a recession, and when you were
playing in a tight niche, you don't have a lot
of room for a market downturn. So at that time

(32:58):
advertising drives up, the business gets tougher, and I have
to make a decision do you go back to the
well and raise more money? And then, as anybody who
starts a business like this, ask yourself, what's the exit potential?
Is it worth it on the back end for the
money I'd have to raise two hopefully cash in on
the exit. And we decided it was not. It was

(33:19):
a failure. I failed. Yeah, I always supportant about that,
Clay go ahead. I'm sorry, No, No, I was gonna say,
what did you learn? Because that's that's I think the
biggest question that comes. I mean, this is wins and losses,
and everybody wants to win, but I think oftentimes you
can learn more losing way more than anything I ever
learned from winning way more so. The biggest thing I
learned is this, I know how to make money. I

(33:39):
know how to succeed. What I need to be cognizant
of is I need to be passionate every day about
the actual content that I am putting out, about the
actual business that I'm engaged in. And for better or worse,
King Sanerra's and the passions of fifteen year old Latino
girls were not my passion and I made which, by

(34:01):
the way, would be a lot creepier if it was
if you were like, yeah, you know, if I were,
if you're like, you know what I'm really passionate about
as a you know, thirty five year old grown man
fifteen year old girl parties, you'd be like, I don't
know about that, dude. You might get rich, but you
might also go to jail. Um. That's exactly the lesson

(34:21):
I learned. And then I said to myself, Okay, whatever
you do next, just really care. And from growing up
at the dinner table debating with my dad to law
school in the Socratic method, in the topics that I
cared about, I always cared about debate, ideas, conversation, and
I just decided at that time, whatever I do next,
I'm going to care about it. And this is kind

(34:43):
of what I care about. I care about debating the
most important ideas in society. So from there you go,
what's the next step. So this is around two thousand
and ten eleven. What's the year and what's the next step?
So the next step is I start Because I don't
ever been an entrepreneur and never had a job. As
I mentioned earlier, I started with a television pilot. I

(35:05):
produced a TV pilot. I decided everything on TV was
not worthy of the national moment. It was Obama McCain,
or maybe it was Obama Romney, I can't remember the moment,
but it was important, and I created television pilot. It
really didn't go anywhere because, as you know at that time,
networks like Fox or CNN or ESPN for that matter,

(35:26):
don't really buy outside programming. They do it themselves. But
what it did do is it led a relationship. Led
to a relationship for me with National Review, which is
a conservative political magazine. And I am conservative with a
libertarian bent in my political ideology. So I started doing
stuff for National Review for free. This gets to the
first question you asked me. I was always doing stuff

(35:49):
for free, always doing stuff below market, whether or not
it was going to work for small town newspapers in
Central Texas when I had a law degree and my
buddies were making a d twenty thousand dollars a year
out of law school and I would make nineteen dollars
writing articles on the school board in Atlanto, Texas or
working for free at National Review. I told them I'll

(36:09):
do this, but in exchange, I want you to introduce
me to everybody you know in television. And the first
relationship that really sent me to was Fox News and
so I started doing stuff for Fox News for free again.
And then one night, after I built up enough television appearances,
I guessed at the email address of the president of

(36:29):
CNN that time. His name was John Klein, and I
guessed it was first name dot last name at Turner
dot com or something, and I sent him an email
and said, you really need somebody like me at CNN.
Here's a clip, and he responded within fifteen minutes. You're right,
come on in, let's talk. That's amazing. And so what

(36:50):
did you do at CNN? So, by the way, what
was the first time you were on air ever? Do
you remember what you were talking about? I don't remember
when exactly it was, but it would have probably been
on Fox News dot com. They used to have a
show called the Strategy Room, And I have no idea
what I was talking about, but that our first time
on bombitcare? Now that did you go back and watch?

(37:12):
The reason why I ask is did you go back
and watch yourself on television because one of the things
that I think is fascinating is, um, you're coming from
the writing side, and uh, you know, I started writing
that I did a radio, that I did TV. I
liked you the first time I ever did television. You
have to learn how to do television right. You could
be there as some people who are better at it

(37:33):
like anything else, Like right, there's some people who step
on a basketball court and the first time they shoot
a basketball, they look natural doing it. But there are
other people who have to work at it a little bit.
And the example I like to use is you have
to stare right at the television camera or it looks weird, right.
And that's something that people have never been on television
don't understand. But if you have a normal conversation with
somebody and you stare at them the whole time, that

(37:56):
looks super weird. So automatically, just by being on tell vision,
you have to do something that is counter to whatever
you would do in a normal relationship. And the reason
why I bring it up is the first time I
ever went on television, I went back and watched and
somebody kept saying, Man, what were you seeing out of
the corner of your eye. It was because I was
averting my gaze right Like I wasn't staring at the
camera because I was treating the camera like it was

(38:19):
someone else's eyes. But on television, if somebody's not looking
directly at you, you're like, oh, that person is shifting.
You can't trust them, And it would be the exact
opposite and an in person relationship. So that's why I asked, like,
the first time that you go on, did you go
back and like sort of scout yourself and be like, Oh,
I did well there. I moved too much there, Like

(38:39):
how did you self assess? Because you're good at television,
how did you self scout to get better? Was there
any sort of epiphany you had as you were doing television?
So I have a couple of things to say on that.
When you first started asking me the question, I almost
dismissed it internally because I was like, just be yourself,
be second nature, be smart. And I do think that's
where you get Eventually, a guy like you, Clay, who

(39:01):
is smart, You're gonna go in. You're gonna have unique thoughts,
You're gonna be brave enough to share them. Television dynamics
be damned. All of that is small fries compared to
actually giving people good, intelligent, unique content. That being said,
as you were talking about the question, I did remember
that my first real big boy television appearance was on
Fox and Friends, and it was in the studio. And

(39:24):
not only is it unnatural to stare into a black box,
as you said, but there's all these other external input.
Two or three people usher you to a chair very quickly.
They put this thing in your ear that you've never
had before, and all of a sudden you hear things
that are distracting you from what you're thinking about. They
clip a mic on and out the corner of your
eye you see the other people in the studio, which
normal circumstances you would be talking directly to talking to

(39:46):
another black box. And then these lights flashed down in
your face, and everything is distracting you from exactly what
it is you want to say and be natural and
be smart, but you get conditioned to it. I mean,
if somebody gives you the opportunity, and that's key, if
they give you the opportunity to actually take some balls,
take some strikes, take some cuts to plate, then you

(40:07):
will get used to all of that. I'll tell you this, man,
I don't go back and watch myself now, and I
don't know. I might be a mistake. I really probably should,
but I can barely stand to watch myself, much like
I don't watch. I don't watch now. I thought early on,
because it's a new discipline. I wanted to know what
what I looked like to other people. Um And now

(40:28):
I never go back and watch, and I don't go
back and listen very much to radio anymore. But early
on in radio, I noticed that I had ticks right.
I would say, there would be words that are unnecessary
that I would use, and I tried to knock it out, like,
for instance, I remember the first time I went on
starting to go on as a guest, I said, you

(40:49):
know all the time, and and somebody like somebody reached
out and they said, did you realize that during the
course of that fifteen minute interview you said, you know
seventy eight times? So I no way. And you go
back and you listen, and you realize we all have
speech patterns, and maybe you're a little bit more nervous,
and so you tend to feel like you need to

(41:09):
fill that silence and so you learn how to do
it better. But I think you can overtrain right and uh,
but I think early on there are important lessons that
you can pick up because doing television well require some
unnatural reactions in order to look natural, if that makes sense. Well,

(41:30):
talking about those verbal ticks, there's a contagion at places
like MSNBC. It's not just that you have to wear eyeglasses,
but that you say the word right at the end
of every sentence, so that that's forced the listener to
agree with every point you're making. Right. And so I
have another really intelligent point that I'm gonna need to
put these glasses on four and you're gonna like it right.
And I can't stand that verbal tick that is seemingly

(41:56):
contagious at MSNBC. Um, you don't win. There's something you
and I agree on, and that is the best mechanism
for developing your thoughts. And the best medium out there
is absolutely radio. You talked about honing your craft and
how you talk. Radio teaches you, I think the right
way to do it, because you first of all have

(42:16):
a big runway, you have elbow room. You can actually
explain your thoughts. You can connect with the listener in
a way then no other platform really can connect. But
you shouldn't take that for granted. And I think most
people who in radio do take it for granted. They think,
turn the blue light on, start talking, and I will
be interesting enough, And it's not true. So what you
learn to hone is the order of your thoughts. Tell

(42:39):
the audience what you're talking about, tell them what your
point of view is, give them almost your conclusion to start,
and then back it up after so they know what
the hell we're talking about. You do continue throughout your
career to learn how to hone your message in a
way that makes people want to listen. And I think
radio is absolutely the best mechanism learning that. How did

(43:01):
you go from CNN to ESPN? So that in my career,
art to me is the least interesting part of my
career because at that point it becomes more traditional. So
at some point at CNN and then there was a
little stretch Clay where I had some appearances on the
view and there was the potential for me to become

(43:22):
one of the first male hosts. Yeah yeah. In fact,
I got to know Whoopi Goldberg during that time, went
out to her house asked her for career advice. But
throughout that process, I decided that the career wasn't going
where I wanted to go. So I switched agents. I
switched to C A A, which I know you're there.
I'm no longer at A, but I switched to C

(43:44):
A A. I switched to Nick con and Nick has
deep relationships in sports. Um he knew that I had
deep interest in sports, and he started to guide me
towards the ESPN. I developed relationships with some people. There's
some very good people there, like Rob Savanelli invested in me,
who understands what it is to think outside the box.
And it actually took a couple of years for those

(44:06):
relationships to coalesce into hiring me at ESPN. But it really,
honestly is a more traditional hiring process than sending a
dude an email in the middle of the night. So
let's talk about ESPN and some of the ways that
sports media covers sports in general. You obviously had a
lot of success at ESPN. You mentioned your radio show.

(44:28):
You mentioned you didn't mention it, but you were on
first take. Did you feel comfortable sharing what you actually
thought initially at ESPN and why do you think it
is in sports media. We talked a lot about political
bias that exists in the media at large, but I
would argue that there is more of a self selecting

(44:50):
bias almost in sports than in the political arena at all.
Why do you think that is. There's a couple of
broad questions, but I'm just kind of curious what your
experience was there. When I first joined the ESPN, I
first got a little more invested in the sports media world,
and I should say in the sports media world, because
you asked me earlier, was I always invested in sports?

(45:11):
My first real memory is NFC Championship game. It's versus
the Cowboys and Joe Montana throwing up a prayer that
Dwight Clark brings down and catch him on his fingers
and make six year old Will cry. I have loved
sports since I was a kid, deeply and paid attention
at every step. But when I really joined the espiis
when I started paying attention to sports media. And I

(45:34):
came across you, and one of the things you said
at that time was sports media is even more insular
and more monolithic in terms of point of view than
political media. And you were absolutely right. It is further
left and more monolithically left than any other news media,

(45:55):
and that is saying something because the rest of news
is also incredibly biased and leaning left. Um, why does
that happen? So there's a self selection mechanism, like you
talked about, of people who choose to go into media.
I think, just like most people in the oil industry
tend to be conservative, the people that choose to go
into media tend to be on the left. But that

(46:17):
doesn't mean it's exclusive. There are people who share my
points of view, and this now brings in the other
self selection mechanism. What you bring up is whether or
not you want to share those out loud. It wasn't
hard for me at all. Man. I had come from
politics that was much more rough and tumble, and I
was maybe even naive that my point of view would
be so out of the ordinary in sports. So I

(46:40):
never thought twice. I never thought about the cost, not
that I would have changed anyway, because I don't really
think I have that capability, but it's only increased. And
you know that everyone listening knows that. I mean, if
you share a point of view that the guardians of
sports media, whether or not. Those are the critics, the loggers,

(47:01):
the on air talentcy executives, whoever it may be, don't
like you are absolutely at risk of being branded a racist.
You're at risk of being branded someone on the wrong
side of history and that moral and you really should,
in their estimation, have your platform taken away? Has that
gotten worse every year as you were at ESPN And

(47:21):
do you attribute that to social media? Do you attributed
to Donald Trump? I think everything you said is true.
Why did it continue to grow? It seems like to
me because you talked about earlier in our conversation the
fact that you got a twelve year old and you're
not sure if college is the right idea for him,
because college used to be, in a traditional sense, a

(47:42):
place where people went to challenge their mind. You may
not be a communist, but you learn about communism. You
may not be a hard core capitalist, but you learn
about capitalism. Right. You challenge your mind so that you're
more comfortable and aware of the world. You expand your
universe of comprehension. It seems to me now that so
much of what goes on is sideloed and you're only

(48:03):
allowed to have one idea I've seen it just grow
at an exponential rate. Since all the Corona bros out
there are worried about exponential growth, what I have seen
to actually grow exponentially is in my career. So I
started out kicking two thousand eleven. Um. You know, we
were a zany kind of fun, college football centered sports
site for several years, and then along the way, I

(48:27):
was like, wait a minute, Suddenly there's only one opinion
that you can have, and it seems like it's just
accelerated to such an extent where here as we set
having this conversation in it feels almost like the McCarthy era.
Obviously we're super young, but we study history where there's
only one right answer for things. How did you see

(48:47):
that evolve inside of ESPN and also just in the
larger sports media. She's had a couple of things there
I want to respond to. Let's start with college and
then we'll get to sports media and ESPN. I've been
having this conversation with myself as drove around the country.
You talked about the role of college in the traditional
success path of the American dream. It's absolutely true. You
can see the stats were at large if a child

(49:09):
goes to college, the likelihood he makes X dollars is
multiplied exponentially. The likelihood he's going to be a success
goes remarkably up. And we should therefore obviously focus on
education higher education. But I've been thinking about that more
and more. What does that require? What does that mean?
And what it means is you're going to go to
an institution where they are going to require you to

(49:31):
fall into lockstep with their point of view. And even
if you were okay with that in exchange for being
a success in life, I would ask you what is
success in It's going into corporate America and then falling
into other institutions which are shown to be some of
the most spineless leaders in American history, who will say

(49:51):
if you don't fall inline, not only were not going
to promote you, if you don't submit to the majority
point of view, or rather, i'm sorry, the minority ex
dreamly loud point of view, then we're going to potentially
fire you. I started thinking about who I want my
sons to be. I'm like, is being rich that important?
Is being quote unquote successful so important that you have

(50:12):
to sell out your principles, your values, your manhood, that
you have to just fall in line, that you have
to agree or be fired, that you tuck your tail
between your legs and you went for your way to
your golden handcuffs. I don't want that for my kids.
Don't want them to be men and if college and
that traditional success path to find that's the kind of
person they're gonna be. I have real doubts and concerns

(50:34):
about it. I'd rather them go be a man in
Montana and learn how to make a living on his
own and live by his own principles. That's what I
am right now. But again, I'm all talked. I got
six years to figure this out. That's fantastic. And then
the other part of that, because that was such an
interesting answer, like the evolution at your time at ESPN,
did you see a sort of what I would say

(50:57):
is shrinking of the the universe of acceptable opinion? To
kind of sum it up, like it seems as if
with social media and sports media in particular, that the
number of opinions that someone is allowed to have the
space for those opinions has increasingly shrunk. Would you agree
with that and did you notice it? And how would
you attribute that to occurring? Why did it occur? So

(51:21):
let's talk about ESPN and the sports media and why occurred.
So I will say this, no one in five years
at ESPN ever told me what to say or what
I could not say. No one at ESPN made me
feel unwanted. The executives there, I truly believe wanted most
of the time me on the network. There might have
been times when they thought I'm not right for a

(51:42):
certain show or a certain audience. They might have had
their doubts about me personally. I'll never know because they
didn't share it. But I felt fairly comfortable at ESPN
in terms of support. But I was an outlier. Everybody
knows that. You know that my opinion was in the
minority there. In two thousand sixteen, you really saw this
stuff take off, right Colin Kaepernick Niels and we begin

(52:05):
to have these conversations around race. They weren't exclusively around race.
There was trans issues, There was issues about sexual assault charges.
We talked about principles earlier. Clay, I'm a big believer
in reasonable doubt, in burden of proof. Almost every accusation
against an athlete, be they black, white, man, or woman.
I just want you to make your case before you

(52:26):
brand and and totally condemned them as guilty. So all
of these issues are sensitive, and it starts to really
peak more than two thousand sixteen, and I do think
it goes away in sevent nine. And then the answer
your question, I don't think this is unique to ESPN.
I think it's in sports media writ large, and I
think it's in media at large. Over the last six months,

(52:47):
this idea that you can only have one a point
of view has absolutely had rocket boosters on it. Again,
it did never manifest in we don't want will on air.
ESPN supported me, they wanted me, they wanted me to
stay at ESPN. My contract was up and we were negotiating.
But I think the role of social media, the role
of blogs and critics, the role of like mindedness and

(53:09):
media has really forced everything to become monolithically one point
of view. How does it change fracturization. Honestly, it changes
with probably institutions like OutKick. It changes because media will
continue to be made up of smaller, more independent, more

(53:31):
independently minded organizations. From you and Jason and Bobby and
Ryan and all the guys over there to OutKick and
what you're doing to Portnoy and Big Cat and what
those guys are doing at barstool, guys like Ben Shapiro.
I think kata fracture up and that's where independence will
be earned. How much does creative freedom matter to you?

(53:55):
Being able to say exactly what you think and not
have to war worry about it costing you your job? Incredibly?
I loved the Will Kaine Show. I mean, Clay, you
do radio. I think you can probably identify with this.
I love the idea that there was three hours of
blank space every day and I pretty much could talk
about whatever I want. However I wanted to shape those

(54:17):
three hours meant the world to me. I just indicted
mainstream media and big media companies writ large. I will
say this to you, and I'm not saying it because
I'm being a good soldier. It was one of the
decisions that led me to joining them. But Fox News
is an institution that has shown backbone and leadership and
willingness to stand up against online mobs and cancel culture

(54:39):
and embrace I truly believe this embrace differing viewpoints on
their airwaves. I would there is no mainstream media, big
media company that I would rather work for. Than Fox News.
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox Sports

(54:59):
Radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio app.
Search f s R to listen live. We're talking to
Will Kaine Wins and Losses. I'm Clay Travis. Um. Why
do you think? So? Let me take a step back.
Did you feel as if you were disliked internally at
ESPN by other people on air because of your opinions

(55:22):
or did you have really good relationships with people behind
the scenes, even if publicly sometimes they disagreed with you.
How would you assess your overall experience with co workers
at ESPN given the fact that you were outspoken and
frankly sometimes uh not supported by a lot of other people,
at least publicly in what you were saying, The vast

(55:44):
majority relationships were really good. I mean that really good.
I hope they were all authentic. Um. I really think
that they did appreciate me, did like me, did take
the time to invest and understand who I am, why
I think what I think. I'm sure there are some
who didn't like me. The truth is about those that
didn't like me, we probably didn't interact a whole lot.

(56:05):
They probably didn't give me a shot, didn't really invest
in understanding who I was. But for the vast majority
of relationships whennot they were Stephen A. Smith or Marcus
Spears or Damie al Woody or Dan Orlovsky or Tim Hasselbeck,
there were good relationships that I sincerely hope to maintain.
How often would people come up to you at ESPN
and say, I don't want people to know it, but

(56:25):
I agree with a huge percentage of what you say,
keep doing it. It happened. It definitely happened. And you know, Clay,
I heard you talk about that because I remember you
talk about people that would send you messages behind I
I have a just so you know, and I'm this
is not going to shock you. There are I have
a lot of really good friends at ESPN. People are like, oh,

(56:46):
you know, I don't look I I have a lot
of really people that I considered to be good friends
and also good professional friends. And many of those people
reach out to me regularly and they say, man, I
love out kick, I love what you're doing. Keep doing it.
H You're right in a lot of the criticisms that
you levy about sports media and ESPN is obviously the
biggest mirror to reflect sports media. I don't think it's

(57:07):
an ESPN exclusive issue. I think they just are bigger,
so they magnify sometimes more. Uh So, I know there
is a deep well of people at ESPN with a
strong belief system in uh in things that might seem counterintuitive.
And Jason Whitlock, I thought recently said uh that that
he thinks that it goes on in sports media too,

(57:27):
where there's a lot of guys making seventy five thousand
dollars a year out there and they got to take
care of their family, and they're like, man, I can
say what I actually think on social media, but if
I do, I might lose my job, and then it's
not easy for me to go get another seventy five
or a hundred thousand dollar job. I'm fifty six years old.
I'm just trying to play out the thread on my career.
I think there's a huge number of people out there

(57:49):
like that. But I'm curious whether they come up to
you internally and whether you had some of those conversations
as well. I did, And I would say three things
in response to that. I think the number of people
who agree with what I have to say is actually growing.
I think as the points of view have gotten more extreme.
I'm not just talking about ESPN. I'm talking about in
the nation as a whole, but particularly in the media

(58:12):
as a whole, and the need even more particularly in
sports media, has gotten more extreme. I think more people
are um gravitating to my positions once they see grounded
in reason and rationality, and they're starting to see the
cost of some of these extreme points of view. Trust me,
I live in New York City. I can tell you firsthand.
I have seen the cost of these kind of ideas implemented.

(58:36):
Number two, Um, I can't help it, and I would
tell my friends this. I am a little disappointed sometimes
that they feel this way privately but don't say it publicly.
I mean sometimes it can be even as as an
oxuous is saying I think wil Kaine is good or
Wilkaine is right, or you know, one of those statements

(58:56):
that somehow ends up being controversial. I do wish a
little bit people were more forthcoming with their points of view.
But then my third point is I understand, just like
you said with Whitlock, I understand it's a very rational
choice to make to be quiet. Your job will probably
be threatened, your reputation will most definitely be threatened, And

(59:16):
so I understand why people would make those very rational
self preservationist um choices. How often have you written a
tweet and deleted it before you sent it? Um? This
is a real weakness in my game. I don't love Twitter.
I don't love social media. You're really good at it,

(59:37):
you truly are. I don't tweet a ton. You probably
know that, and it's good for your career. You as
in the proverbial you everyone because you have to be heard.
I just think it's a really crap platform, Clay. I
just don't think it lends itself to any sort of
really interesting thoughts. It doesn't lend itself to back and force.
It's extremely negative, and I actually think, like your colleague

(01:00:01):
Jason has said inny Times, I actually think it's a
really big contributors to the negativity going on in society.
So I don't really tweet delete, tweet delete, I just
honestly don't tweet that much. I need to, I need
to tweet more. I know it's good for my career,
and I get all myself about it. I just don't
like the platform. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I I

(01:00:22):
totally understand that that perspective, and I feel like Twitter
has been great for me personally and awful for the
country as a whole. And that dichotomy that I feel is,
I do think it. It has helped to elevate what
we do at out kick, It's helped to distribute our
ideas to a larger audience. But I also think that

(01:00:44):
the overall tone of Twitter is so negative. I'll tell
you what I've done, and and this has been really
in the last couple of years. I rarely read mentions, right,
other than the people that I follow, Like I'll go
and see what they're tweeting about and stuff like that.
I enjoy it, and certainly I enjoy it for news,
but it's it's interesting, Like as a writer, I learned

(01:01:04):
years and years ago never read the mentions to what
people write but below your article, and I would never
do it. But there's something seductive, and certainly our industry
creates a lot of narcissists, right, I mean, it's not
a surprise that if you decide you want to be
on television or you want people to pay attention to you,
that you may well have narcissistic tendencies. And what Twitter creates,
I believe, is the idea that everybody cares about everything

(01:01:27):
that you think because there's one or two people constantly
in your mentioned saying it. And I think the mentions
are actually more troubling and problematic than the actual megaphone
of Twitter. And so what I've found is it's like
every YouTube comment threat eventually ends in a fight. If
you're a sports fan and you go on any sports

(01:01:47):
message board, people start off talking about whether the backup
quarterbacks should be starting or not, and eventually it ends
up in an attack between two different people over something
that has nothing to do with it. Most of what
people say on Twitter, even the mentions underneath what I
have said or what you have said, I have found
is about them, not about you. And it's not that
efficient or effective of a use of time. It's a megaphone,

(01:02:09):
not a conversational device. And once I kind of got
that idea around it and stopped caring about what people
say in response, I think that has been a more
effective tool for me to use to go out. Well
a couple of things. I think that's really disciplined. That
shows a lot of disciplines, and I look at your mentions.
It's the right choice. But it's also actually a pretty
difficult thing to do because everyone's instinct is what are

(01:02:32):
people saying about what I just said said, which is why,
which is why, which is why the app works. Right.
It goes right into our primal instinct to see what
other people think about us, whether they like it, whether
they retweet it, whether they hate us like it's a
It goes to the primal instincts. I understand why it works,
and yes, it is fascinating. Yeah, you brought up narcissism,

(01:02:53):
and you're absolutely right about the people that choose to
go into media are largely narcissistic in some way. Now,
what is narcissism. It is not confidence, but it's insecurity.
It's a need for an ego feed and it's the
opposite of how I like to engage. I just sung
the praises of the platform of radio to you just
a moment ago, but I treated radio as an open forum.
If you disagreed with me, I wanted you to call in.

(01:03:15):
I know you've done the same thing because all the time, yes,
I want to hear you, I want you to challenge
my ideas. Where Twitter is full of that insecurity. See,
that's how a man handles his business. In my mind,
that is confidence, that is quote unquote face to face
right where Twitter, I feel, is full of even more
insecurity and more little backstabby, back and forth fight. I'm

(01:03:37):
gonna give you an example that this isn't about you, Okay.
I haven't agreed with everything you had to say on coronavirus. Honestly,
I think you're probably right on coronavirus. But that's higher
percentage that my wife believes, by the way, so I'll
take it. Well. I think you were, especially in the beginning.
I think you were a little too dismissive of coronavirus.
I think you're having totally totally wrong. I got the

(01:03:58):
I believe the China numbers, which was a failure. I
trusted the WHO. Yeah, like it's right. I mean, you know,
I try to get my facts right, and when I
base an opinion on a failed fact factual model, I
mean that's what actually makes me feel sick to my stomach.
Not being wrong about who's gonna win a game? Right,

(01:04:18):
like whatever you can, but when your facts are wrong,
it leads you to the wrong destination, and that's one
of the big problems with Twitter. There's a lot of
factual and accuracies in general. But yes, sorry to cut
you off. Yes that is I'll take that's higher than
my wife. Um. By the way, I do that with everybody,
and it's a sign of respect. I think to sell
someone where I think they were wrong, I don't like

(01:04:38):
the oh you're always right stuff. Yeah, Um, I think
you were also wrong on Greg Siano. For what it's worth,
I don't think what you did at University of Tennessee
was a good thing. I thought you didn't give him
the benefit of the doubt, as we talked about burden
of proof earlier. But all I'm doing by that, it's
not rehashing those debates with you. I'm telling you like
I'm willing to tell everyone where I think they're wrong.
And I don't see it as a sign of disrespect.
I see it as the opposite, a sign kind of respect.

(01:05:01):
And now to take this back to full circle, by
the way, you're right on almost everything. Otherwise, I mean,
you're right we should play college football. You're right on
on on a lot of these things. But I saw
that back and forth with Revel and I'm just like,
you know, I can have a conversation with Clay about
coronavirus for a while. It may not be that interesting
because we might mostly agree. But whatever is going on
with Rebel and Clay right now, it's probably entertaining for

(01:05:22):
a lot of people, But like you know, it's not productive.
You know, it's not working to help solve the issue.
It's it's just you guys going back and forth at
each other and really extending no goodwill to each other.
By the way, Clay, I don't think you're wrong on
that side of the debate. I think Darren is wrong.
I think Darren is like all these guys you call
Corona Bros. And caving into I guess the new normal,

(01:05:45):
which has not been the curve but zero percent transmission
rate and peddling in fear. I think Darren is doing
all of those things. But I just don't feel personally
compelled to go to Twitter and have that fight with him. Yeah,
it's an interesting boy. I like Darren. You know, I
consider Darren to be a friend. He may be that
with me now, and this kind of goes to, uh,
the way I live life in general. It's really hard

(01:06:06):
to offend me and what And I'm curious if you've
found this. I mean, I think you may well be
similar in that respect. If somebody disagrees with me, I
take my opinion seriously, but I don't take myself very seriously.
And so if somebody's like, hey, you're an idiot for
that opinion, I'm wide open to the idea that I

(01:06:26):
might be wrong, right, it doesn't bother me. And maybe
that's the lawyer as well, where you're used to having
to make opinions and sometimes the judge comes down or
the court comes down, or whoever. The deciding factor is
if you're in law school, mood court, mock trial, whatever
it is, somebody comes down and says, hey, this side
with a better argument. And so that's kind of how
the law works. One side wins, one side loses. It's

(01:06:47):
adversarial and system kind of like sports. And so I
don't get upset, and I have short memories even for
people who attack me. And I don't know if that's
a character benefit or a character flaw. Is what my
wife says is you're the guy if if people say
ten negatives and one person says a positive, you remember
the positive and and and it is true, like that

(01:07:09):
helps you on Twitter. That's that's true. So I I
have a psychology where I don't get that worked up
by people being disagreeing with me. Does that makes sense?
Like it? It doesn't really kind of, And I don't
know what that is about my psychology. I think I
know what it is. Would ane it? Well? I think

(01:07:31):
you're confident in who you are. It's it's you know.
Somebody asked me for radio advice this morning, and I
told him exactly what you just said. Take what you
say very seriously. Do not take yourself seriously. But the
corollary to that is if you're confident enough about who
you are, not just being told you're wrong. But in
the case of my radio show, I allowed people in
the air to say you are a racist to me

(01:07:51):
on air. I required them to back it up, and
I sometimes got mad, but I usually got over it
pretty quickly. I do have a hot temper, but I
get over it pretty quickly, and I will let that
person come back on my radio show. But the end
underlying factor is I know who I am and they
get to define it. I define who I am. I
imagine you feel somewhat the same way. So I don't

(01:08:13):
hold really big grudges, but I don't get that mad
when somebody tells me I'm wrong. Yeah, I'm very confident
in what I believe and if I were. What I
always say is the people you have to watch out
for are the people that are trying too hard to
tell you what they are. And what I mean by
that is I've just seen it happen in social media
so many times. Like, the guys who are the biggest

(01:08:34):
creeps are not the people who are out there, uh,
They're the people that are out there going way over
the top with stuff, right Like, time after time after time,
they're trying to cover up for something. I'll give you
an easy example, the people who are fundamentally like opposed
to gay people. It's amazing how often those people are
actually gay. What they're actually combating is their internal interest

(01:08:57):
in the same sex, and so they are tacking it
way over the top aggressive right. For me, I always
even back at seventeen or eighteen years old, I grew
up in Nashville. I didn't know any gay people really
very much growing up, but we went away to college
there was a lot of gw My first thought as
an eighteen year old was I love gay dudes. That's
a lot less competition for girls, Like I still don't

(01:09:19):
understand why, guys, that isn't the number one reaction when
you're an eighteen year old college kid and the campus
is swarming with girls like GW had a huge gay population,
and I was like, man, this is awesome for me.
There's a lot better options that I'm gonna have because
those good looking dudes are gay and they're not interested
in girls at all. Right, Like, maybe that it's self interested,
but I don't care very much about what other people

(01:09:42):
think or do. And I heard you say your libertarian
bent earlier, like I want for like I believe in
capitalism and I believe in free speech. And I obviously
got in trouble on CNN c ann perspective for saying
I believe in the First Amendment, Boobs. I'm a heterosexual
guy who likes most things that heterosexual guys like. But
that does it mean that everybody has to be a
heterosexual guy. But I also don't think we should apologize

(01:10:05):
for our masculinity, which is a big part of I
think several of your different stories, like we have feminized
so many things that seems to be in this country
that men are shrinking from the responsibilities of manhood. And
you know, like having a disagreement is not a bad thing,
right uh and and having a face taking along of it.

(01:10:25):
Losing is not like losing is not a bad thing.
That's that's how you grow as an individual. In fact,
I think I totally agree. There's lots of un fact
with what you just said. Let me just see if
I can remember a couple of them. First. I totally
agree that the people that seeing the loudest about their
own virtues and cast the most accusations usually are hiding
something big, bad, and ugly. I think most of the

(01:10:45):
people that yell racist at everybody else online make I
would suspect because I have seen it in my private
life some of the most racist Amen. Amen, yes, um.
And it applies across the spectrum um every issue. I
feel like the ones that preached the loudest and cast
the biggest accusations are really talking about themselves in some way. Um,

(01:11:09):
what else did you talk about? I said I was
going to remember, but I'm masculinity. I think you probably
agree in many ways with Like I have three boys,
do you have four? To us by the way, I
wish i'd had one more. I would keep going, I
would have a fourth. My wife is tap has has
said that you can't, we can't have any more kids.
But I've got three boys. I try to think about

(01:11:30):
the world in which I want to raise them. And
it's okay to be in touch with your emotions. I'm
fine with that, but when your emotions tip over into fear,
I don't want to raise children who are afraid of
the world. And I used that earlier as example. I
said this today, I took my kindergartener to school. All
my kids are gonna be going to in person school.

(01:11:51):
I think it's important. I've talked to my kids about
the coronavirus the same way eight percent of the times correct,
as you said, But I've tried to talk to them
as adults to understand that you can't allow fear to
dictate all the choices that you make. And it seems
to me that as a society, we are treating fear
as if it is something to be avoided, as opposed

(01:12:14):
to something that is to be accepted and understood as
a part of adulthood, and that troubles me in many ways.
And so I think about that from the parenting perspective.
What am I trying to instill in my kids? We
talked about when you and I both went away to college,
maybe we were a little bit uh soft, right, um?
And I think the world creates a lot of soft people,
and when hard times come, I'm not sure that soft

(01:12:37):
people can cope. Does that make sense? Man? You are
singing my song, Fear is winning the day in the world.
I've been saying this on some of this media tour
that I've been going through. I think corporate leadership is
absolutely beholden to fear. Right now, you can go read
my interview with Bobby Burrack at OutKick dot com see
what I had to say about that. But I want
to say something different about what you just said about

(01:12:59):
raising boys and racing fear. I have sat at the
top of a cliff with my youngest son, who was
a little more less of a daredevil than my oldest son,
and said, we're going to jump. We're going to jump
into this ocean. We're gonna take this jump. And he's afraid,
and I said to him, fear is rational, Fear is fine.

(01:13:19):
Don't be embarrassed about fear. Fear is absolutely part of life.
The only question is what do you do with fear?
Do you let it win? Do you let it dictate
your next action. You should feel fear. It's rational. It's
telling you by the way that bear is big, I
want to run. But if it's a black bear, you
should not run. You should stand tall, you should act big,

(01:13:41):
you should be loud, you should back down the bear.
The fear is okay, but what you do with the
fear is what's important. I don't care much about skateboarding Clay,
but I got both of my boys into skateboarding when
they were young, and I got him into it for
that reason. I wanted him to learn to drop in,
to crash on concrete, to over um their fear. I
never wanted them to be protected from fear. I just

(01:14:03):
wanted to learn how to overcome fear. It's it's so
well said, and I think that's honestly. What's so important
about sports is because sports teaches you how to put
everything you have into trying to win, regardless of how
good you are, and sometimes you're still gonna fail, and
understanding how to deal, which is why this podcast is
called Wins and Losses understanding how to learn from your

(01:14:26):
losses that ultimately you've gotta keep getting back up right,
and everybody is going to get knocked down. And my
concern is so many people now today are afraid of
getting knocked down. They're not even getting knocked down will
They're afraid of getting knocked down, and so they never
actually take any risk or actually experience any significant success

(01:14:47):
because they're so worried about the possibility of getting knocked
down that they don't do what they really should. And
you've talked about challenges earlier and everything else, like we interviewed,
I got to interview that the president a couple of
days ago. I want to feel, yeah, I want to
fill that that nervousness in the pit of my stomach
a lot of times every year to find some new

(01:15:09):
challenge to embrace, because if you're not doing that, you're
not growing in any way. I totally agree, man, and
raising boys is one of the most clarifying factors on this.
I wanted them to not make the travel team from
time to time. I wanted them to not get off
the bench and realize that that stinks. Okay, what are
we gonna do to to fix that issue? I'm not

(01:15:29):
going to go to the coach and telling you should
be playing. What are you gonna do to fix that situation.
You've got to deal with failures, You've gotta deal with loss.
You could give your kids if you could adopt one
trait for yourself in life, it would be resilience. My
only pessimistic thought in response to that is, you know,
I said it to you earlier in the show. I said,
we're raising generations of people who are unprepared for the

(01:15:51):
real world. All these safe spaces is protection from fair
They're unprepared for the real world right now. And this
is a pessimistic point of view. They are shaping the
real world. The real world is not shaping them. They've
imported the safe spaces from college into the corporate chain
of America. They have turned the entire country into a
place where we will not withstand this agreement. We will

(01:16:13):
not let you fail. We will not let anything negative
happen to you in your life. I don't think it's sustainable.
I think they will ultimately fail, but make no mistake.
In the short term. Right now, I think they're winning
the culture war well, and that's my biggest concern. Um
and Frankly, I've said this before. I want to make
you know, certainly, OutKick. The thing that I like is
we have a voice in a big way I think

(01:16:35):
without Kick, and you certainly have a big voice with
Fox News. But imagine if Fox News didn't exist, Imagine
if out Kick didn't exist. In sports media, what's scary
to me is we don't really have a marketplace of
ideas now. I love seeing Fox News rewarded for the
marketplace that they share. And maybe you can argue if

(01:16:55):
Fox News didn't exist, somebody else would come along and
fill that vacuum. But I think the number of people
who are like the Murdocks, that are willing to be
involved in the marketplace of ideas and and and be
willing to accept the side I right, like the society
people who are gonna say like, oh, you know, that's
uh that those are those uh, those rebel murdocks and stuff.

(01:17:18):
I think that that is a rare thing, certainly in
the media, and so I wonder I think, you know,
in sports media there's almost no marketplace of ideas. That's
what scares me, right, is that the marketplace of ideas
is going to continue to constrict. I love what you
said about all the different people who are, you know,
kind of creating their own lane, so to speak. But

(01:17:40):
that still is scary. And I'm glad that we're involved
in the fight. But if I wasn't involved in the fight,
I'd be sitting on the sidelines as a sports fan
and as a as an as an American and somebody
who's proud uh to to be a to be living
in America, and feel like our entire lifestyle is under assault.
But here's the thing. The culture war is not being
lost to a massive ship in the majority opinion of

(01:18:01):
the country. The decisions of corporate leaders are not being
made because their consumer base has changed. The decisions by
advertisers are not because their consumers are telling them place
your ads here or do not place your ads here.
What is happening is a small, loud, extreme minority is
scaring the hell out of everybody, and they don't have

(01:18:22):
I guess, the spying to stand up to even protect
their own bottom line, to protect their own shareholders, to
protect their own ratings. I'm telling you, it is a
suicidal agreement that they're making. These companies that make this
bargain to give into the fear they will fail. It
may take some time because glaciers melt slowly, but they

(01:18:43):
will fail. And in the meantime, there is a massive
market opening. And I think this applies to everything. Media
choices like out Kicking, Fox News Present and both of
whom success show there is a massive market for this.
But also beyond that, there will have to be some
edic factional choices. There will have to be some career
path choices. Like I talked about earlier, with my kids,

(01:19:05):
It's not gonna be that people are can continue to
send their children off to these factories of indoctrinated thought.
They're not going to say, go make a hundred fifty
dollars working for this corporation that has told you you
are born inherently evil and racist. They're not going to
continue to do this. Media, sports, media, that's just the start.
People are gonna have to make choices, and I do

(01:19:27):
believe for the entrepreneurs and the business owners and the
media personalities that choose to do so, they're walking into
a massive market a majority opinion. Be sure to catch
live editions about Kicked the coverage with Clay Travis weekdays
at six am Eastern three am Pacific Man, this has
been a fascinating conversation. Tell people again, I'm Clay Travis

(01:19:49):
Wins and Losses with Will Caine. You can follow Will.
I think it's just simple at Will Kine. But where
can people watch you and starting win? I start this
Saturday on Box and Friends Weekend with my friends Pete
Hexeth and Jedediah Beela. You'll be six to ten Eastern
every Saturday morning and Sunday morning on Fox News, and
then as time allows. I am not walking away from sports.

(01:20:11):
I'm gonna stay involved in the sports world. I love sports.
You couldn't keep me out of it if I want.
I consider this a new opening door from my career,
not closing any So I'd love it, man, I'd love
it if your listeners, your readers, your fans, all um,
come join us over and I hope you and I
keep talking. Man, there's been a long time into making
and um, and I appreciate what you guys are doing. No, look,

(01:20:32):
I love to get you on the radio show regularly. Um.
We need to talk about that offline at some point,
but I think our listeners would love hearing from you
on a regular basis. I think we'd have a lot
of fascinating conversations, and I don't want you to leave
completely the world of sports either. This has been awesome, man.
I appreciate the time. I know how busy you are
getting ready for that new show to launch. Encourage everybody

(01:20:53):
to go watch it. Fox and Friends on the Weekend
with Will Caine. Go follow him on Twitter telling me
enjoyed the conversation and if you enjoyed this and go
check out some of our other long form conversations. Thanks
my man, I'm rooting for you. It's great to get
to spend as much time talking as we just did. Thanks, Clay,
keep up the good work, man, appreciate it. That's Will Kaine.
I'm Clay Travis. This is Wins and Losses. Go subscribe

(01:21:13):
thirty whatever the number is. Long form conversations, hardly any commercials.
You're gonna love it. Look forward to it. Thanks again
to Will Kine, and thanks to you guys.

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