Ep 01: The Politics of El Gusano - Featuring Dan Le Batard

Jemele opens the premiere episode of SPOLITICS with "The Filibuster," explaining the state of the union between politics and sports — a history lesson and a wake-up call. Then, Jemele is joined by her former ESPN and current Meadowlark Media colleague Dan Le Batard, host of THE DAN LE BATARD SHOW. Dan and Jemele bond over their inability to "stick to sports." Dan explains how his Cuban heritage influenced his worldview and why American politics have disheartened him. Jemele and Dan also reminisce on their ESPN days and compare their experiences to Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith’s unprecedented power. Plus, find out the infamous figure who is responsible for Dan’s love of sports.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, what's up everybody.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm Jamel Hill, and welcome to his politics and iHeart
podcast and Unbothered Network production.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Time to get spolitical.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
One of the biggest lies ever told about sports is
that sports and politics don't mix. Often when people say
keep politics out of sports, what they.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Really mean is shut up and dribble, or they mean.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Stick to sports unless his politics I agree with.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
And you campaign for President Darrell Hey think he's doing
I think he's doing well.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
I just hope he can get agendas going. I mean,
he wants to cut deals, but unfortunately we have a
lot of people against him, and for the wrong reason.
You know, I know him personally, and I know he's
a great guy.

Speaker 4 (00:51):
Well, somebody who has said some highly critical things about
the president is Jamille Hill, who's a sportscaster does a
six o'clock sports center over at esp and earlier on
a tweet this week, I refer to the president as
a white supremacist. People were wondering what ESPN would do.
Apparently they talked to her. She apologized to them, said
she felt bad that she put them in a bad light.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Well, well, that's good that she owned up to it,
you know, And I want.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
To watch sports for sports, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
You know, when the politics get involved with sports, it
gets a little bit touchy.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Johnny Damon appearing on Fox News to support Donald Trump
while also telling me to stick to sports.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Irony truly is on the line now.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Politics touches everything we do, even our precious little sports.
In fact, especially our precious little sports. So I wanted
to create a space for sports and politics not only mixed,
but they matter. The marriage of sports and politics isn't
exactly new, In fact, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Old as fuck.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
What if I told you that when our first president,
George Washington, first ran for political office in Virginia, he
used to host election parties and bribe people to vote
by getting them drunk, as well as having them.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Play games, Henny and horseshoes. You got my vote, George. Yes,
even back then, when dudes were wearing wigs and.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Hain stockings, the political elite understood the fusion between sports
and politics, and over time, that complicated alliance became even
more pronounced. And as soon as it was discovered that
sports could be heavily influenced by politics, well you.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Know what happened.

Speaker 4 (02:25):
Now.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
What if I told you.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Football wouldn't exist if it weren't for Theodore Roosevelt, the
twenty sixth President of the United States. In the early
nineteen hundreds, a lot of people wanted to ban football
because it was too deadly and dangerous. Yeah, I know, funny,
how some things never change. In nineteen oh four, the
Chicago Tribune reported that eighteen people died playing football, and
there were over one hundred and fifty serious injuries, mostly

(02:49):
to youth football players. That's when Teddy Roosevelt, the football fan, intervened.
The President, whose son, Theodore Junior, was a football player
at Harvard, held a summit at the White House in
nineteen oh five with representatives from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton
to discuss ways they could make football less violent.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Now.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
It didn't happen immediately, but eventually the powerbrokers introduced radical
concepts like the forward pass and the neutral zone, and
instead of a first down being five yards, it became
ten yards.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Very wild times. But something interesting happened.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
After the Civil War, Black athletes started to become more prominent,
and as their stature grew, they became more inboldened and
to white America, they also became more of a threat.
For example, between eighteen seventy five and nineteen oh two,
eleven African American jockeys won the Kentucky Derby, but that
success didn't lead to a high demand for black jockeys. Rather,
horse owners were so threatened by their success that they

(03:43):
conspired to exclude black jockeys. This became the playbook for
trying to suppress black power. Moses Fleetwood Walker was technically
the first black player to play in Major League Baseball.
In eighteen eighty nine, after playing in the Miners, Walker
was released, and Major League Baseball wouldn't add another blackface
in its league until Jackie Robinson sixty three years later.

(04:03):
When the NFL was founded in nineteen twenty, the league
was integrated mostly because Americans weren't really checking.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
For football like that.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Fritz Pollard was one of the league's biggest stars, a
champion who became the league's first black head coach, But
in nineteen thirty three, George Preston Marshall, the owner of
the Washington football team, led a movement to banned black
players from the league as the Great Depression intensified. Marshall
was a hard eer racist who once said will start
signing negroes when the Harlem Globe Trotters start signing whites.

(04:34):
The last name Marshall wanted was for white folks to
see black players making a living playing football when good
old white folks were struggling just to eat. So from
nineteen thirty three to nineteen forty five, black players were
banned from the NFL, and to no one's surprised, the
last team in the NFL to sign a black player
was the Washington football team, which didn't happen until nineteen

(04:55):
sixty one. According to longtime sports journalists Bill Roden, who
authored with the.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Powerful book forty Million Dollar Slave, black.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Athletes have always had this corporation success and systems designed
to deny them power.

Speaker 5 (05:09):
As Blacks began to trickle into the game, they were
just simply seen as a threat period a threat. As
more and more African Americans began to dominate sports like
basketball and football, their numbers were seen as a threat
because they were taking jobs away from white men white players.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
The presence and excellence of black athletes dramatically changed the
relationship between sports, politics, and culture. Even though white men
such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson were among
the first to politicize sports. When black athletes started using
their platforms to speak to the conditions their own people
were subjected to, and to call out the hypocrisy of
white America wanting black talent but not black voices, it

(05:53):
was suddenly massive resistance to sports and politics mixing together
like yams and mac and cheese.

Speaker 6 (06:00):
Has always been an important highway, but at the same time,
it's not been totally free of a lot of the
racism that we see uh in society, which is why
we're always talking about the intersection of race and racist sports.

(06:22):
Because as pure, or as even or as fair sports
supposed to be, we've always seen this unevenness, whether it's
in us quotas of black athlete, whether it's being black
athletes not being able to play certain positions, whether yeah,
you know earlier a couple of years ago, recently was

(06:44):
a couple of years ago. Commentators Jelen Lebron, James Matthews
just sharp and droopy.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Often when athletes speak up for themselves or call attention
to the conditions that impact marginalized people, they face severe penalties,
which sometimes include the weight of powerful politicians.

Speaker 7 (06:59):
Love.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
One of these NFL owners when somebody disrespects our flag
to say, get that son of a chop the field
right now out.

Speaker 7 (07:08):
He's fired. He's fired.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
Even with the pushback, the fact is that sports as
a political weapon has sometimes drugged the rest of society
to the progress that it sometimes initially rejects. Jackie Robinson
integrated baseball twenty years before legal desegregation began in nineteen
fifty nine, fifty seven years before Colin Kaepernick took a
need to protest against police brutality.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Track and field star Rose Robinson refused.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
To stand for the national anthem at the Pandam Games because,
as she put it, the anthem represented quote war in
justice and hypocrisy.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Venus Williams fought to get the.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Women who competed in all four Grand Slams the same
prize money as men, and in two thousand and seven
that finally became a reality. Meanwhile, in civilian society, that
fight wages on, with women overall now earning eighty two
cents for every dollar a man makes. For Black women
that number is sixty nine cents, and for Hispanic and
Latina women fifty eight cents.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Sports and politics.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Are happening all around us all the time, whether it
be Caitlin Clark, fans wearing Make America Greater Gain hats
at her games, or athletes being reminded that their money
and fame doesn't insulate them from being victimized by the
same oppressive systems as anyone else.

Speaker 7 (08:22):
Get out of that guy right now. We're not playing
this game.

Speaker 8 (08:25):
Get out, get get out. Yeah, you know what quarter
of products you want to.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Or them realizing that their political voice matters.

Speaker 9 (08:40):
I want people to understand now, I grew up in
an inner city and I know the whole notion of
getting out and voting. And I was one of those kids,
and I was around the community that was like, our
vote doesn't matter, but it really does.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Sports and politics simply cannot be separated. And that is
why this podcast as Politics exists. The sports and politics
relationship might at times be troubling, like Donald Trump and
felony convictions, but it deserves further examination, reflection, and conversation.
Thank you for listening to my opening filibuster. I'm Jamel Hill,

(09:16):
and I approve this message. Coming up next on Spolitics,
it's the first guest in politics history a man whose
favorite athlete became one of the most infamous athletes in
sports history. A man who liked me also left ESPN
under a bit of controversy. A man who is definitely
not afraid to discuss the intersection between sports, race, politics,

(09:37):
and culture. A man who has built his own empire
down there in Miami. The one and only my friend
Dan Lebretard up next on spolitics. Dan, I must admit

(10:00):
this seems very odd. I'm so used to being interviewed
by you.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Me getting the.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Opportunity to interview you actually feels kind of strange.

Speaker 7 (10:09):
I am. I'm very eager to do it with you, Jamel,
because if your audience does not know, there are very
few people in the history of this business that I
admire more than you. So thank you for just including
me adjacent to anything you do, because I've been a
fan of your work and your strength, because no one

(10:30):
in our business has had to be stronger than you
for thirty years.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Well, thank you for telling people how old I am
that I'm a fossil, but I appreciate you saying that.
That means a lot coming from somebody like you, whose
career I feel like I have respected for just as long,
if not longer going back to your days at the
Miami Hero because you know a lot of people, they
get so caught up in the television thing and all

(10:57):
the multimedia things that you do. Now that there's an
entire possible generation that is not familiar with Dan levatart
the writer, which I found to be just as compelling
as Dan levatar at the TV personality. I could make
an argument a more compelling writer, but I'll save that
for a conversation or a question that I want to have.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
With you later on in this interview.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
But because we tend to always dive into heavy stuff,
I'm going to actually start with something a.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Little bit lighter for you.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
Tell me who is the athlete that made you love sports?

Speaker 7 (11:33):
The reason that question is so funny, you know what
I'm going The way I'm going to tell this story
instead of just telling you and having you be shocked,
the name of the athlete is going to be at
the end of this story because it's a funny answer
to the question. If I just left it alone as
the name, the thing that made me love sports is

(11:57):
I come from an exile fan family, a political exile family,
not immigrant. They left for political reasons to chase freedom.
And it was a very small life that I did
not know was small, filled with a lot of fear
and not very much money. So when my father, the

(12:21):
person working at a fiberglass plant, got the worst tickets
that they gave at the office that no one else wanted,
he took me to a football game and when I
walked in with him, and you know, I just I
tell this story all the time when people ask me
sports memory type questions. I still remember the way that

(12:44):
my hand felt small in his because he's taking me
through a concourse at a loud football stadium with a
lot of people, and I've just never seen anything like it.
It's like a kid going to Disney World from a
small existence and then just feeling the energy of what
is this thing? And the reason that we were going
there is because the Dolphins were playing a truly terrible

(13:07):
football team and I got to scream from the stands
that we were going to squeeze the juice. So OJ
Simpson is the answer to your question of the first
athlete that I ever loved. And after that, a lot
of things.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
That one didn't age particularly well did it.

Speaker 7 (13:31):
But it was the feeling right like you can imagine
and I don't know what your origin story is, but
I did not know that I would love sports. I
did not know that the connection point to my father
would have sports in it more than any other. That
that my father emotionally is probably somewhere on the Aspergers scale.

(13:54):
So I spent my entire childhood trying to please a
man who wasn't doing play, And you know that was
all pleasure. Like everything that happened there was me awe
in discovery, a kid opening Christmas presents and not knowing
yet that Santa Claus doesn't exist.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
So it appears that the likeness of our conversation has
lasted all of thirty seconds because you mentioned your parents,
and you are the son of Cuban exiles. For a
lot of people, they don't know quite what that means.
So as best you can can you explain to them
what that means, being you, being the son of them,

(14:33):
and what their life was like like give us the
connective tissue there.

Speaker 7 (14:38):
My parents, more than anything else, taught me one thing
above all else. I'm fairly incompetent as an adult toddler
fixing anything around the house. It's embarrassing to me that
my wife has to do all the things, because the
thing that I was taught in my household is if
you work in America, you get to freedom. If you

(15:01):
work in America, you get to opportunities. So work becomes
who you are. Because they're leaving a communist regime that
at the ages of fifteen and sixteen, they are leaving
their parents, not knowing whether they'll ever see them again,
and then not meeting up with them again four ten years.

(15:22):
So if the audience can imagine whatever that is of
leaving your country to go to another country where you
don't speak the language and don't have any money, and
you think you're going to see your family again, but
they're putting you on planes because they're worried about a
revolution and the changing politics of Cuba that make it
so that a tyrant and firing squads are coming to

(15:44):
people who have different religious beliefs. There's not going to
be freedom of any kind. And America is a place
of real freedom. When I talk about some of this stuff,
and I imagine we'll cover where it is that I
bumped heads with the ESPN. When I talk about this stuff,
I don't tell Americans, hey, I value freedom more than you.
But when you have either fled to find freedom or

(16:08):
had to fight to get freedom. It's more front of
lobe than if you've had freedom all of your life
and are now not understanding what it's like or what
the consequences are of it being encroached upon. So being
an exile is a huge part of my identity, even
though my pain is all borrowed. I didn't have to

(16:30):
make any of the sacrifices like they made all the sacrifices.
All I had to do was work, and I since
become Americanized. My father named me Dan instead of Gonzalo
or Louise because he didn't want me to endure any
of the things that I would have to endure if
I was Gonzalo or Louise. And the great irony of
that is when I get a show on ESPN that

(16:50):
is meant to cater to the underserved Hispanic population, I
have to put my cartoon father on in his accent
because no one knows Dan Lebattard is Queen instead of front.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Now, how has that, would you say?

Speaker 2 (17:03):
Like having coming from that parentage and that background, how
does that shape the way you look at American politics?

Speaker 7 (17:11):
I Mean, I'm so confused by what's happening in America
right now, Jamel, because of how vastly I underestimated how
much race is used as politics, and I don't I
don't know how much the audience understands either Florida or
Cuban voting. They're only I think one point five million
Cuban voters, but they vote Republican for you know, a

(17:35):
thing that dates back to Bay of Pigs and also
doesn't like the Barack Obama open borders to a normalize
relations with a Fidel Castro who represents my family's hitler
in Cuba. But Feedale did a lot to help black
folks in Cuba, and it was part of his unpopularity

(17:56):
in Cuba. And so it's a complicated mix of things
that you have lived for a long time and see
happening in front of us right now where race becomes politics,
even though race should be about race. But we know
what it is to other people, and so I've sort
of meandered into I have separated from the politics of

(18:19):
my people here. Locally, they call me El Gusano the
worm in Spanish, because I don't align with my people here,
because I'm progressive. My people don't believe that Trump is
a threat to democracy. They believe that the Democratic Party
is the socialist party that wishes to not embrace again capitalism. Work,

(18:43):
keep your money, economy is the most important thing. And
also Cubans have a different relationship with this country than
say Haitians because for the longest time, Cubans can get
here on a boat. When you ask me my parents
leaving at fifteen or sixteen, Jamel, imagine what I'm about
to say to you. The biggest graveyard that there is
is the ocean that separates Cuba from Miami. Imagine getting

(19:08):
on a boat made of tires and wood to escape
your desperation and literally throwing your life to the wind
because you got to get the ninety miles to land
in Florida. Because Cubans get freedom here are used to wetfoot, dryfoot,
but Haitians do not, or nobody else does really like

(19:29):
So that freedom is at the forefront of where it
is that I separate from my people on politics locally,
regionally here in Miami.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
So when did that separation begin?

Speaker 2 (19:43):
Because you're growing up in a household that's very firmly
connected to those politics, I would imagine, So how and
when did you start to separate.

Speaker 7 (19:50):
When I started meeting and talking to black people when
I was at the University of Miami and one of
my best friends is Bernard Clark, and he's saying to me,
you know, there is justice in jail, right, And I'm like,
what do you mean. He's like, it's just us and
and like that's the first time that I sort of
started thinking about any of those things because I didn't
have any black people in my childhood. It was very

(20:13):
cube and it was very isolated, you know how this
stuff happens, Like it's it's how communities get divided everywhere,
Like we grow up around our circumstances. And my father
was hell bent on sending me even though we couldn't
afford it, Like you know, he was he was driving
a car. The glove compartment would open anytime we hit
a bunt, a bump, and there was a hole in
the floorboard. But he was hell bent on getting me

(20:37):
to a private school, getting me an education that had money.
And so it had money but didn't have diversity. I
not until I got to college and started making friends
with the University of Miami football players that I was
sort of like it was a bit of culture. Shock right,
seeing how this group of people who were my friends

(20:58):
in college were being received by the country at large
as I'm coming up in sports writing, and they're the
most controversial thing that anyone has seen in sports, these
guys who are running rough shot over sportsmanship.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
So I mean.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Having that sort of political education, social political education, do
you feel like that that made you perhaps best equipped,
or at least somewhat equipped to navigate these tricky waters
of sports and politics best equipped.

Speaker 7 (21:32):
I don't know if I've navigated it particularly well, Jamelle,
because I've never considered myself someone who's in any way
interested in politics. I'm interested in race, and then as
I grew up, it got turned into politics on me.
I wasn't talking politics at ESPN. I was always talking

(21:55):
about race, and then after George Floyd, it became sort
of innevance bull that, oh, we're not going to be
able to pretend to keep separating these things. Like you
you lived it. I saw you live it. You know.
At at the end, I would throw an occasional Molotov
cocktail because one of the times I got in trouble
at ESPN is because you can imagine as an exile

(22:18):
where it is. I would get pissed off that a
president of this company, a country, excuse me, would be
telling immigrants and exiles to go back to where they
came from. Like, I don't need to explain to you
how offensive it is to me that an American president
would take that position. But until we got to that point,

(22:40):
I wasn't somebody who was actively seeking to talk politics.
I hate politics, and I hate it more now than
ever because it's got dumber. It's gotten dumber than ever
when the way that we're discussing this is I'm sitting
here holding up in front of you, Hey, this is
a pen, and the other side is telling me, no,
it's a fork, and I'm like, okay, that's the set

(23:00):
of facts that we're going to do this on. We're
gonna have that discussion. And so you can imagine how
empty and stupid it's gotten now, where like it's not
even a good faith discussion we're having. You don't actually
care to discuss this. You just want to be right,
and you want to keep telling me that as I
strive for equality for everyone, Instead of you know, me

(23:23):
asking you for equality and feeling like that's a reasonable request,
you're telling me at the height of white power. No,
you can't have equality. I'm not going to give it
to you. You're going to have to take it from me.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
Well, part of it, too, is that we approach quality
from a scarcity mindset. I'm not saying you and I
do this, but I think that is very much how
the vast majority of Americans feel about it. And that
is something that color is kind of all racist to
some degree, because you know, I think one of the
wedge issues that certainly happen in the black community is

(23:55):
how they're trying to pit us against immigrants or pit
us against migrants, right, and so it this constant, Well,
if they get let in, then I get less, or
if they start taking advantage of some of these social services,
that means less for me.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
So equality, the way that.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
It's positioned in this country is that if somebody else
gets something, somebody else loses something.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
And that, to me, is that the.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Root of why our politics are so toxic, particularly in
this moment.

Speaker 7 (24:23):
It's also a great strategy to keep things unequal. If
you keep pitting different groups against each other, they won't
get to the places where the power is because there
are distraction tactics meant to keep us apart. It's sort
of It's like if you read history books, this is
sort of how you do all of this stuff. It's

(24:45):
a how to book.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
Do you sometimes, Dan, because I go through this, do
you sometimes wish that you could be the guy that
And this is not to suggest any anybody who's listened
to your show know that you do actually talk about sports,
right I know some people we probably you talk about
a lot of a variety of things, right, Like in
the entertainment space, like you do. You're more than just
the guy who's always talking about politics or race like.

(25:10):
You're much broader than that. But are there times or
moments or stretches where you wish you could wake up
and just be the guy that argued about who's going
to win the AFC East this year?

Speaker 10 (25:21):
No?

Speaker 7 (25:21):
I got bored with that pretty early in the process. Right.
I love sports, but what I've always loved the most
about sports is the sociology of sports. It's not the athletes,
it's how did they become that? What are the roots
of all of that? I can be moved by sporting events,
but you know how this works. I don't know if
you're the same sports fan now that you used to be.

(25:44):
But if you work for thirty years making the McDonald's fries,
they probably don't taste the same the last day as
they did the first. So in growing up or trying
to grow up, I've tried to have diverse interests beyond sports,
And now I would say is just about the because

(26:05):
the political discourse has gotten so dumb and it's not
about changing anyone's mind. It's about arguing and being right.
Now is the first time that I have felt my
hands heavy in the fight because it doesn't feel like
we're doing anything in terms of advancing or making any
progress on where it is that people are entrenched. And

(26:27):
I'm like, and I'm so tired of losing listeners because
all of this is so polarizing, like making choices that
I have had to make and knowing that the cost
is going to be somebody out there is going to
think that all I do is talk about politics, when
all I'm trying to do is show people again and again.

(26:49):
Can you look at this, like, look at what this
looks like? Can can we just be a society that
when this does creep into sports, we remember Colin kapp
her Nick was simply asking people, while kneeling in front
of a flag super peacefully, can you stop being brutal
to my people? And we wrap ourselves in that flag

(27:11):
to give him the answer of no, we can't stop
being brutal to your people and get the fuck out
of the sport while you're at it.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yeah, I mean it is sometimes woefully and painfully confusing.
As much as we pretend we have learned from history,
we have actually not learned anything from history, because like
that is just another reincarnation of obviously when you had
you know, Tommy and John Tommy Smith and John Carlos,

(27:38):
that is like another And we've run into this iteration
like a thousand times where it's like we how many
times do we have to painfully learn a lesson historically
to understand that this is not how things should actually work?
But as you know, as somebody who doves deep into
these waters of trying to navigate sports and political conversations,
it comes at a cost.

Speaker 1 (27:58):
And you just alluded to it. You said you've had
to make choices.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
What do you mean by you what do you mean
by that statement that you've had to make choices in
terms of how you navigate this?

Speaker 7 (28:06):
Sure, I don't know if the public at large has,
and especially that your audience understands because you've made it
look so easy. I don't know that everyone totally understands
how hard it was for you to leave ESPN. You
and I haven't actually talked about this, but I in
creating our own media company and realizing and trying to

(28:29):
hire some of my friends that none of them actually
want to leave the safety of ESPN because it's a
good place to be. That's much safer than the waters
that I'm presently in, where I have the terrifying responsibility
of forty five employees and I've got to keep my
numbers up in a way I've never cared about, because

(28:51):
all I was interested in is doing the show correctly
and hoping that people would stay with me. But you
go free, and whether it is Dan Patt did his
show from his attic for a long time, and no
one has any idea how actually hard that was, because
he too made it look easy. This has not been
in any way easy for me. I need to keep

(29:13):
our customers. They feed the employees who now have kids
that I knew when they were kids, and I'm now
responsible for that. And so what is the cost when
I have Billy Corbin do because Miami, because he's on
the side of every right thing here politically in Miami,
but it's an unpopular thing. The cost is listeners. The

(29:34):
cost is I'm done with Lebtzart. He talks too much
politics when it's not even my show. I'm just supporting
a show that is on our network because it's important
to show just how woefully corrupt Miami is in ways
that are inarguable, Like it's not even hey, we can
agree to disagree on this, No, these are the set
of facts on our entire government in Miami is a

(29:56):
banana republic that is more corrupt than probably any in
the United States. And with journalism dying, Jamel like dying
in a way that has that Orange oh fucking taking
a hatchet to it with something as simple as fake news,
because so many people don't know what the difference is
between the New York Times bleach your report and just

(30:16):
somebody writing something on a QAnon website, like there's no
difference in credibility between those things, and some of those
people believe the New York Times is less credible because
of the damage we've done to mainstream media I think
it's important to protect those things because front of lobe
for me is always his freedom. And I recognize that
journalism is a checks and balances for government when you've

(30:39):
got presently Jamel And this part's crazy to me. I
don't know how Donald Trump sleeps at night because of
the following he's in the middle of. Right now, you
win and knock over democracy, or you die in prison.
Those are your two choices because you want to change
all the rules on how all of this works. You
want a jerrymanned and put federal judges in and have

(31:02):
the Supreme Court be bought so that you can be
in charge to stay out of prison. And I want
a journalism that is checks and balances to that, and
it's being threatened. And so now I have to pay
Billy Corbin to please do this for me so that
my show can have a soul during an important time.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Yeah, we're going to get to the journalism part because
I don't know if you realize this or even if
you like this role, but you have sort of become
sports media sports journalisms. Let me be very clear, there
is a difference between sports media and sports journalism. You
have become sports journalism's sort of unofficial ombudsmen in many
respects with how I think a lot of your criticisms

(31:45):
of our industry are not just fair, I think they
are scarily accurate. But before we get to that part,
let's get to the part we talked that you were
just mentioning about leaving ESPN and what that looks like
and making it look easy. You know a lot of
people don't know that like or would not imagine somebody
like you, or maybe even somebody like me. We never

(32:06):
got in this to be entrepreneurs, like I did not
get in this to own a company or in my case, companies.
I did not get in this to do that. In fact,
I found the idea totally repulsive, because you know, as journalists,
you're sort of used to operating as an independent force
doing your own thing, and then all of a sudden,
through different scenarios and different events, you become responsible for others.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
And as exciting as that is, on.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
Some regard or at least the idea of bringing people
with you and making sure that their lives are in
a place, you know, where they can take care of
their families and that kind of thing, but it does
come with a draining emotional responsibility. I'll be the first
to admit I've not always handled that responsibility. Well, So
what I want to ask you is how have you

(32:54):
been able to find your way in these tricky entrepreneur
or waters where now responsible for other people? And people
don't get that that's a different responsibility, Like you can
hate me all you want, but unfortunately that does come
at a cost. That means that, like, if I lose people,
I can't pay this person what I want to pay them,
Like it is just such a sometimes terrible balancing at

(33:18):
So how have you managed or how do you manage
to deal with that poorly? That's about the best answer
I have.

Speaker 7 (33:25):
To I mean, I just keep falling on my face
and try to convince myself that failure is learning, and
I tend to be pretty hard on myself, so failure
feels like failure. But I, like you didn't have any
interest in entrepreneur I was a bit forced into it, right.
You let go my mentor's son without telling me as

(33:46):
a final act of you know, trying to make my
life more difficult, and you hurt me in a way
that I have to make a choice about what I
do next, and though I would have stayed in the
safety of ESPN for a long time.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
If and you're referring to Chris Cody.

Speaker 7 (34:09):
Yes, I'm sorry, so Greg Cody is one of my
best friends in the world. And ESPN. It was a
final straw because we were running up against this for
a while and I was looking for an exit ramp
and they gave it to me when they fired or
they let him go without telling me, and so we
had to make a choice, and they pushed me into
something I wouldn't have chosen otherwise. You know, my wife, Valerie,

(34:34):
I couldn't have done this without her either, And so
I get pushed into entrepreneurship. When I'm telling you, Jamel
zero interest in it. I was very happy having my
professional life only be something that I had to worry
about me and then a company would take care of
my company, the people who kept me company. Somebody else

(34:58):
would take the burden of of paying those people. But yeah,
there's just been a lot of struggling, a lot of learning,
and thankfully we're in a time where we've got one
of the five or ten things in this space that
someone's willing to pay a lot of money for DraftKings

(35:19):
so that we can keep doing it, which to me
is honestly the measure of success. Do I get to
keep doing it? That is, I don't want any of
the other stuff? Do I get to keep fucking around
with my friends, having fun around this and us having
a thing that makes people happy or smile and more

(35:43):
than that, because we're a fairly addictive cotton candy for
people helps some people who are lonely at bad jobs
or jobs that they hate get a little bit of
medicine that for four of the eight hours they could
listen to what it is that we're doing and be
slightly less alone.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
I'm not gonna ask this next question because I've since
the answer, but mostly because I know the enormous responsibility
and enormous effort that it takes to do what you do.
But how much longer do you think you can do this?

Speaker 7 (36:17):
On the days that I'm happy, they're going to have
to put me in this seat ten years after my
death to get people to still keep paying for whatever
our show is in its remains. But on the days
where I'm unhappy, and there have been more of those
over the last I'm not even gonna say three and
a half years my last eighteen months, said ESPN. Well,

(36:39):
as soon as Skipper left, basically as soon as the
CEO of Metal Lark left the ESPN, the world fell
in on me. I lost what I didn't know was
protection because I just wanted him to leave me alone,
and I would leave him alone. And the whole way
I ended up at ESPN. I won't bore you with
too many of the details, but I was CIA's worst

(37:01):
client for ten years because I insisted on doing it
in Miami. Everybody wanted me to do it in Los
Angeles and New York. The answer was always no, can
you make something more Miami than the Miami thing I have?
And Skipper had to get the Latin demo, just like
you were the only black woman columnist in America. For
god knows how long, I was the only name that

(37:22):
kept coming to him on Hispanic journalist, how do you
make ESPN a little more ethnic, more diverse? They're in Bristol, Connecticut,
old thinking, white thinking, how do you do it? I
was the name that kept coming up for him, and
the way that he made it more Miami is like
I'll hire your father, your brother can do the art.
The ocean will be behind you at the Cleveland or hotel.

(37:43):
And that's when I went to work for ESPN because
he wanted to have He had learned that and I
think you were one of these people. He had learned
that he couldn't change the thousands of people at ESPN,
so he was going to hire ten firestarters to just
see where it is that people would get influenced on stuff.
And what ended up happening is all the fire starters

(38:04):
had to run from the burning building because they wanted to.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
And I've joked with you about this off air, and
to this day, as much as I loved highly Questionable,
I still part of me wants to kill you because
my mother to this day still ask me why we
can't do a show together because of your.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Ass and I'm like, just because you saw Dan do
it and you left me no.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
Choice but to make continual excuses. I'm like, I you're
not poppy, but that's okay.

Speaker 7 (38:31):
It is one. I mean, it's obviously the greatest professional
blessing I've ever had, but it's the biggest miracle I
ever pulled off professionally. Jamelle. The idea that my father,
who doesn't know that much about sports and was trying
to do the show in his second language would steal
the stardom from me on my own baze. But Jamel,
on a show that has me and Bomani Jones on it,

(38:54):
you're telling me my father's going to be the start.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
Look.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
I have a lot more that I want to ask you,
particular as it relates to our profession.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
But you know, before we get.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Into that, we're just going to take a quick break
and come right back more with Dan LeBatard. As I
mentioned earlier in our conversation, Dan, whether intended or unintended,
not have a feeling sort of unintended. You have become
like the onbudsman of our profession, and for those who

(39:24):
are not familiar with what that that is, we believe
it or not. In media newspapers in particular, that's where
I think that position originated with it was somebody's job
to sort of keep the newspaper or the media outlet
in some cases because ESPN had unbudsman a couple of times, right,
is that your job was to sort of take a

(39:47):
lens to that entity that you were working for and
in fairness and the point of accuracy, sort of cover
them the way they cover other people, like when something
went wrong at the newspaper where they mishandled something, it
was the budsman's.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Job to sort of deliver to the public.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
They were operating on the behalf of the public of
being the checks and balances for the newspaper, and it
was a public position. Again, as I mentioned, ESPN used
to have this position for ESPN dot com and generally
things that happen at the network, and Dan, you sort
of have become the person in that role when it
comes to telling people the things that are good and

(40:23):
are bad about our industry, and many of which I
think are unlike anything both of us have probably seen
in our career, particularly as we're in this space now now.
You said journalism is dying. I hate to be this pessimistic.
I think we have lost that fight, and I know
that's probably a terrible thing to say when you're still
in it, but there's just so much now that is

(40:46):
not just foreign but sort of unacceptable with the way
that we cover things, both in sports and politics and
all the things that sort of matter to our American culture.
You said is dying, as in like we're still in
of Do you feel like we still are waging a fight,
or do you feel as if the fight has been lost?

Speaker 7 (41:07):
Fair enough your correction, You are right, I am wrong.
I've told people nine or ten years ago who care
about journalism the way I do, Hey, we've lost. It's
over like it's it was a long time ago that
I said that we have lost. But the ombudsman role
that I took at ESPN, and thank you for being
discerning enough to notice it, because I don't know how

(41:28):
many people would say that about me, but it was something.
One of the criticisms I get all the time is, oh,
look at Lebatade, so bitter now after he's left the place,
criticizing the place, And I'm like, I thought that was
my job while I was still there. Like some of
the biggest fights that I had at ESPN with executives
was trying to explain to them how much more credibility

(41:51):
we would all have if we covered the worldwide leader
in sports the way the world Wide Leader in Sports
covers athletes. But anytime they had a problem there, it
was hided in the shadows. And I'm like, now, if
you let me talk about it and explain, here's where
the company was wrong. If you trust me, to be
someone who's going to have a journalistic integrity. You'll make

(42:13):
all of us stronger by allowing me to be someone
who's critical of the place in a way that's meant
in no way to be self I mean, I shouldn't
say in no way to be self serving, because of
course it's going to help my credibility and make me
seem more dangerous if I'm the person willing to criticize
the man the way David Letterman would criticize his network
employer John Oliver. Does it now, Like, of course, you

(42:37):
elevate everyone when you give a journalist that freedom. But
I did feel and you could speak to this better
than I can, because maybe I don't have an appraisal
that's accurate here, or maybe there's too much ego in it.
I did feel like I kind of earned it, and
I did feel like there aren't a whole lot of
people there journalistically who would argue with much of any
of what I was generally saying. They just didn't want

(42:57):
out in publics that think about what I'm saying here. Jamal,
the worldwide leader in sports, covers everyone with a microscope
that is scalding, like scalding anyone, an athlete steps in
a pothole and we are there to cover it with
a great deal of intensity. Why when the thing comes
your way, and again, you're the world wide leader in sports,

(43:22):
why would you go hide under a blanket like you're
a really powerful entity. You got all of Disney's fuck
you money. You can do the job, however it is
that you want to do it. What's the point of
having all the world's fuck you money and never telling
anybody fuck you?

Speaker 3 (43:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (43:38):
And ESPN, as as you know, never saw it this way,
because I think that's a way to actually gain credibility
with the audience, when you are willing to say or
at least when your personalities are allowed to say, hey,
this is.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
Where ESPN got it wrong.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
And as you said, kind of look at them even
though we're you know, at that point, we're all getting
our paychecks from them. But I think the audience respects
you more when you don't treat them like they're stupid,
Like they can see it, okay, they can see what
is happening, and we're pretending like this is not happening.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
And to me, that's losing credibility with the audience.

Speaker 7 (44:12):
It's Jamel the thing that you have such a unique
vantage point on that. Perhaps because it's been a generation ago,
many people don't even remember it. ESPN kept getting more
and more credibility because in the Sports Century series they
would sit down journalists who would tell stories and then
have these documentaries that had all of this richness. Because

(44:33):
the journalists had all the stories, it would be me
and Mitch Album and Mike Lupeka doing the essays on
television that were meant to be journalistic. Then when PTI
and Around the Horn come, they are literally trafficking in
the names of newspapers because Skipper wants this to be
a coast to coast company that has Chicago Tribune newsroom

(44:54):
behind it, Denver Post newsroom, La Times newsroom. So you're
trafficking in the credibility of newspapers while taking the columnists
who are supposed to be watchdogs and giving them all
of the television cotton candy. That ends up ending those
newspapers because everyone runs to the money of television, and

(45:14):
now your watchdogs can't actually say anything honest. They're not
watchdogging anymore. They're collecting the paychecks. As we slowly burn
up the credibility ESPN grabs the parts that it wants
and discards the parts that it doesn't and becomes a
journalism company that never had to be a journalism company.
Like they didn't have to choose that. There's not a

(45:34):
j in ESPN. It's entertainment and sports, it's not there's
not a journalism in there. They chose it, and now
they fairly obviously are getting out of that business in
a way that shakes and rattles the entire industry because
it's super interesting the way it's happening.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
Yeah, And that's the part that I fear is that
when you look across our landscape, not only is ESPN,
they have obviously being the worldwide leader them getting out
of the journalism industry or the journalism part of it.
And some journalism, some journalism still goes on there, but
the reality is like outside the lines is the shell
of itself. E sixty doesn't largely exist anymore, and you

(46:15):
look at how real sports is not there anymore, like
these sports investigative long form sink your teeth in type
of journalism is just absolutely obliterated at this point in
our industry, and I fear about how that is going
to maintain a level of a lack of a complete

(46:36):
lack of transparency, particularly by these behemoth leagues and places
like they already got away with a lot, they're going
to get away with monstrous things because there's nobody keeping
their eye on the store because as an industry, we've
just decided that just isn't profitable anymore. So with that
being said, though, Dan, given that we both have been

(46:58):
able to attain a level of fame and money through
the very thing that is killing our business, how do
you sort of resign or look at your place in
the industry now, given that it's changed so dramatically from
where your career started, and even at the midpoint in
your career.

Speaker 7 (47:16):
Just because you're losing the fight, or even know that
you're going into the fight and you're going to lose,
it doesn't mean that it's not a fight worth fighting.
And I would say to you that wherever it is
that the most ardent loyalty exists in our audience. And
I will tell the people listening to this, it's LeBatard

(47:38):
and Friends on YouTube. We are now on Peacock, we
are now on Max. We have built something that has
an audience that travels with us, at least because many
of those people do value that. They value that I
am and we are something that is trying to stand

(48:01):
for something, even if it might be a losing fight.
You're not going to stop fighting for racial equality, even
as the fight gets dumber and dumber. You you're not
gonna stop fighting for it. Even though you witnessed what
I witnessed, which was after George Floyd, all of those
same corporations, it seemed like a genuine movement. I was

(48:22):
tricked by it, like I thought there might be actual
change here. I know, I know, but yeah, right correct.
I thought that it felt good enough to hope and it. Yes,
I am naive, I can be a fool. But corporations
reverting back to the hedge fund safety of all we

(48:43):
have to do is profit is what makes it appalling
to me in a way that I don't even think
people notice, Jamelle. The history of this is such that
whatever the television anchorman used to be in your wartime
times in a different America, John Stewart became, by Poul
the most credible journalist in America for about ten years

(49:04):
as a comedian, simply because he was doing journalism a
little bit differently and he became a trusted newsman. Polling said,
he's your most trusted newsman. To have that guy go
to Apple and do a legitimately great, difficult show when
Apple doesn't have to worry about anyone and Apple keeps

(49:26):
choosing safety instead of employing someone who does good work
because they have relationships with China and everything else. For
them to run off John Stewart and not be able
to support something that feels like it's on the right
side of history is excellent, is meticulous, is something that
should make any entity proud, like what are we doing?

(49:46):
What are we doing? When the journalists who keep us
safe on the right fights are so distrusted by everyone
that even the giant businesses that don't need your money
because they make adapters every every week that fail in
a year so they can sell you more adapters. And
my phone has so many Apple charges jamale that I

(50:07):
have no idea what I'm being charged for. They can
charge me for anything, and it's like, yeah, that's a
good cost. And they're doing that to everybody for them
not to be able to support what's right, like come on,
what are we what are we doing?

Speaker 2 (50:20):
Well, as you know, are there are a lot of people
who think a lot differently, and one of the people
who thinks a little bit differently is your friend and
someone I have known also for a long time in
Stephen A. Smith, right, who has become the face of
ESPN firmly in the conversation of maybe most successful journalists ever.

(50:40):
Given what the empire he's been able to build around himself.
You and him had a wonderful conversation on his show,
The Steve Nay Smith Show, his podcast, which is on YouTube,
and I found this part to be hilarious and I
love the sense in which you took it, So I'm
gonna play this clip right now.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
I don't think I've ever heard someone take these.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
Particular kind of insults as well as you tick them,
So everybody take a listen.

Speaker 7 (51:08):
You do seem to be a bit sanctimonious. Man.

Speaker 8 (51:11):
I'm not gonna use the word hypocritical, because I think
that's harsh, and I don't think you deserve that, especially
from your buddy, who is.

Speaker 7 (51:16):
Me but sank demonious. I just got off the phone
with my man, Mike Willbond. He's listening right now. I'm
a total a few men, and he was like, this.

Speaker 8 (51:24):
We both love Dan, we love he's our brother, but
you tell his sanctimonious ass to calm down. That is
a quote from Mike Willbond, and I would echo that quote.

Speaker 7 (51:34):
Dan Jamel. He's a really good arguer. He is very
good at debate. And I think it's fair to accuse
me of being so strident in tone sometimes that I
get the way of my message because of my conviction
that I am absolutely right on something. So it's a criticism.
I think that is fair of me, that that perception.

(51:58):
I can only argue against it so much because I
understand how Stephen A. Smith would think that he and
I are doing the same thing when I don't think
we're doing the same thing. But he's like, why are
you better than me? Because I do debate television for
the lowest common denominator that casts a wide, wide net.

(52:20):
And I tell you publicly that my main goal, or
one of my chief goals, is to make money for
my bosses. That I am in the business of making
money for my bosses. He's a good businessman, and that
is a prudent model, and he is. His story at
ESPN is unlike any in the history of the media
business to be fired and make it all the way back,

(52:43):
and that is all the way.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Back, become the face of the entire company.

Speaker 7 (52:47):
Right, And so that is a good way to do it.
And I and I will appear sanctimonious and self righteous
if I tell you that's not what I chose. I
chose to be a niche thing. That wouldn't be that
kind of that wouldn't be what he is. And see,
I don't want to say he's a company man, because

(53:08):
he's a company man like he's I can't believe what
he has built. But he'll also tell you at every
turn that he lives in service of making his boss's money.
And that's just not what I do. And if he
were to take that as criticism that I'm being self
righteous and sanctimonies, as if I'm better than him, I

(53:31):
understand how he would arrive at that position, even though
I don't think I'm better than him. And in fact,
I would say at television he's a good deal better
than me.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
Yeah, And I think probably you know, your lived experience
very much shapes how you look at things, and you know,
for those people who don't know. But Stephen A was
let go by ESPN right, he was persona non grata,
Like when I got to ESPN, quite frankly, his show
that he used to have was still going, and then
when all of that kind of dissipated and he was

(54:04):
off the network, it was a very frosty time, and
so he the media business wasn't where is now where
you can kind of be independent, And while there is
some struggle to it, the thought of not being at
ESPN is not crazy anymore. Like when Dan Patrick left,
people thought he was insane for leaving ESPN. And so

(54:25):
when Stephen A when their relationship disintegrated there, it was
it put him in like a no man's land, and
it took a big fight and a lot of clawing
for him to get back on the network. So I
think he probably looks at the experience much differently because
he saw a cold life without ESPN.

Speaker 7 (54:47):
Oh and Jamel, like, I mean, he's a black dude,
and it's just all it's just all of it would
be much harder for him. Like I I am in
awe that Stephen A. Smith, after being fired by ESPN,
has absolutely, unequivocally become the modern day Howard Cosell. I

(55:13):
cannot believe the degree of difficulty on that as a
fired black man with a failed show on that network,
I can't help but be awed by that, because he
played the game flawlessly to get the things that he wanted,
and the degree of difficulty on that, you'd be in
the rare position of being able to understand how that

(55:35):
is as a black woman. In fact, stephen A and
I have had these conversations, and I'm not betraying any
confidences when I say so, like in an assortment of
fights and conflicts that I had at ESPN, where by
the way, he's the only one telling me, calling me
up and saying to me, Dan, you can't go against
the company publicly there. You can't do what you're doing

(55:59):
on that one. I can't help but be amazed at
what it is that he has made there of himself
around so many obstacles, because you can speak uniquely what
he has said to me a number of times, Dan,
you're not black like you can do that. You can

(56:22):
do X, Y and Z. I cannot do that when
I'm yelling about bosses and stuff, When I'm yelling about
this person's incompetent. Is this person evil or just incompetent?
He's like, you can do whatever it is that you're
doing there. I can't and won't do that. I have
responsibility to other black journalists. I have a responsibility to

(56:45):
the black platform. I have a responsibility to black employees
at ESPN. I can't do the things that you're doing there.
That's your mess to make, not Yeah, I was.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
Of the opinion, like I think you shared that during
this interview that Stephen A was probably the person who
had the most freedom to say what he wants to
say until Pat McAfee came along, when I realized clearly
my idea of freedom was greatly distorted because Pat McAfee
has disrupted the system of how they do things at

(57:16):
ESPN in a way that I'm frankly stunned by, repeatedly,
repeatedly stunned.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Of course, you know.

Speaker 7 (57:25):
How the naive tables have turned on, and Cowboy Hat
might have the interesting how naive you are?

Speaker 2 (57:34):
You're right, I mean, I just never thought that that
was possible, even.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
For a white man.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
I gotta be honest, because and perhaps I was. I
actually underestimated whiteness. And that's wild because I'm a black
woman that's lived in this country for their entire lives,
and I underestimated whiteness and how that works. But I've
seen Pat McAfee do something that I just never thought
I would ever see at ESPN. And you know, many

(58:00):
of his transgressions, if you want to put that, put
him that way, well documented.

Speaker 11 (58:05):
You know.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
He flamed our old boss, Norby Williamson. He got him
about the paint in a way that I was like, well.

Speaker 7 (58:10):
My, hold on, hold on, please please, if I may
just correct you a little bit there, that was never
my old boss.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
Oh, you're right, you're please, You're right, it was.

Speaker 7 (58:20):
Please be clear on that. I mean he was there.
I'm not saying there, but you're not saying no. But
I'm also not saying he didn't have the power to
be my boss. I am simply correcting you on that
person was never going to be my boss. Never mind
even if he was my boss in what direct reports
are that person was never going to be my boss.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
No, Like, no, well, I did not avoid that.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
I was unsuccessful at avoiding that. But that's what happens
when you're a part of Sports Center. So that person
was my boss. And again, as I.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
Said at the time, did o Pat McAfee did all right?

Speaker 2 (58:54):
But even beyond all that, with some of the things
he said and done, and most recently he at the
idea of actually having to practice journalism at and even
though we see how his show is platform. But what
I guess the rambling question I'm getting to is what
do you make of the Pat McAfee effect at ESPN?

Speaker 7 (59:18):
Oh so super interesting. I could talk about this with
you for a long time because this is my business
and I care about this business. And I'm guessing we're
all ready going to get aggregated in some way given
how politicized both you and I are on whatever it
is that it sounded like moments ago where it may
have seemed like we are saying just flatly that Pat

(59:41):
McAfee gets away with all of that, or may be
perceived because of whiteness. It isn't just that because of that,
It is absolutely not. I mean, he's wildly entertaining. He
serves a young demo, and he comes in kicking the
door down at a time, and this part is breathtaking
where ESPN needs him more than he needs ESPN because

(01:00:04):
all of the walls have crashed in on ESPN is
renting his show, paying him a ton of money. So
he could give millions of dollars to Aaron Rodgers and
Bill Belichick and it's on their tab to grow his
show because they don't know how to get young audience.
And he's wildly charismatic and he has, you know, wrestling

(01:00:29):
skills that make him counterculture in a way that people
who are tired of journalism might want something different at
ESPN that is pro athlete. And I have just watched
in a genuine interest, right like I'm just wildly interested
on Hey, does everyone else see what's happening here? And

(01:00:52):
how awesome and amazing it is that it's so different
from the way ESPN has done different this past. Keep
in mind Jamel dan Patrick tells the story and it's
amazing one. And you know this, and you and I
have talked about some of this about ESPN. The way
leadership worked there is just don't set any precedents for

(01:01:15):
anybody on anything, so no one else can say, well,
he or she got that, so can I have that?
The beginning of the end for me at ESPN. I
don't think anybody knows this is actually that I got
a T shirt company in negotiations, I got a merch
company in my last negotiations, and Disney wasn't really happy
with the idea that I can make my own cartoons,

(01:01:37):
you know. Not surprisingly, Disney pretty proprietary about those things.
So the precedent had been set that now anybody there
can ask four things like that. But the famous story
I tell is Dan Patrick is with Keith Oberman on
a culturally groundbreaking show that was the most powerful thing
of its time, and Dan Patrick wanted a television in

(01:01:59):
his office so before going on Sports Center he could
simply see what was happening in sports pre internet. And
the answer was no, because then Keith Oberman would also
want one. So if that's their system of governance since
the beginning of time, imagine my shock when someone's getting
drunk on thirty Guinnesses and telling all the smoke that
he's got all sorts of drugs in his system because

(01:02:22):
he's like, I don't care, I'm having fun. It's part
of his appeal, and it's something that Disney signed up
for in a way that breaks all precedents. And I
obviously welcome all the anarchists who changed the game, like,
because what ends up happening with anything I say when
I point this stuff out to people like, Hey, they
told me this was coming. They told me that whatever

(01:02:44):
I was doing that they wanted more sec football that
their customers want, and they're entitled to. They run their
business the way they want. They don't have to make
it about journalism. So they choose this guy who's not
about journalism, and they allow him to urinate all over
journalism and it only makes him more popular. While it's
kind of the opposite of what it is that we

(01:03:04):
came up and back when ESPN needed the name Chicago
Tribune in the newsroom because that's what they were going
for back then.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
Yeah, and I want people to understand, because you know
you're right, and I know how headlines work, is that
there will be a headline that says Dan Levatard and
Jamel Hill says Pat McAfee's.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
Only successful because he's white.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
Like, No, I am not saying that at all, Like
he's successful for all the reasons that you mentioned that
have nothing to do with his whiteness. However, what I
will say is that I do think that his behavior,
and I'm not saying that in a wagging the finger
kind of way, is more palatable because.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
Of who he is.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
Because he is a youngish white man that is specifically
has an audience that is also youngish, and there are
certain things that he can do that Frankly, I don't
know that a black person in his position would be
able to do those things on that network. And that's
not to say that that's any in any ways his fault.

(01:04:03):
But like, listen, I remember when Mike and I had
His and Hers and we did a boys in the
Hood skit which called for you know, ice Cube to
be drinking a forty ounce, right, Like it's the infamous.

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
Scene where him and Cuba Gooding.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
It's toward the end of the movie and he's just
lamenting about all the violence in his neighborhood, and we
basically recreated that scene and I was I told one
of the production assistants, go get me a real forty ounce,
and they were just like, we can't possibly do that, Like,
we can't have you drinking a forty on there, And
I was like, in order for me to sell it,
this has got to be a real forty and I

(01:04:39):
just wanted to sort of test the boundaries. And the
conversations around that forty hous were just nauseating, right, They're
just soul killing. It just sucks all.

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
The creativity out of you. We got it done. I drink.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
I tell people all the time, real forty houtse Yes,
I drink, and I'm pretty sure I'll go down in history,
although maybe not so much because McAfee is there as
the only person in he it's being history to drink
an actual forty ounce of beer on air. I'm very
proud of this, but I guess what ultimately why I
also am as equally fascinated by the effect of this.

(01:05:12):
It's not about Pat McAfee being the first, it's about
who will be the second.

Speaker 1 (01:05:17):
Will there be a second?

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
Will Is this an experiment that they will be willing
to try over and over again? And I don't know
that that will that will be the case. I don't
know that they're gonna somebody who doesn't look like Pat McAfee.
They're gonna welcome them saying yes, I take edibles, Yes
I do all this stuff. Yeah I'm high, Yeah I'm drunk. Yeah,
I don't care about my bosses, fuck everybody like.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
I don't know if them or any.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
Or many media companies are in the position to extend
that to people who only look one way and I
don't know if I'm being wrong about that or whatever,
but that's just my sense.

Speaker 7 (01:05:54):
I think that they're already doing it, and McAfee will
be the pioneer or the trendsetter here and we will
see what Shannon Sharp and Steven A. Smith get to
do with the same power. And I don't know whether
they have the same lack of fear. They don't seem
to run their lives quite the same way that McAfee does,

(01:06:14):
but we will. We will see how the rules are
or aren't different if they get into any of these things,
and then we'll have all the arguments around that. I
did hear I heard Shannon the other day because he's
on the same path of owning his own stuff and
being a brand so powerful that he doesn't have to
actually respect quote unquote bosses at ESPN. They report to

(01:06:37):
Eiger and Pataro's there, that's the CEO of Disney and
the president of ESPN. And I'm putting report in quote
marks because I don't think that Shannon Sharp actually has
to listen to much of anybody anymore because he's got
his own thing, and he he also doesn't need ESPN.
ESPN needs him like that's the seismic shift, right, It's

(01:07:01):
it's that's always been a production company. The dirty secret
about ESPN. I say this on my show all the time.
Nobody notices this, but you do realize that all of us,
on all the other shows are just the infomercials to
get you to the games, right, Like, these shows don't
have to be any good, they don't have to be
any popular. They don't even have to do numbers. Really,

(01:07:21):
like whatever First Take does is between you know, five
hundred thousand and a million in numbers, and at the
height of ESPN they had one hundred and twenty million subscribers,
so one hundred and nineteen million of them weren't paying
to watch, weren't watching First Take, and we're paying anyway
to not watch First Take. So all of the shows

(01:07:43):
are just infomercials and they can do whatever they want
with the shows. I know. Roy Wood Junior tells me
that in comedy he keeps an eye on sports television
because it's just so cheap. It can just you can
make it so much more cheaply two hours of television
because it's just people talking that all of this stuff
is Actually there's not a lot of incentive to make
any of it any good because just get them to

(01:08:05):
the games. And now they have a little more pressure
because of the streaming has taken so many of their
built in advantages. Right, it's not one hundred and twenty
million people anymore who are paying for this and not
watching it. It's whatever it is, sixty million, seventy million
because people are off the grid. Streaming is eating up
some of the numbers, and they now have to they

(01:08:27):
have to get different audiences in the tent. What is
Shannon Sharp's audience? Hey, come over here, I want you
to watch Shannon on our thing. So what do you think? Like,
I think Shannon Sharp can get away with a good deal,
because when I saw him interviewed the other day, there
was something. There are a lot of reports about McAfee
and Steven a are fighting or discord on the set
of First Take, and Shannon Sharp's like, what discord can

(01:08:49):
there be with me? I show up, I sit in
a closet. I don't do any production meetings. I don't
talk to any producers. I don't talk to any vice presidents.
I deal with whatever it is three or four people
at the company. Don't put me in your discord. I
don't talk to anybody, and he doesn't have to imagine
us trying to do the job that way. This is
what they've welcomed in the door. And here's the funny
thing about it, Jamel, and interesting to you. I imagine

(01:09:13):
these athletes have so much more confidence than the journalists do.
So like so many athletes I've talked to at ESPN
who look at me and just in general the hair
business and vanity business that is television, after a lifetime
of being coached, and they say, why are you guys
so insecure? Like we're used to criticism, We're used to,

(01:09:36):
you know, corrections coaching, And so I just think that
Shannon Sharp and Pat McAfee and people like them, with
their own brand and their own power and a lack
of fear, can actually come in and be totally unafraid
of bosses because they're just producers. It's just a production
company and it's been making infomercials for a long time

(01:09:59):
with those produce just trying to hold on desperately to
the power that now McAfee knocks out of their hands
and Shannon Sharp knocks on out of the hands because like, no,
I'm going to go talk to Iger. I don't need
to listen to you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Well, Dan, I want to thank you for joining me
on this episode of His Politics. I appreciate your continued support.
You're a dear friend of mine. You know how I
feel about you on a personal level, So for you
to allow me this time with you is really magnificent
because I know you do not do this off.

Speaker 7 (01:10:27):
Tell you again, as I've told you before, that beyond
admiring you, I genuinely love you. You are a person
that I think is very special in a lot of
different ways. So thank you for having me here, and
thank you for being like one of the best guests
we've had for a really long time in our universe.

Speaker 1 (01:10:46):
All right, appreciate you, Dan.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
I hope you all enjoyed that conversation and have enjoyed
this initial episode of Spolitics so far. Now, how comes
the time when I ask you for a favor, or
rather make a request I want to hear from you.
Yes you Now, I know you will listen to episodes
of Politics and have questions of your own.

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
So every week I'm going to answer a.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
Question from you all about anything that you might have
been thinking as you have been listening to an episode
of Spolitics. All you have to do is email your
question or send in a video to Spolitics twenty twenty four.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
At gmail dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
That's Politics twenty twenty four at gmail dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
And in case you're wondering, here's how you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
Spell spolitics s p O l I t I c
S s p O l I t.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
I c s. Hopefully you got that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
Also, make sure to follow Spolitics pod on Instagram and
on TikTok. Now, I know you enjoyed this first episode,
so let me give you an idea of what's to
come this season on Spolitics. But of course, craig sister
former First Lady Michelle Obama rich and her as an athlete.

Speaker 11 (01:12:03):
What kind of athlete was Michelle? She could play every
sport I played. She played baseball, softball, basketball, and she
ran track. We went to a day camp in Chicago
at Rainbow Beach and she would win all the ribbons
for track. So she was fast, athletic, and she had
the spirit of an athlete, right, so she was trying

(01:12:24):
to win. She wasn't just out there for exercise.

Speaker 12 (01:12:28):
I want black men's ideas to be invested in and
those ideas can result in businesses they can result in
whatever your personal ambition may be, job wise, et cetera.
Because ultimately this is about access to our dream of health.

Speaker 13 (01:12:40):
And well, every investment I make is first and foremost,
and investment business matters above all. In all these investments
in women's sports, like don't get it twisted, Like, yes,
obviously I'm married to Serena the Goat, Yes I have
two daughters. But the number one driving force behind all
these investments, starting with Angel City back in twenty nineteen,
has been business opportunity.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):
Everyone loves to say, shut up and dribble in to that,
I say, I wish we could, but we can't.

Speaker 14 (01:13:04):
So many of these athletes who were exercising their power
in that way, who were being political, I think that
those were women that a lot of women in society
could look to and say, well, if they can do it,
maybe I should be doing something.

Speaker 7 (01:13:17):
What else?

Speaker 14 (01:13:17):
You know, what else could I be doing? If these
athletes can be paying attention and doing something and trying
to make a difference, you know, and they're a fan
of that person, that's maybe raising their awareness in a
way that they didn't have before. That's maybe making them
aware of power that they didn't understand that they had.

Speaker 10 (01:13:32):
And the last five electure is Jamail. We've seen black
turn up from we are now at the point of
pre Obama level. That's a concern because I need Black
people to understand if we vote at our capacity, Jamail,
we wipe out racists.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Politics is a production of iHeart Podcast and The Unbothered Network.
I'm your host Jamel Hill. Executive producer is Taylor Schakoigne.
Lucas Hyman is head of audio and a executive producer.
Megan Armstrong is associate producer. Original music Frost Politics provided
by Kyle VISs from wiz FX