December 19, 2025 • 36 mins
In this episode of the Tudor Dixon Podcast, Tudor sits down with OutKick founder Clay Travis for a wide-ranging conversation at the intersection of sports, politics, and culture. The discussion breaks down the latest Michigan football saga, the long-term consequences of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals in college athletics, and how shifting incentives are reshaping fan loyalty and competitive balance.
Clay and Tudor also explore the growing demand for authenticity in media and politics, the role social media plays in amplifying controversy, and why financial literacy remains a major challenge for young athletes suddenly managing large sums of money. The episode further examines sports gambling regulations, cultural trust in institutions, and what current economic trends may signal for the upcoming midterm elections.
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right, you're listening to the Tutor Dixon podcast, and
today I have Clay Travis with me, and I wanted
to dig into all this sports stuff because if you
listen to my podcast, you know that I'm not a
sports person, but obviously Clay is, and I'm in Michigan
and you of m just had this like bizarre thing.
So everybody, Clay is saying to me, this has to
be because we lost to Ohio, but I don't think
(00:22):
it is.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Look, it is interesting if Michigan beating Ohio State, then
maybe things would be different, because I think the number
one unforgivable sin of major college athletics is not cheating.
It's not you know, recruiting kids who have no business
on campus. It's losing to your most hated rival. And
(00:45):
so Sharon Moore last year beat Ohio State as a
first year head coach. I know he also won as
an interim for people out there that are big fans,
but then got whipped pretty solidly in the big Auson
and Arbor. And then a couple weeks later, Low and Behold,
right after signing day when the recruits commit, it comes
out that he was allegedly having an affair with a subordinate,
(01:08):
and boom he is fired. And then you know, look,
the affair with the subordinate would be bad enough, but
his career wouldn't be over. He'd just have to say
that he screwed up. He's thirty nine years old, relatively
young for a coach, would have to go be an
assistant for a few years until he got another opportunity.
Except that, according to the felony charges brought against him,
(01:29):
when he got fired, he went to the subordinate's house
and said he was going to kill himself in front
of her, according to the allegations, and that her blood
would be on his hand.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
She blamed him.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
He blamed her for sharing the fact that they have
been engaged in this relationship. So that's the story in
a nutshell, and there are lots of different angles that
spin off from it, but that's the most basic aspect
of it.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
I mean, it is bizarre here because obviously U of
M football is very important to people.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
But you listen to this and there's all these rooms.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Like, oh he went there and he was like holding
himself at butter knife point.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
You know, it's like just very threatening.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yes, yeah, no, Look, the whole thing is a cluster,
and it kind of ties in with the University of
Michigan has been a bit of a mess off the
field for a few years now, and I look, I
think part of this is in order to sometimes compete
at a very, very high level in college football. One
(02:30):
of the coaches used to say, you recruit your problems.
It was such a great line because I think it's
applicable to all of life. He said, you know, we're
in a unique spot because we recruit our problems. And
what he meant by that is you're begging coaches, you're
begging players, You're begging people to come to your program,
and then when they get there, if they don't perform
(02:50):
at a level that you would hope that they would,
or certainly if they engage in behavior that's criminal in nature,
then you have brought the problem in to your own house.
And you know, when I heard that phrase the first time,
I thought it made a lot of sense. The older
I get, the more I think it makes sense for
everyone because lots of people will focus on external threats
(03:13):
and most of the time we are individually our own
worst enemies. We recruit our own problems while we tend
to focus on the external nature and worry about things
that often don't emerge. And I think that, you know,
put simply, Michigan has recruited a series of problems that
have not been particularly beneficial to the university as a whole.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
I can see that in politics too, what you're saying,
I mean, it's really hitting me hard right now because
of what I see on social media and because behind
the scenes when you're in the political world, so many
people come to me and they're like, we want to
have a whole influencer network. We either want to have
an influencer network for a state or we want to
just start influencing across the country.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
And have our own.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
But it's like, that's it exactly what I say to them.
I mean, not those words exactly, but I'm like, you
recruit it, you own it. Who whatever that person. Once
that person hits a certain level, they feel like they
can do whatever they want. They are untouchable, and you
recruited that person, so you own whatever they become.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
And it's hard.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, there's a lot of truth to that too, And
I think we live in a profoundly and authentic era
and so what I would say is the antidote to
cancel culture is authenticity, because if you are what people
think you are, then it becomes really hard for you
to get in trouble for being what.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
The expectation is that you are.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
And I'll give you a kind of a ridiculous but
fun example of this. Charles Barkley's probably the best former
player who has done media, maybe ever former NBA superstar,
and he was arrested in Scottsdale, Arizona. I don't know
if I've told you the story or you've heard it tootor,
but he was arrested in Scottsdale, Arizona for driving drunk. Scottsdale, Arizona,
(05:02):
by the way, a place where lots of people go
out and get drinks. You know, it's it's kind of
a lively spot. When he was arrested. When they pulled
him over, they said, you know, hey, you're driving drunk.
He acknowledged he was, and they said why are you
doing this and if you got kids in the car,
turn it down. He said, because I'm driving to the
house of the woman who gives the best blowjobs in Arizona.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
In the police report, he.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Missed one day of work one day of work tutor
because everybody was like, yeah, I kind of expect Charles
Barkley to get drunk, get in his car and go
do that. And so I would argue that that probably
Charles Barkley is one of the most authentic voices in media.
And look, you can also apply that same logic, I think,
on some level to Donald Trump. Right, people kept saying, oh,
(05:48):
my goodness, he just did this, he just did that.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
There's no way his political career is going to survive.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And actually, as long as Trump behaved as people anticipated
Trump to hay, Once he set that expectation, it became very,
very difficult to alter it. And now I'll give you
another example from the world of politics. Hillary Clinton completely
lied about being under fire in Iraq. I mean, you
go back and look at all the evidence. She was
never in danger, She was never under fire. Brian Williams,
(06:17):
who was at the time NBC's top political anchor, basically
top anchor in general, I think Gate, told the same lie.
His career collapsed. But why because people expected that he
would tell the truth and they expected that Hillary Clinton
would lie.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
And one more, and this is I think even.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
More illustrative of this, when the Access Hollywood tape came
out tutor with Donald Trump and Billy Bush.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Do you remember the outcome Donald Trump, Billy Bush was toast.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, and Donald Trump got elected President of the United States.
It wasn't just that Billy Bush lost his job, his
wife left him. His entire world collapsed because he kind
of laughed at a Trump joke.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
He didn't tell the joke. It wasn't a full on interview.
He was off.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
You know, they were miked up, but they weren't on
camera yet. And yet the standard in media was his
career is over for Trump. He got elected President of
the United States. So it is amazing, and I think
to a large extent, it's illustrative of people in the
general public have a higher tolerance for behavior right for humanity,
(07:28):
good and bad than sort of the artificial safeguards that
are put in place in the media ecosystem, which I
think all those stories to me kind of are illustrative
of the era in which we're in.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
So I will tell you my Charles Barkley story. When
I was fifty or I was sixteen, I'd just gotten
my driver's license and Michael Jordan did this like golf
tournament every year right down the street from my house,
but that year he had had surgery or something, so
Charles Barkley was taking charge of this. I went out
to dinner and he was sitting at the table next
(08:02):
to me and my girlfriend and we were so excited.
So we like and he was with Danny Ainge and yeah,
someone else. I can't remember who the third person was.
So we like totally geeked out right, So, and the
Bulls were winning.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
It was like you know that.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Time era in the NBA when everybody cared about the NBA.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Yeah, right, exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
So we walked up to him and I was so
excited and nervous and I introduced myself and he looked
at us and he goes, oh, are your parents sitting
at a different table And I was like, no, it's
just us.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
He goes, did they drop you off? And I said no,
I drove here, and he was like, man, who are
they giving driver's licenses to you?
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Now?
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Are you like ten years old?
Speaker 1 (08:42):
And that was it was like that moment where he
it wasn't playing with me, he really was just like,
oh my gosh, you look way too young.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
But he was. He was genuinely nice, but it was
just really who he was.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, Look, I've gotten to know Charles quite a bit,
and I think one of the best pieces of advice
that I've heard from him, he said it was given
to him early in his media career, was if you
worry about the opinions of people who don't like you,
then eventually the people who do like you won't like
you anymore either. And this was kind of in a
pre social media era that he told me that quote,
(09:16):
but I think it's so particularly perceptive for the world
in which we live in, where it's just there's I mean,
if I go on my phone right now, there's no
telling the toxicity that is in my mentions over whatever
I said today on the show or whatever I've tweeted.
It could be sports, politics, pop culture, whatever it is.
And there's a lot of noise. And if you allow
(09:36):
your head to get involved in that noise too much,
then then it can start to impinge on your unique nature.
And I don't think it's coincidental. I mean, Barkley basically
isn't on social media at all, and you know, Peyton
Manning to a large extent, isn't on social media at all.
Certainly Michael Jordan isn't and I think there's probably a
(09:59):
great deal of health for people who chose not to
get on social media. I'm on social media for my career,
but I don't have like private social media accounts or
anything like that.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
So I see that people will like send you a
nasty message, and it hurts my heart. It's like this,
I've always listened to you, I'm a huge fan. You
turn me off today and I'm done, and then you
post it. I'm like, that is so bold, and I
love that you do that because it is that first.
My first feeling when I see that as like I
(10:29):
don't want to lose you, but I don't.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Even know this person. I've been hearing that my entire career. Yeah,
I mean seriously. You know when I first started doing
local sports talk radio, and the first couple of times,
I thought it was strange because somebody sends an email
and they're like, I will never listen to you again
because you said whatever opinion it was. And then what
(10:51):
I noticed is that person always wrote back they were
like and then you said, sometimes there is two I
really think this. There is a hater gene and there's
a certain person out there type of personality that is
in some way. They're attracted to their own distaste for things.
(11:12):
And I don't really understand it because I don't have
time to watch all the TV shows or go to
all the concerts that I would like to or whatever else,
so I only go to things that I like. But
I think there's about twenty percent of the population that
somehow gets gratification out of being a hater, and so
they can't turn away, and they listen to people that
(11:34):
they claim not to like, but they actually listen more
than the people who claim to like you. It's one
of the craziest things I've ever seen.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
It's like the freaky joy and misery people.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
There are truly people that love to be miserable, and
they seem like they're happy in their misery, but everyone
around them is also miserable because miserable people are just miserable.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah, and they also I mean, this is like holiday
advice for everybody, but they also suck a lot of
joy out of the air, right. Not just that they
are miserable internally, it's that they become energy vampires and
everybody knows what I'm talking about. There are people that
you're around that have effervescent personalities and they give you
energy and help everybody to be to be better off.
(12:15):
The phrase I've heard and I think it's so true.
There are a lot of energy vampires and basically they
exist to suck away your energy and just.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Leave you like, oh, what in the world are we doing?
Speaker 2 (12:26):
And I think around the holiday season, you know they're Unfortunately,
everybody's family has got people like that that you're placating
and trying to make sure that they don't end up angry.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
And you know, Happy Holidays America.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Even Winnie the Pooh has e or we learned about
it when we were young.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
That's right, the.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Ears of our life.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Let's take a quick commercial break will continue next on
the Tutor Dixon podcast. I want to talk about name,
image and likeness because I was watching so I went
to UK and I was watching a basketball game with
my brother law a few weeks ago, and he was like, oh, yeah,
one of these guys never plays. He gets all this money,
(13:06):
but he never plays, and he people apparently were making
fun of him. So he went out and took thirty
thousand dollars out of the bank and made it rain
money on Instagram. And I was like, I may never play,
but I get all this money, and I think this
is gross, but I don't know how you feel about it,
because you're a sportsperson.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Well, so I'm a capitalist, but I think that it's
always important to remember that in most of the world
we don't have true capitalism, by which I mean unregulated,
completely capitalism. Like we can't sell our kidneys in the
United States, right Like you know, you can't go buy
a nuclear weapon and decide that you're going to put
(13:43):
it on eBay, right like. There there are certain things
that as a society we look at. I mean, you know,
I'll give you a good example. I've got a fifteen
year old tutor. You know, my wife, she would murder
me with her bare hands if I took him out
to go get a tattoo, even if he wanted a tattoo,
because he's fifteen year old. Right. So, we regulate a
lot of commerce, what is allowed to be sold, what's
(14:05):
not allowed to be sold. And in college athletics, we
went from the Berlin Wall being up, where we tried
to enforce a standard where nobody basically could be paid
at all, to the Berlin Wall came down and suddenly
everybody could get paid everything, and it actually reminds me
of what happened in Eastern Europe, which is that pure
unregulated capitalism for a little while led to hey, I
(14:28):
want to buy a tank.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Hey, you know, I'm going.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
To go buy like a government munitions plan. Right, they
started selling off everything, And so I think that's where
we are in college athletics. And what's unique about college
athletics is actually not unique to sports in general. But
sports is one of the only places where the goal
of the business is to compete and you don't want
(14:55):
to put your opponent out of business. Right, So you
were talking about the NBA back in the day. One
of the reasons we all loved the NBA back in
the nineties was Michael Jordan had elite competition that he
had to go up against, and everybody got to sit
around and watch that competition. But if you had a
situation where the Bulls got to spend a billion dollars
(15:17):
and everybody they played against got to spend a million, well,
it wouldn't be a very fair competition, right, And so
we're going to have to end up with some form
of regulation in the NIL space to preserve competitive balance
in college athletics.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
How is it working because it's not the schools that
are paying right.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah, well the schools are now paying some And look,
the downside is what you just pointed to. Kentucky lost
your alma mater lost to Gonzaga in my hometown of
Nashville a couple of weeks ago, and they played awful.
And when I was a kid, my dad always said,
you never boo college kids because they're out there trying
their best. They're eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old. The boos
(15:57):
rained down like crazy because they're not college kids anymore. Tutor,
they're professionals. And so if somebody is being paid millions
of dollars and they perform poorly, the sports fans let
them have it, even in the home arena or the
home stadium. So I think where we have to go.
This is eventually where it's going to end up. Is
use the NBA or the NFL as an example. They
(16:19):
have salary. Caps players signed contracts. They're committed to teams
for multiple years. You can be a free agent, but
you have to serve out your contract four or five years,
and everybody has to pay similar amounts of salary to
individual teams. The salary cap exists for that reason. So
(16:41):
I think we are headed towards there. It may take
a decade to get there, it may take twenty years
to get there, but to me, it's the inevitable final destination.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Well you just said, okay, So when I was at UK,
it was like they were us. It wasn't like joy
represented us. It wasn't like we owned them or yeah.
You know. It's different like when you own a car
and you race it. But that's the way you just described.
It was like they're not a part of the university
(17:11):
there that I don't like.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
No, I think it's look the one group that is
getting screwed here. I think players are making more money
than they've ever made before, Coaches are making more money
than they've ever made before, Television networks are making more
money than they've ever made before. But fan loyalty is
being taken advantage of. We just had Lane Kiffen leave
(17:35):
ole Miss in the middle of the playoffs. It's the
greatest season in ole Miss football history, probably certainly in
like the modern era, last fifty years, and yet their
head coach just walked away to go take a job
against of Arrival against LSU. What's going on is everybody
is acting in their naked self interests and there's no
one who's looking out for the best interest of the sport.
(17:57):
And that is why I think we're in it challenging
spot because what makes people like you love UK is
the experience that you had at the University of Kentucky.
What makes people fans in college athletics is typically a
connection that feels personal. It can be that they went
to the school. It can mean that they went to
watch games when they were kids. It can mean that
they feel an associational value as a member of a
(18:20):
fan base, a tribe that all kind of pulls in
the same direction. And when you have people who are
playing for Kentucky one year in Louisville the next, or
coaching for Kentucky one year Louisville the next, Hated Rivals
Mercenary players, at some point it starts to strip away
what made college athletics great. And it may always be
(18:42):
a bit of a fiction, but everybody out there that's
a fan of a school, that loves a school, you
like to think, Hey, that's seventeen year old. He came
to my school because he saw something unique in our
tribe in the experience, the culture of the university. And
when it's like, oh, no, he came because he got
fifty k more than somebody offered him at Tennessee or
(19:03):
Alabama or wherever it is, you're not really selling that
blood connection that you feel, that tribal connection. You're just
hiring a mercenary. And I think it starts to detract
at some point for the overall brand of college athletics.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
And you kind of felt like it was nice to
think that they went through that same process that they
sent in their SAT scores and that guy you see
at the cafeteria is also one of the people you're
cheering on at the game.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
I mean, it just is a very weird.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Concept to me that you could technically then have a
player your freshman and sophomore year who then when he turns,
when he becomes a junior, he gets a better deal
and he leaves.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
That feels so weird.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, And by the way, you could have a kid
who goes to four different schools in four years tutor,
So I mean, think about how hard that is. And remember,
ostensibly the reason these guys are there is to get
a college degree, because most people, well that's what we thought, yeah,
well most and look, most college athletes. Let's say you
(20:12):
go to the NFL. Yeah, let's say you are supremely talented.
This is why I talk to kids all the time
about this, and my way I talk about it is
use the ball, don't let the ball use you. And
there are so many kids out there that get used
by the sport. Because let's say you're wildly successful at football,
You're an incredible athlete. You know, the average length of
an NFL career three point five years, three point five years,
(20:36):
so that means you come out at twenty one or
twenty two, and by twenty five or twenty six, your
football career is completely over. You're still, in many ways
a baby, right in terms of your professional career and
everything that you have worked so hard for to aspire
to reach the apex of your profession. You're done with
it at twenty five, You're done with it at twenty six,
(20:59):
and then you have to go back because a lot
of these guys, let's say you made three million dollars
on that contract, three million dollars. You know this, but
a lot of the kids don't. Let's say you're paying
forty percent tax on that you're down to one six
Let's say that you're paying agent fees that you know
that money is gone, right like you, it is gone.
(21:20):
You're not living on that for the rest of your life.
So you have to have an ability to build a
career doing something else. And that's what you go to
college theoretically for. And I feel like, unfortunately, a lot
of these kids are going to make a few hundred
thousand dollars in college. They're going to have no marketable skills,
they're not going to be able to go pro at all,
and they're going to be sitting around, you know, back
(21:41):
at home at twenty three years old, thinking to themselves, Okay,
what do I do for the rest of my life?
When they're such young guys and and you know again
you know this, Uh, they spend money because young men
are oftentimes not very smart. You don't have great financial
advisors around you. Most people aren't used to even having
(22:03):
hundreds of thousands of dollars in their twenties, much less
access to it.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
And you're not at the age where you're thinking this
is ending, correct, So you can't even comprehend that that
money is temporary and that salary is temper.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
And by the way, you're also then maybe you're trying
to do something nice for mom or dad, or you're
trying to do something nice for your brothers, sisters. And
he says, nephews, whatever it may be, and that money
can vanish in a hurry. And so my concern is, look,
I mean, people make awful choices all the time with
the way that they choose to live.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
I've got a buddy from law school.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
I was out to dinner with him recently, tutor, and
he's going through divorce and I was talking with him
and I said, well, how are you doing. He said,
for twenty straight years, I had two paths. Smart financial decision,
bad financial decision. He's like, in every time I took
bad financial decision. And you know, like he's a forty
five year old guy now and he's sitting around and
(23:00):
he's like, you know, I don't have a nest egg,
I don't have anything to take care of. And so
my point on that is, we tend to focus on athletics,
but a lot of people don't necessarily make the best
decisions for themselves. And it gets accelerated even more when
you're talking about guys. Eighteen nineteen twenty years old who
are trying and drive nice cars and impress, you know,
girls on campus, and they think that money's going to
(23:22):
be there forever. And suddenly you hit a wall at
twenty five years old and you realize, I'm going to
have to have a real job and you don't have
the skills.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
To do it.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Okay, but gambling is also getting a little bit risky,
and now we have senators that are trying to get
involved in gambling.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
You're obviously very familiar with gambling.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
So what is your feeling on the government starting to
raise regulation on that.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Well, so right now it's individual.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
States have the right to decide whether or not they
want to have sports gambling, and obviously sports gambling is
a subset of larger gambling. And this really, I would say,
the gambling world exploded. The first that I remember doing
this tutor was Georgia started the Hope Scholarships, basically where
the lottery money went to pay for kids to go
(24:10):
to the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech state universities in
Georgia if you kept a be average and so the
idea was we're going to have a lottery and then
as these things often do they have grown. Now there's casinos,
Now there's sports, gambling, everything else. I like to gamble
on sports. I also like to drink. I have an
(24:32):
affinity for things that are not healthy for me. So
I think the key to life is moderation. Right, are
you able to balance You know, you can't eat birthday
cake for every meal, like every six year old in
America would like.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
You have to balance out everything.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
One of the challenges is there are a lot of
people have addictive personalities and tutor out. I don't know
how you regulate things on behalf of you know, most
people can have a couple of drinks and not have
to worry about becoming an alcoholic. But a certain subset
of people they are very susceptible to alcohol or drugs
or gambling and it becomes super addictive to them. So
(25:13):
my general proposition is, I think the state should be
able to make a decision and then they should tax
and regulate it and hopefully restrict it for people that
have problematic issues there. And I think we're so young
in the infasy of this era that we're just starting there.
And then the other part of this is, you know,
some athletes are making awful decisions and being involved in
(25:35):
gambling related scandals all the way up to professional athletics
and all the way down to certainly college athletics.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
And so what should happen if you're an athlete? What
should happen if you're involved.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
In that, Well, if it's a crime, I think you
should be prosecuted, like we're seeing happen with Chauncey Billips,
for instance, who was a great member of the Detroit
Pistons back in the day I was coaching at the
Portland Trailblazer. If you and athletic event in some way,
then you should be prosecuted. And if I were giving
advice to athletes, I would say, hey, focus one hundred
(26:09):
percent on playing and avoid getting involved in talking about
anything having to do with the lines or anything else.
My general thought is, tutor, we're catching people more because
legalization means that the sports books recognize a barent betting behavior.
In other words, like they caught a University of Alabama
(26:30):
baseball coach recently. He was trying to go into Cincinnati,
or his friend was. He was on the phone with
the coach trying to place a big dollar wager on
a college baseball game that nobody ever bet on in Cincinnati,
so they caught him. I think the fact that we
are now regulating and bringing sunshine onto this issue is
actually creating more recognition of it and making it look
(26:54):
like a bigger issue than it was in the past.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
My hope is.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
That these athletes and coaches are learning away, Hey, there's
a big risk here. I've got to be able to
protect myself from this. But look, the leagues are making
money handover fist. The players share revenue with the league,
so the players are actually getting paid based on legalization,
the advertisements that you see everywhere. And I'm gonna be
honest with you tonight, I'm gonna kick back and watch
(27:17):
Thursday night football and I'm gonna have money on the game.
Not a lot of money, but you know, I always say, like,
if I go out to a movie, it's gonna cost
me fifty sixty bucks minimum, and that money's gone forever.
If I go play golf, it's going to cost me
one hundred and fifty bucks whatever it is to play
with a buddy, and that money's gone forever. If I
put one hundred bucks on a football game, I can
(27:40):
watch the game, have a little bit more enjoyment from it,
and I might actually make money. Worst case scenario, I
lose money. And it's not much different than playing golf
or going to going to the movies. That's kind of
the way that I think about it.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
So as long as you have a small bet, I
will tell you how poor of a gambler I would be.
The other night, I said to the girls, so the
power ball is going to be over a billion dollars
and they were like, what does it take to play?
And I said, we have to go get a ticket
at the gas station. And they're like, do you want
to go do that? And I was like, it's kind
of cold. I guess we're not going.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
To win this.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I look, I like to buy scratch off lottery tickets
every now and then. I think it's fun. Look what
is being But again, it's all balancing, right. The difference
in having a couple of beers and having twenty very
seismically different. And the difference between buying a couple of
lottery tickets and buying twenty or spending money that you
can't afford to lose, is very different. But you know, look,
(28:37):
the lottery ticket idea that is being sold is the
fantasy of what if I actually want what would it
be like to suddenly become rich overnight?
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Which is and then it's always tragedy. So I remind
myself of that. You don't want to win this anymore.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
You know what's crazy is even the people who win
the lotteries, a lot of them end up broke.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Right, I know, right, because it's the shock of so
much money so fast, and you're like, I need that yacht,
and then what.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Are you going to do with the yacht?
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (29:04):
No, I mean people burn through it so quickly. I mean,
I don't know if you saw this. It went viral recently,
but Odell Beckham Junior said he made one hundred million
dollars a wide receiver, went to LSU undergrad, then went
to the New York Giants among other teams, and he
spent all his money. You know, he's thirty one or
thirty two years old, whatever he is, And then went
(29:25):
viral because he said, you know, one hundred million dollars,
it's easy to blow through, basically I'm paraphrasing him. And
then he started to itemize it. He was like, so,
first of all, that's forty million gone to taxes. So
you're down to sixty and then he's like, you got
a manager, you got agents, that takes another ten million away.
You think, to your point tutor, that money's always going
(29:45):
to be there. So you live at a high lifestyle.
You're flying around private you're spending money hand over fist,
and then suddenly you get And this happens to a
lot of musicians. This happens to a lot of people
who come into wealth suddenly and always presume those paychecks
are going to be there. I read recently, I think
his wife now has sold her makeup company for a
(30:07):
billion dollars, so they may be fine now, but that
justin Bieber basically had been down to his final little
bit of dollars. You know, he made ungodly amounts of money.
But that lifestyle, Hey I got to have a private
jet flight, Hey I've got to have.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
And you're with everybody that has that stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
So it's not like we look at that and I'm like, well,
why didn't you just get like a cabin in the
woods and live the high life there? You know, but
you aren't there. You're with all of the richy rich people,
so you have to it's like keeping up with the Joneses.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Yeah, and you know that.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
This is why I mean again, a general good life
lesson is start presuming and thinking about your expenses whatever
you make at a young age, and you know, deciding, hey,
I want to put away X amount of my yearly
income and try to manage that and maintain it even
if you have a lot of success in the years ahead,
(30:57):
because what most people do is as they get a raise,
they spend the race, right, and the number of people out.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
There, you weren't expecting it, So you get to go
out the.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Number of people who've done it. I mean, you've been
in this camp, I'm sure where when you're young, like
you're not thinking about saving anything. You know, what is
it like sixty percent or seventy percent of people do
not have money beyond a couple of paychecks saved up.
So you know, we live in a society that definitely
glamorizes expending everything you got. Life is expensive for a
(31:30):
lot of people, depending on what your tastes.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
End up, let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue
next on the Tutor Dixon podcast.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
All right, so I will just end because you brought
up life being expensive, and obviously the president was out
talking about the fact that life is getting less expensive
and people don't necessarily feel that way.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
So what's your prediction for the midterms.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
So we're sitting here, you know, eleven months away from
people being able to vote. I think that the economy
is going to be white hot, meaning in a good way.
Here's the challenge. You and I are young enough that
we don't remember this. People may say, like, I look
old enough like I should, and so I respect that,
but I'm not actually of age where I can remember
the Jimmy Carter era and the transition into Reagan. I
(32:15):
remember Reagan two point oh, not Reagan one point oh.
But I think that we have to get mortgage rates down.
A lot of people who were fortunate enough to get
two and a half or three percent before this crazy
Biden inflation took off are sitting there now. They're not
selling their homes, and people have to get used to
what things cost.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Now. I've said it before.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
When I take my boys and we go to Chick
fil A and it's over fifty dollars. I know I
sound like an old guy here, but I'm just like
you should be able to sit down at an actual
rest fifty dollars. Now I get a you know, chicken
sandwich and you know, some waffle fries for my boys
and a couple of drinks for them too, and everything,
and I'm like, you know, that'll be fifty six dollars. Sorry,
(32:58):
I'm like, what are you talking about? Like that's a
huge amount of money to be still in my head.
And so I think people are going to have to
get used to it. And the challenge. You know this
because you've run the challenge is you have to balance
the line between telling people that things are getting better
without being condescending and making them feel like you don't
(33:19):
respect the fact of what things cost. Does that make sense.
You have to be able to say things are getting
better without telling.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Them that things are growing.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
And that's hard.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
That's a hard line.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
So I will tell you.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
I remember when I graduated from college, I spent a
semester after that in London, and when I got there,
I was just riding like cabs and stuff.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
But I remember we stopped one day to get.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Gas and it was fifty pounds and I calculated that
in my head and I thought, I cannot even imagine
because I was paying maybe eighteen bucks for.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
A tank of gas.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, and I thought that was insane fifty pounds, and
now every time it's one hundred dollars to film my tank,
that's right crazy to me.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
No, I mean, and look, that is frustration that people feel.
And I think when I talk to people who are older,
they say, remember, Reagan wasn't that popular the first term.
Everybody remembers in eighty four that he won the landslide election,
but it took about three years is ish for people
to start to see the economy turn from Carter and
(34:31):
so I suspect that it's going to be tough to
see tremendous accomplishment in the way people feel by the
midterms next year. So look, I think we're going to
be roughly even in the Senate. I don't think it's
going to move very much, but I would make Democrats
a small favorite based on redistricting and the anger out
there to take back the House. And if that happens,
(34:52):
basically we're going to have two years where not very
much can occur, and then we go along impeachment. Yeah,
and mell impeach Trump a one hundred percent will.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
That's going to be horrible.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Well, we are going to work hard to make sure
that doesn't happen.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
So Michigan is going to work for you makes state.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Look, we talked about this because I was up at
back and all with you for the conference there, Governor
and Senate Michigan. As Michigan goes, I think at this
point is the way the nation goes. So I think
everybody up there is going to have to my wife's
home state. Y'all are going to have to make good
decisions because you're going to drive the future of the country.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
I really think, well, we're fighting. We're fighting here. Clay Travis,
thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You
are always fun to talk to.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Thank you for killing it on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Merry Christmas to you and your girls, and hope you
guys have an awesome holiday season.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Merry Christmas to you, and Merry Christmas to all of you.
Thanks for joining the podcast. You know where to get
it the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts,
and watch it on Rumble or YouTube at Tutor Dixon.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
Join us next time and have a blessed day.
All right, you're listening to the Tutor Dixon podcast, and
today I have Clay Travis with me, and I wanted
to dig into all this sports stuff because if you
listen to my podcast, you know that I'm not a
sports person, but obviously Clay is, and I'm in Michigan
and you of m just had this like bizarre thing.
So everybody, Clay is saying to me, this has to
be because we lost to Ohio, but I don't think
(00:22):
it is.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Look, it is interesting if Michigan beating Ohio State, then
maybe things would be different, because I think the number
one unforgivable sin of major college athletics is not cheating.
It's not you know, recruiting kids who have no business
on campus. It's losing to your most hated rival. And
(00:45):
so Sharon Moore last year beat Ohio State as a
first year head coach. I know he also won as
an interim for people out there that are big fans,
but then got whipped pretty solidly in the big Auson
and Arbor. And then a couple weeks later, Low and Behold,
right after signing day when the recruits commit, it comes
out that he was allegedly having an affair with a subordinate,
(01:08):
and boom he is fired. And then you know, look,
the affair with the subordinate would be bad enough, but
his career wouldn't be over. He'd just have to say
that he screwed up. He's thirty nine years old, relatively
young for a coach, would have to go be an
assistant for a few years until he got another opportunity.
Except that, according to the felony charges brought against him,
(01:29):
when he got fired, he went to the subordinate's house
and said he was going to kill himself in front
of her, according to the allegations, and that her blood
would be on his hand.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
She blamed him.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
He blamed her for sharing the fact that they have
been engaged in this relationship. So that's the story in
a nutshell, and there are lots of different angles that
spin off from it, but that's the most basic aspect
of it.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
I mean, it is bizarre here because obviously U of
M football is very important to people.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
But you listen to this and there's all these rooms.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Like, oh he went there and he was like holding
himself at butter knife point.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
You know, it's like just very threatening.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yes, yeah, no, Look, the whole thing is a cluster,
and it kind of ties in with the University of
Michigan has been a bit of a mess off the
field for a few years now, and I look, I
think part of this is in order to sometimes compete
at a very, very high level in college football. One
(02:30):
of the coaches used to say, you recruit your problems.
It was such a great line because I think it's
applicable to all of life. He said, you know, we're
in a unique spot because we recruit our problems. And
what he meant by that is you're begging coaches, you're
begging players, You're begging people to come to your program,
and then when they get there, if they don't perform
(02:50):
at a level that you would hope that they would,
or certainly if they engage in behavior that's criminal in nature,
then you have brought the problem in to your own house.
And you know, when I heard that phrase the first time,
I thought it made a lot of sense. The older
I get, the more I think it makes sense for
everyone because lots of people will focus on external threats
(03:13):
and most of the time we are individually our own
worst enemies. We recruit our own problems while we tend
to focus on the external nature and worry about things
that often don't emerge. And I think that, you know,
put simply, Michigan has recruited a series of problems that
have not been particularly beneficial to the university as a whole.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
I can see that in politics too, what you're saying,
I mean, it's really hitting me hard right now because
of what I see on social media and because behind
the scenes when you're in the political world, so many
people come to me and they're like, we want to
have a whole influencer network. We either want to have
an influencer network for a state or we want to
just start influencing across the country.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
And have our own.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
But it's like, that's it exactly what I say to them.
I mean, not those words exactly, but I'm like, you
recruit it, you own it. Who whatever that person. Once
that person hits a certain level, they feel like they
can do whatever they want. They are untouchable, and you
recruited that person, so you own whatever they become.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
And it's hard.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, there's a lot of truth to that too, And
I think we live in a profoundly and authentic era
and so what I would say is the antidote to
cancel culture is authenticity, because if you are what people
think you are, then it becomes really hard for you
to get in trouble for being what.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
The expectation is that you are.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
And I'll give you a kind of a ridiculous but
fun example of this. Charles Barkley's probably the best former
player who has done media, maybe ever former NBA superstar,
and he was arrested in Scottsdale, Arizona. I don't know
if I've told you the story or you've heard it tootor,
but he was arrested in Scottsdale, Arizona for driving drunk. Scottsdale, Arizona,
(05:02):
by the way, a place where lots of people go
out and get drinks. You know, it's it's kind of
a lively spot. When he was arrested. When they pulled
him over, they said, you know, hey, you're driving drunk.
He acknowledged he was, and they said why are you
doing this and if you got kids in the car,
turn it down. He said, because I'm driving to the
house of the woman who gives the best blowjobs in Arizona.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
In the police report, he.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Missed one day of work one day of work tutor
because everybody was like, yeah, I kind of expect Charles
Barkley to get drunk, get in his car and go
do that. And so I would argue that that probably
Charles Barkley is one of the most authentic voices in media.
And look, you can also apply that same logic, I think,
on some level to Donald Trump. Right, people kept saying, oh,
(05:48):
my goodness, he just did this, he just did that.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
There's no way his political career is going to survive.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And actually, as long as Trump behaved as people anticipated
Trump to hay, Once he set that expectation, it became very,
very difficult to alter it. And now I'll give you
another example from the world of politics. Hillary Clinton completely
lied about being under fire in Iraq. I mean, you
go back and look at all the evidence. She was
never in danger, She was never under fire. Brian Williams,
(06:17):
who was at the time NBC's top political anchor, basically
top anchor in general, I think Gate, told the same lie.
His career collapsed. But why because people expected that he
would tell the truth and they expected that Hillary Clinton
would lie.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
And one more, and this is I think even.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
More illustrative of this, when the Access Hollywood tape came
out tutor with Donald Trump and Billy Bush.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Do you remember the outcome Donald Trump, Billy Bush was toast.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, and Donald Trump got elected President of the United States.
It wasn't just that Billy Bush lost his job, his
wife left him. His entire world collapsed because he kind
of laughed at a Trump joke.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
He didn't tell the joke. It wasn't a full on interview.
He was off.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
You know, they were miked up, but they weren't on
camera yet. And yet the standard in media was his
career is over for Trump. He got elected President of
the United States. So it is amazing, and I think
to a large extent, it's illustrative of people in the
general public have a higher tolerance for behavior right for humanity,
(07:28):
good and bad than sort of the artificial safeguards that
are put in place in the media ecosystem, which I
think all those stories to me kind of are illustrative
of the era in which we're in.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
So I will tell you my Charles Barkley story. When
I was fifty or I was sixteen, I'd just gotten
my driver's license and Michael Jordan did this like golf
tournament every year right down the street from my house,
but that year he had had surgery or something, so
Charles Barkley was taking charge of this. I went out
to dinner and he was sitting at the table next
(08:02):
to me and my girlfriend and we were so excited.
So we like and he was with Danny Ainge and yeah,
someone else. I can't remember who the third person was.
So we like totally geeked out right, So, and the
Bulls were winning.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
It was like you know that.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Time era in the NBA when everybody cared about the NBA.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Yeah, right, exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
So we walked up to him and I was so
excited and nervous and I introduced myself and he looked
at us and he goes, oh, are your parents sitting
at a different table And I was like, no, it's
just us.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
He goes, did they drop you off? And I said no,
I drove here, and he was like, man, who are
they giving driver's licenses to you?
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Now?
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Are you like ten years old?
Speaker 1 (08:42):
And that was it was like that moment where he
it wasn't playing with me, he really was just like,
oh my gosh, you look way too young.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
But he was. He was genuinely nice, but it was
just really who he was.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, Look, I've gotten to know Charles quite a bit,
and I think one of the best pieces of advice
that I've heard from him, he said it was given
to him early in his media career, was if you
worry about the opinions of people who don't like you,
then eventually the people who do like you won't like
you anymore either. And this was kind of in a
pre social media era that he told me that quote,
(09:16):
but I think it's so particularly perceptive for the world
in which we live in, where it's just there's I mean,
if I go on my phone right now, there's no
telling the toxicity that is in my mentions over whatever
I said today on the show or whatever I've tweeted.
It could be sports, politics, pop culture, whatever it is.
And there's a lot of noise. And if you allow
(09:36):
your head to get involved in that noise too much,
then then it can start to impinge on your unique nature.
And I don't think it's coincidental. I mean, Barkley basically
isn't on social media at all, and you know, Peyton
Manning to a large extent, isn't on social media at all.
Certainly Michael Jordan isn't and I think there's probably a
(09:59):
great deal of health for people who chose not to
get on social media. I'm on social media for my career,
but I don't have like private social media accounts or
anything like that.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
So I see that people will like send you a
nasty message, and it hurts my heart. It's like this,
I've always listened to you, I'm a huge fan. You
turn me off today and I'm done, and then you
post it. I'm like, that is so bold, and I
love that you do that because it is that first.
My first feeling when I see that as like I
(10:29):
don't want to lose you, but I don't.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Even know this person. I've been hearing that my entire career. Yeah,
I mean seriously. You know when I first started doing
local sports talk radio, and the first couple of times,
I thought it was strange because somebody sends an email
and they're like, I will never listen to you again
because you said whatever opinion it was. And then what
(10:51):
I noticed is that person always wrote back they were
like and then you said, sometimes there is two I
really think this. There is a hater gene and there's
a certain person out there type of personality that is
in some way. They're attracted to their own distaste for things.
(11:12):
And I don't really understand it because I don't have
time to watch all the TV shows or go to
all the concerts that I would like to or whatever else,
so I only go to things that I like. But
I think there's about twenty percent of the population that
somehow gets gratification out of being a hater, and so
they can't turn away, and they listen to people that
(11:34):
they claim not to like, but they actually listen more
than the people who claim to like you. It's one
of the craziest things I've ever seen.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
It's like the freaky joy and misery people.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
There are truly people that love to be miserable, and
they seem like they're happy in their misery, but everyone
around them is also miserable because miserable people are just miserable.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah, and they also I mean, this is like holiday
advice for everybody, but they also suck a lot of
joy out of the air, right. Not just that they
are miserable internally, it's that they become energy vampires and
everybody knows what I'm talking about. There are people that
you're around that have effervescent personalities and they give you
energy and help everybody to be to be better off.
(12:15):
The phrase I've heard and I think it's so true.
There are a lot of energy vampires and basically they
exist to suck away your energy and just.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Leave you like, oh, what in the world are we doing?
Speaker 2 (12:26):
And I think around the holiday season, you know they're Unfortunately,
everybody's family has got people like that that you're placating
and trying to make sure that they don't end up angry.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
And you know, Happy Holidays America.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Even Winnie the Pooh has e or we learned about
it when we were young.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
That's right, the.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Ears of our life.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Let's take a quick commercial break will continue next on
the Tutor Dixon podcast. I want to talk about name,
image and likeness because I was watching so I went
to UK and I was watching a basketball game with
my brother law a few weeks ago, and he was like, oh, yeah,
one of these guys never plays. He gets all this money,
(13:06):
but he never plays, and he people apparently were making
fun of him. So he went out and took thirty
thousand dollars out of the bank and made it rain
money on Instagram. And I was like, I may never play,
but I get all this money, and I think this
is gross, but I don't know how you feel about it,
because you're a sportsperson.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Well, so I'm a capitalist, but I think that it's
always important to remember that in most of the world
we don't have true capitalism, by which I mean unregulated,
completely capitalism. Like we can't sell our kidneys in the
United States, right Like you know, you can't go buy
a nuclear weapon and decide that you're going to put
(13:43):
it on eBay, right like. There there are certain things
that as a society we look at. I mean, you know,
I'll give you a good example. I've got a fifteen
year old tutor. You know, my wife, she would murder
me with her bare hands if I took him out
to go get a tattoo, even if he wanted a tattoo,
because he's fifteen year old. Right. So, we regulate a
lot of commerce, what is allowed to be sold, what's
(14:05):
not allowed to be sold. And in college athletics, we
went from the Berlin Wall being up, where we tried
to enforce a standard where nobody basically could be paid
at all, to the Berlin Wall came down and suddenly
everybody could get paid everything, and it actually reminds me
of what happened in Eastern Europe, which is that pure
unregulated capitalism for a little while led to hey, I
(14:28):
want to buy a tank.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Hey, you know, I'm going.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
To go buy like a government munitions plan. Right, they
started selling off everything, And so I think that's where
we are in college athletics. And what's unique about college
athletics is actually not unique to sports in general. But
sports is one of the only places where the goal
of the business is to compete and you don't want
(14:55):
to put your opponent out of business. Right, So you
were talking about the NBA back in the day. One
of the reasons we all loved the NBA back in
the nineties was Michael Jordan had elite competition that he
had to go up against, and everybody got to sit
around and watch that competition. But if you had a
situation where the Bulls got to spend a billion dollars
(15:17):
and everybody they played against got to spend a million, well,
it wouldn't be a very fair competition, right, And so
we're going to have to end up with some form
of regulation in the NIL space to preserve competitive balance
in college athletics.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
How is it working because it's not the schools that
are paying right.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah, well the schools are now paying some And look,
the downside is what you just pointed to. Kentucky lost
your alma mater lost to Gonzaga in my hometown of
Nashville a couple of weeks ago, and they played awful.
And when I was a kid, my dad always said,
you never boo college kids because they're out there trying
their best. They're eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old. The boos
(15:57):
rained down like crazy because they're not college kids anymore. Tutor,
they're professionals. And so if somebody is being paid millions
of dollars and they perform poorly, the sports fans let
them have it, even in the home arena or the
home stadium. So I think where we have to go.
This is eventually where it's going to end up. Is
use the NBA or the NFL as an example. They
(16:19):
have salary. Caps players signed contracts. They're committed to teams
for multiple years. You can be a free agent, but
you have to serve out your contract four or five years,
and everybody has to pay similar amounts of salary to
individual teams. The salary cap exists for that reason. So
(16:41):
I think we are headed towards there. It may take
a decade to get there, it may take twenty years
to get there, but to me, it's the inevitable final destination.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Well you just said, okay, So when I was at UK,
it was like they were us. It wasn't like joy
represented us. It wasn't like we owned them or yeah.
You know. It's different like when you own a car
and you race it. But that's the way you just described.
It was like they're not a part of the university
(17:11):
there that I don't like.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
No, I think it's look the one group that is
getting screwed here. I think players are making more money
than they've ever made before, Coaches are making more money
than they've ever made before, Television networks are making more
money than they've ever made before. But fan loyalty is
being taken advantage of. We just had Lane Kiffen leave
(17:35):
ole Miss in the middle of the playoffs. It's the
greatest season in ole Miss football history, probably certainly in
like the modern era, last fifty years, and yet their
head coach just walked away to go take a job
against of Arrival against LSU. What's going on is everybody
is acting in their naked self interests and there's no
one who's looking out for the best interest of the sport.
(17:57):
And that is why I think we're in it challenging
spot because what makes people like you love UK is
the experience that you had at the University of Kentucky.
What makes people fans in college athletics is typically a
connection that feels personal. It can be that they went
to the school. It can mean that they went to
watch games when they were kids. It can mean that
they feel an associational value as a member of a
(18:20):
fan base, a tribe that all kind of pulls in
the same direction. And when you have people who are
playing for Kentucky one year in Louisville the next, or
coaching for Kentucky one year Louisville the next, Hated Rivals
Mercenary players, at some point it starts to strip away
what made college athletics great. And it may always be
(18:42):
a bit of a fiction, but everybody out there that's
a fan of a school, that loves a school, you
like to think, Hey, that's seventeen year old. He came
to my school because he saw something unique in our
tribe in the experience, the culture of the university. And
when it's like, oh, no, he came because he got
fifty k more than somebody offered him at Tennessee or
(19:03):
Alabama or wherever it is, you're not really selling that
blood connection that you feel, that tribal connection. You're just
hiring a mercenary. And I think it starts to detract
at some point for the overall brand of college athletics.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
And you kind of felt like it was nice to
think that they went through that same process that they
sent in their SAT scores and that guy you see
at the cafeteria is also one of the people you're
cheering on at the game.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
I mean, it just is a very weird.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Concept to me that you could technically then have a
player your freshman and sophomore year who then when he turns,
when he becomes a junior, he gets a better deal
and he leaves.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
That feels so weird.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, And by the way, you could have a kid
who goes to four different schools in four years tutor,
So I mean, think about how hard that is. And remember,
ostensibly the reason these guys are there is to get
a college degree, because most people, well that's what we thought, yeah,
well most and look, most college athletes. Let's say you
(20:12):
go to the NFL. Yeah, let's say you are supremely talented.
This is why I talk to kids all the time
about this, and my way I talk about it is
use the ball, don't let the ball use you. And
there are so many kids out there that get used
by the sport. Because let's say you're wildly successful at football,
You're an incredible athlete. You know, the average length of
an NFL career three point five years, three point five years,
(20:36):
so that means you come out at twenty one or
twenty two, and by twenty five or twenty six, your
football career is completely over. You're still, in many ways
a baby, right in terms of your professional career and
everything that you have worked so hard for to aspire
to reach the apex of your profession. You're done with
it at twenty five, You're done with it at twenty six,
(20:59):
and then you have to go back because a lot
of these guys, let's say you made three million dollars
on that contract, three million dollars. You know this, but
a lot of the kids don't. Let's say you're paying
forty percent tax on that you're down to one six
Let's say that you're paying agent fees that you know
that money is gone, right like you, it is gone.
(21:20):
You're not living on that for the rest of your life.
So you have to have an ability to build a
career doing something else. And that's what you go to
college theoretically for. And I feel like, unfortunately, a lot
of these kids are going to make a few hundred
thousand dollars in college. They're going to have no marketable skills,
they're not going to be able to go pro at all,
and they're going to be sitting around, you know, back
(21:41):
at home at twenty three years old, thinking to themselves, Okay,
what do I do for the rest of my life?
When they're such young guys and and you know again
you know this, Uh, they spend money because young men
are oftentimes not very smart. You don't have great financial
advisors around you. Most people aren't used to even having
(22:03):
hundreds of thousands of dollars in their twenties, much less
access to it.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
And you're not at the age where you're thinking this
is ending, correct, So you can't even comprehend that that
money is temporary and that salary is temper.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
And by the way, you're also then maybe you're trying
to do something nice for mom or dad, or you're
trying to do something nice for your brothers, sisters. And
he says, nephews, whatever it may be, and that money
can vanish in a hurry. And so my concern is, look,
I mean, people make awful choices all the time with
the way that they choose to live.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
I've got a buddy from law school.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
I was out to dinner with him recently, tutor, and
he's going through divorce and I was talking with him
and I said, well, how are you doing. He said,
for twenty straight years, I had two paths. Smart financial decision,
bad financial decision. He's like, in every time I took
bad financial decision. And you know, like he's a forty
five year old guy now and he's sitting around and
(23:00):
he's like, you know, I don't have a nest egg,
I don't have anything to take care of. And so
my point on that is, we tend to focus on athletics,
but a lot of people don't necessarily make the best
decisions for themselves. And it gets accelerated even more when
you're talking about guys. Eighteen nineteen twenty years old who
are trying and drive nice cars and impress, you know,
girls on campus, and they think that money's going to
(23:22):
be there forever. And suddenly you hit a wall at
twenty five years old and you realize, I'm going to
have to have a real job and you don't have
the skills.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
To do it.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Okay, but gambling is also getting a little bit risky,
and now we have senators that are trying to get
involved in gambling.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
You're obviously very familiar with gambling.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
So what is your feeling on the government starting to
raise regulation on that.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Well, so right now it's individual.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
States have the right to decide whether or not they
want to have sports gambling, and obviously sports gambling is
a subset of larger gambling. And this really, I would say,
the gambling world exploded. The first that I remember doing
this tutor was Georgia started the Hope Scholarships, basically where
the lottery money went to pay for kids to go
(24:10):
to the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech state universities in
Georgia if you kept a be average and so the
idea was we're going to have a lottery and then
as these things often do they have grown. Now there's casinos,
Now there's sports, gambling, everything else. I like to gamble
on sports. I also like to drink. I have an
(24:32):
affinity for things that are not healthy for me. So
I think the key to life is moderation. Right, are
you able to balance You know, you can't eat birthday
cake for every meal, like every six year old in
America would like.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
You have to balance out everything.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
One of the challenges is there are a lot of
people have addictive personalities and tutor out. I don't know
how you regulate things on behalf of you know, most
people can have a couple of drinks and not have
to worry about becoming an alcoholic. But a certain subset
of people they are very susceptible to alcohol or drugs
or gambling and it becomes super addictive to them. So
(25:13):
my general proposition is, I think the state should be
able to make a decision and then they should tax
and regulate it and hopefully restrict it for people that
have problematic issues there. And I think we're so young
in the infasy of this era that we're just starting there.
And then the other part of this is, you know,
some athletes are making awful decisions and being involved in
(25:35):
gambling related scandals all the way up to professional athletics
and all the way down to certainly college athletics.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
And so what should happen if you're an athlete? What
should happen if you're involved.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
In that, Well, if it's a crime, I think you
should be prosecuted, like we're seeing happen with Chauncey Billips,
for instance, who was a great member of the Detroit
Pistons back in the day I was coaching at the
Portland Trailblazer. If you and athletic event in some way,
then you should be prosecuted. And if I were giving
advice to athletes, I would say, hey, focus one hundred
(26:09):
percent on playing and avoid getting involved in talking about
anything having to do with the lines or anything else.
My general thought is, tutor, we're catching people more because
legalization means that the sports books recognize a barent betting behavior.
In other words, like they caught a University of Alabama
(26:30):
baseball coach recently. He was trying to go into Cincinnati,
or his friend was. He was on the phone with
the coach trying to place a big dollar wager on
a college baseball game that nobody ever bet on in Cincinnati,
so they caught him. I think the fact that we
are now regulating and bringing sunshine onto this issue is
actually creating more recognition of it and making it look
(26:54):
like a bigger issue than it was in the past.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
My hope is.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
That these athletes and coaches are learning away, Hey, there's
a big risk here. I've got to be able to
protect myself from this. But look, the leagues are making
money handover fist. The players share revenue with the league,
so the players are actually getting paid based on legalization,
the advertisements that you see everywhere. And I'm gonna be
honest with you tonight, I'm gonna kick back and watch
(27:17):
Thursday night football and I'm gonna have money on the game.
Not a lot of money, but you know, I always say, like,
if I go out to a movie, it's gonna cost
me fifty sixty bucks minimum, and that money's gone forever.
If I go play golf, it's going to cost me
one hundred and fifty bucks whatever it is to play
with a buddy, and that money's gone forever. If I
put one hundred bucks on a football game, I can
(27:40):
watch the game, have a little bit more enjoyment from it,
and I might actually make money. Worst case scenario, I
lose money. And it's not much different than playing golf
or going to going to the movies. That's kind of
the way that I think about it.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
So as long as you have a small bet, I
will tell you how poor of a gambler I would be.
The other night, I said to the girls, so the
power ball is going to be over a billion dollars
and they were like, what does it take to play?
And I said, we have to go get a ticket
at the gas station. And they're like, do you want
to go do that? And I was like, it's kind
of cold. I guess we're not going.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
To win this.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I look, I like to buy scratch off lottery tickets
every now and then. I think it's fun. Look what
is being But again, it's all balancing, right. The difference
in having a couple of beers and having twenty very
seismically different. And the difference between buying a couple of
lottery tickets and buying twenty or spending money that you
can't afford to lose, is very different. But you know, look,
(28:37):
the lottery ticket idea that is being sold is the
fantasy of what if I actually want what would it
be like to suddenly become rich overnight?
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Which is and then it's always tragedy. So I remind
myself of that. You don't want to win this anymore.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
You know what's crazy is even the people who win
the lotteries, a lot of them end up broke.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Right, I know, right, because it's the shock of so
much money so fast, and you're like, I need that yacht,
and then what.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Are you going to do with the yacht?
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (29:04):
No, I mean people burn through it so quickly. I mean,
I don't know if you saw this. It went viral recently,
but Odell Beckham Junior said he made one hundred million
dollars a wide receiver, went to LSU undergrad, then went
to the New York Giants among other teams, and he
spent all his money. You know, he's thirty one or
thirty two years old, whatever he is, And then went
(29:25):
viral because he said, you know, one hundred million dollars,
it's easy to blow through, basically I'm paraphrasing him. And
then he started to itemize it. He was like, so,
first of all, that's forty million gone to taxes. So
you're down to sixty and then he's like, you got
a manager, you got agents, that takes another ten million away.
You think, to your point tutor, that money's always going
(29:45):
to be there. So you live at a high lifestyle.
You're flying around private you're spending money hand over fist,
and then suddenly you get And this happens to a
lot of musicians. This happens to a lot of people
who come into wealth suddenly and always presume those paychecks
are going to be there. I read recently, I think
his wife now has sold her makeup company for a
(30:07):
billion dollars, so they may be fine now, but that
justin Bieber basically had been down to his final little
bit of dollars. You know, he made ungodly amounts of money.
But that lifestyle, Hey I got to have a private
jet flight, Hey I've got to have.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
And you're with everybody that has that stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
So it's not like we look at that and I'm like, well,
why didn't you just get like a cabin in the
woods and live the high life there? You know, but
you aren't there. You're with all of the richy rich people,
so you have to it's like keeping up with the Joneses.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Yeah, and you know that.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
This is why I mean again, a general good life
lesson is start presuming and thinking about your expenses whatever
you make at a young age, and you know, deciding, hey,
I want to put away X amount of my yearly
income and try to manage that and maintain it even
if you have a lot of success in the years ahead,
(30:57):
because what most people do is as they get a raise,
they spend the race, right, and the number of people out.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
There, you weren't expecting it, So you get to go
out the.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Number of people who've done it. I mean, you've been
in this camp, I'm sure where when you're young, like
you're not thinking about saving anything. You know, what is
it like sixty percent or seventy percent of people do
not have money beyond a couple of paychecks saved up.
So you know, we live in a society that definitely
glamorizes expending everything you got. Life is expensive for a
(31:30):
lot of people, depending on what your tastes.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
End up, let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue
next on the Tutor Dixon podcast.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
All right, so I will just end because you brought
up life being expensive, and obviously the president was out
talking about the fact that life is getting less expensive
and people don't necessarily feel that way.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
So what's your prediction for the midterms.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
So we're sitting here, you know, eleven months away from
people being able to vote. I think that the economy
is going to be white hot, meaning in a good way.
Here's the challenge. You and I are young enough that
we don't remember this. People may say, like, I look
old enough like I should, and so I respect that,
but I'm not actually of age where I can remember
the Jimmy Carter era and the transition into Reagan. I
(32:15):
remember Reagan two point oh, not Reagan one point oh.
But I think that we have to get mortgage rates down.
A lot of people who were fortunate enough to get
two and a half or three percent before this crazy
Biden inflation took off are sitting there now. They're not
selling their homes, and people have to get used to
what things cost.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Now. I've said it before.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
When I take my boys and we go to Chick
fil A and it's over fifty dollars. I know I
sound like an old guy here, but I'm just like
you should be able to sit down at an actual
rest fifty dollars. Now I get a you know, chicken
sandwich and you know, some waffle fries for my boys
and a couple of drinks for them too, and everything,
and I'm like, you know, that'll be fifty six dollars. Sorry,
(32:58):
I'm like, what are you talking about? Like that's a
huge amount of money to be still in my head.
And so I think people are going to have to
get used to it. And the challenge. You know this
because you've run the challenge is you have to balance
the line between telling people that things are getting better
without being condescending and making them feel like you don't
(33:19):
respect the fact of what things cost. Does that make sense.
You have to be able to say things are getting
better without telling.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Them that things are growing.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
And that's hard.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
That's a hard line.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
So I will tell you.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
I remember when I graduated from college, I spent a
semester after that in London, and when I got there,
I was just riding like cabs and stuff.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
But I remember we stopped one day to get.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Gas and it was fifty pounds and I calculated that
in my head and I thought, I cannot even imagine
because I was paying maybe eighteen bucks for.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
A tank of gas.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, and I thought that was insane fifty pounds, and
now every time it's one hundred dollars to film my tank,
that's right crazy to me.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
No, I mean, and look, that is frustration that people feel.
And I think when I talk to people who are older,
they say, remember, Reagan wasn't that popular the first term.
Everybody remembers in eighty four that he won the landslide election,
but it took about three years is ish for people
to start to see the economy turn from Carter and
(34:31):
so I suspect that it's going to be tough to
see tremendous accomplishment in the way people feel by the
midterms next year. So look, I think we're going to
be roughly even in the Senate. I don't think it's
going to move very much, but I would make Democrats
a small favorite based on redistricting and the anger out
there to take back the House. And if that happens,
(34:52):
basically we're going to have two years where not very
much can occur, and then we go along impeachment. Yeah,
and mell impeach Trump a one hundred percent will.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
That's going to be horrible.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Well, we are going to work hard to make sure
that doesn't happen.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
So Michigan is going to work for you makes state.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Look, we talked about this because I was up at
back and all with you for the conference there, Governor
and Senate Michigan. As Michigan goes, I think at this
point is the way the nation goes. So I think
everybody up there is going to have to my wife's
home state. Y'all are going to have to make good
decisions because you're going to drive the future of the country.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
I really think, well, we're fighting. We're fighting here. Clay Travis,
thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You
are always fun to talk to.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Thank you for killing it on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Merry Christmas to you and your girls, and hope you
guys have an awesome holiday season.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Merry Christmas to you, and Merry Christmas to all of you.
Thanks for joining the podcast. You know where to get
it the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts,
and watch it on Rumble or YouTube at Tutor Dixon.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
Join us next time and have a blessed day.
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Buck Sexton
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