Episode 16 - Pablo Torre

Pablo Torre is a sportswriter, podcaster and television show host. He hosts Pablo Torre Finds Out with Meadowlark Media. Additionally, he previously hosted and contributed to various programs at ESPN including PTI, High Noon and the podcast ESPN Daily.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is interrupted by Matt Jones on news radio. Wait
forty wits, now here's Matt Jones.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
It is episode sixteen, interrupted by Matt Jones, presented by
Cornbread Hemp. This is the good life and listen. There
are very few people in sports that are more interesting
to talk to than the next guy. Pablo Torre. He
has He's used to be on ESPN. He works for
what's the name of Levitard's media company, Metal Lark Metal

(00:31):
Lark Media.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
The sweatiest, most principled startup in the sports media.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yes, and does the podcast Pablo Torre finds out. Pablo,
thank you very much for taking the time to chat.
We've known each other from AFAR for years, but I
appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
I mean so long. I feel like our dms are
full of would be I wasn't always a PTFO is
only almost two years old. If it had existed, our
dms would have been a real I would say episode generator. Man,
that's true, or you're happy to do this? Well?

Speaker 2 (01:03):
So I actually thought you have an interesting story, but
I want to do the personal stuff at the end.
But I actually thought part of the way to do
this is in Pablo Tory finds out. When I heard
what you were gonna do, I thought to myself, I'm
gonna be honest with you. There's no way that's not
gonna that's gonna work. You can't do journalism in podcast form.
That's just not gonna work. And it has. And I thought,

(01:25):
in order to sort of get people to understand what
you do, I thought we would go through some of
the stories you've done and just have you talk about
them and get people to understand. But first, when you
decided I'm gonna do long form sports journalism in a
podcast world, why did you think that would work?

Speaker 1 (01:42):
It was a race that no one else wanted to run.
And it's the one that is actually what I'm passionate about.
I am authentically, obsessively curious. I am a journalist by trade,
and I'm a journalist hopefully in the way that people
soon realize is not mutually exclusive with fun. Like to me,

(02:02):
it's being smart but also very stupid. It is being
high brow but also quite low brow. It is the
idea of like, if I'm going to serve you vegetables,
I'm melting a ton of cheese on it, right, Like
it's gonna be hopefully delicious, but also to sound like
an after school ad for a second here nutritious, right,
I want to be both of these things.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
And so for me, you use those exact words on
Bill Simmons or something, right, God.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Oh jeez, if I if I did, I apologize. I
have been trying though to figure out, like how do
I articulate what my show with people who have never
listened to it? And so I am trying to be
always self aware about like not over promising, but the
very nature of what I do is I solve mysteries
for my audience and myself and my friends. And so

(02:48):
is this a mystery box that I open up and wow,
inside of this can be Rick Patino or the NFLPA scandal,
or this videotape starring James Gandalfini, the Knicks made for
Lebron or whatever else. Yes, the whole point is journalism
finding out something that you didn't know about that you
already I would say, this is a key thing for me,

(03:08):
something that you did not already express to the algorithm
that you wanted right like that to me, it's almost
we are so oversaturated with the creator influencer economy and
the algorithm feeding us all force feeding us all of that.
I was like, wait a minute. I come from magazines.
I think this could be fun and also like meaningful.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
I think you did do It's like a magazine on
a podcast. I like that analogy. Well, I want to
we're gonna talk Patino because we both love Patino story.
But I think what you were doing this podcast, you
were trying to get traction on it. And I think
it's fair to say the Bill Belichick Jordan Hudson's story
got you the traction. And I want to go into

(03:50):
it because I'm fascinated by it, just like like everybody
can act like they're too good for it, but they're not.
But I also from you, I know there's got to
be a part of you that go I was doing
all this serious stuff. Why did it take a seventy
one year old man dating a twenty five year old
woman to be the thing that got me broke through?
Did that bother you at all?

Speaker 1 (04:10):
It certainly lodged itself in my brain a bit as
sort of just like this reminder of you can try
to dress up whatever it is that you're doing that
may be you know, award winning ye or whatever. But
people ultimately look scandal, conspiracy, the age gap relationship, plus

(04:35):
like the nexus of power at a state, at a
school like North Carolina in which the highest paid employee
of the state is this guy who you remember, except
he's the opposite and now he's dating this woman who
you've never met before, but you suddenly everywhere Like I
did not find myself surprised by the magnitude of reaction,
but I did find myself having to sit down for

(04:56):
a second and be like, am I at peace with this?
Because it was definitely the biggest Look when you talk
about like your freak flag flying for a show, you
exist you have to do it.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
But that's I mean, that's part of it. You know,
in Kentucky, I have to I basically do this all
the time. I mean there's a big part of me
that would like to sit and I mean part of
the reason I did this podcast is so I could
talk about things that were not nineteen year olds throwing
a ball through a hoop. But you also have to understand, like,
to get people to care about that, they have to

(05:29):
care about you. And to get people to care about you,
you have to talk about the things they're interested in
talking in about a little bit and that's just life,
and I can't act like I'm better than it. I
found the Belichick Jordan Hudson thing amazing. So let's just
talk about seventy one year old twenty five. Do you
think the age gap is why people are so fascinated

(05:53):
with it and the is that at its core what
it is? Or is it also that he's this old
grumpy man? And then like what do you think it is?

Speaker 1 (06:01):
I think the sticker shock begins with the age gap,
that's true. And then when you realize, oh, wait a minute,
and this is something that I reported at the bottom
of the rabbit hole. I was like, wait a minute,
they met when she was nineteen?

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Is that how old they were when they met?

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Yeah, on that airplane. We reverse engineered the whole like
what do you.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Think happened on that airplane? So like what was that interaction?

Speaker 1 (06:22):
So some people were like, wait a minute. Belichick flies commercial,
he flies Jet Blue, And it's like, yes, I can
report that he flies Jet Blue. He flies Logan Airport
in Boston to West Palm to go to Trump's golf
club in Jupiter, and that's that's his routine. And so
he sits down. Bill Belichick, the greatest football coach of
all time, sits down, and next to him sits a

(06:45):
young woman who turns out to be nineteen years old,
carrying a philosophy textbook by a Harvard professor named Warren Goldfarb,
who we interviewed on the show. As a side note
that's not essential to the understanding, but this is the
length Warren gold Farm Warren g Man. Doctor Warren was
a great quote. I had no real idea, but was

(07:07):
so proud that his book was an aphrodisiac basically, but
you see, you see in the textbook man like she was.
So this is a Jordan Hudson. She is a Bridgewater
State philosophy student. And so she shows and this is
the way you sort of reverse engineer this. There's an
Instagram thing in which she has an inscription from Bill Belichick,

(07:31):
signed and dated, and I'm like, okay, so let's let's
now work backwards from this and try to figure out
who everybody was, where they were headed. And she she herself,
by the way, was in her own pre existing pre
Belichick age gap relationship with a guy in his sixties
who was also I am home.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
She was dating a guy in her six in his
sixties already.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Who was also hanging around Troup National Golf Club.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Oh, also trump, So is this oh all right, well,
let me take a step back. I at first I
had the natural reaction everybody else did, which is, this
is kind of weird, this is creepy, this is whatever.
And then there's a part of me, I mean, it's
still weird. I'm not gonna act like it's not. But
there's a part of me that says, like, I feel

(08:19):
like the hate always comes in in these stories on
the woman. It's always the misogynistic world, says the man. Oh,
he said, like everybody loves younger women. Of course he's
going to be into her. But the woman becomes a
gold digger, and she becomes all this. That's my natural
instinct when you say, well, she was dating a sixty

(08:39):
year old and a lot of that I think happened
even more after you did the story. Do you think
that's fair to her?

Speaker 1 (08:47):
I think that people, if they listen to the reporting
I've done, should have the impression that I have had,
which is Jordan Hudson is kind of a brilliant young
strategists when it comes to many aspects of her life,
and she is absolutely a twenty four year old in

(09:09):
some key ways that basically have proven to be wildly
self destructive. And so I should say that you're totally
right that on some level this story fits into, frankly,
a deeply cliched thing that we I, who wants to
be surprising and interesting and sort of like enlightened about

(09:30):
such things or whatever, I should seek to actually tell
the different.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Story, right, like from Monica Lewinsky's point of view. Right,
there's a part.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
Of that exactly, you know, exactly right, that's exactly right.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Now.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
Here's the thing, though, the age gap is not to me,
the most interesting, It's not the most interesting part by far.
The most interesting part by far to me is that
Bill Belichick is somebody who was truly the embodiment of
one way of living in public. He was mister privacy,
mister do your job, mister discipline, mister.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
No distractions, no distractions, benching, I mean benching Malcolm Butler, right,
just like doing stuff, doesn't care, media has questions, doesn't
need to answer him, doesn't have time for insta face
and whatever it is.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
That he would call these these social media platforms. So
that's him right for twenty plus years, as he is
the greatest coach of all time. He is, of course,
basically thrown out of the NFL. No one wants give
him a job. The Patriots are like, we're done with this.
No one wants to make him a general manager plus
head coach. He goes and figures out what do I

(10:38):
do next? And what he does next? Matt is He
launches like a half dozen media enterprises. He has podcasts,
He does appearances on television. He is everywhere.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
I thought he was good on inside the NFL when
he did that, I actually thought he was pretty good
at it. If I found him interesting.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
I think Belichick talking about football is inherently interesting. Yeah,
because he is in that context a genius. But when
it comes to the other ways in which he's trying
to be a public person, now, well that's where I
think of what Bob Kraft said. This was quoted in SETH.
Rickersham's book, He's an idiot savant. The guy is very good, brilliant,

(11:19):
genius level at football. But you'll notice when it comes
to like who he's hired his coaching tree, just be
football nerd for a second, Like there aren't a lot
of great.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Now they they haven't the wrenches, Yeah, they haven't. But
is the simple explanation that whis into her just she's
young and attractive or do you think there's something else there?

Speaker 1 (11:38):
So definitely a big chunk. I talked to a former
Patriot and he was like, look, this is the least
surprising story of all time.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
Okay, yeah, but mini men, this is the story. This
is how they You see all these powerful men who
make all these amazing decisions, and then there's this thing
where they just show a different side and.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
She's a cheerleader and a beauty pageant, the miss main.
But this brings me back to like, why is it interesting?
It's because the question of why is Belichick suddenly mister media,
mister public figure in which he is writing a book
in which he is now sitting for these interviews, in
which he's trying to sell himself, in which he is eventually,

(12:23):
of course, becoming the head coach at the University of
North Carolina.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
The key, the key.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
Thing to realize about his decision making during this era
of his life is that Jordan Hudson is the most
powerful person in his inner circle, to the exclusion of
everybody else that had been frankly like attached to him,
like these Remora fish, right, these core like mediocre coaches
and guys who like needed him to get a job.
Jordan Hudson comes into his life and is like, I

(12:49):
am a young person who is native to the Internet,
who can tell you all about what it is to
be online and to brand yourself and to be positioned
to be not just the greatest coach of all time
and grumpy, but also so much more. And that's this
moment in Bill Belichick's life that I've been just sort
of like, that's what I've been obsessed with. How do

(13:10):
you go from the archetype of one thing to the opposite,
the actual opposite in which you are publicly I mean, dude,
the yoga photos, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
Also the yoga photos. There's the CBS interview.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
A dressed as a fisherman catching her as a when they.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Walk out of the stadium and her jacket is on,
you know, and she looks like a child. Here's my question, Pablo,
I freely admit to being interested for the same reason
I don't like Love Island, but I do like bad
reality shows, and I've I was on not a reality show.
But I was on a docuseries, so like, I know

(13:49):
that live. So I'm not in any way saying I'm
above being interested in it. But you seem to have
also argued, and this is where I disc agreed with
you a little bit, that it was also like news,
that it wasn't just Curry like period, like just this
interest of I just I want to know about it,
that it was news. Explain why you think it was like.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Newsworthy, because I think sports are important. Okay, you know,
I think at a certain point, if Bill Belichick doesn't matter,
then nothing matters. And maybe I'm just sort of like
the kind of guy who's clinging to your point earlier
about like how what I do is not merely as
they say, newspaper is the toy department, but even more

(14:32):
now that it's a podcast. Right, Maybe I'm just clinging
to that. Admittedly, maybe that's my psychotherapy. But I think
that the greatest coach of all time acting one way
and in the opposite in which he is also the
highest paid public employee in North Carolina, in which he
is also now this leader of young people. And I'm
not saying that woe Belichick's corrupting the young people. No, no, no, no,

(14:52):
I'm merely saying that this older man, this seventy one
year old man, is trying to figure out how do
I really late? How do I win these kids over?
And the way he does it, you can't understand his
solution to these questions without understanding the impact of Jordan
Hudson and the influence of Jordan Hudson to the degree

(15:14):
by the way that everybody in Belichick's life, including his family,
his inner circle, people around the administration in North Carolina.
Not everybody, but I would say a majority of them
have expressed a clear concern for like, oh boy, do
you think.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
It's gonna work? Do you think that, like, I mean,
the game start here in four weeks, is it gonna work?

Speaker 1 (15:37):
I would say that if he makes it to a
second season, everybody should be extraordinarily happy. I see it
as one and done, man, I do. I just I
just feel like there's look, I've just seen too much
in terms of reporting the backstage aspects of this to
say I to be naive.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
You know, well, the first employee I ever hired, Pablo
Okysr fifteen years ago, is it's all I can do
not to call him all the time because he works
in the he works there now, and he is like
he does the helps with the Nile fundraising and stuff.
I mean, he was you talk about he left John Caliperry.

(16:17):
This is you'll think this is funny. He was doing
that for John cal Perry. He kind of got tired
of John Caliperry and he was like, I'm gonna go
somewhere that's more low key, and he goes to North Carolina.
And then a year later Bill Belichick AND's up there
like what it's crazy.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
It's it.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
Look, I have foya public records, requested enough emails to
know just how deluged and how tough it is to
be a normal person who was like, I thought we
were getting one thing and instead we're getting the opposite.
That sucks on some real level. But as to go
back to your your analogy to the reality show or

(16:54):
the bad reality show thing, is this a good or
a bad reality show? My vote is firmly in the
camp of this is one of those it's so bad
that it's good reality shows. Yeah, I think that when
when it comes to the way in which look Belichick
has his son on staff, right, Steve, it's not like

(17:17):
he can sort of parse. And this is the thing
that Jordan Hudson said after the disastro CBS thing. Well,
this is when North Carolina came out and said, is
that she is not employed by the football team. She
is employed as a personal advisor, media strategist PR thing
to Bill and you covered John Calla Perry. I ask
you this, can there actually be a distinction between professional

(17:42):
and personal head coach of a program like that?

Speaker 2 (17:45):
No? No, no no, And then it bleeds in whether
there it doesn't really matter if there's a check sign
or not. I get it now. You went on. You
kind of had a back and forth online with Bill Simmons.
I have sort of a love hate relationship with Bill Simmons.
In the sound, I don't hate him, but love frustration

(18:05):
because I am in this business because I read Bill
Simmons sitting at my law firm at Wilmer Cutler in
DC in two thousand and two and thinking, if he
can do that, I can do that.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
So I billable hours of a different kind exactly right.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
And I loved, I love like I think he changed
a lot of this and so I have a huge
amount of admiration. Still listen to his podcast almost every time,
and you go on there and I was like, this
is going to be tense, and I have to say,
you totally owned him. I mean, he wasn't prepared for
the interview. He was not, he had not I think

(18:41):
he had only almost seen clips of your thing. I
don't even know if he'd listened to the whole thing
you came in. Were you nervous to do that? I mean,
this is the biggest, along with part of my take,
the biggest podcast platform, and you kind of destroyed him.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Well, listen, I am one of I'm one of you
in that regard. I grew up reading him. I distinctly remember,
just like the color scheme of page yellow and wack,
it's just it imprinted itself on me. I read no
sports writer because he also wrote ten thousand word columns.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Right now, but like his draft reviews were so good
running so.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, all dude. I read all of it, all of
it and also a listener to his show. Still today.
We have many many friends in common, which is part
of why I had my backup a bit about like,
why is he coming at me for this without seemingly
as I would discover really having listened or watched to
the stuff that I made. Was I nervous? I was

(19:44):
at that point so steeped in the reporting on Belichick
that I was ready, but it was nerve wracking in
the sense of, like, this is an opportunity for me
to kind of step these moments A couple of times
when you start doing television, certainly kind of feel like
you've climbed into the television when you meet certain people.

(20:07):
Simmons is like that. He was like that in that moment.
I remember I was going to the airport. I was
like about to fly home. I was headed to Lax.
My suitcase was in the studio, and I was like,
I'm about to get on a plane right after this,
I'm gonna feel either very bad, yeah ro or maybe
at best just like pretty good. And it ended up
being a conversation that I was very, very very glad

(20:29):
to have had because I got to argue my way
to I think some point of public persuasiveness.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
But also you changed my mind on it. You changed
my mind. I mean I was critical. I thought you
had kind of like, all right, that's enough, Pablo, and
I I.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
That's a fair So the whole thing of like what
I had done for people who aren't familiar. It got
to the point where I was like, I'm going to
solve every available mystery that I feel is significant to
the understanding of the story. And so there was a
ring camera video that Tom Braid.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
When you did the camera, I was like, all right,
that's a lot you're you're doing it. Didn't you rent
the Airbnb.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
Or I stared at the bed where allegedly the magic
would have happened. I recreated the ring camera video. I
hired an army. I mean not hired. I didn't pay
him anything, but I enlisted an army of geo guessers
to help geolocate it. Yeah. I look, I do serious
things stupidly and stupid things seriously, and I do not

(21:27):
I do not have any illusion about the idea that
when if if someone were to see that in isolation,
they would say this, you're an insane person. And I
would have to own that. And so for me to
explain like this whole approach I had inside of a
larger story I was telling that I can and won't
belabor here. Dude, I appreciate you listening, because all I

(21:49):
can ask for in an era in which we are
flooded by everything is for someone to give what I'm
doing a shot.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
And I think I think people should listen to that.
It's it's the on a Bill Simon. I think you
did a great job, and you did kind of flip
my perspective and I was like, that's very cool. By
the way, you also are friends with I mean the
two people that I would still be a lawyer if
these two people did not exist, without question, is Bill Simmons,

(22:17):
who I haven't met but who I've talked to. And
then one person who I have never met, who if
I don't meet before he dies, will make me very sad,
which is Tony Korneiser. I mean my entire radio If
you turned on my radio show, it is a cheap
imitation of Tony Kornheiser's radio show. I love him on PTI,

(22:38):
but his radio show to me was like everything that
I wanted to do was Cornheiser and the combination of
Bill Riding and the way Tony made the radio show
his life to where I cared about the Washington Nationals
through him, and you're close to him, tell me, because

(23:01):
I don't know if I ever meet him, because he
just doesn't go anywhere what's Is he awesome or is
he a grump? Or do I what?

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Yes? Okay, yes, and yes, I mean he's he's the
closest thing to Larry David in real life.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
I love so.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yes, Oh he's He's a recluse, he is unapologetic, he
has a point of view. He will call me and
without any introduction just start yelling, takes at me and
it's the best, man, it's the best. And his radio show,
to your point, which is now a podcast to any
coroneizer show. I have talked to him about this, not
because I have a radio empire like you met, or
because I aspire to make a show like that one,

(23:39):
but simply because I have gotten to appreciate the way
in which he is also this template for doing something
differently that inspired a lot of people to figure out
how to creatively do radio that involved their friends, that
involved of course, and Simmons took this from Kornheiser to
pop culture as well as hardcore sports fan.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Well, he made the people on the show like that's
what I loved about and you're right. Simmons does it
too with his friend Joe House and John in complex
Litigation and these people that I'll never meet, but that
I feel like, I know he did it with his
little crew. And it's funny because now I do ESPN Radio, right, Yeah.
And when I first started, they were conscientiously moving as

(24:25):
far away from the Kornheiser way of doing radio possible.
And I came in and say, I remember, I said,
my hero is Tony Korneiser, and they looked at me like, ugh,
your hero should be Mike and Mike, And I was like,
I kind of think Mike and Mike sucks. But they
left me on. And now fast forward seven years and
ESPN is embracing what Kornheiser did fifteen years ago with

(24:48):
the whole McAfee, and they let me do like I
do my thing now. Yeah, but it's funny how that shifted.
Korneiser was ahead of his time.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
Oh look my whole bet and Gause I talked to
all the time. He is he is like truly genuinely
a mentor of mine. And he is somebody who is
so blunt about how he feels about things that I
I really do look up to him in ways that
I can't personally enact in my life, like I can't

(25:17):
be Larry David.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
But when it comes to why and how he made
his show, like what he always tells me over and
over again, which, by the way, I have quietly plagiarized
these coming words and everything I said already. He just
goes to me smart and funny.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yeah, he's I've heard him say that. I've heard him
say he's I've heard him say that about you before.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
But that and that's the greatest for me as a
fan of his, And it's also the greatest thing that
I appreciate in others if you think about it. I'm like, look,
I if you can be funny without leading with it,
if you can be smart without hitting people over the

(25:57):
head with that, then like you can, you can get
away with a lot. I mean. He and by the way,
there's another thing about him, which is like he's a
he's an unapologetic generalist, like yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
And he just starts his show with what happened to
him yesterday, which is what I do. He would talk
about the music coming out of breaks, like talk about
the songs, which I mean, I don't think my listeners
realize how much of my show is just stolen from him.
He literally would talk about like going to get breakfast,
He would talk about the song as it comes out.

(26:28):
I took stole that from him too. He would just
make his fandom his is the Nationals. Mine is well Kentucky,
but like I do the Reds and the Carolina Hurricanes,
and people follow it through me like it's all stolen
from him. And so I was supposed to meet him
once Pablo and I had well, I had a relative
die and I had to I had to miss it,

(26:49):
and I still one day I will.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
I will, I will be a backstage okay connector however
I can, because I do think he would appreciate somebody
who studies and does radio in a way that he
would obviously recognize. And by the way, the thing that
I asked him when I was launching Pablatoria finds Out,
which is not like that show, but has of course

(27:14):
spiritual sorts of like aspects. I am telling stories to
my friends. I am not taking myself terribly seriously. I
do try to be smart and funny. Blah blahlah blah blah.
The thing that he told me about how to do
a show was you want to start a club in
which anybody can be a member?

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Love it? Yes?

Speaker 1 (27:31):
And I'm like, yes, you want Yes, so inside jokes
references this internal sort of history that you build, but
you want it to be accessible to whoever wants to join.
And that to me is yes.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
I know he said that, but he's exactly right about that.
You want it to be in Kentucky, I have always
tried to make it to where listeners feel like there
are friends, and I think that's that's how you know
you're you're doing it right. You know, summertime means hot days,
hard work, and fighting to find time to slow down.

(28:05):
That's important. Thankfully we've got corn bread hemp. They're here
to help. Their lineup of natural hemp based wellness products
are designed to help you stress less, move more, and
sleep better. I use them. They help me to feel
great and whether you're looking to swap your evening cocktail
for something without the hangover, if you need relief after
a long day of work, you just want to find
a moment to chill, they got you covered. Infew Seltzers

(28:29):
are light, refreshing and perfect for those moments when you
want to feel good but not feel guilty or have
a hangover. Plus, their full spectrum gummies and oils are
made with USDA organdic ingredients that work. Go to cornbreadthemp
dot com slash Matt Jones and go ahead and use
my code Matt Jones. It's thirty percent off your order.
By the way, there are other places you can get this,

(28:49):
but this is a better deal. Cornbreadhimp dot com slash
Matt Jones and the code is Matt Jones Cornbread HEMP.
This is a good life, all right. Let me ask
you about Rick Patino. You years ago. I think I
met you because you wrote me and asked me something
about Rick Patino. I think everybody knows that he had

(29:14):
sex with a woman in an Italian restaurant, and I
think most people know that his staff paid for prostitutes
for recruits. I still don't, however, think the country understands
just how crazy that story was. As someone who sat
in every moment of the care insideher trial and heard

(29:36):
him say I did down my leg in less than
fifteen seconds. It was my tweet that got that out
to the world. Yes, do you think the craziness of
the Rick Patino story is still not totally appreciated?

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Absolutely not. And it's a shame because if you appreciate
something like a true crime story that is just full
of almost like this, whether it's Veep or the Cohen Brothers,
just like this deep incompetence that's borderline mafioso. There's nothing
really like it. I mean, the thing that I keep
on And by the way, I remember I was covering

(30:12):
the story for Sports Illustrated when I was there. I
was in Louisville, I was I remember I interviewed Karenzipher
at her kitchen table. Yes, I was going through forms.
I hugged her at one point, just like a very
surreal like I'm just now it's like coming back to me.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
But the thing that people call and ask me to resent.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Her, Oh my goodness, dude.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
I'm not kidding. I can say that because I didn't
say yes so I could, but she did like, and
I was like, that would be too insane. You can't
have me do that.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
In the movie version. You do for the record, in
the movie version, you do that. But the thing that
I don't think people realize just fundamentally. And we did
an episode of my show in which we dove down
the rabbit hole and found yet more burrows that are
just battled on this story. But the thing on the
front end you gotta know is that Karen Zeipher did

(30:59):
not dissapp peer. She then married one of his most
trusted You.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
Can't skip over that, though. This is even crazier. She
married the man that Patino asked to take her to
to go get the abortion, and they fell in love
on the trip, and in the trial he testified that

(31:32):
he fell in love with her when they pulled over
at a subway on the way home from the clinic.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Matt. They just wanted it to have She wanted to
have it her way, all right, Is anything wrong with that?

Speaker 2 (31:51):
That's a wild story. There's no wilder story.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
Every every granular detail, and you're so right to slow
it down. Every granular detail is absurd. The fact that
they have a child, the fact that on the baptismal
certificate which I reviewed, is the priest that would sit
on the Louisville basketball bench. He was the one who

(32:15):
signed and validated that this child is going to heaven.
I mean, every step of this for years was coexisting
in a way that seems incomprehensible, given that she was
also the person who would you know, go to jail
for trying to extort him. Like all of these things
coexisted in a way that I think is a remarkable

(32:36):
window into how Rick Patino does business.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
A great moment of the trial, Pablo is they brought
these men in who were having a relationship with Karen
Cipher at the same time. I think the theory was
to say, look, you know that I don't know what
the thing. I guess that she also was into other men.
And this man came up and he worked for the

(33:00):
for the water department in Louisville, and their premise was
going to be that Karen Cipher fell in love with
people without them, without really knowing them. And she asked
this guy and he's this country guy. He comes, he's
got a pop belly, and she goes and he was
like trying to say, she was really into me, she
was really into me. And on cross Karen Cipher's attorney goes,

(33:23):
she wasn't really into you. I said. She was like, honestly, sir,
do you how do you know she even knew your name?
And he looks there and goes, well, it was on
my belt buckle. And I decided at that moment that
it was my favorite trial of all time. I mean,
she knew her name, probably because it was on his

(33:44):
belt buck.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
I didn't know this is I'm finding some stuff out today.
I didn't know that detail. Somehow that fell through the
cracks on my mind.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
It was funny. There was almost like the Louisville media
wouldn't report the trial. They literally they would not report
the trial.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
I met her as she was walking out of a
hearing about child support, which, by the way, Rick Patino
was providing. So like the whole thing of just like
everything about this had this small town feel. But Louisville
is also not actually a small town, right, also a town,

(34:18):
a major American city for whom Rick Patino and his
protector is protectors at the university who stood by him
through all of the other crazy things you alluded to eating,
you know, strippers and sexual I didn't even know what
the right noun is to follow sexual fill in the blank,

(34:39):
escapades at a room in a room at a building
named after his dearly departed nine to eleven. You know, victim,
what are we doing here? So look, I could I
just like the fact that part of my reporting also
involved going up or Porcini the restaurant.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
You went to Porcini's. Oh yes, great, I've set in
the booth.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
Great I was. I remember. I remember trying to be like, okay,
so I'm ordering whatever, like the meat balls, and I'm like,
so Vinnie Tatum, who was lying down horizontally across the
seats right nearby, like keeping watch of the door, while
Karen Seifer within fifteen seconds is you know, uh is

(35:28):
running a real you know, hurry up offense.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
And Tatum has become a friend of our Like it
is such a bizarre I I could.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
Not bless Vine Tatum.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
God bless everybody needs a friend like Vinnie Tatum. I'll
just so.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
So. This is also the thing about it is how
these coaches, who are not merely just like sports figures
but like really important local, i mean borderline political leaders,
how they create the system around them. Right, Belichick is
doing it one way. Patino man the guys he curated

(36:04):
since they were ball boys with the Celtics in some cases, Yeah,
this is a loyalty that is generational and.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
So and it's still there. The same faces that were
at Kentucky and we're at Louisville now sit on the
sidelines at Saint John's. I mean, they really do. I
went to Saint John's first game under Patino. I went.
It was at their lou Carnasecad gym, at this old
gym on their campus, and I was like, I've seen
all of these people before. They're all they're all here

(36:32):
and now. And then Rick Patino ended up on my show,
which I never thought would ever happen, but it did.
You know, Clayton and Crew was founded on a simple idea,
all leather goods should last a lifetime. They make everything
from bags, belts, wallets, and much more. And the best part,
they're doing it right here in Kentucky. You can check
them out Clayton and Creme dot com. That's Crume dot com.

(36:53):
Or you can visit their flagship retail store in Louisville
at two sixteen South Shelby Street. That's in New Lou's
Clayton and Krem quality leather goods built to last. Well.
I want to give you some credit because I don't
want you to think. I don't want people to think
you only do these like slacious stories.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
I don't just investigate older greatest of all time level
college coach.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
Well, they are the more interesting. But you also ended
up getting the NFL Players Association president to resign and
I actually this is a little silatious, but it's also
you know, he ended up. I saw. The thing I
saw about it was that he would take the players
Association money and go to the Strip club. But there
was more. There was deeper than that. Explain to people

(37:37):
what that was.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah, So my curiosity started with this because there was
a collusion ruling, which is, by the way, like the
number one hot button issue that the union was suing
the league over that went to arbitration, and this ruling
never was talked about, never leaked, never was discussed, and

(38:00):
so me and Mike Florio, I mean Mike Florio basically
put out a ransom, being like, can anybody get this document?
And I'm a guy who gets documents, and so I'm like,
let me see if I can get it. And what
you realize in this document is the answer to a
question of why would the NFL and the NFLPA, the
union and the league, these sworn enemies arch nemesies, why

(38:23):
would they both agree to keep something secret from everybody,
including the membership of the union as well as all
these executives in the NFL.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
So collusion in what way? How are they colluding?

Speaker 1 (38:35):
So the finding was that the league attempted to collude
by Roger Goodell. I mean, this is documented. So let
me let me wind up a little bit. So Deshaun
Watson gets signed to the worst contract in NFL history,
right fully guaranteed two hundred plus million dollars, and the

(38:57):
reaction from the League office. It turns out because in
this collusion arbitration, in the series of legal proceedings behind
closed doors, in which Roger Goodell, eight NFL owners, Lamar Jackson,
Russell Wilson, Kyler Murray, the NFL's general counsel, a slew
of executives, the executive director of the NFLPA, all of

(39:19):
them have to testify, all of them, Matt and you,
as a lawyer will appreciate this. All of them submit
to expedited discovery, which means you get the cell phones,
you get the texts, to get the emails. So I
say all that to say that Roder Goodell documented in
emails sent messages to his general counsel in which they

(39:40):
told the owners at the annual meeting, the league meetings,
the big meetings in front of the thirty two NFL teams,
do not give guaranteed contracts out that is the cliff
Notes version of it, and that attempt the arbitrator documented
in detail. And they are a again just texts between

(40:01):
owners in which they're celebrating not giving guaranteed deals. Out
to Kyler murrayche will save the Chargers owner money. On
Justin Herbert, you have the realization that Lamar Jackson, after
he was non exclusively franchised tagged by the Ravens, got
zero incoming offers.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
Zero.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
And the reason that matters for people who wouldn't sort
of understand is in order for the NFL to kind
of get exempt from antitrust laws, they have to operate
under this sort of fiction that they're all competing with
each other, which they are on the field, But you
would be on the path to violating anti trust if

(40:41):
the owners all agreed behind the scenes to do things
that they didn't do in collective bargaining. So for the
same reason that like if every gas station in the
country all agreed to raise gas prices, that would be
anti trust. That's why what you found would matter.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yes, And I would say that even if you don't
appreciate what Matt just very succinctly summarized better than I could,
you just get a window into the way that all
of these people talk behind the scenes. And so you
get the texts, you get the emails, you get these transcripts,
these testimonies, and they are bumbling. They are simply saying

(41:21):
the things that the NFL Players Association has been trying
to get people to believe for decades, and they finally
have this proof. It was called to me by a
union source, the Holy Grail, because here you have proof
of this attempt to collude in like four K level quality,
right billionaires, I mean Robert Kraft, John Marra, like down

(41:45):
the line, just like famous powerful people, clearly doing the
thing they never want to be caught doing. They got
caught doing it. But the union and the league agreed
to suppress via confidentiality agreement, this document, which no one
had ever seen until I published it.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
So why did the Players Association had agreed just because
he liked to go to the strip club.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Well, the larger story there is that this whole arbitration grievance,
their collusion grievance, was filed by the previous regime that
was the Morris Smith. Demorris Smith was the adversarial former prosecutor.
Remember this regime was led by aforementioned strip club enthusiast,
Lloyd Howell, who was, by his own reputation, his self

(42:32):
styled image, somebody who was a businessman who was going
to get along with the league in ways that the
previous regime did it. And so that plus the fact
that the election of Lloyd Howell, as we report exhaustively
in the episode, was this deeply corrupt and unusually secretive
process in which literally the names of the two finalists

(42:53):
for that job that went to strip club guy, the
names of the finalists were not revealed for the voters
until the day they showed up because the union executive Committee,
the players who run this thing, had amended the constitution
to prevent the media from apparently looking into this. All
of it was unusually alcreative and suspicious.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
All the more, I'm sure that I'll make players like
Russell Wilson more than they already did, which wasn't which
wasn't a lot. I want to go quickly before we
get done. I wanted to give you a few minutes
out a couple of these other things. These are recent
episodes that caught my I'm a big wrestling guy, you know,
I mean I bought a terrible financial decision wrestling company.

(43:39):
So I love it, you say, Dennis Rodman and Carl Malone,
who played each other in the ninety eight finals but
also were fighting in wrestling at the same time, Well,
just tell me what the argument is about them, because
people will remember they played in the finals, but then
they would also show up in wrestling rings.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
Yes, they and I didn't realize how truly parallel this
wrestling timeline was happening to the nineteen ninety eight NBA Finals,
the most iconic finals, Michael Jordan's legacy being sealed, the
mythology of him being born with this shot over Brian Russell,
Carl Malone, and Dennis Rodman. We talked to I mean,
we talked to Diamond Dallas Page.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
About this does good yoga. He should help you out.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
Oh my god, just a truly a truly limber character
changed with that.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah, I mean he's saying no joke for he joke.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
But the point being that with him and with Eric Bischoff,
they outlined how the best pro this is like proto
influencer economic logic. They realized that the best advertisement for
the Bash at the Beach, which was the event that
Rodman and alone we're going to wrestle.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
At It was going to be and Hogan versus Malone
and Diamond Dallas page right, Okay, yes.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
Yes, yes, And the best possible advertisement for that set
up was literally the NBA Finals, And so they orchestrated
a plan to get Malone and Rodman to basically promote
by fighting each other during the Finals.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
So when he kicked him, that was set up.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
It was just the big I mean, that clip which
was in the last dance was the tip of the iceberg.
We went back and rewatched the whole thing and you
see all I didn't remember how much the diamond cutter
got thrown into the air, Like I'm not you can
we play it in the YouTube channel. You see multiple

(45:39):
just like it's and.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
By the way, by Carl would throw yes.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
By Carl Malone, his partner, and so he's throwing up
the diamond and I'm like, it's it's just I mean, truly,
without being so tongue in cheek about it, it just
seems undeniable that the reason they were behave giving Malone
and Rodman in the NBA Bleeping Finals, the reason they
were behaving the way they were was because they were

(46:05):
also promoting this thing that was going to happen right
after the finals, So that was like, how do you
deny this?

Speaker 2 (46:11):
Yeah, my wrestling fandom was at its probably heaviest, and
I always sort of suspected that the kick had to
be a little bit of wrestling, but I didn't realize
that it was so much of it. I'm gonna have
to go back and listen. Now. You also talked about
one of my favorite stories in sports history, Mario. Do
you know that the Yankees players once traded wives? Two

(46:36):
players on the Yankees traded wives and families, I believe
tell people what that what happened.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
You might know it as the wife swap, the Yankee
wife swap, but you are right, Matt. This was two pitchers,
two lefties on the same Yankees pitching staff in the seventies,
actually trading places so that they swapped families and pets.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
And pets they did it other pets.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
Oh, it was. It was. It was truly like a
trading places scenario. And the best part about this story,
which again I kind of stress enough, is completely real,
is that one couple, this is Mike and Fritz Peterson.
By the two Yankee Pitchers. One couple was like within
a week where like, we this isn't gonna work. We

(47:22):
got we should undo this, and they were like, yeah, yeah,
we should undo this. The other couple was like, hell no,
we love it. This is we love it. And that
couple spoiler alert lasted for more than fifty years.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
So would we go back because I I knew this happened,
But did they just like get together and say switch
a room, like like, what was the what did they
how did they make it happen effectively?

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Yes? I mean so look, this was the seventies man,
the seventies time. Yeah, not to sound like Charlie Murphy,
it was Yeah, it was real. It was a real
different time. Look, there was a party that was held
by a sports writer for I believe the Daily News
at the time, and it's the sort of party in
the seventies where like the Yankees would go. And so

(48:10):
there is this scene that we recreate in which the
two couples who arrived as they previously were show up
and they you know, there are let's be clear about this,
there are like swinger kind of vibes, a key party
kind of vibes here, but they end up agreeing, Hey,
let's leave in separate cars and meet up at a diner.

(48:31):
Like it's like at two am. And one couple goes
right to the diner. The other couple gets there like
an hour or two later, right, so they are like okay, now,
so they're they're enjoying themselves.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
So they switched at the party, went off their separate
ways to swing and then we're gonna mate it the
diner to have some hash browns after Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Like real Americans, okay. And and what turns out to
be the case is that they both decide to do this,
which is again, it's the it's it's just one.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
That's that's kind of like the Patino story. More people
should know it. That's that's christ By.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
The way, Matt, there were press conferences about this the
Tabloy Johnny Carson, you play a clip from the Tonight
Show from the seventies. Johnny Carson makes a joke about this.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
This is so but the real like nitty gritty of
like what was it like as a character study? Who
are these people? That's where again? Like this is these
are all every episode you've mentioned so far, which I'm
so glad you have. These are movies to me, and
it's crazy that people don't know. It's great that they're
not bigger box office hits.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
As that'll be somebody's gonna make a movie about that.
The Yankees thing. It just hasn't been like there's a
Netflix documentary. Are there something that will come? Well? Your documentary?
By the way, you can listen to all these on
Pablo Tory finds out I did what I did not
listen to that. I want you to give me the

(50:00):
quick version of I saw the headline that TRL was rigged?
Is that true? I watched tr Are you telling me
the Backstreet Boys were not number one? Every day?

Speaker 1 (50:12):
It was an inside job. Man, the most influential television
show in the nineteen nineties, the thing that drove the
business of pop culture and music was rigged, and it
was presented for those who don't know it was presented,
this is Time Square everything. They have the biggest presence,

(50:32):
screaming like the the the archetype of just like the
nineties boy band.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
Era, and everyone would get on and like every musician.
Oh there's the famous Oasis interview with the guy like
everyone came on.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
But the point and to your and by the way,
puff Daddy, then Diddy is there, like everybody from that time,
j Lo is there. But the point being that, like
these boy bands kept on winning and of course they
were very popular. But also of course there was this
sham democracy in which was a call in show. You
would call in and you wait for the lineup to

(51:05):
be revealed from ten to one, and it was We
got the MTV executives who ran the show on tape
to admit this, Yes, they rigged it. Oh no, And
it's just like, are.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
You gonna tell me Ruben Stuttard did not beat Clay Aiken.
Is that gonna be the next thing you tell me?

Speaker 1 (51:23):
I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna start sounding like Donald
Trump talking about you know, uh smart matic voting machine.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Yeah, you gotta be careful about that. Okay, this is
this is for the KSR listeners. We have had more
fun in the last fifteen years laughing about what I
still think is one of the is maybe the funniest moment,
certainly on the NBA Draft ever where, when Shane Battier
interviewed this kid that got picked from Russia and he

(51:54):
asked him a question and the poor kid could barely
speak English, and he just says like he is this,
he was that. And then Shane Battier has absolutely no
idea what to say, and he just looks at him
and goes, well, that's great. And we've been using that
drop of well that's great, oh for over a decade.

(52:15):
It's maybe my favorite clip of all time. I saw
you had Shane Battier on and you were talking about
how his ESPN career failed, and I think if you
went back and looked at Shane Battier in college and
with you would have probably said, They'll there's no more
sure thing as a media analyst in the history of
mankind than Shane Battier. Why didn't it work with him?
And just how does he feel about that? Because everyone

(52:37):
thought he would be the next whatever, Jay Billisser, pick
your person.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Oh, by the way, that clip is the clip we
played for him that made him reckon with exactly what
your read of it is, which is he is not
good in this role. He just wasn't. No, No, he wasn't.
And I think there's a and he sort of reclines
on the therapy couch with us about that for a bit,
because what's so stunning as you listen to him on

(53:01):
this episode or just in life, is how charismatic, effortlessly
charismatic he is.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
I was a duke with him. He dated my next
door neighbor growing up. I got to know him. He
was smart, he was charming. I thought, no way, he
doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
Oh and you can laugh at himself and he's great,
and so it's like the special combination of things. But
he was just I think there's look we see in
sports television all of the time, how people get put
into roles that aren't actually playing to their strengths. That interview,
like Battier shouldn't be interviewing random draft prospects number one,

(53:37):
number two though English, you know that it was it
wasn't doing him any favors. Yeah, certainly the language barrier.
It was also the case though, that Battier this job
was a job he started doing almost out of an
obligation to what everybody expected him to do at a

(53:58):
time when he was still like not at peace with
him no longer playing professional basketball. So it was like
this incredibly just like just a sad mental image of Battier,
just like going from city to city trying to cosplays well,
what does he do now? Oh my god. I mean,
so he was in the front office of the Miami Heat. Okay,

(54:18):
he left that job, and now he's one of these
guys who has like two books coming out and he
hosts a podcast and he is doing exactly what he
should be. He's like, he's a renaissance man. He's doing
a jillion different things and he's.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
That was a great I hate Duke, even though I
went there. I hate it worse than anything. The Battier
Williams Boozer dun Levy team is, if not the best
college basketball team of my life. It's in the conversation.
I mean, it's they were unbelievable to watch in person.
I'll finish with this. You worked with Bolmoni Jones, who's

(54:52):
my really, really good friend, and you you worked with
him on a TV show, and I remember when that started.
I thought this gonna be great. I mean, these two
dudes are both insanely smart. I mean, it's gonna work.
And I actually thought it looked amazing. I have a
my ex girlfriend at the time was in TV production,

(55:12):
and I remember we were watching it one time and
she said, that show looks amazing. Just visually like the
way it was done. The show ended up not really working.
I know. I've talked to Bomani about how hard that
was for him. Was it hard for you to have
a show with that platform and it just didn't work? Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (55:36):
I mean I remember, dude, I to sort of like
go full circle here. I remember the day after our
first episode, it was an hour long, it was live,
it was shot in this cinematic.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Yeah, that's what it looked like a movie.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Yeah, way it was. That's Eric Rideholme who had the
aesthetic idea for it, almost like a western, was how
it would open the bell and then like.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
This, Yeah, I forgot.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
The day after if we did the first episode, Tony
Corneiser calls me and he says, you guys are gonna
take over PTI. I've seen enough. That's it. And he
does not do this easily or or freely, but that's
the level of sort of like expectation and the level
of just like wow, this is working after day one,
and then when you go back in time and you realize, okay,

(56:21):
so the show then about a year later, got sought
and a half to thirty minutes, got moved time slots
and concurrent with that was this idea that wait a minute,
neither of them, neither Bow nor I felt like we
like we were being our best selves in that role.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
To me, he always felt that, because I know he
felt that way. You didn't feel like it was using
your best thing.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
When I didn't. I was not experienced enough at that
point in my career to have the vantage point that
BOUMANI had about like what he was missing from his
own sort of like vision of himself. I was very like,
I am just paddling as fast as I can to
just keep this thing on air because I want this
to work and all of that. But when I look

(57:06):
back and I realized, like, what did we both do
since we left that show? I'm like, we chose to
do things that are far more like they're far more
like us than what that show was having us do,
especially in that thirty minute sort of format. To me,
the Squeeze really became palpable when it went from an
hour to thirty minutes, and it felt like now we

(57:29):
have to try and be We were like auditioning to well,
you have to try to BETI, and that wasn't necessarily
what you two do. No, I mean like, the thing
that I love the most was in the hour long
version there was our d segment was the segment was
called this blank Story, and it was basically like any
topic from sports, even vaguely sports. We would just get

(57:53):
like a ten minute chunk to just like deep dive
into it as if we were podcasting. Yeah, and that
was where that's what you two are most That's where
we are most differentiated. Everything else felt it felt to
me in retrospect, and I'm I'm so proud of what
we tried to do, but I also cringe at myself
because I'm like, man, I'm also like couse playing what

(58:13):
I thought I should be and that was not fun
for anybody. So I look, I I am glad that
we had that. I am glad that we both ended
up finding like what it is we should probably be
doing with our respective careers. But yeah, I just think

(58:36):
that when it comes to the show that exists in
the tradition of PTI, you really immediately appreciate why PTI
is in.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
I'll finish with this. I I've always wondered this, and
I hope you understand where I'm coming from with this.
You there's a group of people you're one of them, Bomani,
Mi Na Kahan, Katie Nolan. This group of people that
ESPN brought in, all very smart, all very interesting, all
people that I really like. I mean, there's a number

(59:09):
of them. What's the guy's name that skipper? Is that
the person who brought all those folks in. And when
culture changed and people just all of a sudden started
using the word woke in a derogatory term, and all
of a sudden there was this flip ESPN is two whatever.

(59:31):
You guys in some ways became the face of that
to me unfairly, but you did, and you have the
Clay Travises of the world who decided that you Meana.
You know, Jamal Hill was part of it. I don't
know that I put her with you all. But that
group you guys became almost a cultural flashing point that

(59:53):
ESPN was not sports, it was woke mob stuff. I
hated it. Bomani would fight people about it. But you
that's not you. You're not go on social media and
hit people, which is what Bomani would do. Did that hurt.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
I was bothered by it, But I also just feel
like I have this philosophy when I'm walking down the
street in New York City, where if someone wants to
start something with me, I have so much more to
lose as a general principle than whatever they have to gain.
I'm just somebody who's like, yeah, I'm just gonna keep
it moving, man.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
But it doesn't bother you, like I when when when
you are a cultural talking point and the president is
sitting there railing on if not you, the whole idea
of you, sure does that bother it? I mean it
had to be hard, didn't he.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
Here's what was frustrating about it. We talked about sports
so much so the whole idea of like you guys
are doing an hour or a half hour or whatever
it is on ESPN, and the thing that keeps on
getting used against you is the one topic in a
given day in which you are doing something that I

(01:01:06):
think we were hired and empowered perhaps to the problem
everybody is complaining about to actually be smart and funny
about this thing. Like Bomani says this all the time,
and I agree, not everybody should be weighing in on
these complicated topics.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Yeah. But but coincidentally, though, I mean, they let's be real,
there were no white males put in that conversation, it
was they came after you, They came after Bomani, they
came after convenient women, like it was very mean. Like no,
I mean, it wasn't convenient. It was intentional. Like even LeBatard,

(01:01:44):
who shares your all's point of view, he rarely got
put in that group. It was you all. So I
think it was unbelievably unfair.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
Yeah, I mean I when you put it like that,
I am mad. No it looks, but.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
Sh i'most mad for you all that I don't even
barely know most of you.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
The thing that was bothersome to me was to have
your whole thing, what you do professionally reduced to being
quote unquote woke. I'm like, man, you really are missing
why any of us are any good at what it
is that we do. Like, it's not that the ability
to talk about quote unquote social issues is certainly a strength,

(01:02:28):
certainly for Bomani, certainly for I'd like to think that
I can do that too, But man, the whole thing
of you guys have hijacked the ESPN air waves to
shove down the viewer's throats. This thing they don't want
is an active misrepresentation of what it is we were doing
on a minute to minute basis. It just wasn't the majority,

(01:02:51):
and it wasn't even close to the majority. It was
like the one topic we would do. And frankly, Matt,
the thing that was frustrating was a lot of people
were and now we're just in a vast different time.
But back then a tweet you sent in your own
personal life was an example of something that ESPN was
allegedly saying on air. And so if you were at

(01:03:11):
all weighing in on Donald Trump and Colin Kaepernick in
you know, twenty sixteen, it was as if you were
saying that on Sports Center and we weren't.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
But they also never ply it the other way. I mean,
Clay Travis can write a book called stick to Sports
and he has not done anything of the sort ever since.
And I you know, that is what annoys me. Like
as a progressive person, that is fine saying.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
It, right I.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
But I get annoyed on your behalf because.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
Irel afraid of saying it, by the way.

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
But I don't. But they also I also am coherent
enough to recognize that while people will tell me to
stick to sports, they just accept stuff for me that
they will not accept from you, and they will not
accept from a woman in sports, and it just that
infuriates me. Like, if you want to tell me I
sucked too, that's fine, But like I I just think

(01:04:09):
it was I think the way they treated you all,
just in terms of whether you got hired or fired
is honestly mostly a financial decision usually, but I just
thought the way you were treated was just unfair.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Yeah, I mean, we were we were we were classified
as the problem. And the explanation, by the way, for
why ESPN. It was not the decline of the cable bundle, Matt,
It was not the rise of the Internet.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
And it was not that maybe you and Beaumani just
weren't in the thing that you would be the best dat.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
It wasn't any of those things which are far more
mundane and like a lot of other things that lots
of people experience in the business sports media. It was
the fact that we dared to essentially insult the audience
by shoving race down their throats. And look, maybe you
get that impression if you're on Twitter, I guess. But

(01:05:05):
now the thing that I marvel at, sort of in
retrospect is we're at this moment in time where Steven A.
Smith is plausibly running for president, in which that's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
He is, Yeah, okay, come on, I have to be
careful because I work at the same company, Stephen, But
Steven A. Smith is not running for president. Who is
for Steven A. Smith.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
I've seen crazier things happen.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
I have it. I'll take that. You pick the odds.
No offense to him. I don't know him, but that's
not that's that's not him.

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
The point, by the way, I look forward to replaying
this video game in a couple of years.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
Well, we're not putting this one up because I don't
need to get calls from the bridge. This will live
on the podcast, but it won't be on social media.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
Use your discretion. But to that point, the podcast versus
linear television. Stephen A. Can go on his independent podcast
and talked to Ben Shapiro and Candice Owens and any
number of politicians, and he doesn't wear the criticism of
sticking to sports.

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
But it's all change. I mean, McAfee can have Aaron
Rodgers talk about vaccine skepticism and it's changed. You guys
just hit this period where it was not allowed.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
Yeah, because we were non white people and or women
and or these quote unquote woke libtards who dared to
dare to take over a lot of people's favorite thing.
And I just I'm like, man, look at the look
at the just the math, Like, how much are we
on air talking about this stuff. That's the thing that
always just bugged me. I'm like, you guys are overreacting

(01:06:44):
to something.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
Yeah, Pablo, this was I really enjoyed this. So Pablo
Tory finds out it is, uh, very it is excellent.
He I always liked Pablo, and I liked the episodes
that I would hear, but I was so what was
What's great about what you did is I was so skeptical.
I mean, what we talked about on the whole Belichick thing,

(01:07:07):
and then you kind of won me over by the
end of it. I think that's really cool and I
really appreciate you taking the time to do this. Thank
you very much.

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
Look, persuasion in twenty twenty five is arguably the most magical,
unexpected thing for anyone who makes anything to accomplish. So
it is really cool to say that to hear you
say that. And also I look forward to having you
on the eventual Rick Patino sequel episode, because you know
that's coming.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
Oh dude, I would listen that. That's in my wheelhouse.
It's either that or it's it's that or rant about
Mitch McConnell i can do either one of those two.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
Things, which why not vote?

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
Why not? Why not both? Thank you, Papa,