September 3, 2026 • 51 mins
Dan is joined by former long-time Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin as he prepares for his new role with "Football Night in America." Big Ten commissioner Tony Pettiti joins Dan and talks about the growth of the conference and how they navigate the contemporary age of college football, and the possibility of a big SEC-Big Ten challenge as the two conferences continue to stand above everyone else. With the seismic news regarding the Clippers and Kawhi Leonard, Dan chats with Pablo Torre, the man who is behind the initial reporting that led to the investigation. And NBA insider Brian Windhorst also joins the show to further break down the Clippers situation.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are listening to the Dan Patrick Show on Fox
Sports Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
The newest member of Football Night in America, former Steeler
head coach Mike Tomlin joining us on the program. What's
it like to have all this free time now?
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Oh, man, I am having the time of my life,
to be quite honest with you. I never had an August, man,
since I was like eight years old.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I've always been on the football team and in a
camp-like setting of some description.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
And so, man, August was great.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I can't wait to see what September is like.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Okay, but your body reacts to certain times of the year. Like,
you know, got to get ready for this. This is
the middle of the season, end of the season. So
what's it like when you know you're supposed to be,
you know, somewhere in Pennsylvania, two days, it's hot, getting
ready for the season. Meanwhile, you're sitting at home, whatever
(00:53):
you're doing.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
My pulse rate's a lot lower, you know?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Man, it's crazy how quickly you can get used to chilling.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I've enjoyed 2026, man. The free time. Had an opportunity
to really just focus on my wellness, man. Getting into
shape and things of that nature, man. When you lead
a football team, a football organization, sometimes, man, you put
yourself last. And so it's been good, man, to kind
of focus on some things like that and really just
(01:29):
have time to be present with my family and friends.
I went to a family reunion a couple of weeks ago, man.
I hadn't been to a family reunion since 1997. You know,
the family reunion is always the third week in July. OK,
where have I been all of my adult life the
third week in July in a football camp?
Speaker 4 (01:48):
And so.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Like my family was laughing that I was there, you know,
it's been a good summer.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I haven't seen you this animated before. Like you're smiling.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I mean, I hear I'm pretty pleasant to be around
these days.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
How often did you break camp and know exactly what
you had with your team?
Speaker 4 (02:12):
You know, I always had a pretty good idea. I
think that's what camp's about.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Like, You know, you go there to ready yourself for
the season individually and collectively. But from a coach's perspective
and through a coach's lens, I think you want to
be able to anticipate what you have in all three phases,
how you're built, how you engineer victory and things of
that nature. And so I always left with a pretty
good understanding. But you really don't know until the bullets
(02:40):
start flying. That's just a component of it. But I
think you certainly understand what neighborhood you're in when you
leave a camp setting.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I wonder if Aaron Rodgers would have come back if
you were still the head coach. Did you have conversations?
Mike comes in, but I wonder what would have happened.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
I believe he would have.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Just spending 12 months with Aaron, man, this guy has
a love affair with football and all components of it.
The process, meetings, team development. He loved training camp last year.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Not a lot of guys, man, enjoy training camp settings
the way I watched him enjoy it.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
And so I just think, man, he's built for it.
He's healthy. He's certainly capable.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
And so I think that he would have strongly considered
it regardless of circumstance.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
That's just my gut feeling.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, and he's credited you with helping him fall back
in love with football. Are you going to be able
to watch the Steelers without saying we?
Speaker 5 (03:46):
No.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
You know what I mean? Like, I'm not going to
kid myself.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Like, you know, I'm going to root for those guys, man, because,
you know, that's just who I am. I spent 19
years there. I had a hand in selecting most of
those guys. And so when you have those intimate relationships,
certainly that's going to be a component of viewing for me.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
You know, I don't know how much I'll even fight it.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Talking to Mike Tomlin, you can see him on Football
Night in America starting next Wednesday. It'll be the Seahawks
and the Patriots. What advice would you give Mike McDonald
as the head coach of the defending Super Bowl champs
with that following season?
Speaker 3 (04:29):
You know, I think the number one thing is the journey.
I think sometimes when you've been to the destination, and
particularly when you've been to the destination recently, you want
to hurry up and cut to the chase, and you
absolutely can't.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
And so.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
He's got to take his team through the process again.
A lot of them have been a component of it
in the past. Some of them will be new. But
I think he's got to do the best that he
can to wipe the slate clean and make sure they
appreciate the present and the journey that they're on right now.
And I think that, you know, I think there's a
lot of outside forces, to be quite honest with you,
(05:07):
that's going to be helpful in that regard. I think
the Rams are getting so much positive attention. I think
it's going to be an asset to them in terms of,
getting his group's attention in that regard.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Where would you put Aaron Donald all time?
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Oh my gosh. Um, he's in that elite group.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Um, is he Reggie white? Is he Lawrence Taylor? Is he,
is he in that?
Speaker 3 (05:29):
I mean, I think about, I think about those first
ballot interior guys, man. Um, that elite group, I think
it's about five of them, uh, probably sat being the
most recent. Um, he he's, he's in that elite class, uh,
he'll be a first ballot Hall of Famer. He's one
of the legendary guys of the game at his position,
(05:52):
regardless of generation. I just think he belongs in that
discussion with the elite of the elite.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
I've talked to Bill Cowher about when Ben Roethlisberger was
his quarterback, and he said there are times Ben would
act like he couldn't hear a play where Bill would
call in something and, you know, Ben would... How did
you handle your quarterback?
Speaker 3 (06:17):
You know, more than anything, man, it's my job to
make sure his talents show up and to bring the
game to him. And I think different players digest the
game in different ways and play with different styles. Ben
didn't like constraints, and so I always wanted to accommodate
that when I was capable. Some guys approach the game
(06:41):
like an engineer sometimes. You know, he approaches the game
like a pickup basketball point guard.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
There's a fluidity and organic component to his game. And
I just never wanted to stifle that.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Did you hate the Patriots or the Ravens more?
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Oh, certainly the Ravens.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
OK.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
And just because of the intimacy of it, it starts
in your division before you can dominate the AFC division.
In the NFL, you've got to dominate the division, and
certainly we've been in close quarters with those guys a
lot over the years.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
But no problems with the Patriots. You were okay with
Belichick and Brady?
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Oh, yeah, man.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I respect certainly what they were able to do and
love competing against them.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Good luck on Wednesday.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
Man, I need it, man. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Is anybody giving you advice, though?
Speaker 6 (07:40):
Everyone.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Are you asking for advice, though?
Speaker 6 (07:46):
I am.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
I am like I'm excited and nervous at the same
time about this new challenge and new space I'm in.
And so I'm certainly paying respect to it from a
prep standpoint and and gleaning information from from my peers,
particularly those. that I have relationships with and that have
done it at a high level. And so I've sought
(08:08):
a lot of advice. I've gotten a lot of advice.
And I'm really just excited about doing a good job
for the viewing audience.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Great to talk to you. Good luck, Coach. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Dan, thank you.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
That's Mike Tomlin.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Be sure to catch the live edition of the Dan
Patrick Show weekdays at 9 a.m. Eastern, 6 a.m. Pacific
on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 7 (08:30):
Hey, it's Covino and Rich from Fox Sports Radio. Go
(08:51):
to YouTube, search Covino and Rich FSR. Check us out
on YouTube, subscribe, hit that thumbs up icon, and comment away.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
He is the Big Ten Commissioner, Tony Petitti, joining us
on the program. What kind of year do you think
you had, if you were going to sum it up, Tony?
Speaker 8 (09:10):
The year ahead, I would say we feel, well, if
you're asking me what the year was this past year,
that's an interesting question.
Speaker 6 (09:18):
I mean, on the field, Dan, it couldn't have been
any better.
Speaker 8 (09:20):
You know, winning the football championship and both basketballs and
a total of 13 national championships across everything we play.
I think it was probably the most successful year in
the history of the Big Ten on the field. I
think for our student athletes, it was there was nothing better.
You know, obviously, you know, college athletics deals with all
kinds of challenges every day. Around, you know, legal cases and,
(09:41):
you know, there seems to be a new idea, a
new challenge, you know, coming every time you come.
Speaker 6 (09:46):
To the office. So that part has been difficult.
Speaker 8 (09:48):
But I would say that the main thing is, you know,
we're really fortunate in terms of attendance and viewership. Those
things are still just remarkably good for us. And so
that's the core of what we do. So thank God
that's still going on. as good as you could possibly hope.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Why do you feel so strongly about the rostered NFL
players not being able to return to college football?
Speaker 8 (10:09):
There's a bunch of reasons. I think, look, this is
supposed to be the system was always about you come,
you play your time here, and then you kind of
give way to the next group coming up. I think
people sort of forget that when kids come back, there
are kids that have been practicing since the spring. They're
trying to win jobs, trying to be starters, trying to
be the first backup. And then that goes on all summer.
They're working really hard. I think, no, we sort of
(10:31):
forget about that piece of this when we talk about
kids coming back. So the system is built on that
kind of movement. It was meant to be a place
where you have your time, you compete. If you can
go on and play professionally in any of the sports
we play, that's great. That's part of the journey. But
you go on to do other amazing things in your
life with all the benefits you've had of being in
the Big Ten. So I think that's the core of
what this is supposed to be. And I think we
(10:52):
shouldn't be disrupting that.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
But Tony, I've been saying for a while now, a
couple of years, that you have professional players playing in Europe, basketball,
and then able to come to the United States. Why
do we allow professionals in basketball to be able to
come and take roster spots in the United States?
Speaker 8 (11:10):
I mean, you're raising a really good question about what
happens pre-enrollment, right?
Speaker 6 (11:13):
Football is unique. It doesn't have that pre-enrollment problem, Dan, right?
Speaker 8 (11:16):
You're not coming out of high school playing professional football,
so there's no pre-enrollment issue.
Speaker 6 (11:20):
But in college basketball, there is.
Speaker 8 (11:22):
And I think you get a lot of coaches who
agree 100% with what you're talking about. I think we
have to get into a sense of we've been in
this kind of waiver environment where some kids get to
have that exception based on what you actually did when
you're in Europe. And as you know, not every kid
is exactly the same when they play over there and
then when they come here. So I think what you're
pointing to is something that's just an absolute necessity. We
(11:43):
just have to get clarity. We have to get into
having rules and not having exceptions and waivers everywhere. that
make it really hard because then kids are going to think, well,
I look like that student athlete who got that.
Speaker 6 (11:52):
Why don't I.
Speaker 8 (11:54):
Get the same waiver this kid got? And that's when
you end up in court every other day. So I
totally agree with you. We've got to have more bright lines,
more simple rules, and make a decision about what we
want post-enrollment and what we are willing to allow pre-enrollment
and be consistent.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Why can't we have a commissioner for college, let's say
college football, a commissioner for college basketball?
Speaker 8 (12:13):
I mean, look, there's been a lot of talk about that.
And I think when you see some of the things
about that happen to happen, look, the tradition has always
been this way. The conference system is the way this
has been built. You know, as you know, uh, you know,
for many years, the NCAA really controlled the way football
was operated in this country back into the eighties. And
then it became a conference system, you know, in the nineties.
And that's, what's really survived. And over the last 30 years,
(12:34):
when I was at ABC sports, you know, we, we,
we sort of went from having like the CFA college
football association that broke apart. And that gave way, gave
rise to this whole structure of, you know, conference media deals. Um, Look,
I think the CFP is a good place for us
to start to do more of what you're suggesting, which
is to come together and use the structure of the
college football playoff to come together and use that to
(12:55):
make rules, how we manage the game, competition committees, at
least start with empowering that organization because we all compete
for the championship in that organization.
Speaker 6 (13:04):
To use that to do more, I think would be
a great start.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
He's the Big Ten commissioner, Tony Petitti. How is Big
Ten football different from SEC football?
Speaker 8 (13:14):
I don't really usually try to compare what we're doing,
Big Ten, SEC. I think what we've got is great programs.
We have really good coaching across everything. We're attracting great
student-athletes to play. I'm really excited about the returning quarterback
play we have this year. I think 10 of our
18 are returning their starting quarterback this season. So we
have great depth. I think the way I look at
(13:35):
it is that we're blessed to have this rivalry. I
think anything you want in sports is you want competition.
You want your fans to deeply care about something. So
not only do we have rivalries inside the league, but
this sort of competition with the SEC, I think is
a great thing for college football and all the other
sports we play. So we kind of lean into that.
But at the same time, like every season is different.
Every week tends to be a little bit different. But
(13:57):
I would just say we have great depth and strength.
You know, we've been super successful the last three years.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
We know that.
Speaker 8 (14:02):
We've played in 14 of the 22 CFP games the
last two seasons.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
The 2014 playoff feels like the SEC might be warming
to this. You would know better than me. I'm only
going by a source saying that, you know, the SEC is,
you got to convince them. So what role can you
play in convincing Greg Sankey and the SEC to warm
up to 24 teams?
Speaker 8 (14:28):
Yeah, when we work together on this, you know, not
an everyday basis, but very frequently about the future of
the playoff and what the format should be, the way
it's structured is the two leagues have control of any
of the changes to the format. So we've got to
come together. I think there's been an evolution across these ideas.
I think there's a lot more momentum for 24. It's definitely,
there's definitely, you know, people warming up.
Speaker 6 (14:47):
I think a lot of.
Speaker 8 (14:47):
Coaches and ADs across all conferences really support the idea
of 24. I think, look, we got more than a
hundred teams playing, trying to compete. It's not a high
percentage of, You know, I typically go to practices and
camps in the summer. I'll go see five or six
schools every summer. And, you know, you want all those
teams to be playing for something meaningful. And once you
once you went to a 12 team playoff, you basically
(15:09):
said this is it.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
Right.
Speaker 8 (15:10):
This is where you need to be to be to
be successful. And we just got to increase the opportunities
for student athletes, for our programs. And the other piece
of it at the investments that are being made, you know,
that justifies having more access. Access is really key. I
don't think Greg disputes any of that. I think his
league feels the same way. We just got to work
through the details of how we actually would do it.
But I feel good about the evolution over the last
(15:31):
six months about how people are sort of directionally realizing
the benefits. I actually think it would drastically change regular
season scheduling.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
How close do you think we're to a model like
the Premier League or maybe the NFL where you have divisions, conferences,
the same thing, and maybe you've got– 35, 40 teams,
maybe less than that. How far off is that model
in your opinion?
Speaker 8 (15:57):
I mean, we don't talk about that. We're happy with
the 18 members that we have. We feel the structure
that we have to compete and schedule works well. I
think what we're focused on is I think there's a
lot on the table that we can still do inside
college football. I think in the Big Ten, we can
really improve our schedule. I think fans want us to.
We can play more of these games. I think we've
got to solve the postseason access issue. And once we
(16:19):
do that, we can sort of solve the other issue,
which is to have more impactful matchups in the beginning
of the season. I think everybody's pointing to that. There's
a lot being written about this year and what's scheduled
next year. We can make that better. It's right in
front of us, and we don't need to change our
structure to do that. We just got to solve the
access to the postseason, get coaches comfortable that an early
season loss isn't going to wreck your season.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
I love the rivalry, though, with the SEC. I like
when you jab a little bit, and Greg Sankey's got
a sense of humor. Do Will you have a sense
of humor if he's jabbing you back if the SEC
wins the national title?
Speaker 6 (16:53):
I mean, look, that's part of it. We have some fun.
Speaker 8 (16:56):
Our social media teams like to lean into it and
pick some fights and have our fans pick up on it.
There's lots of memes that get sent to me every day.
I'm sure he gets them as well. That's the beauty
of it. You couldn't write a better storyline. If you're
trying to script this, you would want this, right? You'd
want this rivalry between the leagues about who's better and
when and who's deeper and who's.
Speaker 6 (17:14):
Better at the top.
Speaker 8 (17:15):
Like, yeah, go have at it. Let's go play on
the field. And I think that's why we should play
more in the regular season. Like if we did that,
it would just inspire more of it. It's just like
I said, it's an easy thing to accomplish. We know
it works.
Speaker 6 (17:26):
You know, look, Texas and Ohio.
Speaker 8 (17:28):
State in just a couple of weeks, like we know
the impact that game is going to have. We saw
it last year. You know, that'll just be a great
event for college football. We just need to do more
of that. We got Oklahoma going to Michigan. So there's
some there's some opportunities there. And we know when we
play those games, we get tremendous audiences, lots of buzz.
And it makes the whole game and the sport better.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Could you do a week where it's the SEC Big
Ten like we have in basketball? I know there's more games,
but could you do that based off last year's record or,
you know, this team is going to play this team and,
you know, all the way down to, you know, I
don't want Rutgers, you know, playing LSU. I want somebody
who maybe is kind of commensurate to their talent level.
(18:09):
But can we do that for a week?
Speaker 8 (18:11):
You're raising a really interesting scheduling thing, not only for
the way you schedule like non-conference, but actually schedule.
Speaker 6 (18:17):
The NFL does a really good job.
Speaker 8 (18:18):
The reason why, you know, you saw the Brady Patriots
and the Manning Colts play so often is because they
were playing because of where they finished in their division standings.
Speaker 6 (18:26):
Right.
Speaker 8 (18:26):
And there's something to learn from that. You know, I
think it would take time to get there, but you
could do what you're talking about is exactly the conversations
we have here. We model all those things out. We
have to have you know, we have to come together
to do that. But I think all of those things
are in play. Like you don't necessarily have to schedule
home and homes. Like you can say one year you're
playing this SEC team and the next year you're on
the road, but you're going someplace different. Those are all
great ideas that I think fans will lead into. You know,
(18:49):
and there's also something like we have some really historic
stadiums in both of our conferences, especially on the Big
Ten stadiums. And having fans have an opportunity to travel
and see those, you know, see those stadiums go play
at some of these places would be great.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
I think I think it would inspire a lot of
road trips in both directions.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
No matter how many teams, if you add new schools
to the Big Ten, it's always going to be the
Big Ten. We're not going to actually have the exact number.
That'll never happen. Not the Big 18.
Speaker 6 (19:15):
I don't think so.
Speaker 8 (19:16):
I think everybody sort of likes the Big Ten, and
we've got a logo that sort of allows us to
sort of not highlight the one that's right behind my head.
Speaker 6 (19:22):
Here with the B1G. I give Jim Delaney credit for that.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Thanks for joining us, Tony. Have fun this season.
Speaker 6 (19:30):
Thanks so much, Dan.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
That's Tony Petitti, Big Ten Commissioner. Fox Sports Radio has
the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all
of our shows at foxsportsradio.com. And within the iHeartRadio app,
search FSR to listen live.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Pablo Torre, journalist, podcaster, host of Pablo Torre's Finds Out
with Metal Ark Media. Well, you did find out, but
I'm curious through all of this, any doubts along the
way of your reporting? If your ESPN comes out with
an article recently, hearing from the Clippers, hearing from other people,
(20:07):
Any doubts? Any conversations with the wife at night of, uh-oh?
Speaker 5 (20:12):
The doubts were, hey, we're still going to be married
at the end of this, right? Because you're on the
phone talking to sources all of the time that you
say are very important. And we're at the beach with
our daughter on your quote-unquote vacation. That was the doubt.
But In truth, those sources were right the whole time, Dan.
The thing that was interesting yesterday, and many things were
(20:34):
interesting yesterday, was just what the NBA would do about it.
And that's what we found out, is what does the
internal politics of league governance look like when you have
a scope that leads to a rabbit hole that has
four separate companies in it, manufactured paper trails, fake jobs,
not just for Kawhi Leonard, but for the companies, like
(20:55):
fake consulting jobs for the companies that funneled money to
Kawhi Leonard through the Clippers, as well as those companies.
And you have now, as of yesterday, an SEC, Securities
and Exchange Commission, not Southeastern Conference, SEC investigation into the
scoreboard company that, according to the NBA, got the deal
(21:17):
to build the Halo board in Intuitome because they were
willing to funnel money to Kawhi Leonard. That's what the
NBA could not deny. What did you make of the punishments?
I thought that it could have been more. And I
think that it is two things. The biggest punishment for
(21:38):
an owner that we've ever seen in American sports, I think,
when you account for the fact that it is Steve
Ballmer banned from the building for a year, his head
of business banned from the building for a year, his
head of basketball banned from the building for six months
because Lawrence Frank was that basketball ops president participated and
provided contemporaneous notes to the NBA, by the way, a
(22:00):
whole other rabbit hole of like, why was Lawrence Frank
taking notes during the cap circumvention meetings in which he
is quoting the thanks to the NBA's investigators, Steve Ballmer
talking about how he's going to service Dennis Robertson and
Kawhi Leonard to circumvent the cap. Like, why was that there? Interesting.
$ 30 million is, you know, change to a guy with
(22:23):
$ 145 billion, depending on Microsoft stock. But the thing about
the scope and the vastness of it, the five first rounders,
I mean, I just, I think it was unprecedented in
that regard. but also because it was narrow in scope.
There are names in this report that we have been
talking about for a year that did not show up.
(22:44):
There is a line that Wachtell, Lipton, the law firm
put in. Their investigation is ongoing. They are still receiving tips.
As recently as just weeks ago, they are still investigating.
It's only the beginning somehow, which is kind of the
through line of the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Can you give me best guess of what you think
could be next involving the clippers.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
Well let's just take steve ballmer at his word he
has written a letter via his very expensive attorneys to
adam silver blaming this podcaster for getting the nba to
do a prejudiced investigation and at first after the ruling
came out he threatened arbitration but this is something that's
very interesting that i don't know if people appreciate about
(23:28):
what the nba did When the NBA tried to settle
with Steve Ballmer, and they said, hey, we have a
narrow scope, we have undeniable evidence, we want to just
make sure that you have the opportunity to take your punishment,
admit wrongdoing, and let us all move on. Steve Ballmer,
according to everything that we've seen now play out in
public after that ESPN story two weeks ago, decided to fight,
(23:50):
decided to mount his own campaign. And the NBA said, well,
in that case, we're going to do something that perhaps
caught Steve Ballmer by surprise. They found a way to
settle with Kawhi Leonard and the Players Union. Why is
that important? When Kawhi gets a slap on the wrist,
that's where the slap on the wrist was, Dan, by
the way. $ 700, 000 for Kawhi Leonard. Again, historically, that's quite
(24:12):
a bit, but in terms of the role he had
in the whole story, that's a slap on the wrist.
He can now go on to Toronto and the betting
lines can adjust based on that if Toronto wants to
go through with this, not knowing what else is in
the box.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
I digress.
Speaker 5 (24:26):
They got Kawhi. to settle. And in the NBA, what
Adam Silver knows better than Steve Ballmer and his lawyers
know apparently is that arbitration can only be activated by
the union. And so arbitration, because of that settlement, is
off the table. Can't go to arbitration. What can Steve
Ballmer do? He can literally sue the NBA. He can
(24:49):
sue Adam Silver. He can sue me. He can sue
Wachtell Lipton. He can sue you. He can sue everybody.
And that opens the door to, spoiler alert, more discovery
of documents.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Could he have mitigated, like how much damage could he
have mitigated by just saying to the commissioner, I'm so sorry.
I fall on my sword.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
Something that was really interesting in this Wachtell report was
how much the NBA leaned on the interview he did
with ESPN and Ramona Shelburne the day after part one
of my story came out. When Steve Ballmer went on air,
and it is so interesting, if you guys have some
free time, if you want to, you know, threaten your
own marriages, go rewatch that game film sometime. Take time
(25:39):
out of your day to rewatch what Steve Ballmer did
after knowing what he actually did. And you will see
that he is lying repeatedly. And once he does that,
and he's on the record lying in public about what
happened here, the NBA now has the ability to fact check,
as I did, as I have been doing this whole time.
And because he decided to fight from day one, as
(26:01):
opposed to what you suggest, which is say, I am
horrified by what I tried to do. I love basketball
too much. I wanted the thing that I know I
can't have, even though I'm the richest owner in sports.
And I am so humiliated by this. And I want
to put this behind me and move on. I don't
think we're here. I don't have a 15-part series. I
(26:22):
may not have a Pulitzer Prize. The NBA might not
have a 35-page legal report. Steve Ballmer may not pay
$ 50 million, as he has now said, for the legal
investigation into him, which is what has happened. It's crazy.
That was the fork in the road, and he chose,
I would say, to not tell the truth.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
We're talking to Pablo Torre, the journalist, podcaster, host of
Pablo Torre Finds Out with Metal Ark Media. This isn't
the first time that this has happened with an owner.
It won't be the last. But I'm just surprised it
hasn't come up before. Now, I know that Ballmer tried
to do this with DeAndre Jordan, which doesn't help his
(27:02):
case in this situation. But how prevalent do you think
this has been? And is there anything that you're interested
in that might be going on akin to this of
circumventing the salary cap?
Speaker 5 (27:18):
You got me to do it one time, and I said,
what about a certain player who plays in a city
where I may be living right now? And I said that,
and I've been trying to manage the expectations ever since. Stan,
I see what you're doing. You're a clever interviewer.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
But are you looking into the Knicks and Jalen Brunson?
Speaker 5 (27:38):
I am not focusing on the... What do they say
when you're an ESPN employee and you're trying to break...
graph picks without breaking graph picks. You say, I am
not currently targeting. I am not currently looking into. I'm
not currently circling Jalen Brunson and the Knicks. I have
had all sorts of calls about so many teams. I've
talked to people on the Knicks about all of this,
(28:00):
and they're just not the focus because we have other
things that are, by the way, coming very soon that
are in the vein of what are billionaires who run
sports trying to get away with using your money. And
I will leave it there just for now because I
think we got to button some stuff up, but that's, there's,
let me say this. Soon on the show, we will
(28:20):
start a new series and that new series will speak
to a lot of the themes and even more, I think,
even greater complications for what the everyday person in America
should be worried about. And so what did Balmer do here?
What makes this one special? He had the ambition to,
(28:40):
of creating a scheme that is beyond what other owners
have attempted. That much I'm very comfortable saying. This is
the furthest point in the spectrum of attempted salary cap circumvention.
People do it by degree. No one did it by
this order of magnitude. And that's why the NBA, which
(29:01):
wanted to make everybody stop talking about this, it's why
they had to do the thing we saw yesterday.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
How does ESPN go with the story with their finest
investigative reporters that basically exonerated the Clippers and Steve Ballmer?
Speaker 5 (29:17):
I mean, I, for 15 parts a year, did, of course,
the other thing. I found sources, whistleblowers, documents who were
willing to tell the truth. What was left open, if
you think of all of this as sports, right, what's
left available as territory for us to claim. What ESPN
(29:38):
apparently saw was the Clippers side of the story. And
the NBA immediately within an hour refutes it vociferously with
Mike Bass's name attached, Dan, and you know how rare
that is. For there to be a byline on a
statement that says significant and numerous inaccuracies. And what ESPN
had done, according to my reporting, is they were fed
(30:00):
a story by the Clippers that the Clippers may have
known was not true. And why do you do that? Well,
perhaps it's because that's the available territory that you have,
having been beaten on the other part of this landscape.
Perhaps you really believed it because the Clippers look you
in the eye and for months, for a year, said
to you, we're telling the truth. That annoying clout-chasing podcaster
(30:23):
is lying to you. And at a certain point, it's
a test. Do you choose to believe the evidence, the sources,
the journalism, or do you try to get a win
even when the game's already over?
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Do you care? Have you received an apology from ESPN?
Speaker 5 (30:42):
You know what's interesting? I submitted, I was told after
the story published, hey, if you want to have a
comment here because this is effectively refuting your whole deal here,
we'll include a statement from you. And so I submitted
a statement and I'll just paraphrase it. It was, we
(31:02):
stand by our reporting and we look forward to the
NBA's ruling. Our investigation continues. For whatever reason, ESPN did
not include it. And so I don't expect an apology.
I don't expect anything, nor do I think I even
need or deserve one, right? Like I'm a big boy,
as they say. I just wonder why ESPN It happened
(31:24):
like this because in this story, a story of no
alternate rational explanations, it sure seems to me, based on
my reporting, that they got fed a story by the
people who were lying to everybody this whole time, and
I got implicated as a result of it.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
How much money did Kawhi Leonard make off the books,
in your opinion?
Speaker 5 (31:47):
So I'll tell you factually what I know and what
I don't. So Aspiration has a total value of $ 48 million.
Now let's bring in the other companies, right? Boingo Wireless.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Of course.
Speaker 5 (31:59):
Which is just funny because, of course, the wireless provider
of the Intuit dome is giving Kawhi Leonard payments off
the books. Of course, Daktronics, the scoreboard operator, is. Of course,
Lockton Insurance, the insurance company on the construction of the dome,
is doing the same thing, Dan.
Speaker 6 (32:18):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (32:19):
Those three companies, according to the NBA's investigation through 2021,
guaranteed $ 18 million to Kawhi Leonard. So doing the math,
that's $ 66 million. Only through let's call it 2022. He
resides with the Clippers. As I said before on my
show in January of 24 for a discount, a discount
(32:41):
less than the max. Why and what happened there? And
so you're at 66 million plus. I've told the story,
the beginning of it around the Rhode Island football club
started an LLC in which he got secret undisclosed equity
the week before he signed the extension. And I ask,
as always, what else was there? And I have a feeling,
(33:04):
as always, that there is more.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Congrats. It's been a long process there. And at least
you get a trophy. You get something the Clippers don't have.
You get a trophy.
Speaker 5 (33:18):
You know, I wasn't going to make the joke, but
I'm glad you did.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Thank you, Dan.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Thank you, Pablo. Pablo Torre. He won a Pulitzer Prize.
I think it's a trophy.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
I haven't even seen a Pulitzer. Is it a statue?
Speaker 4 (33:35):
Is it a plaque?
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Maybe some of my best people could get on that
right now. A ribbon? Wait, Pablo.
Speaker 5 (33:44):
Okay what i hope i don't i don't admittedly i've
become known now for my investigations i don't know what
this looks like either which is perhaps embarrassing but my
hope is that it's a karate trophy oh i want
a big karate trophy with a karate man on the
top because i only was a white belt and i've
been chasing that high ever since so that'd be nice.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
You might need that white belt You're going to need
a black belt.
Speaker 6 (34:12):
You know what?
Speaker 5 (34:12):
The more questions you ask about Jalen Brunson, the more
martial arts training I'm.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Going to need in New York City, Dan. You brought
up Jalen Brunson again.
Speaker 5 (34:22):
You pesky journalists with your questions.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah, all right. I'm not winning a Pulitzer.
Speaker 9 (34:26):
All right.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
That's Pablo Torre.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Be sure to catch the live edition of the Dan
Patrick Show weekdays at 9 a.m. Eastern, 6 a.m. Pacific
on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 7 (34:38):
Hey, it's Covino and Rich from Fox Sports Radio. Now,
in addition to hearing us live weekdays from 5 to
7 p.m. Eastern, 2 to 4 Pacific on Fox Sports Radio,
we're excited to announce a brand new YouTube channel for
the show.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yup, that's right.
Speaker 7 (34:52):
You can now watch Covino and Rich live on YouTube
every day. All you gotta do, search Covino and Rich
FSR on YouTube. Again, Go to YouTube, search Covino &
Rich FSR. Check us out on YouTube, subscribe, hit that
thumbs up icon, and comment away.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
ESPN senior NBA writer Brian Windhorst joining us. Wendy, great
to talk to you. Is there any way the Clippers
can mitigate any of this damage moving forward?
Speaker 9 (35:20):
Absolutely. You know, number one, they can.
Drop their chance of, you know, threats of legal action,
because I don't think it's going to be successful. And,
you know, they really need this Kawhi Leonard trade to
go through that they negotiated with the Raptors as constituted,
because they're going to get two first round picks for him. And,
(35:44):
you know, in the case of the Minnesota Timberwolves situation,
and I think It's really reasonable to point that out
because obviously it's the one comparable incidence in history. They
were docked five first-round draft picks, just like the Clippers.
And when the Timberwolves kept their noses clean and stayed
on the straight and narrow, David Stern ended up giving
them back two of the picks. And that happened over
(36:08):
a five-year span. They were hit with the picks immediately
over the following five years. In this case, the picks
are starting, the penalties start in 29. They go out
to 34. Who's to say that by 2031 or 2032,
if the Clippers keep their nose clean, they won't be
able to get some of that, you know, one or
(36:28):
two of them back. That's something that you can, you know,
talk about off the record right now. And so in
the case of the Timberwolves, Joe Smith's contract was vacated.
It was voided. He was a free agent. In this case,
the Clippers are permitted to keep the player with no
significant penalty. They can trade him and get assets back
(36:48):
for him. Not only that, but the length of the
investigation the Clippers used in their favor. They were able
to make moves that landed them the number five pick
in this year's draft and the ability to negotiate this
Kawhi trade without a suspension hanging over his head. So
they are in a lot better position to absorb this
than they would have been if this was handled differently.
(37:10):
And while I understand that hell hath no fury like
an angry billionaire with $ 100 billion— He probably should listen
to a little bit of reason because the league said,
or at least the report said, that this investigation isn't over.
They left open the possibility there could be more. So, yeah,
(37:32):
I think obviously there's a shock in the announcement, and
there's a shock when you read all the details. When
you get past it, I think the Clippers can mitigate
this in a way that can— I see people referencing
a death penalty. It's not a death penalty, Dan. They
didn't give them a playoff ban. They're still going to
have cap space this summer. They're still going to have– Dan,
(37:55):
they have a first-round pick in the 2027 draft. They
didn't take it. It's a swapped pick. They're going to
swap it, I think, with Denver, Oklahoma City. It's probably
not going to be a good pick. They have a
draft pick in 2027. So this is– it's bad. It's
a blow. You're losing a limb, but this is not
a death penalty.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Billionaires usually don't get told what to do. So I'm
sure that Steve Ballmer is surrounded by people who tell
him what he wants to hear. But at some point,
you have to. I mean, they Lawrence Frank was taking
notes in the meeting about circumventing the salary cap. I
get what point do you say, hey, I'm an impenetrable
(38:39):
or the commissioner needs me or I'm so bad. Like,
I don't know if there's arrogance involved in this. that
led him down this path.
Speaker 9 (38:48):
Well, I don't have, you know, omnipotent understanding of everybody's
feelings on this, but what it looks to me like
based on this array of statements yesterday, and the Clippers
put out a public statement and then released a two-page
angry letter to Adam Silver. There's a lot of copy
generated yesterday. It looks to me like what they are
focusing on is a legalese situation about how the arrangements
(39:13):
were made.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Like, No, no.
Speaker 9 (39:15):
We didn't facilitate the deals. We just acted as middlemen.
And that seems to be their legal argument and where
they're ready to go to battle on. But Dan, here's
the thing. He didn't do any work for these companies.
Speaker 6 (39:28):
He didn't.
Speaker 9 (39:30):
Do the endorsements. He didn't do ads. He didn't do
any of it. You don't have to have next-level understanding
of all this stuff to understand that it reeks of
quid pro quo. And what we didn't understand until yesterday
was that this was for companies. four of them. And Dan,
(39:52):
I don't know, one of the companies, two of the
companies openly cooperated, Aspiration and Daktronics. Now Aspiration, and even
the report says that the guy who's in the federal
penitentiary is not credible. And I agree, I don't find
him credible. So they're kind of even, I mean, they
put it in there, but they're kind of ignoring him.
But they had Daktronics. Daktronics copped to it. They openly
(40:15):
said what happened. And I get why they're saying it,
because their CEO yesterday had an earnings call and said
that the SEC is on their backside. This is not
to be messed around with. Plus, they sell scoreboards. Do
you want to be in business with the NBA if
you sell scoreboards? I think you do. So they cooperated.
(40:36):
But here's the thing, Dan. These investigators had the data
and the money for all four companies. How'd they get
it if two of the companies didn't cooperate? They had
internal whistleblowers participating. They had the dollars, Dan. They knew
exactly how much was paid. So these companies didn't do
(40:57):
any ads with Kawhi. He didn't act as an endorser.
So this is the thing. Steve Ballmer or another owner
could look at you square in the face with their
hand on the Bible and say, we have the agents
for our superstar players on our backside all the time
about getting them deals, getting them endorsements. And absolutely that happens.
And absolutely there's teams out there that have acted as middlemen.
(41:20):
In fact, there may have been teams out there that
have acted as more than middlemen. But those players, to
our knowledge at least, are doing the endorsement contracts. Like
when you see, you know, the star player doing a
deal with the team sponsor, he's at least out there
with his face on it. The reason this is so
repugnant is that it just is very cleanly obvious that
(41:43):
it was a kickback because in this case, in 2019,
they didn't just sign Kawhi Leonard. They were also building
the arena. And so that meant there was a whole
bunch of vendors and companies that they were doing hundreds
of millions of dollars in business with that they don't
normally do. You don't build an arena every year. You
don't buy a $ 100 million scoreboard every year. But this year,
(42:05):
they were building the $ 100 million scoreboard. And Pablo Torre
and Hunterbrook Media went and dug into that Daktronics was
struggling at the time. I don't need to go into
all the details.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
This report.
Speaker 9 (42:17):
If you were on a jury and you didn't know
anything about basketball, you didn't know whether the Clippers played
in Los Angeles or London, if you got this report
and you read it, you would vote to convict. I
don't think it's even really close.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
How did Kawhi kind of skirt? I know it's $ 700, 000,
but I thought he was going to get suspended or
they would void his contract. What about you?
Speaker 9 (42:41):
Well, I think there was two reasons. Well, I would
say this. There's probably some unknown reasons that we don't know.
I'll just leave it at that. The second thing is
when you have a disciplinary action with a player, there's
an arbitration process spelled out in the collective bargaining agreement.
(43:03):
The arbiters are already picked, the process is set out,
and you're going to have to present evidence and potentially
do interviews and stuff like that. You have to go
to court. And I'm not sure that the that the
investigators had the documentation where they could win an arbitration
against Kawhi Leonard. I do think they felt like they
had the documentation to go against Jillian Zucker and Steve Ballmer.
(43:24):
And so basically the burden of proof with Kawhi was
much higher. But I'm not going to say.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
More than that. You know more than that.
Speaker 9 (43:37):
I don't know. I speculate. I'm not going to get
into that.
Speaker 6 (43:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
I always find this tricky that You know, whenever I
have a source, you always have to wonder what if
the source has an agenda. And I don't know how
you navigate this. Now, first 10 years at ESPN, you know,
it was pretty powerful place even then. And then I
never questioned as much as I should have. What is
(44:02):
somebody's agenda here?
Speaker 4 (44:04):
And I don't know.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
How do you navigate if somebody gives you the information
of ESPN? OK, do I trust them? Can I go
with this? You know, like Pablo Torre. He's one guy
going against very powerful person here and didn't back down.
But you also have to wonder about that source or sources.
What's their agenda?
Speaker 9 (44:24):
Yeah, it's an absolute the complex web that we operated
in the modern era. This is absolutely a factor. And
you try to do your best as the either you
try to do your best. You don't. That's the basic
way you can say it. I mean, even a moment ago,
I praised Hunterbrook Media. Hunterbrook Media has done a bunch
(44:44):
of investigations. I don't know if you're familiar with them.
They're a new media company, and Pablo has partnered with them.
Hunterbrook Media is a hedge fund-backed media source. They do
investigations and then oftentimes short the companies that they do
the investigation against, which they disclose, right? And I'm just
(45:06):
telling you that they did great work here. But they
have an inherent conflict of interest. So, yeah, it's a
hard thing to figure out, which is why a lot
of people end up stepping in quagmires. And caution doesn't
always win the day. Um, sometimes people who are cautious get, get,
(45:29):
get rolled over. This particular situation is extremely thorny and
this is an imperfect response. The NBA is not going
to be able to get up because it's so nuanced. Um,
that's why I think the Clippers are so mad because
I think the Clippers feel like they were dancing within
the rules here and they feel like they can more
to the point. they feel like they can prove that
(45:52):
they can dance within the rules. And the league is
basically saying, we don't think you can. I think the last,
one of the public statements that the Clippers made was
so telling during this process. They said, we didn't, we
are not guilty of what we are accused of. It's
a loaded sentence. So you get into situations like that.
(46:13):
And it's, look, I have spent a lot of hours
in the last couple of weeks reading legal documents, Dan,
while covering the NBA with the whole Buss family and
now the Clippers. This is the era that we're in,
is that I've got to read all these legal documents
to cover the NBA.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Talking to Brian Wendhorst of the Mothership, what happens with
the Lakers with the Buss family?
Speaker 9 (46:36):
Well, the gigantic difference between a year ago when the
when the Lakers sold, and then this time, and this
is elementary, but it needs to be pointed out, is
that a year ago, the buses had majority control. And
now they do not. And when you are a minority shareholder,
you are exactly that. You don't get to have say. Now,
(46:59):
Jeannie Buss' standing is a little bit different. She is
the governor. But she, as the governor, you serve at
the pleasure of the controlling owner. And so the Lakers
controlling ownership is going to change hands whether the Buss
family can get their act together or not. And whether
Jeannie has the title of governor or not, the controlling owner,
(47:21):
which is going to be Josh Kushner, assuming that he
completes it. And I think Bob Iger is going to
be the managing partner. They're going to have control over
the Lakers because they don't need the 17%. The Buss
family drama is amazing. There has been two television shows
in the last five years about the Buss family, one directly,
(47:43):
the HBO show, the second one, Running Point. The Netflix show,
which Jeannie made, was really about her. It was based
on her life. And neither of those shows will be
anywhere near as good as the true story of what's
happening within that family drama. It is incredible palace intrigue.
But they no longer have control over the Lakers. And
so it will remain palace intrigue. It won't affect the
(48:05):
decisions with the basketball team.
Speaker 5 (48:08):
$ 12.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
5 billion. What do you make of that price tag?
Speaker 9 (48:12):
I make the Jeannie bus sold low so that she
could get a sweetheart deal for herself because I think
$ 10 billion was low. And I'll tell you this, I
can't predict the future. I wouldn't sit here and try
to guess the macroeconomic future of the country. But my
guess is that the $ 12 billion purchase will not end
up being a bad one. And here's something else. Bob
(48:36):
Iger and Josh Kushner were trying to buy the team
in Vegas. And the thought process was that that was
going to cost... Maybe $ 8 or $ 9 billion.
Speaker 5 (48:46):
Okay? And maybe more.
Speaker 9 (48:48):
Maybe it'll end up being more. I don't know the answer.
But that was about what people thought it was going
to cost. So they were trying to raise $ 8 or
$ 9 billion. This is what you have to understand. When
you hear that the Lakers sell for $ 12 billion, they're
not actually selling for $ 12 billion. They're buying about 73%
of it at the $ 12 billion valuation, which means that
(49:08):
they're going to be paying about $ 8 or $ 9 billion.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
Okay?
Speaker 6 (49:11):
So.
Speaker 9 (49:12):
yeah, they only have 73%, but they're controlling it. So
what would you rather have, Dan? Would you rather spend
the same amount of money to own the vegas this
name goes here or the los angeles lakers.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Is uh lebron still in the hunt for the expansion
team is he allowed to be have his name involved
in this So he has.
Speaker 9 (49:37):
Openly said that he is no longer pursuing that. Two
things happened. I think, number one, LeBron was never going
to be able to be the controlling owner of a team.
He has done fabulously well. His net worth is north
of a billion dollars. But A billion dollars, even if
he sold everything, doesn't get it done. And even two
(49:58):
or three years ago, when he was really looking at this,
it was still going to take in the... So you
needed a partnership where you would partner with somebody who
had a giant piece of money that would be your partner.
His partners with Jerry Cardinal and the Fenway Sports Group,
those were the groups he was in business with. They
have backed away from NBA ownership. In fact, Fenway is divesting.
(50:19):
They just sold a big portion of Liverpool. They're selling.
Jerry Cardinal has gone on the record a number of
occasions saying he thinks prices for NBA teams are too high.
So his preferred partners were not looking like they were
going to bid on Vegas. So that was one of
the things that happened. I mean, he could have found
other partners, but that's one thing that happened. The second
(50:41):
thing is he's still being a great basketball player. And
he's still able to continue to play, and he's not
retired at age 41. So he's going to keep playing.
The expansion teams are probably going to get named, and
he's going to miss that window. But I'll tell you this.
If you think LeBron's done trying to be an owner
or trying to have heavy involvement in the NBA, he's not.
His life has many decades left in it. His influence
(51:02):
is going to be on. It's just not going to
be with this particular expansion deal.
Speaker 2 (51:06):
Always great. I know you're busy. Thank you, Wendy.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
Thanks, Dan.
Speaker 9 (51:09):
Have a good day.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
That's Brian Windhorst of the Mothership.
You are listening to the Dan Patrick Show on Fox
Sports Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
The newest member of Football Night in America, former Steeler
head coach Mike Tomlin joining us on the program. What's
it like to have all this free time now?
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Oh, man, I am having the time of my life,
to be quite honest with you. I never had an August, man,
since I was like eight years old.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I've always been on the football team and in a
camp-like setting of some description.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
And so, man, August was great.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I can't wait to see what September is like.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Okay, but your body reacts to certain times of the year. Like,
you know, got to get ready for this. This is
the middle of the season, end of the season. So
what's it like when you know you're supposed to be,
you know, somewhere in Pennsylvania, two days, it's hot, getting
ready for the season. Meanwhile, you're sitting at home, whatever
(00:53):
you're doing.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
My pulse rate's a lot lower, you know?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Man, it's crazy how quickly you can get used to chilling.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I've enjoyed 2026, man. The free time. Had an opportunity
to really just focus on my wellness, man. Getting into
shape and things of that nature, man. When you lead
a football team, a football organization, sometimes, man, you put
yourself last. And so it's been good, man, to kind
of focus on some things like that and really just
(01:29):
have time to be present with my family and friends.
I went to a family reunion a couple of weeks ago, man.
I hadn't been to a family reunion since 1997. You know,
the family reunion is always the third week in July. OK,
where have I been all of my adult life the
third week in July in a football camp?
Speaker 4 (01:48):
And so.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Like my family was laughing that I was there, you know,
it's been a good summer.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I haven't seen you this animated before. Like you're smiling.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I mean, I hear I'm pretty pleasant to be around
these days.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
How often did you break camp and know exactly what
you had with your team?
Speaker 4 (02:12):
You know, I always had a pretty good idea. I
think that's what camp's about.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Like, You know, you go there to ready yourself for
the season individually and collectively. But from a coach's perspective
and through a coach's lens, I think you want to
be able to anticipate what you have in all three phases,
how you're built, how you engineer victory and things of
that nature. And so I always left with a pretty
good understanding. But you really don't know until the bullets
(02:40):
start flying. That's just a component of it. But I
think you certainly understand what neighborhood you're in when you
leave a camp setting.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I wonder if Aaron Rodgers would have come back if
you were still the head coach. Did you have conversations?
Mike comes in, but I wonder what would have happened.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
I believe he would have.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Just spending 12 months with Aaron, man, this guy has
a love affair with football and all components of it.
The process, meetings, team development. He loved training camp last year.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Not a lot of guys, man, enjoy training camp settings
the way I watched him enjoy it.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
And so I just think, man, he's built for it.
He's healthy. He's certainly capable.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
And so I think that he would have strongly considered
it regardless of circumstance.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
That's just my gut feeling.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, and he's credited you with helping him fall back
in love with football. Are you going to be able
to watch the Steelers without saying we?
Speaker 5 (03:46):
No.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
You know what I mean? Like, I'm not going to
kid myself.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Like, you know, I'm going to root for those guys, man, because,
you know, that's just who I am. I spent 19
years there. I had a hand in selecting most of
those guys. And so when you have those intimate relationships,
certainly that's going to be a component of viewing for me.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
You know, I don't know how much I'll even fight it.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Talking to Mike Tomlin, you can see him on Football
Night in America starting next Wednesday. It'll be the Seahawks
and the Patriots. What advice would you give Mike McDonald
as the head coach of the defending Super Bowl champs
with that following season?
Speaker 3 (04:29):
You know, I think the number one thing is the journey.
I think sometimes when you've been to the destination, and
particularly when you've been to the destination recently, you want
to hurry up and cut to the chase, and you
absolutely can't.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
And so.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
He's got to take his team through the process again.
A lot of them have been a component of it
in the past. Some of them will be new. But
I think he's got to do the best that he
can to wipe the slate clean and make sure they
appreciate the present and the journey that they're on right now.
And I think that, you know, I think there's a
lot of outside forces, to be quite honest with you,
(05:07):
that's going to be helpful in that regard. I think
the Rams are getting so much positive attention. I think
it's going to be an asset to them in terms of,
getting his group's attention in that regard.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Where would you put Aaron Donald all time?
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Oh my gosh. Um, he's in that elite group.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Um, is he Reggie white? Is he Lawrence Taylor? Is he,
is he in that?
Speaker 3 (05:29):
I mean, I think about, I think about those first
ballot interior guys, man. Um, that elite group, I think
it's about five of them, uh, probably sat being the
most recent. Um, he he's, he's in that elite class, uh,
he'll be a first ballot Hall of Famer. He's one
of the legendary guys of the game at his position,
(05:52):
regardless of generation. I just think he belongs in that
discussion with the elite of the elite.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
I've talked to Bill Cowher about when Ben Roethlisberger was
his quarterback, and he said there are times Ben would
act like he couldn't hear a play where Bill would
call in something and, you know, Ben would... How did
you handle your quarterback?
Speaker 3 (06:17):
You know, more than anything, man, it's my job to
make sure his talents show up and to bring the
game to him. And I think different players digest the
game in different ways and play with different styles. Ben
didn't like constraints, and so I always wanted to accommodate
that when I was capable. Some guys approach the game
(06:41):
like an engineer sometimes. You know, he approaches the game
like a pickup basketball point guard.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
There's a fluidity and organic component to his game. And
I just never wanted to stifle that.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Did you hate the Patriots or the Ravens more?
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Oh, certainly the Ravens.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
OK.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
And just because of the intimacy of it, it starts
in your division before you can dominate the AFC division.
In the NFL, you've got to dominate the division, and
certainly we've been in close quarters with those guys a
lot over the years.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
But no problems with the Patriots. You were okay with
Belichick and Brady?
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Oh, yeah, man.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I respect certainly what they were able to do and
love competing against them.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Good luck on Wednesday.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
Man, I need it, man. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Is anybody giving you advice, though?
Speaker 6 (07:40):
Everyone.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Are you asking for advice, though?
Speaker 6 (07:46):
I am.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
I am like I'm excited and nervous at the same
time about this new challenge and new space I'm in.
And so I'm certainly paying respect to it from a
prep standpoint and and gleaning information from from my peers,
particularly those. that I have relationships with and that have
done it at a high level. And so I've sought
(08:08):
a lot of advice. I've gotten a lot of advice.
And I'm really just excited about doing a good job
for the viewing audience.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Great to talk to you. Good luck, Coach. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Dan, thank you.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
That's Mike Tomlin.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Be sure to catch the live edition of the Dan
Patrick Show weekdays at 9 a.m. Eastern, 6 a.m. Pacific
on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 7 (08:30):
Hey, it's Covino and Rich from Fox Sports Radio. Go
(08:51):
to YouTube, search Covino and Rich FSR. Check us out
on YouTube, subscribe, hit that thumbs up icon, and comment away.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
He is the Big Ten Commissioner, Tony Petitti, joining us
on the program. What kind of year do you think
you had, if you were going to sum it up, Tony?
Speaker 8 (09:10):
The year ahead, I would say we feel, well, if
you're asking me what the year was this past year,
that's an interesting question.
Speaker 6 (09:18):
I mean, on the field, Dan, it couldn't have been
any better.
Speaker 8 (09:20):
You know, winning the football championship and both basketballs and
a total of 13 national championships across everything we play.
I think it was probably the most successful year in
the history of the Big Ten on the field. I
think for our student athletes, it was there was nothing better.
You know, obviously, you know, college athletics deals with all
kinds of challenges every day. Around, you know, legal cases and,
(09:41):
you know, there seems to be a new idea, a
new challenge, you know, coming every time you come.
Speaker 6 (09:46):
To the office. So that part has been difficult.
Speaker 8 (09:48):
But I would say that the main thing is, you know,
we're really fortunate in terms of attendance and viewership. Those
things are still just remarkably good for us. And so
that's the core of what we do. So thank God
that's still going on. as good as you could possibly hope.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Why do you feel so strongly about the rostered NFL
players not being able to return to college football?
Speaker 8 (10:09):
There's a bunch of reasons. I think, look, this is
supposed to be the system was always about you come,
you play your time here, and then you kind of
give way to the next group coming up. I think
people sort of forget that when kids come back, there
are kids that have been practicing since the spring. They're
trying to win jobs, trying to be starters, trying to
be the first backup. And then that goes on all summer.
They're working really hard. I think, no, we sort of
(10:31):
forget about that piece of this when we talk about
kids coming back. So the system is built on that
kind of movement. It was meant to be a place
where you have your time, you compete. If you can
go on and play professionally in any of the sports
we play, that's great. That's part of the journey. But
you go on to do other amazing things in your
life with all the benefits you've had of being in
the Big Ten. So I think that's the core of
what this is supposed to be. And I think we
(10:52):
shouldn't be disrupting that.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
But Tony, I've been saying for a while now, a
couple of years, that you have professional players playing in Europe, basketball,
and then able to come to the United States. Why
do we allow professionals in basketball to be able to
come and take roster spots in the United States?
Speaker 8 (11:10):
I mean, you're raising a really good question about what
happens pre-enrollment, right?
Speaker 6 (11:13):
Football is unique. It doesn't have that pre-enrollment problem, Dan, right?
Speaker 8 (11:16):
You're not coming out of high school playing professional football,
so there's no pre-enrollment issue.
Speaker 6 (11:20):
But in college basketball, there is.
Speaker 8 (11:22):
And I think you get a lot of coaches who
agree 100% with what you're talking about. I think we
have to get into a sense of we've been in
this kind of waiver environment where some kids get to
have that exception based on what you actually did when
you're in Europe. And as you know, not every kid
is exactly the same when they play over there and
then when they come here. So I think what you're
pointing to is something that's just an absolute necessity. We
(11:43):
just have to get clarity. We have to get into
having rules and not having exceptions and waivers everywhere. that
make it really hard because then kids are going to think, well,
I look like that student athlete who got that.
Speaker 6 (11:52):
Why don't I.
Speaker 8 (11:54):
Get the same waiver this kid got? And that's when
you end up in court every other day. So I
totally agree with you. We've got to have more bright lines,
more simple rules, and make a decision about what we
want post-enrollment and what we are willing to allow pre-enrollment
and be consistent.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Why can't we have a commissioner for college, let's say
college football, a commissioner for college basketball?
Speaker 8 (12:13):
I mean, look, there's been a lot of talk about that.
And I think when you see some of the things
about that happen to happen, look, the tradition has always
been this way. The conference system is the way this
has been built. You know, as you know, uh, you know,
for many years, the NCAA really controlled the way football
was operated in this country back into the eighties. And
then it became a conference system, you know, in the nineties.
And that's, what's really survived. And over the last 30 years,
(12:34):
when I was at ABC sports, you know, we, we,
we sort of went from having like the CFA college
football association that broke apart. And that gave way, gave
rise to this whole structure of, you know, conference media deals. Um, Look,
I think the CFP is a good place for us
to start to do more of what you're suggesting, which
is to come together and use the structure of the
college football playoff to come together and use that to
(12:55):
make rules, how we manage the game, competition committees, at
least start with empowering that organization because we all compete
for the championship in that organization.
Speaker 6 (13:04):
To use that to do more, I think would be
a great start.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
He's the Big Ten commissioner, Tony Petitti. How is Big
Ten football different from SEC football?
Speaker 8 (13:14):
I don't really usually try to compare what we're doing,
Big Ten, SEC. I think what we've got is great programs.
We have really good coaching across everything. We're attracting great
student-athletes to play. I'm really excited about the returning quarterback
play we have this year. I think 10 of our
18 are returning their starting quarterback this season. So we
have great depth. I think the way I look at
(13:35):
it is that we're blessed to have this rivalry. I
think anything you want in sports is you want competition.
You want your fans to deeply care about something. So
not only do we have rivalries inside the league, but
this sort of competition with the SEC, I think is
a great thing for college football and all the other
sports we play. So we kind of lean into that.
But at the same time, like every season is different.
Every week tends to be a little bit different. But
(13:57):
I would just say we have great depth and strength.
You know, we've been super successful the last three years.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
We know that.
Speaker 8 (14:02):
We've played in 14 of the 22 CFP games the
last two seasons.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
The 2014 playoff feels like the SEC might be warming
to this. You would know better than me. I'm only
going by a source saying that, you know, the SEC is,
you got to convince them. So what role can you
play in convincing Greg Sankey and the SEC to warm
up to 24 teams?
Speaker 8 (14:28):
Yeah, when we work together on this, you know, not
an everyday basis, but very frequently about the future of
the playoff and what the format should be, the way
it's structured is the two leagues have control of any
of the changes to the format. So we've got to
come together. I think there's been an evolution across these ideas.
I think there's a lot more momentum for 24. It's definitely,
there's definitely, you know, people warming up.
Speaker 6 (14:47):
I think a lot of.
Speaker 8 (14:47):
Coaches and ADs across all conferences really support the idea
of 24. I think, look, we got more than a
hundred teams playing, trying to compete. It's not a high
percentage of, You know, I typically go to practices and
camps in the summer. I'll go see five or six
schools every summer. And, you know, you want all those
teams to be playing for something meaningful. And once you
once you went to a 12 team playoff, you basically
(15:09):
said this is it.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
Right.
Speaker 8 (15:10):
This is where you need to be to be to
be successful. And we just got to increase the opportunities
for student athletes, for our programs. And the other piece
of it at the investments that are being made, you know,
that justifies having more access. Access is really key. I
don't think Greg disputes any of that. I think his
league feels the same way. We just got to work
through the details of how we actually would do it.
But I feel good about the evolution over the last
(15:31):
six months about how people are sort of directionally realizing
the benefits. I actually think it would drastically change regular
season scheduling.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
How close do you think we're to a model like
the Premier League or maybe the NFL where you have divisions, conferences,
the same thing, and maybe you've got– 35, 40 teams,
maybe less than that. How far off is that model
in your opinion?
Speaker 8 (15:57):
I mean, we don't talk about that. We're happy with
the 18 members that we have. We feel the structure
that we have to compete and schedule works well. I
think what we're focused on is I think there's a
lot on the table that we can still do inside
college football. I think in the Big Ten, we can
really improve our schedule. I think fans want us to.
We can play more of these games. I think we've
got to solve the postseason access issue. And once we
(16:19):
do that, we can sort of solve the other issue,
which is to have more impactful matchups in the beginning
of the season. I think everybody's pointing to that. There's
a lot being written about this year and what's scheduled
next year. We can make that better. It's right in
front of us, and we don't need to change our
structure to do that. We just got to solve the
access to the postseason, get coaches comfortable that an early
season loss isn't going to wreck your season.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
I love the rivalry, though, with the SEC. I like
when you jab a little bit, and Greg Sankey's got
a sense of humor. Do Will you have a sense
of humor if he's jabbing you back if the SEC
wins the national title?
Speaker 6 (16:53):
I mean, look, that's part of it. We have some fun.
Speaker 8 (16:56):
Our social media teams like to lean into it and
pick some fights and have our fans pick up on it.
There's lots of memes that get sent to me every day.
I'm sure he gets them as well. That's the beauty
of it. You couldn't write a better storyline. If you're
trying to script this, you would want this, right? You'd
want this rivalry between the leagues about who's better and
when and who's deeper and who's.
Speaker 6 (17:14):
Better at the top.
Speaker 8 (17:15):
Like, yeah, go have at it. Let's go play on
the field. And I think that's why we should play
more in the regular season. Like if we did that,
it would just inspire more of it. It's just like
I said, it's an easy thing to accomplish. We know
it works.
Speaker 6 (17:26):
You know, look, Texas and Ohio.
Speaker 8 (17:28):
State in just a couple of weeks, like we know
the impact that game is going to have. We saw
it last year. You know, that'll just be a great
event for college football. We just need to do more
of that. We got Oklahoma going to Michigan. So there's
some there's some opportunities there. And we know when we
play those games, we get tremendous audiences, lots of buzz.
And it makes the whole game and the sport better.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Could you do a week where it's the SEC Big
Ten like we have in basketball? I know there's more games,
but could you do that based off last year's record or,
you know, this team is going to play this team and,
you know, all the way down to, you know, I
don't want Rutgers, you know, playing LSU. I want somebody
who maybe is kind of commensurate to their talent level.
(18:09):
But can we do that for a week?
Speaker 8 (18:11):
You're raising a really interesting scheduling thing, not only for
the way you schedule like non-conference, but actually schedule.
Speaker 6 (18:17):
The NFL does a really good job.
Speaker 8 (18:18):
The reason why, you know, you saw the Brady Patriots
and the Manning Colts play so often is because they
were playing because of where they finished in their division standings.
Speaker 6 (18:26):
Right.
Speaker 8 (18:26):
And there's something to learn from that. You know, I
think it would take time to get there, but you
could do what you're talking about is exactly the conversations
we have here. We model all those things out. We
have to have you know, we have to come together
to do that. But I think all of those things
are in play. Like you don't necessarily have to schedule
home and homes. Like you can say one year you're
playing this SEC team and the next year you're on
the road, but you're going someplace different. Those are all
great ideas that I think fans will lead into. You know,
(18:49):
and there's also something like we have some really historic
stadiums in both of our conferences, especially on the Big
Ten stadiums. And having fans have an opportunity to travel
and see those, you know, see those stadiums go play
at some of these places would be great.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
I think I think it would inspire a lot of
road trips in both directions.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
No matter how many teams, if you add new schools
to the Big Ten, it's always going to be the
Big Ten. We're not going to actually have the exact number.
That'll never happen. Not the Big 18.
Speaker 6 (19:15):
I don't think so.
Speaker 8 (19:16):
I think everybody sort of likes the Big Ten, and
we've got a logo that sort of allows us to
sort of not highlight the one that's right behind my head.
Speaker 6 (19:22):
Here with the B1G. I give Jim Delaney credit for that.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Thanks for joining us, Tony. Have fun this season.
Speaker 6 (19:30):
Thanks so much, Dan.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
That's Tony Petitti, Big Ten Commissioner. Fox Sports Radio has
the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all
of our shows at foxsportsradio.com. And within the iHeartRadio app,
search FSR to listen live.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Pablo Torre, journalist, podcaster, host of Pablo Torre's Finds Out
with Metal Ark Media. Well, you did find out, but
I'm curious through all of this, any doubts along the
way of your reporting? If your ESPN comes out with
an article recently, hearing from the Clippers, hearing from other people,
(20:07):
Any doubts? Any conversations with the wife at night of, uh-oh?
Speaker 5 (20:12):
The doubts were, hey, we're still going to be married
at the end of this, right? Because you're on the
phone talking to sources all of the time that you
say are very important. And we're at the beach with
our daughter on your quote-unquote vacation. That was the doubt.
But In truth, those sources were right the whole time, Dan.
The thing that was interesting yesterday, and many things were
(20:34):
interesting yesterday, was just what the NBA would do about it.
And that's what we found out, is what does the
internal politics of league governance look like when you have
a scope that leads to a rabbit hole that has
four separate companies in it, manufactured paper trails, fake jobs,
not just for Kawhi Leonard, but for the companies, like
(20:55):
fake consulting jobs for the companies that funneled money to
Kawhi Leonard through the Clippers, as well as those companies.
And you have now, as of yesterday, an SEC, Securities
and Exchange Commission, not Southeastern Conference, SEC investigation into the
scoreboard company that, according to the NBA, got the deal
(21:17):
to build the Halo board in Intuitome because they were
willing to funnel money to Kawhi Leonard. That's what the
NBA could not deny. What did you make of the punishments?
I thought that it could have been more. And I
think that it is two things. The biggest punishment for
(21:38):
an owner that we've ever seen in American sports, I think,
when you account for the fact that it is Steve
Ballmer banned from the building for a year, his head
of business banned from the building for a year, his
head of basketball banned from the building for six months
because Lawrence Frank was that basketball ops president participated and
provided contemporaneous notes to the NBA, by the way, a
(22:00):
whole other rabbit hole of like, why was Lawrence Frank
taking notes during the cap circumvention meetings in which he
is quoting the thanks to the NBA's investigators, Steve Ballmer
talking about how he's going to service Dennis Robertson and
Kawhi Leonard to circumvent the cap. Like, why was that there? Interesting.
$ 30 million is, you know, change to a guy with
(22:23):
$ 145 billion, depending on Microsoft stock. But the thing about
the scope and the vastness of it, the five first rounders,
I mean, I just, I think it was unprecedented in
that regard. but also because it was narrow in scope.
There are names in this report that we have been
talking about for a year that did not show up.
(22:44):
There is a line that Wachtell, Lipton, the law firm
put in. Their investigation is ongoing. They are still receiving tips.
As recently as just weeks ago, they are still investigating.
It's only the beginning somehow, which is kind of the
through line of the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Can you give me best guess of what you think
could be next involving the clippers.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
Well let's just take steve ballmer at his word he
has written a letter via his very expensive attorneys to
adam silver blaming this podcaster for getting the nba to
do a prejudiced investigation and at first after the ruling
came out he threatened arbitration but this is something that's
very interesting that i don't know if people appreciate about
(23:28):
what the nba did When the NBA tried to settle
with Steve Ballmer, and they said, hey, we have a
narrow scope, we have undeniable evidence, we want to just
make sure that you have the opportunity to take your punishment,
admit wrongdoing, and let us all move on. Steve Ballmer,
according to everything that we've seen now play out in
public after that ESPN story two weeks ago, decided to fight,
(23:50):
decided to mount his own campaign. And the NBA said, well,
in that case, we're going to do something that perhaps
caught Steve Ballmer by surprise. They found a way to
settle with Kawhi Leonard and the Players Union. Why is
that important? When Kawhi gets a slap on the wrist,
that's where the slap on the wrist was, Dan, by
the way. $ 700, 000 for Kawhi Leonard. Again, historically, that's quite
(24:12):
a bit, but in terms of the role he had
in the whole story, that's a slap on the wrist.
He can now go on to Toronto and the betting
lines can adjust based on that if Toronto wants to
go through with this, not knowing what else is in
the box.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
I digress.
Speaker 5 (24:26):
They got Kawhi. to settle. And in the NBA, what
Adam Silver knows better than Steve Ballmer and his lawyers
know apparently is that arbitration can only be activated by
the union. And so arbitration, because of that settlement, is
off the table. Can't go to arbitration. What can Steve
Ballmer do? He can literally sue the NBA. He can
(24:49):
sue Adam Silver. He can sue me. He can sue
Wachtell Lipton. He can sue you. He can sue everybody.
And that opens the door to, spoiler alert, more discovery
of documents.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Could he have mitigated, like how much damage could he
have mitigated by just saying to the commissioner, I'm so sorry.
I fall on my sword.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
Something that was really interesting in this Wachtell report was
how much the NBA leaned on the interview he did
with ESPN and Ramona Shelburne the day after part one
of my story came out. When Steve Ballmer went on air,
and it is so interesting, if you guys have some
free time, if you want to, you know, threaten your
own marriages, go rewatch that game film sometime. Take time
(25:39):
out of your day to rewatch what Steve Ballmer did
after knowing what he actually did. And you will see
that he is lying repeatedly. And once he does that,
and he's on the record lying in public about what
happened here, the NBA now has the ability to fact check,
as I did, as I have been doing this whole time.
And because he decided to fight from day one, as
(26:01):
opposed to what you suggest, which is say, I am
horrified by what I tried to do. I love basketball
too much. I wanted the thing that I know I
can't have, even though I'm the richest owner in sports.
And I am so humiliated by this. And I want
to put this behind me and move on. I don't
think we're here. I don't have a 15-part series. I
(26:22):
may not have a Pulitzer Prize. The NBA might not
have a 35-page legal report. Steve Ballmer may not pay
$ 50 million, as he has now said, for the legal
investigation into him, which is what has happened. It's crazy.
That was the fork in the road, and he chose,
I would say, to not tell the truth.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
We're talking to Pablo Torre, the journalist, podcaster, host of
Pablo Torre Finds Out with Metal Ark Media. This isn't
the first time that this has happened with an owner.
It won't be the last. But I'm just surprised it
hasn't come up before. Now, I know that Ballmer tried
to do this with DeAndre Jordan, which doesn't help his
(27:02):
case in this situation. But how prevalent do you think
this has been? And is there anything that you're interested
in that might be going on akin to this of
circumventing the salary cap?
Speaker 5 (27:18):
You got me to do it one time, and I said,
what about a certain player who plays in a city
where I may be living right now? And I said that,
and I've been trying to manage the expectations ever since. Stan,
I see what you're doing. You're a clever interviewer.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
But are you looking into the Knicks and Jalen Brunson?
Speaker 5 (27:38):
I am not focusing on the... What do they say
when you're an ESPN employee and you're trying to break...
graph picks without breaking graph picks. You say, I am
not currently targeting. I am not currently looking into. I'm
not currently circling Jalen Brunson and the Knicks. I have
had all sorts of calls about so many teams. I've
talked to people on the Knicks about all of this,
(28:00):
and they're just not the focus because we have other
things that are, by the way, coming very soon that
are in the vein of what are billionaires who run
sports trying to get away with using your money. And
I will leave it there just for now because I
think we got to button some stuff up, but that's, there's,
let me say this. Soon on the show, we will
(28:20):
start a new series and that new series will speak
to a lot of the themes and even more, I think,
even greater complications for what the everyday person in America
should be worried about. And so what did Balmer do here?
What makes this one special? He had the ambition to,
(28:40):
of creating a scheme that is beyond what other owners
have attempted. That much I'm very comfortable saying. This is
the furthest point in the spectrum of attempted salary cap circumvention.
People do it by degree. No one did it by
this order of magnitude. And that's why the NBA, which
(29:01):
wanted to make everybody stop talking about this, it's why
they had to do the thing we saw yesterday.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
How does ESPN go with the story with their finest
investigative reporters that basically exonerated the Clippers and Steve Ballmer?
Speaker 5 (29:17):
I mean, I, for 15 parts a year, did, of course,
the other thing. I found sources, whistleblowers, documents who were
willing to tell the truth. What was left open, if
you think of all of this as sports, right, what's
left available as territory for us to claim. What ESPN
(29:38):
apparently saw was the Clippers side of the story. And
the NBA immediately within an hour refutes it vociferously with
Mike Bass's name attached, Dan, and you know how rare
that is. For there to be a byline on a
statement that says significant and numerous inaccuracies. And what ESPN
had done, according to my reporting, is they were fed
(30:00):
a story by the Clippers that the Clippers may have
known was not true. And why do you do that? Well,
perhaps it's because that's the available territory that you have,
having been beaten on the other part of this landscape.
Perhaps you really believed it because the Clippers look you
in the eye and for months, for a year, said
to you, we're telling the truth. That annoying clout-chasing podcaster
(30:23):
is lying to you. And at a certain point, it's
a test. Do you choose to believe the evidence, the sources,
the journalism, or do you try to get a win
even when the game's already over?
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Do you care? Have you received an apology from ESPN?
Speaker 5 (30:42):
You know what's interesting? I submitted, I was told after
the story published, hey, if you want to have a
comment here because this is effectively refuting your whole deal here,
we'll include a statement from you. And so I submitted
a statement and I'll just paraphrase it. It was, we
(31:02):
stand by our reporting and we look forward to the
NBA's ruling. Our investigation continues. For whatever reason, ESPN did
not include it. And so I don't expect an apology.
I don't expect anything, nor do I think I even
need or deserve one, right? Like I'm a big boy,
as they say. I just wonder why ESPN It happened
(31:24):
like this because in this story, a story of no
alternate rational explanations, it sure seems to me, based on
my reporting, that they got fed a story by the
people who were lying to everybody this whole time, and
I got implicated as a result of it.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
How much money did Kawhi Leonard make off the books,
in your opinion?
Speaker 5 (31:47):
So I'll tell you factually what I know and what
I don't. So Aspiration has a total value of $ 48 million.
Now let's bring in the other companies, right? Boingo Wireless.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Of course.
Speaker 5 (31:59):
Which is just funny because, of course, the wireless provider
of the Intuit dome is giving Kawhi Leonard payments off
the books. Of course, Daktronics, the scoreboard operator, is. Of course,
Lockton Insurance, the insurance company on the construction of the dome,
is doing the same thing, Dan.
Speaker 6 (32:18):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (32:19):
Those three companies, according to the NBA's investigation through 2021,
guaranteed $ 18 million to Kawhi Leonard. So doing the math,
that's $ 66 million. Only through let's call it 2022. He
resides with the Clippers. As I said before on my
show in January of 24 for a discount, a discount
(32:41):
less than the max. Why and what happened there? And
so you're at 66 million plus. I've told the story,
the beginning of it around the Rhode Island football club
started an LLC in which he got secret undisclosed equity
the week before he signed the extension. And I ask,
as always, what else was there? And I have a feeling,
(33:04):
as always, that there is more.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Congrats. It's been a long process there. And at least
you get a trophy. You get something the Clippers don't have.
You get a trophy.
Speaker 5 (33:18):
You know, I wasn't going to make the joke, but
I'm glad you did.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Thank you, Dan.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Thank you, Pablo. Pablo Torre. He won a Pulitzer Prize.
I think it's a trophy.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
I haven't even seen a Pulitzer. Is it a statue?
Speaker 4 (33:35):
Is it a plaque?
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Maybe some of my best people could get on that
right now. A ribbon? Wait, Pablo.
Speaker 5 (33:44):
Okay what i hope i don't i don't admittedly i've
become known now for my investigations i don't know what
this looks like either which is perhaps embarrassing but my
hope is that it's a karate trophy oh i want
a big karate trophy with a karate man on the
top because i only was a white belt and i've
been chasing that high ever since so that'd be nice.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
You might need that white belt You're going to need
a black belt.
Speaker 6 (34:12):
You know what?
Speaker 5 (34:12):
The more questions you ask about Jalen Brunson, the more
martial arts training I'm.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Going to need in New York City, Dan. You brought
up Jalen Brunson again.
Speaker 5 (34:22):
You pesky journalists with your questions.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah, all right. I'm not winning a Pulitzer.
Speaker 9 (34:26):
All right.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
That's Pablo Torre.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Be sure to catch the live edition of the Dan
Patrick Show weekdays at 9 a.m. Eastern, 6 a.m. Pacific
on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 7 (34:38):
Hey, it's Covino and Rich from Fox Sports Radio. Now,
in addition to hearing us live weekdays from 5 to
7 p.m. Eastern, 2 to 4 Pacific on Fox Sports Radio,
we're excited to announce a brand new YouTube channel for
the show.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yup, that's right.
Speaker 7 (34:52):
You can now watch Covino and Rich live on YouTube
every day. All you gotta do, search Covino and Rich
FSR on YouTube. Again, Go to YouTube, search Covino &
Rich FSR. Check us out on YouTube, subscribe, hit that
thumbs up icon, and comment away.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
ESPN senior NBA writer Brian Windhorst joining us. Wendy, great
to talk to you. Is there any way the Clippers
can mitigate any of this damage moving forward?
Speaker 9 (35:20):
Absolutely. You know, number one, they can.
Drop their chance of, you know, threats of legal action,
because I don't think it's going to be successful. And,
you know, they really need this Kawhi Leonard trade to
go through that they negotiated with the Raptors as constituted,
because they're going to get two first round picks for him. And,
(35:44):
you know, in the case of the Minnesota Timberwolves situation,
and I think It's really reasonable to point that out
because obviously it's the one comparable incidence in history. They
were docked five first-round draft picks, just like the Clippers.
And when the Timberwolves kept their noses clean and stayed
on the straight and narrow, David Stern ended up giving
them back two of the picks. And that happened over
(36:08):
a five-year span. They were hit with the picks immediately
over the following five years. In this case, the picks
are starting, the penalties start in 29. They go out
to 34. Who's to say that by 2031 or 2032,
if the Clippers keep their nose clean, they won't be
able to get some of that, you know, one or
(36:28):
two of them back. That's something that you can, you know,
talk about off the record right now. And so in
the case of the Timberwolves, Joe Smith's contract was vacated.
It was voided. He was a free agent. In this case,
the Clippers are permitted to keep the player with no
significant penalty. They can trade him and get assets back
(36:48):
for him. Not only that, but the length of the
investigation the Clippers used in their favor. They were able
to make moves that landed them the number five pick
in this year's draft and the ability to negotiate this
Kawhi trade without a suspension hanging over his head. So
they are in a lot better position to absorb this
than they would have been if this was handled differently.
(37:10):
And while I understand that hell hath no fury like
an angry billionaire with $ 100 billion— He probably should listen
to a little bit of reason because the league said,
or at least the report said, that this investigation isn't over.
They left open the possibility there could be more. So, yeah,
(37:32):
I think obviously there's a shock in the announcement, and
there's a shock when you read all the details. When
you get past it, I think the Clippers can mitigate
this in a way that can— I see people referencing
a death penalty. It's not a death penalty, Dan. They
didn't give them a playoff ban. They're still going to
have cap space this summer. They're still going to have– Dan,
(37:55):
they have a first-round pick in the 2027 draft. They
didn't take it. It's a swapped pick. They're going to
swap it, I think, with Denver, Oklahoma City. It's probably
not going to be a good pick. They have a
draft pick in 2027. So this is– it's bad. It's
a blow. You're losing a limb, but this is not
a death penalty.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Billionaires usually don't get told what to do. So I'm
sure that Steve Ballmer is surrounded by people who tell
him what he wants to hear. But at some point,
you have to. I mean, they Lawrence Frank was taking
notes in the meeting about circumventing the salary cap. I
get what point do you say, hey, I'm an impenetrable
(38:39):
or the commissioner needs me or I'm so bad. Like,
I don't know if there's arrogance involved in this. that
led him down this path.
Speaker 9 (38:48):
Well, I don't have, you know, omnipotent understanding of everybody's
feelings on this, but what it looks to me like
based on this array of statements yesterday, and the Clippers
put out a public statement and then released a two-page
angry letter to Adam Silver. There's a lot of copy
generated yesterday. It looks to me like what they are
focusing on is a legalese situation about how the arrangements
(39:13):
were made.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Like, No, no.
Speaker 9 (39:15):
We didn't facilitate the deals. We just acted as middlemen.
And that seems to be their legal argument and where
they're ready to go to battle on. But Dan, here's
the thing. He didn't do any work for these companies.
Speaker 6 (39:28):
He didn't.
Speaker 9 (39:30):
Do the endorsements. He didn't do ads. He didn't do
any of it. You don't have to have next-level understanding
of all this stuff to understand that it reeks of
quid pro quo. And what we didn't understand until yesterday
was that this was for companies. four of them. And Dan,
(39:52):
I don't know, one of the companies, two of the
companies openly cooperated, Aspiration and Daktronics. Now Aspiration, and even
the report says that the guy who's in the federal
penitentiary is not credible. And I agree, I don't find
him credible. So they're kind of even, I mean, they
put it in there, but they're kind of ignoring him.
But they had Daktronics. Daktronics copped to it. They openly
(40:15):
said what happened. And I get why they're saying it,
because their CEO yesterday had an earnings call and said
that the SEC is on their backside. This is not
to be messed around with. Plus, they sell scoreboards. Do
you want to be in business with the NBA if
you sell scoreboards? I think you do. So they cooperated.
(40:36):
But here's the thing, Dan. These investigators had the data
and the money for all four companies. How'd they get
it if two of the companies didn't cooperate? They had
internal whistleblowers participating. They had the dollars, Dan. They knew
exactly how much was paid. So these companies didn't do
(40:57):
any ads with Kawhi. He didn't act as an endorser.
So this is the thing. Steve Ballmer or another owner
could look at you square in the face with their
hand on the Bible and say, we have the agents
for our superstar players on our backside all the time
about getting them deals, getting them endorsements. And absolutely that happens.
And absolutely there's teams out there that have acted as middlemen.
(41:20):
In fact, there may have been teams out there that
have acted as more than middlemen. But those players, to
our knowledge at least, are doing the endorsement contracts. Like
when you see, you know, the star player doing a
deal with the team sponsor, he's at least out there
with his face on it. The reason this is so
repugnant is that it just is very cleanly obvious that
(41:43):
it was a kickback because in this case, in 2019,
they didn't just sign Kawhi Leonard. They were also building
the arena. And so that meant there was a whole
bunch of vendors and companies that they were doing hundreds
of millions of dollars in business with that they don't
normally do. You don't build an arena every year. You
don't buy a $ 100 million scoreboard every year. But this year,
(42:05):
they were building the $ 100 million scoreboard. And Pablo Torre
and Hunterbrook Media went and dug into that Daktronics was
struggling at the time. I don't need to go into
all the details.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
This report.
Speaker 9 (42:17):
If you were on a jury and you didn't know
anything about basketball, you didn't know whether the Clippers played
in Los Angeles or London, if you got this report
and you read it, you would vote to convict. I
don't think it's even really close.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
How did Kawhi kind of skirt? I know it's $ 700, 000,
but I thought he was going to get suspended or
they would void his contract. What about you?
Speaker 9 (42:41):
Well, I think there was two reasons. Well, I would
say this. There's probably some unknown reasons that we don't know.
I'll just leave it at that. The second thing is
when you have a disciplinary action with a player, there's
an arbitration process spelled out in the collective bargaining agreement.
(43:03):
The arbiters are already picked, the process is set out,
and you're going to have to present evidence and potentially
do interviews and stuff like that. You have to go
to court. And I'm not sure that the that the
investigators had the documentation where they could win an arbitration
against Kawhi Leonard. I do think they felt like they
had the documentation to go against Jillian Zucker and Steve Ballmer.
(43:24):
And so basically the burden of proof with Kawhi was
much higher. But I'm not going to say.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
More than that. You know more than that.
Speaker 9 (43:37):
I don't know. I speculate. I'm not going to get
into that.
Speaker 6 (43:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
I always find this tricky that You know, whenever I
have a source, you always have to wonder what if
the source has an agenda. And I don't know how
you navigate this. Now, first 10 years at ESPN, you know,
it was pretty powerful place even then. And then I
never questioned as much as I should have. What is
(44:02):
somebody's agenda here?
Speaker 4 (44:04):
And I don't know.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
How do you navigate if somebody gives you the information
of ESPN? OK, do I trust them? Can I go
with this? You know, like Pablo Torre. He's one guy
going against very powerful person here and didn't back down.
But you also have to wonder about that source or sources.
What's their agenda?
Speaker 9 (44:24):
Yeah, it's an absolute the complex web that we operated
in the modern era. This is absolutely a factor. And
you try to do your best as the either you
try to do your best. You don't. That's the basic
way you can say it. I mean, even a moment ago,
I praised Hunterbrook Media. Hunterbrook Media has done a bunch
(44:44):
of investigations. I don't know if you're familiar with them.
They're a new media company, and Pablo has partnered with them.
Hunterbrook Media is a hedge fund-backed media source. They do
investigations and then oftentimes short the companies that they do
the investigation against, which they disclose, right? And I'm just
(45:06):
telling you that they did great work here. But they
have an inherent conflict of interest. So, yeah, it's a
hard thing to figure out, which is why a lot
of people end up stepping in quagmires. And caution doesn't
always win the day. Um, sometimes people who are cautious get, get,
(45:29):
get rolled over. This particular situation is extremely thorny and
this is an imperfect response. The NBA is not going
to be able to get up because it's so nuanced. Um,
that's why I think the Clippers are so mad because
I think the Clippers feel like they were dancing within
the rules here and they feel like they can more
to the point. they feel like they can prove that
(45:52):
they can dance within the rules. And the league is
basically saying, we don't think you can. I think the last,
one of the public statements that the Clippers made was
so telling during this process. They said, we didn't, we
are not guilty of what we are accused of. It's
a loaded sentence. So you get into situations like that.
(46:13):
And it's, look, I have spent a lot of hours
in the last couple of weeks reading legal documents, Dan,
while covering the NBA with the whole Buss family and
now the Clippers. This is the era that we're in,
is that I've got to read all these legal documents
to cover the NBA.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Talking to Brian Wendhorst of the Mothership, what happens with
the Lakers with the Buss family?
Speaker 9 (46:36):
Well, the gigantic difference between a year ago when the
when the Lakers sold, and then this time, and this
is elementary, but it needs to be pointed out, is
that a year ago, the buses had majority control. And
now they do not. And when you are a minority shareholder,
you are exactly that. You don't get to have say. Now,
(46:59):
Jeannie Buss' standing is a little bit different. She is
the governor. But she, as the governor, you serve at
the pleasure of the controlling owner. And so the Lakers
controlling ownership is going to change hands whether the Buss
family can get their act together or not. And whether
Jeannie has the title of governor or not, the controlling owner,
(47:21):
which is going to be Josh Kushner, assuming that he
completes it. And I think Bob Iger is going to
be the managing partner. They're going to have control over
the Lakers because they don't need the 17%. The Buss
family drama is amazing. There has been two television shows
in the last five years about the Buss family, one directly,
(47:43):
the HBO show, the second one, Running Point. The Netflix show,
which Jeannie made, was really about her. It was based
on her life. And neither of those shows will be
anywhere near as good as the true story of what's
happening within that family drama. It is incredible palace intrigue.
But they no longer have control over the Lakers. And
so it will remain palace intrigue. It won't affect the
(48:05):
decisions with the basketball team.
Speaker 5 (48:08):
$ 12.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
5 billion. What do you make of that price tag?
Speaker 9 (48:12):
I make the Jeannie bus sold low so that she
could get a sweetheart deal for herself because I think
$ 10 billion was low. And I'll tell you this, I
can't predict the future. I wouldn't sit here and try
to guess the macroeconomic future of the country. But my
guess is that the $ 12 billion purchase will not end
up being a bad one. And here's something else. Bob
(48:36):
Iger and Josh Kushner were trying to buy the team
in Vegas. And the thought process was that that was
going to cost... Maybe $ 8 or $ 9 billion.
Speaker 5 (48:46):
Okay? And maybe more.
Speaker 9 (48:48):
Maybe it'll end up being more. I don't know the answer.
But that was about what people thought it was going
to cost. So they were trying to raise $ 8 or
$ 9 billion. This is what you have to understand. When
you hear that the Lakers sell for $ 12 billion, they're
not actually selling for $ 12 billion. They're buying about 73%
of it at the $ 12 billion valuation, which means that
(49:08):
they're going to be paying about $ 8 or $ 9 billion.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
Okay?
Speaker 6 (49:11):
So.
Speaker 9 (49:12):
yeah, they only have 73%, but they're controlling it. So
what would you rather have, Dan? Would you rather spend
the same amount of money to own the vegas this
name goes here or the los angeles lakers.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Is uh lebron still in the hunt for the expansion
team is he allowed to be have his name involved
in this So he has.
Speaker 9 (49:37):
Openly said that he is no longer pursuing that. Two
things happened. I think, number one, LeBron was never going
to be able to be the controlling owner of a team.
He has done fabulously well. His net worth is north
of a billion dollars. But A billion dollars, even if
he sold everything, doesn't get it done. And even two
(49:58):
or three years ago, when he was really looking at this,
it was still going to take in the... So you
needed a partnership where you would partner with somebody who
had a giant piece of money that would be your partner.
His partners with Jerry Cardinal and the Fenway Sports Group,
those were the groups he was in business with. They
have backed away from NBA ownership. In fact, Fenway is divesting.
(50:19):
They just sold a big portion of Liverpool. They're selling.
Jerry Cardinal has gone on the record a number of
occasions saying he thinks prices for NBA teams are too high.
So his preferred partners were not looking like they were
going to bid on Vegas. So that was one of
the things that happened. I mean, he could have found
other partners, but that's one thing that happened. The second
(50:41):
thing is he's still being a great basketball player. And
he's still able to continue to play, and he's not
retired at age 41. So he's going to keep playing.
The expansion teams are probably going to get named, and
he's going to miss that window. But I'll tell you this.
If you think LeBron's done trying to be an owner
or trying to have heavy involvement in the NBA, he's not.
His life has many decades left in it. His influence
(51:02):
is going to be on. It's just not going to
be with this particular expansion deal.
Speaker 2 (51:06):
Always great. I know you're busy. Thank you, Wendy.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
Thanks, Dan.
Speaker 9 (51:09):
Have a good day.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
That's Brian Windhorst of the Mothership.
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