March 5, 2025 • 45 mins
Fantasy sports have undergone a remarkable evolution from their modest inception to becoming a global entertainment behemoth, captivating millions across the globe. In this discourse, we shall meticulously unravel the intricate tapestry of events and influential figures that catalyzed this transformation into the multi-billion-dollar industry it is today. Our esteemed guest, Larry Schechter, an eminent authority in fantasy sports, has not only authored the best-selling "Winning Fantasy Baseball" but has also chronicled the comprehensive history of this phenomenon in his latest literary work, "The History of Fantasy Sports." Through his insights and expertise, we shall explore the origins, pivotal milestones, and the societal implications of fantasy sports, shedding light on how this captivating hobby has permeated mainstream culture. I invite you to join us as we traverse this fascinating journey, delving into the elements that have indelibly shaped the landscape of fantasy sports.
The podcast episode delves into the captivating realm of fantasy sports, a phenomenon that has become as quintessentially American as baseball and apple pie. The discussion centers around the origins of fantasy sports, tracing its evolution from a niche hobby into a multi-billion dollar industry that has captivated millions globally. The episode features an esteemed guest, Larry Schechner, a prominent figure in the fantasy sports arena, whose extensive experience encompasses being a celebrated author and successful player in the field. Through this dialogue, listeners gain insights into the historical context and significant milestones that have shaped the current landscape of fantasy sports, including the influential individuals and events that contributed to its burgeoning popularity. The conversation not only illuminates the past but also reflects on the present state of fantasy sports, underscoring its impact on fan engagement and the broader sports industry. Furthermore, the episode provides informative anecdotes and personal experiences that enrich the narrative, making it not only educational but also engaging for those unfamiliar with the intricacies of fantasy sports.
Takeaways:
- The evolution of fantasy sports has transformed it into a multi-billion dollar global industry.
- Key figures, such as Larry Schechter and Dan Okrent, played pivotal roles in shaping fantasy sports history.
- Fantasy sports originated from simple games but have now become complex and widely recognized entertainment.
- Technological advancements, particularly the internet, revolutionized the way fans engage with fantasy sports today.
Find everything One More Thing Here: : https://taplink.cc/beforeyougopodcast
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Amazon
- CDM Sports
- USA Today
- Sporting News
- SiriusXM Radio
- DraftKings
- FanDuel
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hey, one more thing before yougo. Today we're diving into the world
of fantasy sports. It's anincredible phenomenon that's an American
that's as American as baseballand apple pie and has captivated
millions of fans worldwide.Have you ever wondered how it all
began? What events andindividuals contributed to making
fantasy sports the multibillion dollar industry it is today?
(00:24):
Stay tuned. We're going toenter answer these questions and
so many more with a greatguest who can give us those origins.
I'm your host, Michael Hurst.Welcome to one more thing before
you go. Our guest today isLarry Schechner. He not only is a
(00:49):
fantasy sports enthusiast, buta legend in the field. Larry is the
author of the 2014Amazonbestseller Winning Fantasy baseball
and has been called one of thebest fantasy baseball players in
the world. He's a two timewinner of the CDM Sports national
salary cap contest and hastriumphed in the most prestigious
expert leagues including theUSA Today sponsors Labr league three
(01:12):
times and the Tout warsexperts league six times. Known for
his meticulous attention todetail, Larry's poured his expertise
into researching, conductinginterviews and writing the history
of fantasy sports as well asthe book we're going to talk about
today. Welcome to the show, Larry.
(01:34):
Hi, Michael. Glad to be here.
What an amazing opportunityfor us to be able to inspire, educate
and motivate some peopletoday. I think I had mentioned before
we started this is my firstintroduction to fantasy sports. So
I'm excited for you being here.
Great. I will educate you.
(01:55):
You know, I kind of like startat the beginning of my show. I like
to get a little background onmy guest, a little more in depth
than what we talked about.Where'd you grow up?
Schenectady, N.Y. learning toread and write was a little confusing
because my name is Schecterfrom Schenectady.
(02:15):
I would imagine kindergartenand kindergarten must have been interesting.
Yeah, yeah.
So would you want to be, whenyou grew up, did you always want
to be an author? Were youalways, were you involved in sports
from an early age?
There was a time I wanted tobe an author. Like, and I think like
(02:38):
the end of high school, firstcouple years of college, I had an
idea for a book I thought Iwas going to write like the great
American novel. And you know,I kind of wrote a draft and you know,
now I know it sucked. Youknow, it never, it never had a chance
in a million years of beingpublished. It wasn't any good. So
that was like that was the endof it. So I had no Idea that years
(03:01):
later I would be. I wouldactually publish a couple of books
that had to do with fantasysports. Fantasy sports didn't even
exist when I was writing, youknow, the Great American Novel my
first couple years of college.
Were you, were you involved insports as a kid or through college
or in that.
Yeah, I played little leaguebaseball. I was not good at it, but
(03:23):
I, I played golf. I'm prettygood at golf. So golf, golf has been
my main sport for four years.
And you got a right place downin Florida for golfing in beautiful
weather. Actually. Yeah,that's what I love about Phoenix.
Phoenix has got so many golfcourses here and the opportunity
to golf other than July andAugust, then it's just a wee bit
(03:45):
a little hot. Don't like togolf during those time periods. Help
us understand fantasy sports.How did you get involved in fantasy
sports?
I. Well, I went to college inBoston and lived in Boston for several
years after college. And oneday, approximately 1992, I was driving
(04:08):
around Boston and I heard anad on the radio for something that
was a fantasy baseball league.It was actually a company offering
fantasy baseball leagues. So Icalled, I called and I was immediately
interested in joining thatleague and played that for a couple
years. They went out ofbusiness and I looked in the, I guess
(04:31):
I looked in either the USAToday or the Sporting News or both
of them. And I found it, youknow, found some other companies
that offered fantasy sportsand I signed up with one of those.
And the story that I just toldyou is really, really unusual if
you ask a thousand people. Howdid you first start playing fantasy
sports? I quite possibly wouldbe the only one who said I heard
(04:52):
an ad on the radio. Mostpeople heard about it from friends
or they saw an ad in the USAToday or they saw an ad in the Sporting
News. But hearing it on aradio ad is completely unusual.
I. Yeah, my first introductioninto fantasy sports was actually
friends of mine and colleaguesthat were, that were involved in
(05:15):
it. So I, I didn't getinvolved in it in myself, but I,
you know, could hear thempicking their teams and picking their
players and you know, thatkind of a thing. So yeah, I think
it's pretty, it's prettyinteresting the way that it's evolved.
How, how, how like what werethe origins? How did it go from where
it is now and evolved intolike a global entertainment powerhouse?
(05:38):
Because it's like a multibillion dollar business now.
Exactly. That's why I wrotethe book the History of Fantasy Sports.
Because I've, you know, for,for several Years. I look around
at the industry and you've gotmillions and millions of people playing
everything from fantasyfootball and fantasy baseball to
(05:59):
fancy wakeboarding, cricketfantasy. I did a rod. I mean everything,
it's worldwide. You got newsServices, Stat Services, SiriusXM
Radio, 24. 7 channel forfantasy sports. When you watch an
NFL game or baseball game orwhatever, now they talk about fantasy
statistics. So I, I wonderedhow did we go from ideas people had
(06:20):
years ago for games to wherewe are now with this multibillion
dollar industry? And nobody'sever written a book like this. So
that's, that's why I decidedto write the book. And you know,
to answer your question, therewere precursors to fantasy sports
going back even to the 1800s.There were the first board games
(06:40):
where like you, you wouldslide a penny with your finger into
a spring activated bat thatwould hit the penny into various
holes. For baseball, let's sayout home run, single, double, whatever.
And then in the 1900s therewere board games like Cataco Ellis
All Star Baseball and FrankLayton's football. And then you got
(07:02):
into games like App andStratomatic which were based on the
performance of real majorleague baseball players or football
players, but it was theiractual performance from prior seasons
and what I refer to as modernfantasy sports. The difference is
it's based on actualperformance of athletes, but for
(07:22):
the upcoming season. So forexample, you would draft a fancy
football team in say, Augustbefore the season starts, and then
you don't know what, what'sgoing to happen. So as the season
unfolds, you get thestatistics of the, of your players.
I find that fascinatingactually, because it, in regard to
(07:44):
that, obviously it gives useach an opportunity to kind of feel
like we're involved in thesport. You know, we, we get to be
there, so to speak. Who weresome of the key figures that contributed
to the early development offantasy sports? I mean, you talked
a little bit about, about whatyou had just done, but who, if I
may, who, who come up andsaid, wow, we could do this on a
(08:05):
larger scale. We can createfootball teams, baseball teams, hockey.
Does it, does it work withhockey and everything else like soccer?
Oh yeah, yeah. You said, yeah,you got, I mean you've even got like
wakeboarding and cricket and,and I did a lot. So, yeah, hockey,
basketball, martial arts,curling, there's fantastic curling.
I mean, there's fantasy,everything. There's a list in my
(08:26):
book, there's a list in mybook where I wrote down like every,
every type of fantasy that Icame across. In my, in my research,
and there's more than 50 itemsthere, and I'm sure there were some
that I hadn't even heardabout. Yeah. So to answer your question,
fantasy. There's a guy namedBill Winkenbach who was a 10% owner
(08:51):
of the, of the OaklandRaiders. And in the late 50s, he
had like a primitive fantasybaseball game and a primitive fantasy
golf game. And in 62, I thinkit was 62, he was on a flight with
(09:14):
some other people associatedwith the Raiders, and they were going
to New York to play the jets.Actually, then they were called the
Titans, they became the Jets.And on this trip he mentioned his
fantasy golf and fantasybaseball games to a couple of people
and they're like, we should dothat for football. And they stayed
up all night talking about it,developing rules, and yeah, let's,
(09:37):
let's do this. But it was. Theseason had already started, so they
had to wait till next fall 63,to actually start their league. So
they started their fancyfootball league in 63, but they kept
it amongst themselves.Interesting though, one of the original
players was the. What's hisname? Jerry. Jerry Wolf. That. Who.
(10:00):
I gotta look this up whilewe're talking because the name is
a skeptic, but the guy whobecame the hall of Fame general manager
for the Green Bay packers andI can't think of his first name,
it's something Wolf. I'm sorry.
That's all right.
Anyway, so he, he was, he wasone of those. Just an aside. He was
(10:21):
one of the first members, butthey kept it amongst themselves.
But there's a guy who was inthe, in the league, the original
league, named Andy Musa Lemus,and he's the guy who's responsible
for really spreading the game.He owned a bar in Oakland and after
(10:41):
a year or two in the league,he decided it would be a good idea
for business to make the gameavailable to his patrons. And he
did. And people formed aleague and they loved it. The next
year they had a second leagueand then a third league and then
a women only league becausethere were women that wanted to play,
but the men didn't want womento play in their league with them.
(11:04):
And this is how fantasyfootball really spread is because
Mussolini started these gamesin his bar. People, you know, would
spread it word of mouth. Itwent from Oakland to, to San Francisco.
Then people would come intobar from all over the country and
they'd see what they'd belike, you know, what are these people
doing? They'd find out aboutit before too long. Mussolinius had
(11:25):
people from bars, you know,bar owners from bars all over the
country calling him, askinghey, what's this fantasy football
thing I'm hearing about? So hewas really responsible for this,
starting to spread it. And onething about my book, when I, when
I, you know, when I started toresearch the book, I mean first of
(11:45):
all I had no idea what I wasgetting into. I thought it was something
I could knock out in a fewmonths. It took 18 months of full
time work researching,interviewing dozens and dozens of
people and writing the thing.And when I started my idea was when
to write a book called theHistory of Fantasy Sports. Find out
who did what, when, how. Itall happened when I started all the
(12:08):
research and talking topeople, I started hearing fascinating
stories. And I realized earlyon that if I just write the History
of Fantasy sports, it'll getthe job done. It'll also come off
as a very boring researchpaper. But instead of that I got
all these fascinating storiesI'm hearing about people. So I'm
(12:31):
going to tell the who, what,when, but focus on the stories. So
instead of being a boringresearch paper, it'll be interesting.
And that's what happened. I'vegot all these stories are fascinating,
some are inspirational, somebring a tear to your eye. There's
a lot of humorous stuff. Andso the reviews have been fantastic.
People say it's easy to read,it's fascinating. There's a guy,
(12:53):
the Midwest Book Review saidfascinating from start to finish
and that's a guy who neverplayed fantasy sports because the
book isn't really so muchabout fantasy sports as the stories
of these people and what theydid, you know, the entrepreneurs
that created this industry. Soone thing about Musalimus, you know,
(13:15):
I, I couldn't interview Musbecause he's, he's no longer living.
But I tracked down one of hisgrandkids and got a little bit of
information from, from himthat hadn't been published anywhere.
Because I read, you know, likeI googled article after article after
article about Winkenbach andMUS and the whole thing. And I, you
know, after like 20 articlesabout MUS, I'm reading the same stuff
(13:38):
that I've read 20 times. Butyou know, once in a while there's
some little tidbit that wasn'tmentioned before. So I Get like the
20th article from Musa Lemusand there's this thing mentioned.
I'm like oh my God, I can'tbelieve this wasn't Metro work. The
guy was a war hero,Mussolinius when he was 17 years
old. Pearl harbor happened,and he enlisted in the army. And
(14:00):
his recruiter told him, 97% ofyou are not going to return, because
they were putting them on amission to go behind enemy lines.
And they said, 97% of you arenot going to return alive. But he
volunteered anyway, andobviously he survived. They. They
gave him a cyanide pill so ifhe got caught, he could kill himself.
(14:25):
So, you know, it's likespreading, you know, playing fancy
football. Spreading fancyfootball was, you know, the least,
you know, of the importantthings that he did in his life compared
to that. He later got it. Hismission was top secret for years.
And then after years andyears, they finally made it public
and he, he went to Washingtonand got an award.
(14:45):
That's amazing. Actually, Ithink that, you know, the mere fact
that, that that was a minoraspect of his life, at least the
way it was showcased, and itwas him that kind of helped it transform
into a. The niche hobby, intoa kind of a mainstream sensation,
which I think, you know,again, we hear about it everywhere.
It's all over. You heard onthe radio, as we watch watch it.
(15:08):
We hear about it on TV and inthe news. Which brings me to. We've
mentioned this as you weretalking, that it all started off
pretty much word of mouth. Itall started off in an arena that
our friends were talkingabout, our colleagues were talking
about it. How has technologyimpacted the growth of fantasy sports
(15:31):
over the years? How is that?I'm sure it had to have a major impact
in fantasy regard to not onlyspreading the word, but the actual
participation in. In it. Itmade it easier, I'm sure.
Yeah. Before I, Before I getto that, let me just tell you about
one other person. From yourfirst question, by the way, I got
(15:53):
to say something. Musa Lemus.One more thing about Musa Lemus that
I little tidbit that I readand finally read an article that
was very cool, says a lotabout the guy. You know, his bar,
this is back in the 60s inOakland, his bar, and it was mentioned
he was one of the very firstbartenders in the Oakland area that
welcomed black people. Youknow, that's very cool because, you
(16:18):
know, back then, even. Even inOakland, you had racism. So. Yeah.
Anyway, the other guy I got tomention because any. Anyone who's
listening to this is somewhatfamiliar with fantasy sports or fantasy
baseball has probably heard ofDan Okra. Dan Okran is the guy credited
with inventing fantasybaseball, which was originally called
(16:39):
rotisserie baseball. Now, hedid start a league in 1980 and he
is the person primarilyresponsible for inventing, creating
fantasy baseball. However,there's a lot of myths out there
that are not true. One one ofthem is that the idea magically came
(17:01):
to him on a plane ride fromConnecticut to Texas. In fact, that
was even part of a 30 for 30ESPN special. That's not true. It
goes back years before that.There's a whole long story of what
happened. There are also a lotof people who were playing kind of
like their own primitive gamesof fantasy baseball years before
(17:24):
that. But they were primitivegames and they didn't spread. It
was just friends playing withfriends. So what Oakrent came up
with is his version of fantasybaseball that he invented is kind
of like chess compared toeverybody else who might have been
playing checkers. And theother thing about Oakrent is he was
(17:45):
a writer and the people he gotin his first league were writers,
editors, magazine publishers,kind of like that. So they got publicity.
There were some articleswritten like in the New York Times
for example, they got on theToday show in 1984. They got a book
deal with Bantam Books towrite a book about it. So that's
how it all spread. It'sbecause he invented a very sophisticated
(18:08):
game and they were gettingpublicity. So it spread. In fact,
the 1984 book Bantam Books,they sold, I think it was about 50,000
copies. Lots and lots ofpeople read that book and started
their own leagues. And infact, some of the, like Matthew Barry
for example, who right now isprobably the most famous fantasy
(18:30):
sports, you know, analyst orwhatever you call him, he's, he's
read that book when he was 14years old and joined the league.
That's how he got startedfantasy sports.
That's really interestingactually. I think that allowing them,
I'm sure again technology hasgot to be. Play a part in it these
(18:50):
days where it allows us to beable to create a fantasy team so
much easier and be able toshare that and spread it and, and
kind of bounce.
Yeah. So now getting to that,your question on technology. Yeah.
So the first, you know, thefirst back before you're back before
technology and the Internetwhen people started playing, you
(19:11):
know, I started playing about1992. You know, lots of people were
playing in the 80s and backthen you didn't have information.
You could just go on theInternet. So people who, you know,
were really taking itseriously, they, they would, you
know, like, they'd go to thepeople, they would go to the newsstand
on Sunday and buy every out oftown newspaper they could find, take
(19:33):
the sports section, throw outthe rest. And they'd read the sports
sections, try and get littletidbits of information about that
papers, local football team orbaseball team. And if they did that,
they had a big advantage overtheir competitors. And they also.
People would call the PRoffices of teams. They'd call the
(19:57):
Phillies front office, andthey pretend they were a reporter
or something and say, hey, youknow, Mike Schmitz got a groin injury.
How long is he gonna be outfor? You know? And then at first,
the PR offices would thinkthese people were bookies. And then
later on, they realized mostof them weren't bookies. They were
fantasy baseball players. Andit was a real pain in the ass for
(20:18):
them. There's a guy named BobHarris, started a company because
of this. Bob Harris got anidea for an advice newsletter for
fantasy football. And hecalled the PR offices of the teams,
and he said, listen, I knowthese idiots are calling you, asking
these stupid questions. Here'swhat I have an offer for you. Give
(20:41):
me the information. And theneverybody else who calls, tell them
to call me. So they happilyagreed to that. And he started a
business where, you know, hehad all this information, and he
started charging people tocall, to call him. Yes. My book is
full of stories ofentrepreneurs who saw something that
(21:01):
was needed and didn't exist.And they started it, or maybe it
existed, but they thought theycould do better. Because, you know,
back at the beginning, like,you know, people said, well, boy,
this fancy football thing isgreat, but there's no information.
So let's start a magazine, youknow, or let's write a book or let's
start a news service orwhatever. The first kind of technological
(21:23):
breakthrough to get to yourquestion is, was computers. So when
computers came around, therewere, you know, some people realized,
like, wait a minute, we coulduse this for fantasy sports because
the. The commissioners ofleagues or somebody in the league
would have to do all the movesand statistics and standings by hand.
(21:44):
They'd have to get the boxscore from the paper and do everything
by hand. When computers cameout, people realized, like, whoa,
we can use computers for this.So instead of a commissioner taking
10 hours a week, do it all byhand. We can do it with computers.
So some people becameentrepreneurs and started statistics
services. One of them was acouple from Pennsylvania, Jim and
(22:07):
Gloria Berger. And what they.They started a service for baseball
and football. And what theyhad to do back then for baseball
is the Tuesday edition of theUSA Today would have the American
League statistics, andWednesday would have the National
League statistics. So Gloriawould read the statistics from the
USA Today. Jim would put themin the computer. The computer would
(22:30):
calculate all the results, andthey'd mail reports to their clients
on Wednesday night. So that'skind of like the, you know, I talked
about, like who, what, when ofthe history of fantasy sports. But
then the subtitle of the bookis and the stories of people who
made it happen. This is wherethe flavor comes in. So one, one
Wednesday, Gloria went intolabor with her first child, and they
(22:54):
did not let a little thinglike going into labor stop them from
doing their job. So in betweencontractions, Gloria would read Jim
the statistics, and then she'dbe like, oh, wait, hold on, hold
on, here comes another one.Okay, it passed. And the contraction
would pass and she'd continue.And they got their statistics done,
(23:16):
the reports out in the mailthat Wednesday night on time. And
the. The daughter that wasborn that day, now 37 years later,
plays in the fantasy footballleague with her dad.
That's dedication. Yeah, yeah,absolutely dedicated.
And then. And then the otherbig, you know, then the. The huge
(23:40):
technological breakthrough wasthe Internet. You know, with the
Internet, it made it reallyeasy for people to play, to find
leagues to join. They couldmake their own moves online instead
of having to go through thecommissioner or stat service. You
could get your reports onlineinstead of having to wait, you know,
you used to have to wait toget them in the mail. Like if you
were in a league, a footballor baseball league, the stat week
(24:04):
probably ended on Sunday andyou wouldn't get your report. You'd
have to wait to get it in themail. You know, Wednesday or Thursday
when fax machines came out,that made it easier. Some people
would fax the reports. Youknow, one of the. One of the people
I interviewed was the owner ofa comp of a company that offered
(24:24):
games. And he remembers thefirst time somebody called him and
said, hey, instead of themail, could you start sending my
report by fat? And his answerwas, what's the facts?
Oh, that's funny. It'sinteresting, the evolution where,
(24:44):
how somebody finds rightplace, right time, right technology,
and take advantage of that,like you said earlier, from an entrepreneurial
perspective, and then makelife so much easier for all of us,
especially within thisindustry. Do you think the role of
media or broadcasting help topopularize it?
(25:08):
Oh, yeah, definitely. So whathappened is when fantasy sports started,
the media was kind of split.Like, take. Basically, you know,
half the media thought, thisis terrible. This is going to ruin
the game, because people areonly rooting for their players. And
statistics are not rooting fortheir teams. And the other half of
(25:30):
the media thought this isgreat. So like, you know, Dan Oprint
started his league in 1980 andI mentioned got lots of publicity,
a lot of people startedplaying and he, he says he thinks
by like 81 or 82 there was afantasy baseball league in every
major league press box. Youknow, the, someone in the press would
(25:52):
start their own league,whether other people in the press.
So like you got half thepeople playing fancy baseball and,
and you got half the peoplethinking this is terrible, it's going
to ruin the game. And, and Ithink it was 80. Every, I mean every,
everything in the book isfactually correct. I don't remember
every little detail. So Imight say something that's not quite
correct, but in the book it'scorrect. I, I think it was 81 was
(26:16):
when there was a major leaguebaseball strike. And so during the
strike the baseball writersdidn't have anything to write about.
You know, usually they justwrite about the games. So some of
them started writing abouttheir own fantasy teams which again
helped publicize it.
(26:38):
That's interesting. And now isthere a, this can be a strange question,
but is there a conflict forthe actual players to be playing
in a fantasy team or having afantasy team? Sort of like Pete Rose.
Pete Rose got in trouble forbetting on baseball so much. Is there
an issue with that? With, withthe teams and the players?
(27:02):
No, no, there's no issue. Youknow, it's unusual for someone to
have themselves on a fantasyteam, but if they did, they would
be, they'd be trying hard.Yeah, I mean like thing, the thing
with Rose is, you know, Rose,you know, if you're a major league
baseball player betting on agame, you, you know, you could throw
(27:24):
a game and lose intentionallyor you could, you could bet on your
team, but you're using insideinformation that people don't know
about. But fantasy isdifferent. You know, like Maurice
Jones Drew, very good, wellknown football player. You know,
(27:44):
he got into fantasy prettyearly on and he would, he would always
draft himself. He'd alwayspick himself first on his team.
That way make sure he's alwayspicked first. I can respect that.
I can respect that. How's thebusiness of fantasy sports changed
the sporting industry as awhole? Do you think, you think it's
(28:06):
made an impact on it?
Well, there's a whole fantasy,there's a whole fantasy industry.
Obviously it's like a 25billion dollar a year industry that
sprung up and you know, allkinds of Related businesses. You
got statistics services, newsservices, advice services, companies
(28:28):
that offer games for people toplay. And now there's, you know,
there's analysts on, you know,when you watch, you know, when you
turn on an NFL game or majorleague baseball, they talk about
fantasy or they have their ownfantasy shows. So, you know, like
main mainstream, mainstreamsports coverage now kind of includes
(28:50):
a lot of references to fantasyor fantasy specific shows even.
So, you know, the foundersprobably never would have thought
in their lifetime that itwould turn into a multi billion dollar
industry.
Right. Of course, you know,the thing is they're. When, you know,
when I, when I startedresearching the book, I did not know
(29:14):
the vast majority of what's inthe book. And a lot of people who've
played fantasy sports foryears or even been in the industry
for years didn't know most ofwhat's in the book. One thing that
blew my mind, and most peoplehear this when I, when I, when I
started researching the book,I had seen the statistic that estimates
(29:38):
approximately 50 millionpeople in the US play fantasy sports.
And that's just adults age 18and over. It doesn't even include
under 18. And there are lotsof under 18 playing fancy sports.
So, okay, so we have 50million people in the US playing
fancy sports. I knew that.What I didn't know is in India, guess
(30:02):
how many people are playingfantasy cricket in India?
I would say because of thepopulation of India. It's got to
be amazing. Number millions.
Yeah. 200 million.
That's phenomenal.
Yeah. And the big, the bigcricket company out there in India
is worth $8 billion.
$8 billion?
(30:24):
Yeah.
That's phenomenal. That'scrazy, right? Yeah, you know, it
is. I think from a perspectiveof trying to understand the comparison
between the fantasy sports in,in a normal sports arena, they, the,
(30:47):
the amount of money that'sgoing through for both those industries
is just an immense amount ofmoney that we've invested as a society
and a culture in sports alone.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
That's pretty crazy. What kindof challenges do you think are controversies
have, has fantasy sports facedthroughout history? I mean, do you
(31:11):
cover that in your book?
Yeah, yeah. The book coversreally everything. It starts with
the precursors of fantasysports. The invention spread of fantasy
football, the invention spreadof fantasy baseball, the first commercial
games, the first magazines andbooks, news services, stat services,
(31:32):
just every, you know,everything. Right through more modern
times like daily fantasysports and worldwide expansion. And
there's been a whole lot oflegal issues kind of get to your
question. I mean, ever sincethe beginning there was a question
of is fantasy sports gambling?Because most, most leagues have some
(31:54):
money involved. You know, notnecessarily a lot of money, but something.
So ever since the beginningthere's been a question, is it legal
or is it gambling? Even goingback to Andy Musalimus in his bar,
they, their, their scoringsystem, they, you know, if you got
a touchdown or whatever theyhad, they, they had like, they, they
(32:17):
called them like 10 centleagues and 20 cent leagues where
like you got 10 people in theleague. So if I get a touchdown,
if my guy gets a touchdown, Iget, if I'm in a 10 cent league,
that means I get 10 cents fromthe other players. So they're the
nine other teams, I get 90cents. So that's kind of how they
worked it. So there was moneyinvolved. And what they did is instead
(32:40):
of calling it sense, theycalled it points because they didn't
know if one day the vice squadmight come into the place and arrest
everybody. So this, this is,this is a question for years, and
there were a couple ofincidents in the 80s where a fireman
got arrested in four FortLauderdale, Florida. They had a fancy
(33:01):
league. He was arrested forgambling. And then there was some
people playing a league in abar in Austin, Texas, got arrested
for gambling. And the questionkind of lasted for years as a gambling
or not finally got resolved bythe federal, the federal government
determined it's not gambling.And most states at this point have
(33:21):
determined it's not gambling.But there are a few states where
they say it is gambling andyou know, it's not legal to play
if money's involved.
It's kind of like. Back tothat, the thing I asked earlier about
Pete Rose being involved ingetting busted for, for what he was
doing. And, and so thatclarifies that. I appreciate that.
It gives me a betterunderstanding from, from that too.
How do you see.
(33:43):
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I justsay one of, you know, one of the
people I interviewed, ClayWafter, was the head of the NFL Players
association for many years.And when they were considering a
bill about, you know, fantasysports being legal or not, he testified
in Congress. And you know,the, you know, some of the congressmen
(34:04):
were concerned, well, fancy,fancy sports is legal or could, could
players be bribed? You know,like, like they could be bribed to
throw a game. Could they bebribed to throw a football game?
And you know, Clay Walkerexplained to them, you can't bribe
(34:24):
a player to do better. Yeah,like Emmett Smith, you know, he can't
bribe him to play better.
Yeah, that's a nice way to putthat. I think it's a nice analogy
to put that. How do you seethe future of fantasy sports evolving?
Do you see it evolving any.Any more than it already has?
(34:48):
I can't really envision how,but I would say, I mean, probably
just it's come so far, youknow, 10 years ago or whatever, I
don't think, you know, peoplewould have envisioned daily fantasy
sports. You know, 10, 10 yearsago or so, daily fantasy sports didn't
(35:09):
exist yet. And, you know,people wouldn't have envisioned that
something, you know, dailyfantasy sports would come along.
And now you got, you know,DraftKings and FanDuel and just.
You can't watch a sports eventwithout knowing about DraftKings
and FanDuel.
Isn't that kind of a deal?What about virtual reality or artificial
(35:31):
intelligence? I just had aconversation, I guess, about a week
ago whether we're talkingabout the evolvement of VR and AI
in so many, so many aspects ofour life and society. Do you think
just from your experience andwhat you've researched, do you think
that it might eventuallyevolve into like, the virtual reality,
the Oculus, the meta, whereyou. They people can participate
(35:54):
from that direction?
Well, I don't really knowhardly anything about this, but,
you know, fantasy sports isbased on, you know, the activities
of others. So I'm not surehow, you know, how that would work.
It may not fit. May not fitwithin arena. I mean, I just felt
(36:15):
it was, it was a question Ithought needed to be asked only because
again, you know, artificialintelligence has been, you know,
implementing itself in so manyways in daily life that, right, you
know, we've become the StarTrek generation now where.
I mean, I mean, I suppose, youknow, you might, you know, somebody
could probably programartificial intelligence to try to
(36:38):
help them pick like the idealfootball team or, you know, or the
ideal predictions of, youknow, what, you know, what do you
think Sh Otani is going to doin 2025? You know, I mean, like,
you can do that, you know, youknow, people do that themselves,
you know, try to analyzestatistics and, and things like this
(37:00):
and figure out, okay, so thisyear coming up, you know, you know,
Shohei O'Connor gonna hit 40home runs or 30 or 50 or whatever.
So, you know, I'm sure youcould program artificial intelligence
to do that.
That takes the fun out of it.I mean, really, if you. You're in
it. I'm an analytical personanyway, you know, as an investigator,
(37:20):
an individual that spent alifetime investigating Things and
piecing together crime scenesand, you know, tracking bad guys,
everything else. I love theaspect of that. Analyzing evidence
and looking things in adifferent way. To me, it would take
the. The excitement out of itand saying, hey, I was right, or
I was, you know, crap, I waswrong. Let's see what else I can
do to fix that. Yeah, almost.Yeah, kind of almost cheating. Just.
(37:45):
Just maybe on the ver.
Yeah. And. But, you know, Idon't know if. I don't. I mean, I
don't know if it would dobetter than, you know, a good. A
good analyst, you know, Idon't. But. But I agree with. I agree
with you, though. Kind of.
I.
If everybody. If there waslike artificial intelligence doing
this and it was better thanwhat people can do and it was available
(38:08):
to everybody, I think. I mean,that would kind of ruin the game.
Like, if you with 12 peopleand everybody's using the same artificial
intelligence, then you allhave the same exact ideas what players
to take. I think that wouldkind of. They kind of ruined the
game. That's like. It remindsme of playing the ever character
play the game Stratego.
I actually have it.
(38:29):
Okay. It's a. It's a board.It's a board game. And you kind of
like there are two peopleplaying, trying to like, attack each
other and. And defend againstattacks. And, you know, years ago,
like a long, long years andyears ago, I played this with my
(38:49):
brother. And, you know, weplayed a bunch of games and it was
fun, and I won some and he wonsome. But then my brother figured
out the way to win the game isdon't attack. Just hold back. Let
the other guy come after you.And he started doing this, and I
(39:10):
didn't understand what he wasdoing, but after he played a few
games and he beat me, thosegames, I realized what he was doing
and why he was doing it, andit made sense. So now I realize,
okay, the way to play thisgame is don't attack, hold back.
So now you've got two peoplewho are not attacking, they're holding
back, and there's no point inplaying the game anymore. I mean,
(39:31):
we just sit there. We just sitthere for hours and do anything.
So it's like, okay, we can'tplay this game anymore because it
just got ruined.
Yeah. So like. LikeBattleship, kind of like Battleship.
That old game was a battleshipwhere you had to guess how to sink
somebody's battleship andwhich ones they are. Yeah, right.
So, yeah, it's. It'sinteresting. What advice could you
(39:53):
give to Somebody looking toget started in a fantasy sports.
And I asked this for a littleselfish reason because I told you
I'm really haven't gotten intoit, but I know a lot of people that
are. But what advice could yougive to someone like me looking to
get started with it?
Well, first of all, you know,pick a sport that you like. You know,
(40:15):
I mean, you know, there's no,there's no reason to play a fantasy
sport if you don't alreadylike that sport. So start with that.
You know, as far as, if youjust Google, there's lots, there's
lots of opportunities,opportunities to play. Like if you
say I want to play fantasybasketball, you know, you could google,
(40:35):
you know, what's out there forfantasy basketball. You know, find
some kind of league that youthink is interesting or, or ask friends,
you know, another good way.Just, you know, ask friends. Hey,
do you know anybody in a fancybasketball league that I could join?
You know, most people knowpeople that are playing some kind
of fantasy, especially fantasyfootball. And fantasy football is
(40:57):
by far the most popular in theUnited States.
That would be good. I, I can,I have plenty of people that are
playing it, so I have plentyof resources in order to do that.
And obviously Google, I liveon the computer lately, so Google
seems to be a really simpleway of, of at least giving myself
(41:17):
another introduction into howto get in to it right off you jumping.
Jump. Just jump into it? I guess.
Yeah. I mean now, you know,now we're in January, you know, baseball's
the one that people could jumpinto. But one thing like daily, you
know, because foot, foot, Imean football just ended and basketball
knock, you're already inprogress. But daily fantasy sports
(41:43):
has made it possible forpeople, you know, start playing even
when the season's alreadystarted. Yep. It's quite a different
thing though than the seasonlong fantasy where you've got to
do a league and it lasts theentire season. That's quite a different
thing than the.
Daily games from thatperspective. I, I watch a lot of
(42:04):
soccer. I do watch a lot ofsoccer. I have my wife and I watch
a little bit of football.Mostly just the Broncos or the Cardinals,
you know, if they're playingor if they're in the playoffs, we'll
watch the playoffs and thingslike that. So. But yeah, I might
try that with soccer. When themajor seasons open up, I'll see if
I'll jump into it and play alittle bit. Well, let's talk about
(42:27):
how to get your book.
The book is available on mostbooksellers websites, Paperback and
ebook. Amazon is the one thathas lots and lots of reviews and
details about what's in the book.
And that's the history offantasy sports. Again, I'll make
(42:49):
sure that there's a link inthe show notes so that the people
have an easy way of going, atleast to Amazon. But you can find
it everywhere. And it. Does itcome in a Kindle version as well?
Just a paperback or a hardback?
No, it's paperback and Kindle.
Paperback and Kindle, yeah.
And then it's something. Andmost. Most booksellers have it in
ebooks. So if somebody doesn'tlike Kindle, they like another ebook
(43:11):
that's probably available fromthat perspective.
Well, I'll make sure thatthose are in the show notes and everybody
can come in there. An amazingopportunity for me to learn about
fantasy sports. I appreciateyou coming on the show, Larry.
All right, thanks for having me.
This is one more thing beforeyou go. So do you have any words
of wisdom for anybody that'swanting to jump into or is in fantasy
(43:35):
sports at the moment?
Well, I just. I think if youlike fantasy sports, you'll love
the book. It also makes agreat gift for anybody who plays
fantasy sports. You know, it'ssomething like when people play fantasy
sports, you know, a lot of us,we look for advice services that
we think are helpful. If wefind something we think is really
(43:56):
helpful, we do not want toshare it with our league mates. We
want to keep it for ourselves.Whereas this is a book. You can buy
this as a present for all yourleague mates. Because it's not anything
about strategy, how to win.It's just something that they will.
They will like.
That's really good advice.Good advice. Yeah. I had informants,
but I didn't share myinformants, so I understand that
(44:18):
statement.
Right. Wow, that's. Yeah, it'sa little heavier than fantasy sports.
Yeah. But it worked. Itworked. It worked.
Oh, sure, of course. I mean,you know, I mean, thanks for being
a police officer. You know,it's a. You're welcome, you know,
great thing, you know. Youknow, wildfires in California. I
(44:40):
mean, God bless thefirefighters. My God.
Yeah, our hearts go out. Wehave family and friends that are
affected out in Californiawith regard to that. It's a very
difficult situation foreveryone involved. And, yeah, hearts
and prayers go out to. Toeveryone that's affected by it and
to the first responders whoare out there working the fires like
(45:03):
that. They are the policeofficers, firefighters, police officers,
EMTs, volunteers. It'samazing. So hopefully they can get
that under control pretty wellpretty soon, at least. Anyway, Larry,
thank you very much. I'll makesure that the links are in the show
notes, and I appreciate youcoming on the show. Thank you for
sharing your wisdom with usand look forward to another conversation.
(45:23):
All right, Thanks a lot.
For everyone else out there,please like, follow, subscribe and
share. Thank you very much forbeing a part of One More Thing Before
We Go Community and One MoreThing before you all go. Have a great
day. Have a great week, andthanks for listening. Thanks for
listening to this episode of.
One More Thing before you Go.Check out our website@beforeyougopodcast.com
(45:45):
youm can find us as well assubscribe to the program and rate
us on your favorite podcastlistening platform.
Hey, one more thing before yougo. Today we're diving into the world
of fantasy sports. It's anincredible phenomenon that's an American
that's as American as baseballand apple pie and has captivated
millions of fans worldwide.Have you ever wondered how it all
began? What events andindividuals contributed to making
fantasy sports the multibillion dollar industry it is today?
(00:24):
Stay tuned. We're going toenter answer these questions and
so many more with a greatguest who can give us those origins.
I'm your host, Michael Hurst.Welcome to one more thing before
you go. Our guest today isLarry Schechner. He not only is a
(00:49):
fantasy sports enthusiast, buta legend in the field. Larry is the
author of the 2014Amazonbestseller Winning Fantasy baseball
and has been called one of thebest fantasy baseball players in
the world. He's a two timewinner of the CDM Sports national
salary cap contest and hastriumphed in the most prestigious
expert leagues including theUSA Today sponsors Labr league three
(01:12):
times and the Tout warsexperts league six times. Known for
his meticulous attention todetail, Larry's poured his expertise
into researching, conductinginterviews and writing the history
of fantasy sports as well asthe book we're going to talk about
today. Welcome to the show, Larry.
(01:34):
Hi, Michael. Glad to be here.
What an amazing opportunityfor us to be able to inspire, educate
and motivate some peopletoday. I think I had mentioned before
we started this is my firstintroduction to fantasy sports. So
I'm excited for you being here.
Great. I will educate you.
(01:55):
You know, I kind of like startat the beginning of my show. I like
to get a little background onmy guest, a little more in depth
than what we talked about.Where'd you grow up?
Schenectady, N.Y. learning toread and write was a little confusing
because my name is Schecterfrom Schenectady.
(02:15):
I would imagine kindergartenand kindergarten must have been interesting.
Yeah, yeah.
So would you want to be, whenyou grew up, did you always want
to be an author? Were youalways, were you involved in sports
from an early age?
There was a time I wanted tobe an author. Like, and I think like
(02:38):
the end of high school, firstcouple years of college, I had an
idea for a book I thought Iwas going to write like the great
American novel. And you know,I kind of wrote a draft and you know,
now I know it sucked. Youknow, it never, it never had a chance
in a million years of beingpublished. It wasn't any good. So
that was like that was the endof it. So I had no Idea that years
(03:01):
later I would be. I wouldactually publish a couple of books
that had to do with fantasysports. Fantasy sports didn't even
exist when I was writing, youknow, the Great American Novel my
first couple years of college.
Were you, were you involved insports as a kid or through college
or in that.
Yeah, I played little leaguebaseball. I was not good at it, but
(03:23):
I, I played golf. I'm prettygood at golf. So golf, golf has been
my main sport for four years.
And you got a right place downin Florida for golfing in beautiful
weather. Actually. Yeah,that's what I love about Phoenix.
Phoenix has got so many golfcourses here and the opportunity
to golf other than July andAugust, then it's just a wee bit
(03:45):
a little hot. Don't like togolf during those time periods. Help
us understand fantasy sports.How did you get involved in fantasy
sports?
I. Well, I went to college inBoston and lived in Boston for several
years after college. And oneday, approximately 1992, I was driving
(04:08):
around Boston and I heard anad on the radio for something that
was a fantasy baseball league.It was actually a company offering
fantasy baseball leagues. So Icalled, I called and I was immediately
interested in joining thatleague and played that for a couple
years. They went out ofbusiness and I looked in the, I guess
(04:31):
I looked in either the USAToday or the Sporting News or both
of them. And I found it, youknow, found some other companies
that offered fantasy sportsand I signed up with one of those.
And the story that I just toldyou is really, really unusual if
you ask a thousand people. Howdid you first start playing fantasy
sports? I quite possibly wouldbe the only one who said I heard
(04:52):
an ad on the radio. Mostpeople heard about it from friends
or they saw an ad in the USAToday or they saw an ad in the Sporting
News. But hearing it on aradio ad is completely unusual.
I. Yeah, my first introductioninto fantasy sports was actually
friends of mine and colleaguesthat were, that were involved in
(05:15):
it. So I, I didn't getinvolved in it in myself, but I,
you know, could hear thempicking their teams and picking their
players and you know, thatkind of a thing. So yeah, I think
it's pretty, it's prettyinteresting the way that it's evolved.
How, how, how like what werethe origins? How did it go from where
it is now and evolved intolike a global entertainment powerhouse?
(05:38):
Because it's like a multibillion dollar business now.
Exactly. That's why I wrotethe book the History of Fantasy Sports.
Because I've, you know, for,for several Years. I look around
at the industry and you've gotmillions and millions of people playing
everything from fantasyfootball and fantasy baseball to
(05:59):
fancy wakeboarding, cricketfantasy. I did a rod. I mean everything,
it's worldwide. You got newsServices, Stat Services, SiriusXM
Radio, 24. 7 channel forfantasy sports. When you watch an
NFL game or baseball game orwhatever, now they talk about fantasy
statistics. So I, I wonderedhow did we go from ideas people had
(06:20):
years ago for games to wherewe are now with this multibillion
dollar industry? And nobody'sever written a book like this. So
that's, that's why I decidedto write the book. And you know,
to answer your question, therewere precursors to fantasy sports
going back even to the 1800s.There were the first board games
(06:40):
where like you, you wouldslide a penny with your finger into
a spring activated bat thatwould hit the penny into various
holes. For baseball, let's sayout home run, single, double, whatever.
And then in the 1900s therewere board games like Cataco Ellis
All Star Baseball and FrankLayton's football. And then you got
(07:02):
into games like App andStratomatic which were based on the
performance of real majorleague baseball players or football
players, but it was theiractual performance from prior seasons
and what I refer to as modernfantasy sports. The difference is
it's based on actualperformance of athletes, but for
(07:22):
the upcoming season. So forexample, you would draft a fancy
football team in say, Augustbefore the season starts, and then
you don't know what, what'sgoing to happen. So as the season
unfolds, you get thestatistics of the, of your players.
I find that fascinatingactually, because it, in regard to
(07:44):
that, obviously it gives useach an opportunity to kind of feel
like we're involved in thesport. You know, we, we get to be
there, so to speak. Who weresome of the key figures that contributed
to the early development offantasy sports? I mean, you talked
a little bit about, about whatyou had just done, but who, if I
may, who, who come up andsaid, wow, we could do this on a
(08:05):
larger scale. We can createfootball teams, baseball teams, hockey.
Does it, does it work withhockey and everything else like soccer?
Oh yeah, yeah. You said, yeah,you got, I mean you've even got like
wakeboarding and cricket and,and I did a lot. So, yeah, hockey,
basketball, martial arts,curling, there's fantastic curling.
I mean, there's fantasy,everything. There's a list in my
(08:26):
book, there's a list in mybook where I wrote down like every,
every type of fantasy that Icame across. In my, in my research,
and there's more than 50 itemsthere, and I'm sure there were some
that I hadn't even heardabout. Yeah. So to answer your question,
fantasy. There's a guy namedBill Winkenbach who was a 10% owner
(08:51):
of the, of the OaklandRaiders. And in the late 50s, he
had like a primitive fantasybaseball game and a primitive fantasy
golf game. And in 62, I thinkit was 62, he was on a flight with
(09:14):
some other people associatedwith the Raiders, and they were going
to New York to play the jets.Actually, then they were called the
Titans, they became the Jets.And on this trip he mentioned his
fantasy golf and fantasybaseball games to a couple of people
and they're like, we should dothat for football. And they stayed
up all night talking about it,developing rules, and yeah, let's,
(09:37):
let's do this. But it was. Theseason had already started, so they
had to wait till next fall 63,to actually start their league. So
they started their fancyfootball league in 63, but they kept
it amongst themselves.Interesting though, one of the original
players was the. What's hisname? Jerry. Jerry Wolf. That. Who.
(10:00):
I gotta look this up whilewe're talking because the name is
a skeptic, but the guy whobecame the hall of Fame general manager
for the Green Bay packers andI can't think of his first name,
it's something Wolf. I'm sorry.
That's all right.
Anyway, so he, he was, he wasone of those. Just an aside. He was
(10:21):
one of the first members, butthey kept it amongst themselves.
But there's a guy who was inthe, in the league, the original
league, named Andy Musa Lemus,and he's the guy who's responsible
for really spreading the game.He owned a bar in Oakland and after
(10:41):
a year or two in the league,he decided it would be a good idea
for business to make the gameavailable to his patrons. And he
did. And people formed aleague and they loved it. The next
year they had a second leagueand then a third league and then
a women only league becausethere were women that wanted to play,
but the men didn't want womento play in their league with them.
(11:04):
And this is how fantasyfootball really spread is because
Mussolini started these gamesin his bar. People, you know, would
spread it word of mouth. Itwent from Oakland to, to San Francisco.
Then people would come intobar from all over the country and
they'd see what they'd belike, you know, what are these people
doing? They'd find out aboutit before too long. Mussolinius had
(11:25):
people from bars, you know,bar owners from bars all over the
country calling him, askinghey, what's this fantasy football
thing I'm hearing about? So hewas really responsible for this,
starting to spread it. And onething about my book, when I, when
I, you know, when I started toresearch the book, I mean first of
(11:45):
all I had no idea what I wasgetting into. I thought it was something
I could knock out in a fewmonths. It took 18 months of full
time work researching,interviewing dozens and dozens of
people and writing the thing.And when I started my idea was when
to write a book called theHistory of Fantasy Sports. Find out
who did what, when, how. Itall happened when I started all the
(12:08):
research and talking topeople, I started hearing fascinating
stories. And I realized earlyon that if I just write the History
of Fantasy sports, it'll getthe job done. It'll also come off
as a very boring researchpaper. But instead of that I got
all these fascinating storiesI'm hearing about people. So I'm
(12:31):
going to tell the who, what,when, but focus on the stories. So
instead of being a boringresearch paper, it'll be interesting.
And that's what happened. I'vegot all these stories are fascinating,
some are inspirational, somebring a tear to your eye. There's
a lot of humorous stuff. Andso the reviews have been fantastic.
People say it's easy to read,it's fascinating. There's a guy,
(12:53):
the Midwest Book Review saidfascinating from start to finish
and that's a guy who neverplayed fantasy sports because the
book isn't really so muchabout fantasy sports as the stories
of these people and what theydid, you know, the entrepreneurs
that created this industry. Soone thing about Musalimus, you know,
(13:15):
I, I couldn't interview Musbecause he's, he's no longer living.
But I tracked down one of hisgrandkids and got a little bit of
information from, from himthat hadn't been published anywhere.
Because I read, you know, likeI googled article after article after
article about Winkenbach andMUS and the whole thing. And I, you
know, after like 20 articlesabout MUS, I'm reading the same stuff
(13:38):
that I've read 20 times. Butyou know, once in a while there's
some little tidbit that wasn'tmentioned before. So I Get like the
20th article from Musa Lemusand there's this thing mentioned.
I'm like oh my God, I can'tbelieve this wasn't Metro work. The
guy was a war hero,Mussolinius when he was 17 years
old. Pearl harbor happened,and he enlisted in the army. And
(14:00):
his recruiter told him, 97% ofyou are not going to return, because
they were putting them on amission to go behind enemy lines.
And they said, 97% of you arenot going to return alive. But he
volunteered anyway, andobviously he survived. They. They
gave him a cyanide pill so ifhe got caught, he could kill himself.
(14:25):
So, you know, it's likespreading, you know, playing fancy
football. Spreading fancyfootball was, you know, the least,
you know, of the importantthings that he did in his life compared
to that. He later got it. Hismission was top secret for years.
And then after years andyears, they finally made it public
and he, he went to Washingtonand got an award.
(14:45):
That's amazing. Actually, Ithink that, you know, the mere fact
that, that that was a minoraspect of his life, at least the
way it was showcased, and itwas him that kind of helped it transform
into a. The niche hobby, intoa kind of a mainstream sensation,
which I think, you know,again, we hear about it everywhere.
It's all over. You heard onthe radio, as we watch watch it.
(15:08):
We hear about it on TV and inthe news. Which brings me to. We've
mentioned this as you weretalking, that it all started off
pretty much word of mouth. Itall started off in an arena that
our friends were talkingabout, our colleagues were talking
about it. How has technologyimpacted the growth of fantasy sports
(15:31):
over the years? How is that?I'm sure it had to have a major impact
in fantasy regard to not onlyspreading the word, but the actual
participation in. In it. Itmade it easier, I'm sure.
Yeah. Before I, Before I getto that, let me just tell you about
one other person. From yourfirst question, by the way, I got
(15:53):
to say something. Musa Lemus.One more thing about Musa Lemus that
I little tidbit that I readand finally read an article that
was very cool, says a lotabout the guy. You know, his bar,
this is back in the 60s inOakland, his bar, and it was mentioned
he was one of the very firstbartenders in the Oakland area that
welcomed black people. Youknow, that's very cool because, you
(16:18):
know, back then, even. Even inOakland, you had racism. So. Yeah.
Anyway, the other guy I got tomention because any. Anyone who's
listening to this is somewhatfamiliar with fantasy sports or fantasy
baseball has probably heard ofDan Okra. Dan Okran is the guy credited
with inventing fantasybaseball, which was originally called
(16:39):
rotisserie baseball. Now, hedid start a league in 1980 and he
is the person primarilyresponsible for inventing, creating
fantasy baseball. However,there's a lot of myths out there
that are not true. One one ofthem is that the idea magically came
(17:01):
to him on a plane ride fromConnecticut to Texas. In fact, that
was even part of a 30 for 30ESPN special. That's not true. It
goes back years before that.There's a whole long story of what
happened. There are also a lotof people who were playing kind of
like their own primitive gamesof fantasy baseball years before
(17:24):
that. But they were primitivegames and they didn't spread. It
was just friends playing withfriends. So what Oakrent came up
with is his version of fantasybaseball that he invented is kind
of like chess compared toeverybody else who might have been
playing checkers. And theother thing about Oakrent is he was
(17:45):
a writer and the people he gotin his first league were writers,
editors, magazine publishers,kind of like that. So they got publicity.
There were some articleswritten like in the New York Times
for example, they got on theToday show in 1984. They got a book
deal with Bantam Books towrite a book about it. So that's
how it all spread. It'sbecause he invented a very sophisticated
(18:08):
game and they were gettingpublicity. So it spread. In fact,
the 1984 book Bantam Books,they sold, I think it was about 50,000
copies. Lots and lots ofpeople read that book and started
their own leagues. And infact, some of the, like Matthew Barry
for example, who right now isprobably the most famous fantasy
(18:30):
sports, you know, analyst orwhatever you call him, he's, he's
read that book when he was 14years old and joined the league.
That's how he got startedfantasy sports.
That's really interestingactually. I think that allowing them,
I'm sure again technology hasgot to be. Play a part in it these
(18:50):
days where it allows us to beable to create a fantasy team so
much easier and be able toshare that and spread it and, and
kind of bounce.
Yeah. So now getting to that,your question on technology. Yeah.
So the first, you know, thefirst back before you're back before
technology and the Internetwhen people started playing, you
(19:11):
know, I started playing about1992. You know, lots of people were
playing in the 80s and backthen you didn't have information.
You could just go on theInternet. So people who, you know,
were really taking itseriously, they, they would, you
know, like, they'd go to thepeople, they would go to the newsstand
on Sunday and buy every out oftown newspaper they could find, take
(19:33):
the sports section, throw outthe rest. And they'd read the sports
sections, try and get littletidbits of information about that
papers, local football team orbaseball team. And if they did that,
they had a big advantage overtheir competitors. And they also.
People would call the PRoffices of teams. They'd call the
(19:57):
Phillies front office, andthey pretend they were a reporter
or something and say, hey, youknow, Mike Schmitz got a groin injury.
How long is he gonna be outfor? You know? And then at first,
the PR offices would thinkthese people were bookies. And then
later on, they realized mostof them weren't bookies. They were
fantasy baseball players. Andit was a real pain in the ass for
(20:18):
them. There's a guy named BobHarris, started a company because
of this. Bob Harris got anidea for an advice newsletter for
fantasy football. And hecalled the PR offices of the teams,
and he said, listen, I knowthese idiots are calling you, asking
these stupid questions. Here'swhat I have an offer for you. Give
(20:41):
me the information. And theneverybody else who calls, tell them
to call me. So they happilyagreed to that. And he started a
business where, you know, hehad all this information, and he
started charging people tocall, to call him. Yes. My book is
full of stories ofentrepreneurs who saw something that
(21:01):
was needed and didn't exist.And they started it, or maybe it
existed, but they thought theycould do better. Because, you know,
back at the beginning, like,you know, people said, well, boy,
this fancy football thing isgreat, but there's no information.
So let's start a magazine, youknow, or let's write a book or let's
start a news service orwhatever. The first kind of technological
(21:23):
breakthrough to get to yourquestion is, was computers. So when
computers came around, therewere, you know, some people realized,
like, wait a minute, we coulduse this for fantasy sports because
the. The commissioners ofleagues or somebody in the league
would have to do all the movesand statistics and standings by hand.
(21:44):
They'd have to get the boxscore from the paper and do everything
by hand. When computers cameout, people realized, like, whoa,
we can use computers for this.So instead of a commissioner taking
10 hours a week, do it all byhand. We can do it with computers.
So some people becameentrepreneurs and started statistics
services. One of them was acouple from Pennsylvania, Jim and
(22:07):
Gloria Berger. And what they.They started a service for baseball
and football. And what theyhad to do back then for baseball
is the Tuesday edition of theUSA Today would have the American
League statistics, andWednesday would have the National
League statistics. So Gloriawould read the statistics from the
USA Today. Jim would put themin the computer. The computer would
(22:30):
calculate all the results, andthey'd mail reports to their clients
on Wednesday night. So that'skind of like the, you know, I talked
about, like who, what, when ofthe history of fantasy sports. But
then the subtitle of the bookis and the stories of people who
made it happen. This is wherethe flavor comes in. So one, one
Wednesday, Gloria went intolabor with her first child, and they
(22:54):
did not let a little thinglike going into labor stop them from
doing their job. So in betweencontractions, Gloria would read Jim
the statistics, and then she'dbe like, oh, wait, hold on, hold
on, here comes another one.Okay, it passed. And the contraction
would pass and she'd continue.And they got their statistics done,
(23:16):
the reports out in the mailthat Wednesday night on time. And
the. The daughter that wasborn that day, now 37 years later,
plays in the fantasy footballleague with her dad.
That's dedication. Yeah, yeah,absolutely dedicated.
And then. And then the otherbig, you know, then the. The huge
(23:40):
technological breakthrough wasthe Internet. You know, with the
Internet, it made it reallyeasy for people to play, to find
leagues to join. They couldmake their own moves online instead
of having to go through thecommissioner or stat service. You
could get your reports onlineinstead of having to wait, you know,
you used to have to wait toget them in the mail. Like if you
were in a league, a footballor baseball league, the stat week
(24:04):
probably ended on Sunday andyou wouldn't get your report. You'd
have to wait to get it in themail. You know, Wednesday or Thursday
when fax machines came out,that made it easier. Some people
would fax the reports. Youknow, one of the. One of the people
I interviewed was the owner ofa comp of a company that offered
(24:24):
games. And he remembers thefirst time somebody called him and
said, hey, instead of themail, could you start sending my
report by fat? And his answerwas, what's the facts?
Oh, that's funny. It'sinteresting, the evolution where,
(24:44):
how somebody finds rightplace, right time, right technology,
and take advantage of that,like you said earlier, from an entrepreneurial
perspective, and then makelife so much easier for all of us,
especially within thisindustry. Do you think the role of
media or broadcasting help topopularize it?
(25:08):
Oh, yeah, definitely. So whathappened is when fantasy sports started,
the media was kind of split.Like, take. Basically, you know,
half the media thought, thisis terrible. This is going to ruin
the game, because people areonly rooting for their players. And
statistics are not rooting fortheir teams. And the other half of
(25:30):
the media thought this isgreat. So like, you know, Dan Oprint
started his league in 1980 andI mentioned got lots of publicity,
a lot of people startedplaying and he, he says he thinks
by like 81 or 82 there was afantasy baseball league in every
major league press box. Youknow, the, someone in the press would
(25:52):
start their own league,whether other people in the press.
So like you got half thepeople playing fancy baseball and,
and you got half the peoplethinking this is terrible, it's going
to ruin the game. And, and Ithink it was 80. Every, I mean every,
everything in the book isfactually correct. I don't remember
every little detail. So Imight say something that's not quite
correct, but in the book it'scorrect. I, I think it was 81 was
(26:16):
when there was a major leaguebaseball strike. And so during the
strike the baseball writersdidn't have anything to write about.
You know, usually they justwrite about the games. So some of
them started writing abouttheir own fantasy teams which again
helped publicize it.
(26:38):
That's interesting. And now isthere a, this can be a strange question,
but is there a conflict forthe actual players to be playing
in a fantasy team or having afantasy team? Sort of like Pete Rose.
Pete Rose got in trouble forbetting on baseball so much. Is there
an issue with that? With, withthe teams and the players?
(27:02):
No, no, there's no issue. Youknow, it's unusual for someone to
have themselves on a fantasyteam, but if they did, they would
be, they'd be trying hard.Yeah, I mean like thing, the thing
with Rose is, you know, Rose,you know, if you're a major league
baseball player betting on agame, you, you know, you could throw
(27:24):
a game and lose intentionallyor you could, you could bet on your
team, but you're using insideinformation that people don't know
about. But fantasy isdifferent. You know, like Maurice
Jones Drew, very good, wellknown football player. You know,
(27:44):
he got into fantasy prettyearly on and he would, he would always
draft himself. He'd alwayspick himself first on his team.
That way make sure he's alwayspicked first. I can respect that.
I can respect that. How's thebusiness of fantasy sports changed
the sporting industry as awhole? Do you think, you think it's
(28:06):
made an impact on it?
Well, there's a whole fantasy,there's a whole fantasy industry.
Obviously it's like a 25billion dollar a year industry that
sprung up and you know, allkinds of Related businesses. You
got statistics services, newsservices, advice services, companies
(28:28):
that offer games for people toplay. And now there's, you know,
there's analysts on, you know,when you watch, you know, when you
turn on an NFL game or majorleague baseball, they talk about
fantasy or they have their ownfantasy shows. So, you know, like
main mainstream, mainstreamsports coverage now kind of includes
(28:50):
a lot of references to fantasyor fantasy specific shows even.
So, you know, the foundersprobably never would have thought
in their lifetime that itwould turn into a multi billion dollar
industry.
Right. Of course, you know,the thing is they're. When, you know,
when I, when I startedresearching the book, I did not know
(29:14):
the vast majority of what's inthe book. And a lot of people who've
played fantasy sports foryears or even been in the industry
for years didn't know most ofwhat's in the book. One thing that
blew my mind, and most peoplehear this when I, when I, when I
started researching the book,I had seen the statistic that estimates
(29:38):
approximately 50 millionpeople in the US play fantasy sports.
And that's just adults age 18and over. It doesn't even include
under 18. And there are lotsof under 18 playing fancy sports.
So, okay, so we have 50million people in the US playing
fancy sports. I knew that.What I didn't know is in India, guess
(30:02):
how many people are playingfantasy cricket in India?
I would say because of thepopulation of India. It's got to
be amazing. Number millions.
Yeah. 200 million.
That's phenomenal.
Yeah. And the big, the bigcricket company out there in India
is worth $8 billion.
$8 billion?
(30:24):
Yeah.
That's phenomenal. That'scrazy, right? Yeah, you know, it
is. I think from a perspectiveof trying to understand the comparison
between the fantasy sports in,in a normal sports arena, they, the,
(30:47):
the amount of money that'sgoing through for both those industries
is just an immense amount ofmoney that we've invested as a society
and a culture in sports alone.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
That's pretty crazy. What kindof challenges do you think are controversies
have, has fantasy sports facedthroughout history? I mean, do you
(31:11):
cover that in your book?
Yeah, yeah. The book coversreally everything. It starts with
the precursors of fantasysports. The invention spread of fantasy
football, the invention spreadof fantasy baseball, the first commercial
games, the first magazines andbooks, news services, stat services,
(31:32):
just every, you know,everything. Right through more modern
times like daily fantasysports and worldwide expansion. And
there's been a whole lot oflegal issues kind of get to your
question. I mean, ever sincethe beginning there was a question
of is fantasy sports gambling?Because most, most leagues have some
(31:54):
money involved. You know, notnecessarily a lot of money, but something.
So ever since the beginningthere's been a question, is it legal
or is it gambling? Even goingback to Andy Musalimus in his bar,
they, their, their scoringsystem, they, you know, if you got
a touchdown or whatever theyhad, they, they had like, they, they
(32:17):
called them like 10 centleagues and 20 cent leagues where
like you got 10 people in theleague. So if I get a touchdown,
if my guy gets a touchdown, Iget, if I'm in a 10 cent league,
that means I get 10 cents fromthe other players. So they're the
nine other teams, I get 90cents. So that's kind of how they
worked it. So there was moneyinvolved. And what they did is instead
(32:40):
of calling it sense, theycalled it points because they didn't
know if one day the vice squadmight come into the place and arrest
everybody. So this, this is,this is a question for years, and
there were a couple ofincidents in the 80s where a fireman
got arrested in four FortLauderdale, Florida. They had a fancy
(33:01):
league. He was arrested forgambling. And then there was some
people playing a league in abar in Austin, Texas, got arrested
for gambling. And the questionkind of lasted for years as a gambling
or not finally got resolved bythe federal, the federal government
determined it's not gambling.And most states at this point have
(33:21):
determined it's not gambling.But there are a few states where
they say it is gambling andyou know, it's not legal to play
if money's involved.
It's kind of like. Back tothat, the thing I asked earlier about
Pete Rose being involved ingetting busted for, for what he was
doing. And, and so thatclarifies that. I appreciate that.
It gives me a betterunderstanding from, from that too.
How do you see.
(33:43):
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I justsay one of, you know, one of the
people I interviewed, ClayWafter, was the head of the NFL Players
association for many years.And when they were considering a
bill about, you know, fantasysports being legal or not, he testified
in Congress. And you know,the, you know, some of the congressmen
(34:04):
were concerned, well, fancy,fancy sports is legal or could, could
players be bribed? You know,like, like they could be bribed to
throw a game. Could they bebribed to throw a football game?
And you know, Clay Walkerexplained to them, you can't bribe
(34:24):
a player to do better. Yeah,like Emmett Smith, you know, he can't
bribe him to play better.
Yeah, that's a nice way to putthat. I think it's a nice analogy
to put that. How do you seethe future of fantasy sports evolving?
Do you see it evolving any.Any more than it already has?
(34:48):
I can't really envision how,but I would say, I mean, probably
just it's come so far, youknow, 10 years ago or whatever, I
don't think, you know, peoplewould have envisioned daily fantasy
sports. You know, 10, 10 yearsago or so, daily fantasy sports didn't
(35:09):
exist yet. And, you know,people wouldn't have envisioned that
something, you know, dailyfantasy sports would come along.
And now you got, you know,DraftKings and FanDuel and just.
You can't watch a sports eventwithout knowing about DraftKings
and FanDuel.
Isn't that kind of a deal?What about virtual reality or artificial
(35:31):
intelligence? I just had aconversation, I guess, about a week
ago whether we're talkingabout the evolvement of VR and AI
in so many, so many aspects ofour life and society. Do you think
just from your experience andwhat you've researched, do you think
that it might eventuallyevolve into like, the virtual reality,
the Oculus, the meta, whereyou. They people can participate
(35:54):
from that direction?
Well, I don't really knowhardly anything about this, but,
you know, fantasy sports isbased on, you know, the activities
of others. So I'm not surehow, you know, how that would work.
It may not fit. May not fitwithin arena. I mean, I just felt
(36:15):
it was, it was a question Ithought needed to be asked only because
again, you know, artificialintelligence has been, you know,
implementing itself in so manyways in daily life that, right, you
know, we've become the StarTrek generation now where.
I mean, I mean, I suppose, youknow, you might, you know, somebody
could probably programartificial intelligence to try to
(36:38):
help them pick like the idealfootball team or, you know, or the
ideal predictions of, youknow, what, you know, what do you
think Sh Otani is going to doin 2025? You know, I mean, like,
you can do that, you know, youknow, people do that themselves,
you know, try to analyzestatistics and, and things like this
(37:00):
and figure out, okay, so thisyear coming up, you know, you know,
Shohei O'Connor gonna hit 40home runs or 30 or 50 or whatever.
So, you know, I'm sure youcould program artificial intelligence
to do that.
That takes the fun out of it.I mean, really, if you. You're in
it. I'm an analytical personanyway, you know, as an investigator,
(37:20):
an individual that spent alifetime investigating Things and
piecing together crime scenesand, you know, tracking bad guys,
everything else. I love theaspect of that. Analyzing evidence
and looking things in adifferent way. To me, it would take
the. The excitement out of itand saying, hey, I was right, or
I was, you know, crap, I waswrong. Let's see what else I can
do to fix that. Yeah, almost.Yeah, kind of almost cheating. Just.
(37:45):
Just maybe on the ver.
Yeah. And. But, you know, Idon't know if. I don't. I mean, I
don't know if it would dobetter than, you know, a good. A
good analyst, you know, Idon't. But. But I agree with. I agree
with you, though. Kind of.
I.
If everybody. If there waslike artificial intelligence doing
this and it was better thanwhat people can do and it was available
(38:08):
to everybody, I think. I mean,that would kind of ruin the game.
Like, if you with 12 peopleand everybody's using the same artificial
intelligence, then you allhave the same exact ideas what players
to take. I think that wouldkind of. They kind of ruined the
game. That's like. It remindsme of playing the ever character
play the game Stratego.
I actually have it.
(38:29):
Okay. It's a. It's a board.It's a board game. And you kind of
like there are two peopleplaying, trying to like, attack each
other and. And defend againstattacks. And, you know, years ago,
like a long, long years andyears ago, I played this with my
(38:49):
brother. And, you know, weplayed a bunch of games and it was
fun, and I won some and he wonsome. But then my brother figured
out the way to win the game isdon't attack. Just hold back. Let
the other guy come after you.And he started doing this, and I
(39:10):
didn't understand what he wasdoing, but after he played a few
games and he beat me, thosegames, I realized what he was doing
and why he was doing it, andit made sense. So now I realize,
okay, the way to play thisgame is don't attack, hold back.
So now you've got two peoplewho are not attacking, they're holding
back, and there's no point inplaying the game anymore. I mean,
(39:31):
we just sit there. We just sitthere for hours and do anything.
So it's like, okay, we can'tplay this game anymore because it
just got ruined.
Yeah. So like. LikeBattleship, kind of like Battleship.
That old game was a battleshipwhere you had to guess how to sink
somebody's battleship andwhich ones they are. Yeah, right.
So, yeah, it's. It'sinteresting. What advice could you
(39:53):
give to Somebody looking toget started in a fantasy sports.
And I asked this for a littleselfish reason because I told you
I'm really haven't gotten intoit, but I know a lot of people that
are. But what advice could yougive to someone like me looking to
get started with it?
Well, first of all, you know,pick a sport that you like. You know,
(40:15):
I mean, you know, there's no,there's no reason to play a fantasy
sport if you don't alreadylike that sport. So start with that.
You know, as far as, if youjust Google, there's lots, there's
lots of opportunities,opportunities to play. Like if you
say I want to play fantasybasketball, you know, you could google,
(40:35):
you know, what's out there forfantasy basketball. You know, find
some kind of league that youthink is interesting or, or ask friends,
you know, another good way.Just, you know, ask friends. Hey,
do you know anybody in a fancybasketball league that I could join?
You know, most people knowpeople that are playing some kind
of fantasy, especially fantasyfootball. And fantasy football is
(40:57):
by far the most popular in theUnited States.
That would be good. I, I can,I have plenty of people that are
playing it, so I have plentyof resources in order to do that.
And obviously Google, I liveon the computer lately, so Google
seems to be a really simpleway of, of at least giving myself
(41:17):
another introduction into howto get in to it right off you jumping.
Jump. Just jump into it? I guess.
Yeah. I mean now, you know,now we're in January, you know, baseball's
the one that people could jumpinto. But one thing like daily, you
know, because foot, foot, Imean football just ended and basketball
knock, you're already inprogress. But daily fantasy sports
(41:43):
has made it possible forpeople, you know, start playing even
when the season's alreadystarted. Yep. It's quite a different
thing though than the seasonlong fantasy where you've got to
do a league and it lasts theentire season. That's quite a different
thing than the.
Daily games from thatperspective. I, I watch a lot of
(42:04):
soccer. I do watch a lot ofsoccer. I have my wife and I watch
a little bit of football.Mostly just the Broncos or the Cardinals,
you know, if they're playingor if they're in the playoffs, we'll
watch the playoffs and thingslike that. So. But yeah, I might
try that with soccer. When themajor seasons open up, I'll see if
I'll jump into it and play alittle bit. Well, let's talk about
(42:27):
how to get your book.
The book is available on mostbooksellers websites, Paperback and
ebook. Amazon is the one thathas lots and lots of reviews and
details about what's in the book.
And that's the history offantasy sports. Again, I'll make
(42:49):
sure that there's a link inthe show notes so that the people
have an easy way of going, atleast to Amazon. But you can find
it everywhere. And it. Does itcome in a Kindle version as well?
Just a paperback or a hardback?
No, it's paperback and Kindle.
Paperback and Kindle, yeah.
And then it's something. Andmost. Most booksellers have it in
ebooks. So if somebody doesn'tlike Kindle, they like another ebook
(43:11):
that's probably available fromthat perspective.
Well, I'll make sure thatthose are in the show notes and everybody
can come in there. An amazingopportunity for me to learn about
fantasy sports. I appreciateyou coming on the show, Larry.
All right, thanks for having me.
This is one more thing beforeyou go. So do you have any words
of wisdom for anybody that'swanting to jump into or is in fantasy
(43:35):
sports at the moment?
Well, I just. I think if youlike fantasy sports, you'll love
the book. It also makes agreat gift for anybody who plays
fantasy sports. You know, it'ssomething like when people play fantasy
sports, you know, a lot of us,we look for advice services that
we think are helpful. If wefind something we think is really
(43:56):
helpful, we do not want toshare it with our league mates. We
want to keep it for ourselves.Whereas this is a book. You can buy
this as a present for all yourleague mates. Because it's not anything
about strategy, how to win.It's just something that they will.
They will like.
That's really good advice.Good advice. Yeah. I had informants,
but I didn't share myinformants, so I understand that
(44:18):
statement.
Right. Wow, that's. Yeah, it'sa little heavier than fantasy sports.
Yeah. But it worked. Itworked. It worked.
Oh, sure, of course. I mean,you know, I mean, thanks for being
a police officer. You know,it's a. You're welcome, you know,
great thing, you know. Youknow, wildfires in California. I
(44:40):
mean, God bless thefirefighters. My God.
Yeah, our hearts go out. Wehave family and friends that are
affected out in Californiawith regard to that. It's a very
difficult situation foreveryone involved. And, yeah, hearts
and prayers go out to. Toeveryone that's affected by it and
to the first responders whoare out there working the fires like
(45:03):
that. They are the policeofficers, firefighters, police officers,
EMTs, volunteers. It'samazing. So hopefully they can get
that under control pretty wellpretty soon, at least. Anyway, Larry,
thank you very much. I'll makesure that the links are in the show
notes, and I appreciate youcoming on the show. Thank you for
sharing your wisdom with usand look forward to another conversation.
(45:23):
All right, Thanks a lot.
For everyone else out there,please like, follow, subscribe and
share. Thank you very much forbeing a part of One More Thing Before
We Go Community and One MoreThing before you all go. Have a great
day. Have a great week, andthanks for listening. Thanks for
listening to this episode of.
One More Thing before you Go.Check out our website@beforeyougopodcast.com
(45:45):
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com