Loyalty, Rivalries nad Sports Business

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome in. This is beside by the Shoff. All right,
thanks for joining me on this new journey as we
talk about sports. I'm excited. Last week's show wasn't great. Right,

(00:34):
like last week's shows, we had dogs barking, went with
the the wrong exit for the show. US used the
exit from the last last show, which is fine. You know,
it's new, we're starting new things. We had a ten

(00:56):
year journey as real deal Sports Talk with KP, so
the sideline shuffle is different. Right, We're no longer I'm
no longer trying to emulate and be part of the
sports world as it is that's out there. No more angry.
I'm trying to be more chill. I'm trying to talk
about sports and the stories that I want to talk

(01:17):
about the way I want to talk about them, and
hopefully that you want to interact and disagree and engage
and extend that conversation on hopefully in a way that
touches some people and they want to continue listening, they
want to subscribe, they want to share the show out

(01:38):
with other people. I would love that. I love the engagement,
negative or positive. Let's be engaged, right, that's what we're missing, right,
now is engagement. So I'm looking forward to it. I'm
looking forward to the journey. We're given it a second
episode of The Sideline Shuffle today, and on less to say,

(02:00):
I'm looking forward to it. A little bit of Super
Bowl talk, but mostly I want to talk about loyalty,
rivalries and sports business today because yes, we see that
a lot on the professional level, but we now see
it on the collegiate, high school and in some cases
even the little league level. We're seeing changes in the

(02:22):
way loyalty and rivalries and the infiltration of sports business
is becoming more and more a part of the model.
So I'm going to start that conversation today. It might
be something that I revisit, especially if we get some
feedback to the show, different ideas coming in about these topics.

(02:43):
It could be something that we revisit time and again,
or here and there, or maybe not at all. Maybe
I'll get it all off my chest today. But let's
start with the big news, right. It's not the NBA
tread that Trey didline which is tomorrow. It's not Luka
going to the Lakers. It's not eighty going to Dallas.

(03:04):
It's not DeAndre Fox going to the Spurs, Zach Levine
going to Zacramento. It's not what Kevin Durant might do,
it's not what the Nuggets are doing. It's super Bowl Week,
the greatest holiday in this country in my opinion. Ol Way,

(03:25):
I know it's biased. It's not Christmas, it's not the
fourth of July, blah blah blah. The Super Bowl is
the best holiday for me. You can decide for yourself
what that favorite holiday is for you. But it's Super
Bowl Week. We've got the Kansas City Chiefs, We've got
the Philadelphia Eagles. One team going for the three p

(03:49):
the first team ever to make it to the Super
Bowl in the year they were going for a three PA.
Every other back to back Super Bowl winner did not
make it all the way back to the super Bowl
the third year. So that's a storyline. And let me
just put this out there. The Kansas City Chiefs are

(04:09):
not villains. They're not villain This is the story becoming old.
Is it becoming that rerun you don't want to watch anymore?
You can argue that, right. Just like the Patriots for
twenty years, we're now getting into that world with the
Kansas City Chiefs. What is it seven or eight straight
AFC Championship games. They've been in five of the last

(04:34):
six Super Bowls. It's getting old. That's what people don't like.
It's not fresh, it's not entertaining. People think it's rigged. Look,
good teams get calls. That's how it always worked in sports.
You want to go back and change it, you probably
need to look pre Michael Jordan because it really took off.

(04:54):
In my opinion, for those of you old enough to
have watched Michael play in the early nineties and late eighties,
the Michael Jordan rule on how games were called now
again not official, just something from the sideline that seems
to be happened. So villainous, no tired. Yes, Philadelphia best

(05:20):
free agent signing of the offseason. Can we argue that
Saquon Barkley joining that team, joining that offensive line putting
up two thousand plus yards this year? Can we make
that argument? I think so. And with that with the
Patrick Mahomes, with the Travis Kelsey, with the Hollywood Brown,

(05:40):
with the Worthy, with Andy Reid, with Jalen Hurts, with
Brown and Smith and god her this game, this game
comes down to defense. If Philadelphia can do to Kansas
City what Tampa Bay did a couple of years ago.

(06:03):
They've got a real good chance of winning themselves a
super Bowl. If Spags and that defense and Chris Jones
can keep Jalen Hurts from making some plays. Guess what,
Kansas City's got a real good chance of winning this game.
The team, in my opinion, that wins the Super Bowl

(06:24):
this year, will be the team whose defense makes the
play in the fourth quarter. All those offensive weapons I
listed for both teams and this game, to me, defense
wins championships. That will happen this year. Defense will win

(06:46):
the Super Bowl this year. No matter how many points
are scored by either offense, defense will make the deciding play.
And both of the scenarios I laid out are very plausible.
Kansas City's defense could keep Jalen Hurts from making any plays,
shut him down on the run, keep him in the pocket.

(07:10):
You control that game. You keep Patrick Mahomes from being
able to make off schedule plays, and you pressure him,
and you got guys in his face, and you can
reproduce what Tampa did and what Detroit's done and different
teams that have beat Kansas City over the years. You
can win this game. So I'm excited. I love the

(07:34):
super Bowl. I love the super Bowl foods. I love
to play in my menu based on the two teams
that are in the super Bowl. So do you have fun?
Maybe you get Monday off. I've got jury duty on Monday,
so great excuse not to be at work. It's not rigged,
it wasn't predetermined. Good teams get calls. Kansas City's a

(07:57):
good team, they get the benefit of the doubt. Do
I think some of the calls against Kansas City were atrocious?
Really bad referees really do need to have their eyes
checked or have some system of accountability and grading that
these things don't continue to happen that bad from the tvview, sure,
but I've also officiated, and I know how easy it

(08:19):
is to miss something right in front of your face.
So it is what it is. The human element is
part of the game. We don't want to get rid
of that. Let's hope this weekend for the Super Bowl,
the Big Game, whatever. Don't come charge me NFL because
I use the term super Bowl. Let's just hope that's

(08:40):
not a factor this week, that the two teams are
able to go out there give it. They're all perform
on the highest level and give us an entertaining football game.
And please remember it's a game. We don't need to
destroy a city, we don't need to burn anything down
to show appreciation and love to champion for the team

(09:02):
that we support. It's not needed. So please, whichever sides
you're on, let's have some sportsmanship. That leads me into
today's conversation about loyalty, rivalries, and sports business. And we

(09:22):
have to start that conversation with some definitions. So Webster's
Dictionary defines loyalty. It's a noun the quality or state
or an instance of being loyal. Synonyms for loyalty allegiance, devotion, commitment, dedication, attachment, adhesion, devotedness, reliable,

(10:02):
those are big things to me. I'm a very loyal person,
maybe to a fault in some cases, but loyalty matters,
or it did when I was coming up in sports.
I'm in my forties. I get it. Things have changed.
I'm not the target audience anymore. The game has passed
me by from when I played, but it was important

(10:23):
to be loyal. I had the opportunity in high school
to go to another school that I knew their coaches
were going to do more to try and move me
to the collegiate level than the coaches that were at
the school I attended, and through deliberation, after meeting with
administration at the school, knowing who the head coach was

(10:47):
having my brother, my best friend also transferred to that
school the very same year. After deliberation, I sat there
and said, look, I started this journey with this group
of guys. I have pledged to this brotherhood that I

(11:11):
would be there for this group of guys, that I
would finish this journey with them, that I would go
out and give everything I had for them, that the
jersey I put on was more about the name on
the front than the name on the back, and that
I had each one of my team members backs no

(11:33):
matter what on the field off the field. Let's face it,
I'm an adult now. I realize there's things I would
not have had their back for off the field, but
on the field, that's what it was. You're with me,
I'm with you were in this. So loyalty is important

(11:56):
to me. It's important in friendships, and it's important and
er professional business situations. To me, it's important in personal life.
To me, I need to know that I can trust
you I need to know that you're going to be there,
that you're dependable, that you're committed right, that you are
dedicated to the same goal and work ethic that all

(12:21):
of us are putting out there, right, that there is
some determination, some resolution in what you were doing and
what we are part of rivalries. Webster's defines rivalries as
the act of rivalry, the state of being a rival competition.

(12:45):
The word rival most commonly refers to a person or
group that tries to defeat or be more successful than
another person or group, which means that rivals tend to
come in pairs. Right for rivalry, competition, battle, duel, conflict, struggle, confrontation, contention, strife.

(13:12):
We hear this a lot in sports, going to war, Right,
this is that other group. This is that other team that,
no matter what the situation, no matter what the record is,
no matter how good each team is that game, those

(13:33):
games are circled on the calendar. This is a team
I want to be. Growing up in the Denver area,
it was easy. The Broncos could go two and fourteen,
two and fifteen. If they beat the Raiders, their fans
were happy. I now champion for the Lions, for the
last thirty plus years since I was ten. If we

(13:57):
beat the Packers the Bears. Okay, maybe not the Vikings
as much, but the Vikings, that's a good year. Right.
Those rivalries, those things that are ingrained in us as
kids as we start to love sports. This is our team,
that's the team we want to beat the most. That's
the team we hate, that's the team we don't like. Right,

(14:19):
however it's talked about in your world. We mark those games.
We watch what that other team's doing, we see what
players they have. Draft comes around, who did the rivalry get? Right?
We proudly strut our peacock feathers and show our colors
as part of our rivalry. It's part of that tribalism

(14:43):
that comes and again that's ingrained in us, starting from
little league. Your little league team, that's the team that
we need to beat. That's our rival, that's our division foe.
That's the team that keeps us from getting to the championship. Right,
So your rival, rivalry, and then sports business. Sports business

(15:05):
is the commercial side of sports, involving the promotion, management,
and organization of sports related activities. It includes the people, organizations,
activities that contribute to the sports industry. So we're looking
at event organization, team management, marketing, sponsorship, merchandising, broadcasting rights,

(15:28):
talent management. It's an economic force. Billions and billions of
dollars at this point flow through sports business. It creates
jobs and it generates revenue. So just off that we
can see it's easy to see the path as to

(15:49):
how professional sports and sports business became a thing. It's capitalism,
it's consumerism. It's supply and demand. Why we see certain
players valued over others, certain positions valued over others. It's
why we see rules being changed to protect the quarterback position,

(16:10):
for instance. These are the people who become the face
of your leagues, right the point guard, the seven foot center,
the pitcher, the quarterback, the center in hockey, These people
with the recognizable faces that are in the big moments
that the marketing wants to get behind, that sponsorships want

(16:32):
to throw money behind. Now, sponsorships are everywhere. Now everywhere
we see sponsorships going to the collegiate level. We see
them going to the high school level. With this nil conversation,
we don't see sports business as much on the little
league level, but with these traveling teams with AA teams

(16:57):
with some of these seven to ten year olds who
have YouTube videos, right the baby Gronk, the fastest kid
in America, These promotional videos with little kids who have
d one offers. Get out of here with this nonsense. Literally,
nobody knows what a little kid playing a sport is

(17:18):
gonna look like once puberty hits and once they get
into a grown body. But we see that with little kids.
When you're supposed to be learning loyalty and teamwork and
sportsmanship and toughness and stick totiveness and dedication and hard

(17:39):
work and failure and getting back up and resilience, right,
all these lessons, you're supposed to be having fun should
be the number one thing of Little league athletics. But
now it's about, you know, my swag, my drip, my
scoring celebration. How I'm gonna do my bat flip? Right,
How I'm gonna get those views and those clicks. That's

(18:04):
what we're starting to see a lot more on the
little league level. And that hurts my heart because I
love sports at the core. I love sports athletics, competition.
I can do without the big contracts, I can do
without the sponsorships. That's me though. I get that's not everybody.
I get that's not the industry. I get that's not

(18:26):
where we are. I'm not arguing that, But there is
a version. I prefer there was a version that to
me had more loyalty to the team you played with,
to the sport you were in, and to the people
that were around you. Right. I can remember the rivalries

(18:47):
we had and literally with the Centaurs and the Raiders,
with the Rams and the Rebels, Right, I can remember
those games and those feelings and what it was like
to get over one of those teams, the Raiders, beating
us in baseball year after year after year, and finally

(19:08):
taking them out and winning the championship. I know that feeling,
the work that was put in, the sweat, the tears,
the blood. I know what it took to get to
that point. And that's what little leagues should be about,
building that character, and the high school level should be
an extension of that. Maybe fun isn't number one, but

(19:29):
it's number one a because again, these are games, right,
these are things that are for kids. But now on
the high school level, we see in il money creeping in, right,
we see these guys all about what they look like
just trying to get that bag, just trying to get
to college, just trying to get to the pros, and

(19:50):
a lot less conversation being had about the love of
the game is their loyalty? Like I said, when I
was in school, we were ready to jump ship. My
best friend did. That was twenty five years ago. So

(20:12):
what's it like now where we see kids going to
these academy schools that are all about sports, where we
see celebrity kids jumping from school to school to school.
Where we see other kids now wanting to emulate that
so they can get that, so they can get the clicks,
so they can be viral, so they can get that bag.

(20:34):
Some loyalty by the high school level for the top
athletes is almost gone. It's about them already and preparing
their career and the best they can do. And you
hear the parents talk that way too. What can you
do for my kid? How are you gonna help my
kid get to the pros? How about your kid goes

(20:58):
out there and has fun. How about your kid goes
out there and performs and becomes part of a team
and a brotherhood and works hard and get something out
of it and realizes it's a sport. But I get
it in IL got to get that bag, not the
target audience. That's not who I was. I loved the game.

(21:20):
I forget college rivalries are for the fans. By the
time you get to college and high school, you still
have some rivalries, right Those schools still don't like each other.
Prep rallies still go on. You still have that rivalry feeling,
So that's good. I appreciate that about high school athletics.
We still have that rivalry feeling from the teams and

(21:41):
from the fans. By the time you get to college,
it's all done. It's sports business. NIL has changed the game.
The transfer portal has changed the game. I am not
loyal to you. I am going where I can get
the most money and put myself in the best situation.

(22:02):
And that doesn't necessarily mean by winning a championship, because
that team goal is becoming less and less important to
these individuals. The me is outweighing the Wii, at least
from the sideline, That's what I see happening. There's no loyalty.

(22:26):
They change teams and look, I get the argument, coaches
can do it, why can't the players. That is a
valid argument. You can't let one group of individuals do
it and not let the other. I will not push
back against that argument, however weak and low hanging it is.

(22:49):
But it's all about me. What can you get me?

Speaker 2 (22:52):
You can get me cars, you can get me rings.
You're gonna give me what? What kind of how's my
bank account gonna look? If I come to your school
this year? We'll talk about next year when that comes. Now,
they still want to win.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
They know winning breed success, but that's secondary at the
collegiate level for these big schools, for the bigger tame athletes,
the fans somehow still hold on to the rivalries. And

(23:25):
that's true for the collegiate level, and that's true for
the professional level. The fans are where rivalries lie at
that level of athletics. We're the ones who circle those
teams on the calendar. We're the ones who think that's important.
We're the ones who want the Lions to beat the
Packers or the Broncos to beat the Raiders. They don't care.

(23:47):
They're willing to jump teams in the middle of the
season to go over there. Let me be a free agent.
I'll go in the division that never used to be
a thing. You did not have guys who wanted to
go play in their division because those were the rivals.
I don't want to go play. They might spend the
last how much ever time not liking them, trying to

(24:08):
beat them. I'm not going to be one of them.
And I used to argue rivalries aren't dead, but I've changed.
They just exist for the fans, and that's fine. That's
what keeps us coming back. That's what keeps us interested
by and large. You know sports betting too, but we're

(24:30):
not talking about that today. But it's that thrill, right,
It's that experience of that you're somehow connected to this
thing and somehow that tribalism helps you go, well, this
is us and that's them. It's almost like a safety
feature and loyalty. On the NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA level,

(24:54):
you might as well do a spit take and laugh
out loud. Right, you might as well, because WYLT at
that level, it doesn't exist. It's business, and you hear
the guys speak to that all the time. This is
a business. I gotta go do what's best for me
and my family. And that's crazy to me because as

(25:16):
I was coming up, when I wanted to be a
professional athlete. I always said I would play for the
minimum amount because I loved the game, like the money.
Any amount you wanted to pay me to play a
game professionally that I love, That is me to the core,
Sign me up. But that's not the business. I get that.

(25:43):
That's me. That's years ago. It's not where we are now.
Do I fault these guys forgetting whatever some team is
willing to pay them. No, if somebody is gonna say
I'm gonna pay you one hundred million dollars to do this,
you better well damn take that money. Do I think
all of these guys deserve the money they get or

(26:04):
are the player to reset the market? Oh hell no.
You got guys reset in the market and getting some
of these contracts that are average on their level at best.
But money talks. If you'll pay me, I'll come do it.

(26:27):
That's professional sports. I will overlook your character as a
person because I understand the thing we are trying to
do here. The goal we have is business oriented. That's
connected to this game. Right. So you got players, coaches
in division whatever, let's do it. Teams no longer worry

(26:48):
about trading in division or in conference, let's just do it.
Business also picks up on the rivalries on the professional level. Right,
It helps them market, it helps them make money, and
it really does go from the top down. And I
don't think it's gonna go back. I think this is

(27:10):
just the model of athletics. I think we're gonna start
seeing more professional trainers for kids. We're gonna see more
AAU teams. We're gonna see more traveling teams. We're gonna
see more bad coaching. We're gonna see more parents acting
ugly and being capitalistic on the sidelines and trying to
live through their children, thinking they're greater than they are.

(27:34):
And we're not gonna go back to sports being about
all of the positive things that can come from it.
Those things will still be there, but it's not the focus.
Sportsmanship is not the focus, right. Being a good teammates
not the focus. Being in shape or healthy is not
the focus in the new way. I mean, I said

(28:00):
at the beginning, Luca Dallas. Everybody kind of thought Luca
would finish his career in Dallas, be there the whole time.
This is a generational talent who's twenty five, twenty six
years old. There's no loyalty there. This is a business.
We want to win this championship, and we don't think
you can do that because you don't play defense, is

(28:21):
what the team said. Ben Johnson leaving Detroit for the
Chicago Bears in Division. This is a team you have
helped coach against for the last what three years? Four years,
and you're gonna go join them. You had said your
conditions for taking a head coaching job was gonna be

(28:45):
the stability in the organization. What's stable about the Chicago
Bears right now? You took it for the bag. I'd
have more respect for Ben Johnson leaving Detroit if he
just was honest. Look, they're paying me a ton of
money and giving me a promotion. I'd be dumb not
to take this opportunity. Jimmy Butler in the heat, there's

(29:09):
no loyalty there, right. Neither party in that equation is
doing right by the other party. Matt Schurzer jumping all
around Major League Baseball. Who's gonna pay me the most
this year? It's Darius Smith. He's been on three different
teams in the NFC North. We all know Lebron Saquon

(29:31):
Barkley Hello just called him the best free agent signing
went from the Giants to the Indivision rival Philadelphia Eagles
down the road. What is it an hour, hour and
a half, two hours separate those teams that never would
have happened when I was coming up in the eighties,
in the nineties, and clearly not before that. Gone are

(29:58):
the days of guys like Mike Trout sticking around with
one team forever and not asking out Tony Gwynn, Sidney Crosby's,
Dirk your Donnas has them, Tim Duncan's right, the Jason Hansen's,
the Darryl Greens, These guys that play fifteen, seventeen, twenty
years for one team because of loyalty, because of the

(30:21):
rivalries that it brought, not because of the sports business,
not because of nil, not because of the bag it brought,
because of the loyalty. This is my team, this is
my squad. So gone are those days. We might see
a guy here there who happens to do that like
Mike Trout currently, like is Sidney Crosby currently, But I

(30:45):
don't see that being the model moving forward the way
it used to be. And that's fine. Things change. The
only constants in life are change and death. It's not
taxes because as we know, billionaires don't pay tax. We
do so on some level. I shed a to you.

(31:07):
I play the tiny violin today for the days of
sports where loyalty and rivalries matter. When sports business was
something in the background that just took place and not
the forefront. It wasn't the team management, marketing, sponsorship, merchandising,
broadcasting rights, talent management. It wasn't an economic force. These

(31:29):
guys had jobs in the off season. It was about
being part of a collective and working towards a common goal.
So those are the thoughts I have. I'd love to
hear what you have to think. Let's keep this conversation going.
Reach out, connect, share, subscribe, all that fun stuff, and

(31:54):
thanks for listening to the Sideline Shuffle.