August 3, 2019 • 22 mins
Colin talks with Fox Sports Radio and FS1's Clay Travis. They talk about the insanity of the mob on Twitter, the democratic debates and what college football is doing wrong that is leading to decreased attendance in this exclusive podcast.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to our Saturday morning podcast. Well, I thought, with
college football coming up and with all the craziness and politics,
we'd bring in our friend played Travis out kicked the
coverage on Fox Sports Radio six to nine am Eastern
author podcast host lock it In on FS one. Let
me start with a political question. I've watched both debates.
(00:24):
Here's my takeaway that Barack Obama among Democrats is probably
the most beloved candidate since JFK two years ago. He
could have run for reelection, probably one he tested through
the roof, and yet in two debates, outside of Joe Biden,
(00:45):
I've heard nothing but Democratic candidates hammer the most popular
Democratic president really in my adult life. What does it say?
I don't get it. I don't understand it. It's insane
to me, Lolk. I voted for Obama twice. I thought
he was an incredibly skilled politician. And my theory on
(01:06):
Obama is this, if you look at the campaigns that
he ran in two thousand and eight and two thousand
and twelve, they were nearly perfection. What he did was
he did not sell identity politics, but he got people
from all different identities to buy in. And that sounds
like it is a little bit complex until you unpack it.
(01:30):
But Obama ran a campaign that motivated black people, Hispanic people,
Asian people, white people, and certainly gay and lesbian people,
all these different identity groups, right, that are discrete groups.
He reached across all those different different dividing lines, and
he managed to motivate everybody by appealing to their quintessential
(01:55):
belief that America is a great country and that there
was an optimistic future for us. All. What happened with
Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen was she saw what Obama did,
but she lacks his skills as an orator and as
a politician, and so she tried to appeal to those
same people as different identity groups, right. And so the
(02:17):
twenty sixteen election was about Democrats trying to drive up
voter interest by appealing specifically and nakedly and without any
kind of common core purpose to each of those identity groups.
And what I fear we're going to see in twenty
twenty is Trump has taken the identity politics route and
he has run with it for a group of marginalized
(02:40):
they believe, you know, lower socioeconomic class white people who
frankly used to be the lifeblood of the Democratic Party,
and he is trying to motivate them to turn out.
And then simultaneously, all of the Democratic candidates are trying
to motivate their discreet interest groups based on their identity.
And my fear is and maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I'm
(03:01):
I hope that I am wrong, that the twenty twenty
campaign is going to be the most identity politics latent
election of our Why. Yeah, and no one is going
to reach to kind of the larger humanity that connects
us all. Yeah. I mean it's I watch it and
I think to myself, have we gone? You know? It's funny.
Social media has empowered far right and far left. And
(03:24):
I've always found myself to be a real moderate, socially
more left than right, fiscally more right than left, kind
of an independent libertarian to some degree. Uh. And it's
I find too often. I saw it this week with
the Mario Lopez story when he offered a common sense
opinion it's crazy, and yet uh looney left goes and
(03:46):
embraces it, and tyranny of the mob ensues. And I
and I and that's what I don't like about social media.
It's empowered, it's empowered fringe groups and attack dogs, and
I think it pulls the Democrats far left in it
and sometimes it pulls the Republicans far right. That's why
I try to you're more active on it than I am.
(04:07):
I mean, I I think it's it's there's too much
mob driven discussion. Don't you ever worry about that? Yeah?
I worry about it all the time. And that's why
I branded myself for a long time and still do
a radical moderate because I am pro choice, you know,
anti the death penalty, but I'm also of the voice
(04:27):
that you know, when someone like Mario Lopez says, three
year old, we probably shouldn't let them pick their gender,
and that's considered controversial. And my perspective is, you know,
I've raised three kids now past the age of three.
So far we don't let them pick their own food
at three years old. The last thing I'm going to
let them do is pick their gender identity for the
(04:49):
foreseeable future. And so when I see that as being controversial,
it isn't an accurate reflection of the real world. And
I think a lot of times it's not just politicians.
I mean, I think it's companies. I think it's people
in our industry who are in you who are palaces.
I think it is actors and actresses and certainly writers
and authors and everybody else who's a public figure. If
(05:12):
you aren't used to kind of being in the storm
when suddenly you pull out your phone and you will
pull it out and there are tons of people telling you,
screaming at you that you're the worst human being on earth.
I mean, you've been through this, and they're defying you
based on some small little segment of your overall a
larger life picture. It's not the way that most people behave.
Let me pretty too, Yos went like in imagine you're
(05:34):
out to Thanksgiving dinner, as everybody you know will do
just about in this country, and your family is there.
You probably have an anorin uncle or a grandma or
grandpa that will say something and you'll be like, you're
kind of sucking your teeth and you're like, oh, I'm
glad we're not on television right now. You know, Like
it doesn't matter what race or ethnicity, or religion or
sexuality or anything else you are. People say things that
(05:55):
are outside the main stream of opinion all the time.
And Thanksgiving dinner and you don't typically, at least I've
never seen it, immediately isolate that person from your family
and berate them and all as a group line up
against them, and you know, and make it worse, right, Like,
that's not the way that humans behave, but he is
(06:16):
the way that humans behave on social media, and I
think it's fundamentally artificial. And there's a great article I
read in the Sunday Times last week. Cass Sunskin, He's
a brilliant legal scholar, said that he had been studying
apologies and he had found that every apology and his
hypothetical he had done four different hypotheticals, they all failed
(06:37):
because when you apologize, the people who like you stop
defending you, and the people who hate you look for
more blood because then they're convinced that they're actually right.
It's like sharks coming to waters. So the worst thing
you can do is apologize for an opinion. Now, if
you want to apologize for an act, you know, Like
I was using an example the other day, I was saying, like,
(06:58):
if I'm in the backyard, I'm playing wootball with my kids,
which I regularly do, and one of them is running
from first to second base and I try to tag
them and I hit them and knock them down, and
I'm not intending to do that. Apologizing for actions is
I think wholly appropriate. You know, like you knocked your
kid down into game, like, oh sorry, thought I didn't
mean to do that. You apologize for an opinion that
(07:20):
you actually have. People can agree with disagree with opinions.
There's nothing wrong with opinions right in the marketplace of ideas,
you can combat them. But there's a difference between disagreeing
with an opinion and trying to cancel people out, which
is I think what happens very often on social media
with this cancel culture. Clay Travis joining us lock it
(07:41):
in outside the out kick the coverage on Fox Sports
Radio six to nine Eastern author, podcast host Friend of
Our show, All Right, let's get to football. College football
has had declining attendance issue now. College basketball twenty five
years ago had a robust dynamic following it is now
(08:01):
basically a three week sport. It's a bracket more than
a sport. As the NBA has pulled away, star driven
college basketball zion excluded, has virtually no stars. They're there
for a year and they leave. I am watching pro football,
in my opinion, pulling away from the NFL, Abama Clemson.
It's becoming very regional. Attendance is declining, and here's what
(08:25):
I wonder. I don't trust the NCAA because they haven't
done it in basketball. They've been very reactive, not proactive.
If I ran college football today, with this declining attendance
issue and this kind of repetitive Alabama Clemson dominance, I
would force teams to play all play ten conference games.
(08:48):
You get one at a conference game in late August,
then you get right into the meat of your schedule.
I think that would you'd own Labor Day. NFL doesn't
want to get hum until late Septem early October. College
football could grab it by the throat Labor Day weekend
twenty five great games, But I don't trust the MC
double as to do it. So I guess my question
(09:10):
to you is, as a college football diehard, HI lean
more pro than college is the declining attendance assign that,
like college basketball, the nc double A has some holes
in their top sport and they're just not good enough,
smart enough to pivot in time to save a lot
of its popularity. Yeah, these are good questions. So, first
(09:34):
of all, on the attendance front, I think this is
a problem with the stadiums being too big, because remember
there are a lot one hundred thousand, ninety thousand seat
stadiums in college football. So if attendance drops two percent
in a ninety five thousand seat stadium, it's still a
lot more people going to watch a college football game
then go to your average NFL stadium, or the average
(09:55):
stadium is like sixty five thousand people. I think structurally,
the stadium that were built generations ago in college football
don't make sense for our present age. It used to
be if you went to a game, you were deciding,
I want to go to this game because I don't
want to have to listen to it on radio, or
I don't want to have to read about it the
next day in the newspaper. Those are the options that
(10:17):
you had. Very few of them were on television, and
even fewer of them were on a television station that
everybody could get nationwide. I think college football has become
so overwhelmingly popular on Saturdays with the total buffet of games.
I know you're like me, I sit and watch like
twelve hours of college Often you know, I put it
on in the morning, and I'll watch all the way
(10:39):
till I go to bed at night. And if I
have to choose between sitting on my couch and watching
ten or twelve parts of ten or twelve great games
or going to one that might be good, I would
rather stay at home on my couch and watch all
the games. So I think the stadiums have cut into
they're too big for the current society. If I were
building a brand new stadium right now for college's football,
(11:00):
I'd make it like forty five thousand seats, but I'd
make the environment inside that stadium phenomenal so that you
wanted to be there. Lazy boy recliners, perfect Wi Fi,
easy to get food and drink, all of those things. Okay,
so that's one. The other thing I would do. I
like the idea of creating and I think this would
be huge. And the challenges in college football has got
(11:21):
all these different feedoms. The SEC has run separate from
the Big Ten, which is different than the a SEC
in the Big twelve and the eighth and the Pack twelve.
I think we should have conference challenges. I think this
I think would be insanely popular to start the college
football season. Imagine if the SEC played the Big Ten
(11:42):
one to fourteen, and you use the last year's schedules
or this year's projections, or however you wanted to do it.
Seven games in the Big Ten, seven games in the SEC,
and they played it on opening weekend over a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday,
and then closed it out on a Monday. They awarded
a Big Trophy for whichever conference was better head to head,
(12:04):
and then you could have to Pack twelve played the
Big twelve, or you could have the acc rotate end.
I think, much like they do this in college basketball.
I think it would be an insane success, right, Like,
just think about how much attention and talk there would
be if one to fourteen, the SEC and the Big
Ten were going head to head every year on the
opening weekend of college football, and then later on in
(12:26):
the season you can still have the playoff, which I
think should be expanded to eight. I think it would
make the opening weekend of college football a Ken to
March madness because of the total fever pitch that those
games would create in conference challenges. So those would be
my solutions that they said play Travis. We did a
great idea. What would you do? I think at Home
and Home seven verses seven and one to fourteen and
(12:48):
sec big ten is something we don't get enough of,
and get a little bit of it in Bowl season,
but I think fans would eat it up like crazy.
US women's soccer very dominant, and there has been some
discussion about should they be paid more than men. So
I always have this theory when I go to a
movie Clay, it doesn't matter if the movie is an
(13:08):
hour and a half or two fifteen. The actors shouldn't
be paid based on length of film. If I like
the movie, it doesn't matter how long it is. That's
why Serena Williams only plays three sets at Wimbledon, but
makes what the guys do playing five sets. It doesn't
bother me because I'd rather watch Serena than all but
about three men's tennis players Federer, Djokovic, Nandal, Serena. She
(13:33):
is to me in the top four most captivating tennis
players in the world. Now soccer is different the Men's
World Cup. I can watch the United States or fifteen
other teams. I love Brutal, I love Argentina, I love England,
I love Germany, I'll watch Chili, I'll watch Mexico in
the Women's World Cup. Boy, outside of the United States,
(13:55):
I pretty much watched England and France because I thought
they had a chance to play the United Sates. So
men's soccer, we have a men's professional league in America.
It's much more popular than women's soccer. But what do
we do now when we do have a dominant women's
national team that is to a lot of people more
fascinating than are flailing, disorganized, low energy men's team. Let's
(14:20):
talk about the pay issue which surfaced this week. I
don't know if USA Soccer put it out, but let's
talk about that because you, I tend to be a believer. Listen,
if you have a great female team or athlete and
they get me to a theater, I have no problem
paying them as much or more as guys, even though
guys generally commerce and is driven in American sports mostly
(14:41):
by men's teams, right mostly, Yeah, So your thoughts about
the article that came out or the release this week
about the pay in the United States women's soccer team, Well,
let's start here. The reason why our US women dominate
is because they have global human rights in America that
(15:02):
most women don't have around the world. So, as you said,
like great male athletes, even in poor countries are discovered
and developed because there's substantial economic value associated with it. Right,
So if you are growing up poor in Africa and
you are an incredible athlete and you get a soccer
ball on your foot, there's a decent chance they will
(15:23):
find you if you are male, not necessarily the same
thing if you are female. Same thing in the Middle East, certainly,
where women just got the right to drive cars, for
instance in Saudi Arabia, and women have to wear pants
to play soccer and jobs in Iran, and we're not
allowed to go watch games in person. So our resources
and wealth allow us to develop women's talents in soccer
(15:47):
in a way that most of the rest of the world,
outside of the incredibly industrialized and wealthy countries of Europe,
like you mentioned France and England, which don't even care
at least historically, have not anywhere near as much about
women's soccer either. That is one reason why our women dominate.
They are not competing with all of the other women
in the rest of the world because the rest of
the women in the world don't have the same rights
(16:08):
and opportunities as our women do. In men's sports, we
tend to still find all the best athletes, which is
why the competition level is higher for men's World Cup
than women's World Cup. But let's go to the data points.
Because there are lots of people who just want to
yell arguments and its opinions, and it's fine, but one
of the things that troubles me in society today is
you need to have an underpinning, at least factually to
(16:30):
support your argument. You understand this. Sports fans understand this.
If I come on and you're arguing Lebron versus Jordan,
and I say, well, Jordan one twelve championships and Lebron's
only got one, automatically you're not going to believe me
because my basic facts are wrong. Right, So my opinion
of who's better you don't support because you know that
the facts are wrong. Jordan's got six, Lebron's got three. Well,
(16:54):
here are some stats that US Soccer put out. Now
I'm saying that I am believing that these are two.
They say it's been financially audited statements over and so
you can't an accountant. So I have to assume that
what they're putting out is in fact accurate and done
in a legitimate fashion. This is what they put out
from US Soccer. US women in the last decade made
(17:15):
thirty four point one million dollars. The US men made
twenty six point four million dollars. So over the last decade,
the women's soccer team has made fifty six point four
percent of all revenues that have been paid to players.
The men have made forty three point six percent. Now,
what about the revenue that they produce. According to US Soccer,
(17:36):
the men have produced one hundred and eighty five point
seven million dollars in revenue, averaging just shy of a
million dollars per game. The women have produced one hundred
and one point three million dollars in revenue, averaging just
shy of four hundred and twenty five thousand dollars a game. Now,
the way that that would break down is the men
(17:57):
are roughly producing about two of the revenue that comes
into the US Soccer Federation and the women are receiving
over fifty six percent of the money. So when I
see these numbers, which by the way, we're collectively bargained
independently by both the men and the women. The women
are full time employees. They also get health healthcare, they
(18:19):
get you know, insurance, health insurance, they get sick leaves,
they get the ability to start four oh one ks.
The men have financial viability outside of the US men's team, right.
They can play MLS if they're great, they can play
overseas and make millions of dollars. They don't want to
be full time employees. That's because the men's World Cup
produced six billion dollars in revenue. The women's World Cup
(18:43):
produced around up billion sixty to one one hundred million
sixty to one. So all these numbers militate towards the
US men produce more revenue. The women are already making
more money. It's a function of market economics more than
it's a function of anything. Yes, I agree. That's why
I stayed out of the when when people started talking
about this. My takeaway was always from because I've kind
(19:06):
of a soccer nerd for the last seven or eight years,
and I've met commissioners of the MLS, some people with
USA Soccer, and the story behind the story was the
men's revenue in soccer is substantially not marginally substantially higher.
And therefore that's why, you know, the reality is it
(19:28):
pays more to be average for our guys than to
be outstanding for women when it comes to World Cup soccer.
That's just the market economics in play. That's that's how
commerce works. By the way, you know, for years and years,
there are all sorts of businesses where I can be
you know, I'll give you one. An average female supermodel
(19:49):
will make ten times more than a wildly successful male
model because women drive fashion and women drive that industry.
You can be the seventy fifth most coveted female supermodel
in the world and you'll make substantially more than the
third most popular male model. And and and I do
think to a large degree, men and their viewership and
(20:14):
consumption of sports drive sports. Eighty percent of my audience
is men. Nine percent of sports betting is by men.
Not saying it's right, that's that's just the reality of
our sports world, right. Yeah. Look, I mean, market economics
explain many things that people want to attribute to political
(20:35):
based factors most of the time. If you get why.
I used to have an ECON teacher, and he said,
you know, people like to talk about white, black, brown, yellow,
whatever skin color you want to focus on with somebody,
the one that matters the most is clean. And when
you actually look at the money that is produced in
the soccer universe, that's where the value is. Now. Look,
(20:55):
you talked about modeling, I mean there are other examples
right Like right now, it's fascinating to see how the
live music industry has exploded. Right There's never been a
better time if you're one of the superstars to be
able to go out on the road and perform. Women
Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Rihanna, you could run through a lot
(21:15):
of the top female acts. They are dominating, Like if
you look at the revenue that they produce. Same thing
with writing, right, Like, women buy a lot more books
on average than men do. And as a result, if
you look, for instance, at the fiction bestseller list, it's
almost all female based because for whatever reason, they connect
better with the audience that is buying books. So market
(21:38):
based economy economics explain almost everything here. And I think again,
sometimes oftentimes in our society, as you mentioned, were so polarizing.
People want the world to bend to the way that
they see the world, and so they choose to have
opinions that don't necessarily reflect the underlying facts. Clay Travis
Grade talking to you. Can't wait for college football, buddy,
(21:59):
Thanks for coming on. Amen, you and me both can't
wait to start gambling on football against Clay Travis. Thanks Bud,
Thanks that was awesome. Awesome,
Welcome to our Saturday morning podcast. Well, I thought, with
college football coming up and with all the craziness and politics,
we'd bring in our friend played Travis out kicked the
coverage on Fox Sports Radio six to nine am Eastern
author podcast host lock it In on FS one. Let
me start with a political question. I've watched both debates.
(00:24):
Here's my takeaway that Barack Obama among Democrats is probably
the most beloved candidate since JFK two years ago. He
could have run for reelection, probably one he tested through
the roof, and yet in two debates, outside of Joe Biden,
(00:45):
I've heard nothing but Democratic candidates hammer the most popular
Democratic president really in my adult life. What does it say?
I don't get it. I don't understand it. It's insane
to me, Lolk. I voted for Obama twice. I thought
he was an incredibly skilled politician. And my theory on
(01:06):
Obama is this, if you look at the campaigns that
he ran in two thousand and eight and two thousand
and twelve, they were nearly perfection. What he did was
he did not sell identity politics, but he got people
from all different identities to buy in. And that sounds
like it is a little bit complex until you unpack it.
(01:30):
But Obama ran a campaign that motivated black people, Hispanic people,
Asian people, white people, and certainly gay and lesbian people,
all these different identity groups, right, that are discrete groups.
He reached across all those different different dividing lines, and
he managed to motivate everybody by appealing to their quintessential
(01:55):
belief that America is a great country and that there
was an optimistic future for us. All. What happened with
Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen was she saw what Obama did,
but she lacks his skills as an orator and as
a politician, and so she tried to appeal to those
same people as different identity groups, right. And so the
(02:17):
twenty sixteen election was about Democrats trying to drive up
voter interest by appealing specifically and nakedly and without any
kind of common core purpose to each of those identity groups.
And what I fear we're going to see in twenty
twenty is Trump has taken the identity politics route and
he has run with it for a group of marginalized
(02:40):
they believe, you know, lower socioeconomic class white people who
frankly used to be the lifeblood of the Democratic Party,
and he is trying to motivate them to turn out.
And then simultaneously, all of the Democratic candidates are trying
to motivate their discreet interest groups based on their identity.
And my fear is and maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I'm
(03:01):
I hope that I am wrong, that the twenty twenty
campaign is going to be the most identity politics latent
election of our Why. Yeah, and no one is going
to reach to kind of the larger humanity that connects
us all. Yeah. I mean it's I watch it and
I think to myself, have we gone? You know? It's funny.
Social media has empowered far right and far left. And
(03:24):
I've always found myself to be a real moderate, socially
more left than right, fiscally more right than left, kind
of an independent libertarian to some degree. Uh. And it's
I find too often. I saw it this week with
the Mario Lopez story when he offered a common sense
opinion it's crazy, and yet uh looney left goes and
(03:46):
embraces it, and tyranny of the mob ensues. And I
and I and that's what I don't like about social media.
It's empowered, it's empowered fringe groups and attack dogs, and
I think it pulls the Democrats far left in it
and sometimes it pulls the Republicans far right. That's why
I try to you're more active on it than I am.
(04:07):
I mean, I I think it's it's there's too much
mob driven discussion. Don't you ever worry about that? Yeah?
I worry about it all the time. And that's why
I branded myself for a long time and still do
a radical moderate because I am pro choice, you know,
anti the death penalty, but I'm also of the voice
(04:27):
that you know, when someone like Mario Lopez says, three
year old, we probably shouldn't let them pick their gender,
and that's considered controversial. And my perspective is, you know,
I've raised three kids now past the age of three.
So far we don't let them pick their own food
at three years old. The last thing I'm going to
let them do is pick their gender identity for the
(04:49):
foreseeable future. And so when I see that as being controversial,
it isn't an accurate reflection of the real world. And
I think a lot of times it's not just politicians.
I mean, I think it's companies. I think it's people
in our industry who are in you who are palaces.
I think it is actors and actresses and certainly writers
and authors and everybody else who's a public figure. If
(05:12):
you aren't used to kind of being in the storm
when suddenly you pull out your phone and you will
pull it out and there are tons of people telling you,
screaming at you that you're the worst human being on earth.
I mean, you've been through this, and they're defying you
based on some small little segment of your overall a
larger life picture. It's not the way that most people behave.
Let me pretty too, Yos went like in imagine you're
(05:34):
out to Thanksgiving dinner, as everybody you know will do
just about in this country, and your family is there.
You probably have an anorin uncle or a grandma or
grandpa that will say something and you'll be like, you're
kind of sucking your teeth and you're like, oh, I'm
glad we're not on television right now. You know, Like
it doesn't matter what race or ethnicity, or religion or
sexuality or anything else you are. People say things that
(05:55):
are outside the main stream of opinion all the time.
And Thanksgiving dinner and you don't typically, at least I've
never seen it, immediately isolate that person from your family
and berate them and all as a group line up
against them, and you know, and make it worse, right, Like,
that's not the way that humans behave, but he is
(06:16):
the way that humans behave on social media, and I
think it's fundamentally artificial. And there's a great article I
read in the Sunday Times last week. Cass Sunskin, He's
a brilliant legal scholar, said that he had been studying
apologies and he had found that every apology and his
hypothetical he had done four different hypotheticals, they all failed
(06:37):
because when you apologize, the people who like you stop
defending you, and the people who hate you look for
more blood because then they're convinced that they're actually right.
It's like sharks coming to waters. So the worst thing
you can do is apologize for an opinion. Now, if
you want to apologize for an act, you know, Like
I was using an example the other day, I was saying, like,
(06:58):
if I'm in the backyard, I'm playing wootball with my kids,
which I regularly do, and one of them is running
from first to second base and I try to tag
them and I hit them and knock them down, and
I'm not intending to do that. Apologizing for actions is
I think wholly appropriate. You know, like you knocked your
kid down into game, like, oh sorry, thought I didn't
mean to do that. You apologize for an opinion that
(07:20):
you actually have. People can agree with disagree with opinions.
There's nothing wrong with opinions right in the marketplace of ideas,
you can combat them. But there's a difference between disagreeing
with an opinion and trying to cancel people out, which
is I think what happens very often on social media
with this cancel culture. Clay Travis joining us lock it
(07:41):
in outside the out kick the coverage on Fox Sports
Radio six to nine Eastern author, podcast host Friend of
Our show, All Right, let's get to football. College football
has had declining attendance issue now. College basketball twenty five
years ago had a robust dynamic following it is now
(08:01):
basically a three week sport. It's a bracket more than
a sport. As the NBA has pulled away, star driven
college basketball zion excluded, has virtually no stars. They're there
for a year and they leave. I am watching pro football,
in my opinion, pulling away from the NFL, Abama Clemson.
It's becoming very regional. Attendance is declining, and here's what
(08:25):
I wonder. I don't trust the NCAA because they haven't
done it in basketball. They've been very reactive, not proactive.
If I ran college football today, with this declining attendance
issue and this kind of repetitive Alabama Clemson dominance, I
would force teams to play all play ten conference games.
(08:48):
You get one at a conference game in late August,
then you get right into the meat of your schedule.
I think that would you'd own Labor Day. NFL doesn't
want to get hum until late Septem early October. College
football could grab it by the throat Labor Day weekend
twenty five great games, But I don't trust the MC
double as to do it. So I guess my question
(09:10):
to you is, as a college football diehard, HI lean
more pro than college is the declining attendance assign that,
like college basketball, the nc double A has some holes
in their top sport and they're just not good enough,
smart enough to pivot in time to save a lot
of its popularity. Yeah, these are good questions. So, first
(09:34):
of all, on the attendance front, I think this is
a problem with the stadiums being too big, because remember
there are a lot one hundred thousand, ninety thousand seat
stadiums in college football. So if attendance drops two percent
in a ninety five thousand seat stadium, it's still a
lot more people going to watch a college football game
then go to your average NFL stadium, or the average
(09:55):
stadium is like sixty five thousand people. I think structurally,
the stadium that were built generations ago in college football
don't make sense for our present age. It used to
be if you went to a game, you were deciding,
I want to go to this game because I don't
want to have to listen to it on radio, or
I don't want to have to read about it the
next day in the newspaper. Those are the options that
(10:17):
you had. Very few of them were on television, and
even fewer of them were on a television station that
everybody could get nationwide. I think college football has become
so overwhelmingly popular on Saturdays with the total buffet of games.
I know you're like me, I sit and watch like
twelve hours of college Often you know, I put it
on in the morning, and I'll watch all the way
(10:39):
till I go to bed at night. And if I
have to choose between sitting on my couch and watching
ten or twelve parts of ten or twelve great games
or going to one that might be good, I would
rather stay at home on my couch and watch all
the games. So I think the stadiums have cut into
they're too big for the current society. If I were
building a brand new stadium right now for college's football,
(11:00):
I'd make it like forty five thousand seats, but I'd
make the environment inside that stadium phenomenal so that you
wanted to be there. Lazy boy recliners, perfect Wi Fi,
easy to get food and drink, all of those things. Okay,
so that's one. The other thing I would do. I
like the idea of creating and I think this would
be huge. And the challenges in college football has got
(11:21):
all these different feedoms. The SEC has run separate from
the Big Ten, which is different than the a SEC
in the Big twelve and the eighth and the Pack twelve.
I think we should have conference challenges. I think this
I think would be insanely popular to start the college
football season. Imagine if the SEC played the Big Ten
(11:42):
one to fourteen, and you use the last year's schedules
or this year's projections, or however you wanted to do it.
Seven games in the Big Ten, seven games in the SEC,
and they played it on opening weekend over a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday,
and then closed it out on a Monday. They awarded
a Big Trophy for whichever conference was better head to head,
(12:04):
and then you could have to Pack twelve played the
Big twelve, or you could have the acc rotate end.
I think, much like they do this in college basketball.
I think it would be an insane success, right, Like,
just think about how much attention and talk there would
be if one to fourteen, the SEC and the Big
Ten were going head to head every year on the
opening weekend of college football, and then later on in
(12:26):
the season you can still have the playoff, which I
think should be expanded to eight. I think it would
make the opening weekend of college football a Ken to
March madness because of the total fever pitch that those
games would create in conference challenges. So those would be
my solutions that they said play Travis. We did a
great idea. What would you do? I think at Home
and Home seven verses seven and one to fourteen and
(12:48):
sec big ten is something we don't get enough of,
and get a little bit of it in Bowl season,
but I think fans would eat it up like crazy.
US women's soccer very dominant, and there has been some
discussion about should they be paid more than men. So
I always have this theory when I go to a
movie Clay, it doesn't matter if the movie is an
(13:08):
hour and a half or two fifteen. The actors shouldn't
be paid based on length of film. If I like
the movie, it doesn't matter how long it is. That's
why Serena Williams only plays three sets at Wimbledon, but
makes what the guys do playing five sets. It doesn't
bother me because I'd rather watch Serena than all but
about three men's tennis players Federer, Djokovic, Nandal, Serena. She
(13:33):
is to me in the top four most captivating tennis
players in the world. Now soccer is different the Men's
World Cup. I can watch the United States or fifteen
other teams. I love Brutal, I love Argentina, I love England,
I love Germany, I'll watch Chili, I'll watch Mexico in
the Women's World Cup. Boy, outside of the United States,
(13:55):
I pretty much watched England and France because I thought
they had a chance to play the United Sates. So
men's soccer, we have a men's professional league in America.
It's much more popular than women's soccer. But what do
we do now when we do have a dominant women's
national team that is to a lot of people more
fascinating than are flailing, disorganized, low energy men's team. Let's
(14:20):
talk about the pay issue which surfaced this week. I
don't know if USA Soccer put it out, but let's
talk about that because you, I tend to be a believer. Listen,
if you have a great female team or athlete and
they get me to a theater, I have no problem
paying them as much or more as guys, even though
guys generally commerce and is driven in American sports mostly
(14:41):
by men's teams, right mostly, Yeah, So your thoughts about
the article that came out or the release this week
about the pay in the United States women's soccer team, Well,
let's start here. The reason why our US women dominate
is because they have global human rights in America that
(15:02):
most women don't have around the world. So, as you said,
like great male athletes, even in poor countries are discovered
and developed because there's substantial economic value associated with it. Right,
So if you are growing up poor in Africa and
you are an incredible athlete and you get a soccer
ball on your foot, there's a decent chance they will
(15:23):
find you if you are male, not necessarily the same
thing if you are female. Same thing in the Middle East, certainly,
where women just got the right to drive cars, for
instance in Saudi Arabia, and women have to wear pants
to play soccer and jobs in Iran, and we're not
allowed to go watch games in person. So our resources
and wealth allow us to develop women's talents in soccer
(15:47):
in a way that most of the rest of the world,
outside of the incredibly industrialized and wealthy countries of Europe,
like you mentioned France and England, which don't even care
at least historically, have not anywhere near as much about
women's soccer either. That is one reason why our women dominate.
They are not competing with all of the other women
in the rest of the world because the rest of
the women in the world don't have the same rights
(16:08):
and opportunities as our women do. In men's sports, we
tend to still find all the best athletes, which is
why the competition level is higher for men's World Cup
than women's World Cup. But let's go to the data points.
Because there are lots of people who just want to
yell arguments and its opinions, and it's fine, but one
of the things that troubles me in society today is
you need to have an underpinning, at least factually to
(16:30):
support your argument. You understand this. Sports fans understand this.
If I come on and you're arguing Lebron versus Jordan,
and I say, well, Jordan one twelve championships and Lebron's
only got one, automatically you're not going to believe me
because my basic facts are wrong. Right, So my opinion
of who's better you don't support because you know that
the facts are wrong. Jordan's got six, Lebron's got three. Well,
(16:54):
here are some stats that US Soccer put out. Now
I'm saying that I am believing that these are two.
They say it's been financially audited statements over and so
you can't an accountant. So I have to assume that
what they're putting out is in fact accurate and done
in a legitimate fashion. This is what they put out
from US Soccer. US women in the last decade made
(17:15):
thirty four point one million dollars. The US men made
twenty six point four million dollars. So over the last decade,
the women's soccer team has made fifty six point four
percent of all revenues that have been paid to players.
The men have made forty three point six percent. Now,
what about the revenue that they produce. According to US Soccer,
(17:36):
the men have produced one hundred and eighty five point
seven million dollars in revenue, averaging just shy of a
million dollars per game. The women have produced one hundred
and one point three million dollars in revenue, averaging just
shy of four hundred and twenty five thousand dollars a game. Now,
the way that that would break down is the men
(17:57):
are roughly producing about two of the revenue that comes
into the US Soccer Federation and the women are receiving
over fifty six percent of the money. So when I
see these numbers, which by the way, we're collectively bargained
independently by both the men and the women. The women
are full time employees. They also get health healthcare, they
(18:19):
get you know, insurance, health insurance, they get sick leaves,
they get the ability to start four oh one ks.
The men have financial viability outside of the US men's team, right.
They can play MLS if they're great, they can play
overseas and make millions of dollars. They don't want to
be full time employees. That's because the men's World Cup
produced six billion dollars in revenue. The women's World Cup
(18:43):
produced around up billion sixty to one one hundred million
sixty to one. So all these numbers militate towards the
US men produce more revenue. The women are already making
more money. It's a function of market economics more than
it's a function of anything. Yes, I agree. That's why
I stayed out of the when when people started talking
about this. My takeaway was always from because I've kind
(19:06):
of a soccer nerd for the last seven or eight years,
and I've met commissioners of the MLS, some people with
USA Soccer, and the story behind the story was the
men's revenue in soccer is substantially not marginally substantially higher.
And therefore that's why, you know, the reality is it
(19:28):
pays more to be average for our guys than to
be outstanding for women when it comes to World Cup soccer.
That's just the market economics in play. That's that's how
commerce works. By the way, you know, for years and years,
there are all sorts of businesses where I can be
you know, I'll give you one. An average female supermodel
(19:49):
will make ten times more than a wildly successful male
model because women drive fashion and women drive that industry.
You can be the seventy fifth most coveted female supermodel
in the world and you'll make substantially more than the
third most popular male model. And and and I do
think to a large degree, men and their viewership and
(20:14):
consumption of sports drive sports. Eighty percent of my audience
is men. Nine percent of sports betting is by men.
Not saying it's right, that's that's just the reality of
our sports world, right. Yeah. Look, I mean, market economics
explain many things that people want to attribute to political
(20:35):
based factors most of the time. If you get why.
I used to have an ECON teacher, and he said,
you know, people like to talk about white, black, brown, yellow,
whatever skin color you want to focus on with somebody,
the one that matters the most is clean. And when
you actually look at the money that is produced in
the soccer universe, that's where the value is. Now. Look,
(20:55):
you talked about modeling, I mean there are other examples
right Like right now, it's fascinating to see how the
live music industry has exploded. Right There's never been a
better time if you're one of the superstars to be
able to go out on the road and perform. Women
Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Rihanna, you could run through a lot
(21:15):
of the top female acts. They are dominating, Like if
you look at the revenue that they produce. Same thing
with writing, right, Like, women buy a lot more books
on average than men do. And as a result, if
you look, for instance, at the fiction bestseller list, it's
almost all female based because for whatever reason, they connect
better with the audience that is buying books. So market
(21:38):
based economy economics explain almost everything here. And I think again,
sometimes oftentimes in our society, as you mentioned, were so polarizing.
People want the world to bend to the way that
they see the world, and so they choose to have
opinions that don't necessarily reflect the underlying facts. Clay Travis
Grade talking to you. Can't wait for college football, buddy,
(21:59):
Thanks for coming on. Amen, you and me both can't
wait to start gambling on football against Clay Travis. Thanks Bud,
Thanks that was awesome. Awesome,
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Colin Cowherd
Jason McIntyre
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