The Ben Shapiro Show - Clay Travis | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 16

00:00:00.000 Meritocracy works.

00:00:01.000 You know, the most talented person in sports wins, and I'm afraid that we're trying to turn sports into another version of politics, as opposed to the best thing that I think politics can aspire to.

00:00:19.000 Well, here we are on the Sunday special with Clay Travis.

00:00:22.000 Clay is the host of the nationwide morning show for Fox Sports Radio.

00:00:25.000 He's author of the book Republicans Buy Sneakers To Have Left His Ruining Sports With Politics, which will be released on September 25th.

00:00:31.000 We're going to get right to it in just a second. 0.98

00:00:33.000 First, let us talk about you're going to die. 0.98

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00:01:40.000 Well, Clay, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:01:42.000 I appreciate you having me.

00:01:43.000 Well, absolutely.

00:01:44.000 One of the reasons that I've been fond of your commentary is because you take a politically diverse point of view.

00:01:49.000 For a person who, like me, cancelled Sports Illustrated years ago over their political coverage, it's been interesting to watch as you've gained a lot of fame and credibility off of speaking to a different side of the coverage.

00:02:00.000 I've obviously been aware of your site, outkicked the coverage for a long time.

00:02:03.000 I want to get started by asking you sort of where your politics developed and how this sort of political sports merger happened for you.

00:02:10.000 It's a great question, and first of all, I love the show.

00:02:12.000 I appreciate you having me on.

00:02:13.000 I'm a fan of everything that you're doing, so keep up the good work.

00:02:17.000 Secondly, so I was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, K-12 public school.

00:02:23.000 As I was growing up, huge history buff, huge sports buff, like huge politics buff, all those different things.

00:02:30.000 And I think a lot like you, I would wake up every morning, and as I ate breakfast before I'd go to school, I'd put on SportsCenter, and I would wait and see what happened the night before, after I'd gone to bed, whatever else.

00:02:39.000 Along the way I went away to GW for undergrad and then I came back for law school.

00:02:45.000 And to me, and this is a big part of the book, most of the 1980s and 90s when I was growing up, I'm 39, in the early 2000s, I don't remember an athlete ever having a political opinion.

00:02:55.000 I say in the book, I had three posters on the wall when I was a kid growing up.

00:02:59.000 I grew up a Cincinnati Reds fan.

00:03:01.000 I had Eric Davis, who was chasing the 40 for 40 before Jose Canseco did it.

00:03:06.000 I had Jordan dunking from the free throw line, even though he took off from inside of the free throw line, right?

00:03:10.000 That iconic photo of him in flight.

00:03:12.000 And then I had the Bo Jackson with the shoulder pads and the baseball bat, like black and white photo.

00:03:17.000 I was a huge Bo Jackson guy.

00:03:18.000 So those were the three.

00:03:19.000 And I was thinking about this as I wrote the book.

00:03:22.000 None of those guys do I ever remember while they were playing ever having remotely a political idea.

00:03:27.000 And then I went back and I was like, well, maybe I'm a kid and I'm not remembering.

00:03:30.000 I'm missing something.

00:03:32.000 And I kind of went back over everything.

00:03:33.000 And outside of the O.J.

00:03:35.000 Simpson trial, which was political in many different ways, was involving a former athlete.

00:03:42.000 None of the athletes that we grew up with ever got political.

00:03:44.000 And I went back and went through Jordan's history, and the Republicans buy sneakers to quote, or shoes, depending on who you want to give attention to, for the Harvey Gantt versus Jesse Helms 1990 election in the Senate in North Carolina.

00:03:58.000 That was what Jordan said when he didn't choose a side, a black guy running against a white guy in a sort of racially fraught political climate at that time.

00:04:08.000 And I think Jordan was right, you know.

00:04:11.000 So to answer your question, I graduated from law school.

00:04:15.000 I started practicing law.

00:04:16.000 And like a lot of 25-year-old lawyers, probably some who are listening right now, I had a quarter-life crisis where I said, my God, I can't imagine sitting around and doing litigation like this for the rest of my life.

00:04:27.000 And I started writing online.

00:04:29.000 And that grew and grew, wrote a couple of books.

00:04:32.000 And in this book, the Missouri protest, and I know you spoke at the University of Missouri, the Missouri protest in 2015 was my red pill moment.

00:04:41.000 The way that I saw myself and other sports media members responding to that story, I said, we're covering fundamental untruths here.

00:04:50.000 The actual facts and the actual story is not being covered.

00:04:53.000 This is an illegitimate protest with no rooting in reality whatsoever.

00:04:58.000 And yet, you were seeing all of these protesters lionized and treated as if they were modern-day civil rights activists.

00:05:05.000 So for people on this stage, do you want to kind of recapitulate what exactly happened there?

00:05:10.000 Yeah, so the story was at the University of Missouri, there was a protest started by some graduate students, and their goal was pretty outlandish.

00:05:19.000 Like, they were like, we want the university president

00:05:21.000 to climb up on a cafeteria table and denounce his white privilege publicly and then resign.

00:05:29.000 We want the faculty to suddenly be, and I don't remember the percentages, but like 28% African American.

00:05:37.000 And as a result, if you have to fire other people, we don't care.

00:05:39.000 Like fundamentally illogical, illegal, certainly, you know, things that could not happen.

00:05:45.000 And so they started a protest in the center of the campus quad.

00:05:48.000 And as the protest grew, there was a hunger striker.

00:05:51.000 Now, the Hunger Strikers' dad was like an executive, I think, at Norfolk Southern who made like $20 million a year.

00:05:56.000 I mean, like, he was insanely wealthy, but he was saying, oh, we can't afford health insurance anymore.

00:06:01.000 And there were three incidents, they said, that demonstrated extreme racism that was going on in the campus.

00:06:07.000 One of them was a poop swastika, remember? 0.97

00:06:10.000 The infamous poop swastika. 0.77

00:06:13.000 And I've said before, and I'm sure this will be the case for you, if somebody said, oh, Ben Shapiro, I'm a huge fan, and they showed up with you, like a portrait that they had done of you in feces, you wouldn't be like, oh, that's a huge endorsement of me.

00:06:25.000 Right.

00:06:25.000 So I'm not sure which direction the poop swastika is even going.

00:06:28.000 Like, that could be somebody hating the poop.

00:06:29.000 Like, whatever.

00:06:30.000 It's good.

00:06:30.000 So that happened.

00:06:31.000 We don't know.

00:06:31.000 Also not clear it was directed against African-Americans.

00:06:33.000 Or who did it.

00:06:34.000 Right.

00:06:34.000 Like, it could be.

00:06:35.000 We don't even know the motive.

00:06:36.000 Could have been directed against Jews in the swastika.

00:06:37.000 Exactly.

00:06:38.000 Nothing to do with, no idea about that.

00:06:40.000 There was a student body president who allegedly had a racial slur yelled at him off campus by somebody in a red pickup truck.

00:06:47.000 No idea who that was.

00:06:48.000 There were no witnesses.

00:06:50.000 It's off campus.

00:06:51.000 It's awful, but you have no idea how that's connected to Missouri.

00:06:54.000 And then one person who was a non-student walked through campus and said a racial slur, like as an African-American group was meeting on campus.

00:07:02.000 And for that, that was the locus, the reason why they started the protest.

00:07:08.000 And so I went and I looked at all this and I said, the University of Missouri at this time was embracing Michael Sam.

00:07:14.000 They had a gay black man who had been elected as student body president.

00:07:17.000 I can't speak to the hearts and minds of every single student at the University of Missouri, but I had spent a lot of time there as they got integrated into the SEC, became members of the Southeastern Conference.

00:07:28.000 Inclusion and diversity did not seem to be an issue at Missouri.

00:07:31.000 And so the protest eventually spread from this hunger striker to the football team saying, we will not take the field and play unless the demands of these protesting students are acquiesced to.

00:07:42.000 And I said, my God, this is a big story, right?

00:07:46.000 I got to look into all the details.

00:07:47.000 Well, I looked in and found out the three incidents that they were complaining about.

00:07:51.000 And I said, there's no legitimacy for this protest.

00:07:54.000 But the head of the football team, Gary Pinkle, the athletic director, everybody was afraid to call out the students and in any way fight back.

00:08:03.000 The chancellor ended up losing his job.

00:08:05.000 The president of the overall Missouri University lost his job.

00:08:11.000 And so, and then the, this was amazing when I looked at the data, the overall enrollment of the university

00:08:19.000 I don't have the numbers in front of me right now, but it was more crippling to Missouri, this protest, than Hurricane Katrina was to Tulane.

00:08:29.000 So you think about this Hurricane Katrina, which basically shut down the city of New Orleans and crippled the entire region.

00:08:36.000 Had less of a significant impact on the enrollment and I went and looked at the enrollment numbers at Tulane than the Missouri protest did.

00:08:45.000 And so as I examined all the details surrounding this story, I just said, my God, the media is not doing their job.

00:08:50.000 Our job to me in sports media is to speak truth to power sometimes, right?

00:08:55.000 And the students were the powerful people here who were protesting and they were the ones who were winning in the court of public opinion.

00:09:01.000 And their protest was completely illegitimate.

00:09:03.000 So I started writing about that.

00:09:05.000 And something happened to me that I'd never seen happen before, which was immediately, everybody attacked me and said, oh, you're racist, you're sexist.

00:09:13.000 And I had never seen that happen before.

00:09:15.000 Because up to that point, I worked on Al Gore's presidential campaign.

00:09:18.000 I worked in Democratic politics.

00:09:20.000 I consider myself to be a very middle-of-the-road guy.

00:09:22.000 And what I noticed very rapidly was people weren't attacking my reporting or my opinions or the facts that I was discussing in this case.

00:09:32.000 They were attacking me personally.

00:09:34.000 And from there is my red pill moment.

00:09:36.000 My eyes started to open and I said, my God.

00:09:39.000 Maybe I have been missing and slowly the sports media has turned into politics by any other name.

00:09:45.000 And from there, I really do just think it's continued to grow in a rapid fashion.

00:09:49.000 So what the hell happened to the sports media?

00:09:51.000 Because many years ago, now it's probably six, seven years ago, maybe longer, I was a Sports Illustrated subscriber from the time that I was probably 13 years old to the time that I was probably 27, 28 years old and read it cover to cover every single week.

00:10:03.000 And then I unsubscribed because they decided to put Caitlyn Jenner on the cover.

00:10:08.000 Because I just felt like this is not athletically relevant.

00:10:10.000 What does this have to do with anything?

00:10:12.000 And I began to notice that ESPN was doing the same thing.

00:10:14.000 I had the same experience that you did, which I would get up at six o'clock in the morning, West Coast time, so I could be the first person to see all the highlights.

00:10:20.000 And then it became, I don't want to watch any of this stuff anymore because I'm going to get a human interest story on Hands Up, Don't Shoot, which has nothing to do with sports itself.

00:10:27.000 So why do you think that it was that the athletes started to get more political, so the media got more political?

00:10:32.000 Do you think it was that the media got more political and so the athletes rushed to sort of meet that moment?

00:10:38.000 It's a tremendous question and one of the things that I really grapple with in the book that I wrote.

00:10:43.000 So I've spent a ton of time thinking about this issue exactly and I think there are several threads at play.

00:10:49.000 One is, I would say this, social media.

00:10:52.000 Alright?

00:10:52.000 I think that ESPN, and I write about this some, their business started to collapse.

00:10:56.000 They had 100 million subscribers.

00:10:58.000 The court is fraying the number of kids who are subscribing.

00:11:02.000 The old cable subscribers are dying off.

00:11:05.000 And I think ESPN, I had this interesting conversation back in 2012 when Alabama played Notre Dame.

00:11:11.000 I remember having a conversation with a lot of top ESPN executives, because I used to have and still do have a really good relationship with a lot of people there, despite the fact that we've kind of gone at loggerheads at times.

00:11:20.000 And their discussion at that point was, do we pay attention to what people say about our talent on social media, on Twitter in particular, or do we pay attention to the public reaction we see?

00:11:32.000 And I remember having this conversation specifically about Chris Berman and Lou Holtz.

00:11:37.000 And they said, everywhere Chris Berman and Lou Holtz go, they get mobbed and people love them.

00:11:43.000 If you go on social media and you read what people say about them on Twitter, they're old white guys and they get crushed. 0.70

00:11:49.000 And at the time, ESPN was making the argument, we think we need to pay more attention to what we see in face-to-face interaction over social media.

00:11:57.000 I think as ESPN's business collapsed, they looked for salvation on social media and believed that if they made Twitter happy, if we promote the wokest people who are getting the most attention on Twitter, that will lead to success on television as well.

00:12:13.000 It will combat our dying business.

00:12:15.000 So I think they looked for salvation in Twitter and instead found a way to drown faster, like a big rock.

00:12:20.000 Because I think politics was basically a rock they were holding over their head and they thought it was a life jacket.

00:12:25.000 So I think that's a big part of it.

00:12:27.000 And you certainly have seen the radical polarization of politics along sports lines.

00:12:31.000 And it's been really devastating for sports fans because I don't want to watch sports anymore unless I'm at a live event, specifically because I'm afraid of the political coverage that I'm going to see.

00:12:39.000 And it doesn't seem to matter the sport, although the ones that seem least political are the ones that are also least covered by ESPN.

00:12:45.000 ESPN will cover basketball.

00:12:45.000 If it's very political, they'll cover football, which has now become a political football.

00:12:49.000 But they won't cover hockey and they won't cover baseball.

00:12:51.000 Yeah, and I think that ESPN decided Salvation would come through social media, and then I think they promoted everybody who was, you know, left-wing in terms of mixing sports and politics.

00:13:02.000 I think what also tied in there was the athletes.

00:13:05.000 This is amazing stat, and this is in the book, too.

00:13:08.000 Everybody talks about how biased the political media is.

00:13:11.000 And if you go look at the numbers, I think it was something like 27 times as much money was given to Hillary Clinton by people employed in, quote, media circles, right, as opposed to Donald Trump.

00:13:22.000 ESPN in the 2016 presidential election, their employees gave 270 times as much money to Hillary Clinton as they did Donald Trump.

00:13:30.000 So 10 times as much a bias that was existing right there in terms of what they were sending their money on.

00:13:37.000 And so I think what happened is you had a total mix between what was real news and what was opinion.

00:13:44.000 And ESPN in particular, and I think a lot of other sports media people followed it, used quote unquote real news to advocate for their political opinions.

00:13:54.000 And so I think what ended up happening was, instead of saying, like, I use as an example in the book, Kid Rock gets named as the performer at the All-Star Game, right?

00:14:03.000 Big deal.

00:14:04.000 Kid Rock's a rock guy.

00:14:05.000 He's from Michigan.

00:14:07.000 A lot of hockey fans are Kid Rock fans.

00:14:09.000 And he got attacked.

00:14:09.000 Front page story on ESPN was, oh, controversy arises over Kid Rock's selection.

00:14:15.000 Well, you can't use social media as a barometer of controversy because if I check my phone right now, every single decision that's made is controversial, right?

00:14:22.000 You think about in the world of sports.

00:14:24.000 When your team makes a draft pick, it's controversial because not everybody agrees, right?

00:14:29.000 So, they use objective journalism, example like that.

00:14:33.000 And ESPN set the precedent.

00:14:34.000 I think it's a bad precedent.

00:14:35.000 I'm curious what you think about this.

00:14:56.000 I don't think that we should be in a business today, regardless of what your business is.

00:15:01.000 When you are outside of the office, if you are tweeting your political opinions or you are sharing your Facebook opinions, I don't think you should get fired based on those for outside of our opinions, right?

00:15:11.000 Whether you agree or disagree with Curt Schilling on transgender bathroom issues, he has a right to have that opinion in my mind.

00:15:18.000 And so ESPN fired him over sharing a Facebook meme about the North Carolina transgender bathroom dispute.

00:15:25.000 And then when Jamelle Hill came out and called the president a white supremacist, they didn't punish her at all. 0.51

00:15:30.000 And so I think we've entered into this kind of scary time where if your opinion is different than the company you work for,

00:15:38.000 You either keep your mouth shut, or you don't necessarily know that you're going to be able to have that job.

00:15:42.000 So I think all those things have coalesced together, and I think they've created a mess.

00:15:47.000 Because sports used to be the place that united us, used to be the place where when your team scores, you turn and give a high five to somebody in the arena, in the stadium.

00:15:55.000 And their ethnicity, their religion, whether they were born in this country, whether they're an immigrant, it doesn't matter. 0.54

00:16:01.000 Sports was the ultimate big tent, right?

00:16:03.000 Your tribe was connected regardless of your race, your gender, your ethnicity, your sexual orientation.

00:16:08.000 And I think that ESPN has been so desperate to save their business that they've kind of prayed to a false idol.

00:16:13.000 Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with this.

00:16:14.000 I mean, it's one of the reasons why I say I'll still attend live events of various sporting events.

00:16:19.000 I went to the Super Bowl last year and it was exactly that.

00:16:21.000 It was a bunch of people who I'm sure disagreed about politics, but we were all in the stadium to just enjoy the game and it was fantastic.

00:16:26.000 But the minute you leave the stadium and you turn on TV or you turn on Twitter, it's going to be whatever is the latest controversy.

00:16:31.000 I absolutely agree with regard to Schilling and Jemele Hill.

00:16:35.000 Look, I think that there are certain opinions that if you express them on Twitter, you say, I'm an absolute Nazi, right?

00:16:39.000 Like, I actually endorse Adolf Hitler. 0.96

00:16:41.000 I think the company has a right to fire you.

00:16:42.000 Right.

00:16:42.000 But what these companies have done is they've shrunk the Overton window, the window of acceptable discourse, so narrowly that Jamel Ahola is inside of it, but Kurt Schilling is not, for expressing

00:16:52.000 And they just hired Keith Olbermann.

00:17:17.000 Right, right.

00:17:18.000 I mean, who has been so far left wing.

00:17:20.000 I mean, he calls the president a Nazi all the time.

00:17:23.000 And so, it's just, it's not an equal standard being applied.

00:17:27.000 You know, the difficulty with, you know, the great legal aphorism is tough cases make bad law.

00:17:32.000 Right.

00:17:32.000 Right?

00:17:33.000 And so, I think ESPN set a really bad precedent with Curt Schilling, and I don't think they can follow it, but I think that your average listener out there, your average viewer, they don't think Caitlyn Jenner is a hero for deciding to become a woman.

00:17:44.000 Do whatever makes you happy, but you're not heroic, right?

00:17:47.000 I don't think the average NFL fan cared at all who Michael Sam slept with.

00:17:52.000 And making the argument, oh, this is a modern-day Jackie Robinson issue, is fundamentally not true, right?

00:17:57.000 Everybody could see what race Jackie Robinson was.

00:18:00.000 Unless Michael Sam waved his arm around and said, hey, I like to sleep with guys.

00:18:04.000 Nobody would have known.

00:18:05.000 There have been many gay football players before.

00:18:08.000 They just haven't felt the need to publicly come out.

00:18:11.000 Now, to his credit, whatever.

00:18:12.000 He makes him happy is fine.

00:18:14.000 But I think covering Michael Sam as if he were Tom Brady or Peyton Manning, you know, beat writers who are following him around all day, you talk to his people in his locker room, what was the shower like today, right?

00:18:26.000 I don't think sports fans care.

00:18:27.000 What's

00:18:42.000 We're good to go.

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00:20:10.000 Yes. 0.99

00:20:10.000 You're racist. 0.99

00:20:11.000 Yes. 0.98

00:20:34.000 I don't think that that should be that controversial to say, but I'm not sure that we can go back because it seems like everything is so polarized now that to even make those arguments puts you in a, in a kind of nasty category.

00:20:45.000 Well, we'll see.

00:20:46.000 Cause I make those arguments in my book.

00:20:47.000 So, uh, I mean, that's really what I'm arguing.

00:20:49.000 I'm going to get, when the book comes out, I'm going to be attacked and people are going to say, Oh, look at Claytree.

00:20:54.000 You know what?

00:20:54.000 The attacks are going to be already racist, sexist, homophobic, like whatever they're going to, they're going to be all labels that people try to put on me.

00:21:00.000 And what they're not going to do is actually look at the merit of the argument, because I think

00:21:03.000 Even most reasonable people, if they look at the merits of the argument, would have to say, oh, you know what?

00:21:08.000 Like, you're more likely to be, five times as likely to be, like LeBron James is a great example.

00:21:13.000 LeBron, and this is in the book, but I think it's a really kind of instructive moment in the way that sports is covered.

00:21:18.000 LeBron James said, the way America is today, when his son leaves the house, he's not afraid that he's going to come back if he gets pulled over by a cop.

00:21:27.000 LeBron James said that.

00:21:28.000 Overwhelmingly, the sports media said, God bless LeBron James for understanding what black America is going through right now.

00:21:35.000 Thank God he is talking out and speaking out and using his platform.

00:21:39.000 That's a big deal, right?

00:21:40.000 You're using your platform.

00:21:41.000 Okay.

00:21:41.000 If LeBron James had said, when my son leaves the house, I'm not sure if he's going to come home because there's a lot of bees, wasps and hornets out there.

00:21:48.000 People would have said, it seems a little protective of LeBron, right?

00:21:51.000 People probably would have made fun of him.

00:21:53.000 Assuming LeBron's son left the house unarmed, he is more likely to be killed by a bee, wasp, or a hornet in America today than he is by a police officer.

00:22:03.000 And what troubles me is, we got tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of police officers out there working as hard as they can every day, and there's a fundamental untruth that sports is helping to propagate, which is, if somebody gets pulled over by a police officer,

00:22:17.000 You should be expecting that violence is going to ensue, and that mutual disconnect, because it translates into body language, it translates into the interaction between the police officer and the minority youth there. 0.99

00:22:29.000 I think LeBron James is actually making things worse with a statement like that, right?

00:22:34.000 And I think it would be the duty of a robust sports media to speak truth to LeBron James' power and say, actually, this isn't true.

00:22:43.000 But very few people are willing to do that, and so I think there's a couple of things that would be substantial.

00:22:49.000 I think one, sports figures, whether it's Greg Popovich, LeBron James, Steve Kerr, whoever it is, have the right to give their political opinions.

00:22:58.000 The media doesn't have to give those opinions a megaphone.

00:23:01.000 Right?

00:23:01.000 There are plenty of people out there making great critiques of Donald Trump, much better than Greg Popovich is, because it's what they do for a living.

00:23:09.000 They can go on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News maybe sometimes, wherever it is.

00:23:13.000 We don't, in the sports media, need to make the number one headline on our programming, Greg Popovich ripped Donald Trump.

00:23:21.000 Greg Popovich can do it.

00:23:22.000 He's entitled to his free speech.

00:23:23.000 So is LeBron, so is Steve Kerr.

00:23:26.000 But let's not pretend that what they are saying is so perceptive and unique and without parallel that we need to treat it as if they're all modern day Muhammad Ali's, right?

00:23:36.000 Muhammad Ali, and this is in the book too, fought against Vietnam.

00:23:41.000 In the middle of

00:23:59.000 But they can praise the athlete for saying it, and that becomes a default endorsement of their political belief, right?

00:24:05.000 And a great example of this was the Boston Bruin goalie, Tim Thomas, who didn't go to the White House because he was a Tea Party guy.

00:24:12.000 And if you went and read what everybody said about him, he got crushed beyond belief for not going to the White House with his team.

00:24:19.000 Every athlete who comes out now or team and isn't willing to go see Donald Trump gets praise to the high heavens.

00:24:25.000 It's because the media agrees with them.

00:24:27.000 It's a fundamental untruth.

00:24:29.000 So my argument is don't cover the political opinions.

00:24:31.000 I think it's bad for business.

00:24:32.000 If I'm CBS, NBC, Fox or ESPN and I'm paying for the NFL, why would I want to cut out?

00:24:38.000 I'm paying billions of dollars a year.

00:24:40.000 Why would I want to cut the legs out from underneath that brand by covering the protests and the anthem as much as we are?

00:24:47.000 And then I think another aspect of it is, if you're going to cover politics, you need to have people to come on and set the parameters of the debate.

00:24:54.000 Instead of saying, how heroic is Colin Kaepernick, which is the kind of debate show that I have seen for like the last three years?

00:25:00.000 Oh, I think he's a superhero.

00:25:02.000 Well, I think he's only, you know, a quadruple hero, right?

00:25:05.000 It's like, how heroic is he as an artificial frame? 0.98

00:25:08.000 You need to have somebody come on and say, actually, I think Colin Kaepernick's a moron and his protest made no sense and he doesn't have a legal right to do it. 0.98

00:25:15.000 I would make that argument. 0.98

00:25:16.000 I make that argument on my radio show, but it's not something that's on television on a regular basis.

00:25:21.000 So I think you need to have people throwing punches. 0.90

00:25:23.000 You know, when Laura Ingraham said, shut up and dribble. 0.85

00:25:26.000 I think that's a strong argument.

00:25:28.000 If you step into politics, you shouldn't expect golf claps.

00:25:30.000 Like, oh, it's so brave of you to say something political.

00:25:33.000 Politics is, you know, it's a bloody, bare-knuckled fight every day to win your argument.

00:25:39.000 So I think we actually need more speech.

00:25:41.000 I just think we need more ideological diversity.

00:25:44.000 I think that would be a big deal.

00:25:45.000 Because I think what would happen is people would say, you know what, I can watch CNN.

00:25:48.000 If I want to see two guys argue about Donald Trump, I want to see somebody argue about sports.

00:25:53.000 This is totally right, and bringing up the Muhammad Ali example is a great example, because at the time, Muhammad Ali got crushed by the press, or at least by half of the press, for what he was doing with regard to changing his name, or being against the Vietnam War.

00:26:05.000 And by the time he fought Frasier the first time, there was a serious political war over whether Ali was right or not.

00:26:10.000 It wasn't just, let's praise Ali to the high heavens for everything he did, that sort of revisionist history that we know.

00:26:15.000 I don't know.

00:26:35.000 They were doing independent federal investigations of every suspect police shooting already, right?

00:26:41.000 So Barack Obama, I think, if he had been really honest here, he would have said, I appreciate what Colin Kaepernick is protesting, but what he's protesting for, we are already doing.

00:26:50.000 We're doing rigorous federal oversight to ensure that the blue wall of silence or local communities are not covering up

00:26:57.000 Improper shootings that should be prosecuted.

00:26:59.000 The analogy I like to use is, it's like Colin Kaepernick went into McDonald's at 1105 and took a knee and the manager walked out and he said, like, why are you taking a knee?

00:27:06.000 He's like, oh, I want to get breakfast all day.

00:27:08.000 It's like, we serve breakfast all day here already, right?

00:27:11.000 Like, there was no logical thing.

00:27:12.000 And the analogy I love to toss out that drives people insane is, imagine the response if Colin Kaepernick had taken a knee to protest the national anthem because he disagreed with gay marriage being legalized.

00:27:24.000 The same people who are like, oh, it's so great that he's exercising his First Amendment rights would have insisted that the San Francisco 49ers had to cut him immediately.

00:27:31.000 But that would have made sense because the Supreme Court has legalized gay marriage.

00:27:34.000 And when you protest the United States flag, you're actually protesting a tangible federal action.

00:27:39.000 What he was doing made no logical sense.

00:27:41.000 Now, you and I understand that.

00:27:43.000 A lot of your listeners and viewers will.

00:27:45.000 I bet that if we had Colin Kaepernick sitting here right now, his understanding of the separation of powers between federal and state governments is probably not that in-depth.

00:27:53.000 And I think it speaks to what you're saying, which is athletes are entitled to their political opinions.

00:27:57.000 What they aren't entitled to is a presumption that they're incredibly well understanding of those political opinions.

00:28:04.000 Justify it like we would ask anybody else.

00:28:06.000 Can the leagues do anything about this?

00:28:08.000 Because the NFL allowed this to run out of control.

00:28:11.000 And it actually predated Kaepernick.

00:28:13.000 I remember the hands up, don't shoot was the first time I saw it, when you saw members of the St.

00:28:16.000 Louis Rams.

00:28:16.000 Which is a fundamental lie.

00:28:17.000 It is an absolute lie.

00:28:18.000 It never happened.

00:28:18.000 Michael Brown was not standing there with his hands up shouting, don't shoot.

00:28:21.000 He was shot in the front. 0.88

00:28:23.000 The whole thing is just, it's such nonsense.

00:28:26.000 But with all of that said,

00:28:28.000 If the NFL had cracked down on this, as they should have at the very beginning, would that have stopped it?

00:28:31.000 And is there any way for it to stop now, considering that now that the President of the United States has gotten involved, it looks like if the NFL tries to crack down, now it looks like they're surrendering to Trump, as opposed to just making a case for the viability of their product.

00:28:44.000 First of all, the NBA.

00:28:45.000 A lot of people want to say that Kaepernick is a modern-day Muhammad Ali, and I think I destroy that argument in my book.

00:28:51.000 I mean, I really kind of dive into it and explain why it doesn't work.

00:28:53.000 The better argument for Kaepernick, I think, is Mahmoud Abdul-Raouf, who a lot of people will remember as Chris Jackson.

00:28:59.000 And I believe it was 1996, Chris Jackson refused to stand for the national anthem as a member of the Denver Nuggets.

00:29:05.000 And the reason why he said it was because the United States government oppresses, you know, different communities.

00:29:09.000 I mean, it's basically the exact same logic as calling Kaepernick 20 years before.

00:29:13.000 And David Stern, then the commissioner of the NBA, immediately nipped it in its bud.

00:29:17.000 He suspended him, he fined him, the entire game check, and the protest lasted for one game.

00:29:22.000 I think if Roger Goodell had made a smart strategic decision, he would have done the same thing to Colin Kaepernick, and he would have cited the NBA's example.

00:29:29.000 Now, the NBA requires that every player stand at attention for the national anthem before its games.

00:29:36.000 Nobody criticizes that rule at all.

00:29:38.000 The NFL's policy is actually more lenient than the NBA's policy.

00:29:43.000 So I think Goodell blew it.

00:29:44.000 That's what he gets paid a lot of money for.

00:29:45.000 He blew it.

00:29:46.000 If I were Goodell now, I would sit down with the players.

00:29:49.000 And I hear a lot of players say, oh, we don't care if the fans come to the game.

00:29:52.000 We don't care about it. 1.00

00:29:53.000 I think it's insanely stupid. 1.00

00:29:54.000 The players and the owners are in a partnership. 1.00

00:29:57.000 The players get to share revenue.

00:29:59.000 And I think the big flaw here is the players believe that their salaries are always going to go up.

00:30:04.000 Well, if 20% of your market disappears and continues to not show up, then sooner or later your revenue is going to go down, which means the players are going to make less money.

00:30:13.000 And I think if I were Roger Goodell, I'd have every player come in for a big meeting, all 1,500, 1,600 NFL players, and I would say, look guys, you're entitled to whatever political opinion you want.

00:30:21.000 Use your Instagram accounts, use your platforms as you see fit, use your Twitter accounts, everything else.

00:30:26.000 But what you should know is this.

00:30:29.000 Millions of people are choosing to consume our product less.

00:30:32.000 Are you so committed to your politics that you have to do it at work in uniform if it's going to make everybody in here lose 20% of their paychecks?

00:30:40.000 And I think almost everybody out there would say, no, you know, like you're capitalist.

00:30:45.000 So I think the business side is actually one where you could appeal to players because players like to think, oh, I'm not labor.

00:30:52.000 I'm a businessman.

00:30:53.000 Right.

00:30:53.000 The great Jay-Z line.

00:30:54.000 So if I were Roger Goodell, that's the line that I would try to hit.

00:30:59.000 The other thing is, I would just say, look,

00:31:02.000 Like any other business, we're looking at the metrics.

00:31:04.000 And if the metrics start to decline in this insanely competitive entertainment world, we need to figure out why and we need to combat them, because ultimately all of us are going to make less money.

00:31:14.000 So I think that there's an economic argument that takes it outside of politics and just says, regardless of what you think about abortion or gay marriage or, you know, police misconduct,

00:31:23.000 Is that really something that people come into our stadiums or turn on our games for?

00:31:27.000 A great example, my father-in-law is a lifelong, poor, suffering Detroit Lions fan.

00:31:33.000 I've been married for 14 years now.

00:31:35.000 I've got a 10-year-old, a 7-year-old, a 3-year-old.

00:31:37.000 We were down for Thanksgiving.

00:31:39.000 It's past year.

00:31:40.000 And Jordan Lions play every Thanksgiving.

00:31:43.000 We're getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner, and I'm gambling on the game, because it makes games a little bit more fun.

00:31:49.000 And I say to my father-in-law, why is the Lions game not on?

00:31:53.000 He took us to an NFL game when I grew up in Nashville, the Tennessee Titans played.

00:31:56.000 So why is the game not on?

00:31:58.000 He said, I'm not watching this year.

00:32:00.000 He said, I'm so frustrated with the politics.

00:32:03.000 I've been married to my wife for 14 years, probably been done 15 years of Thanksgiving.

00:32:07.000 Every other year, the Detroit Lions game was on Thanksgiving.

00:32:11.000 Yesterday, two days ago, went to get my hair cut.

00:32:14.000 Lady doesn't know me at all. 1.00

00:32:15.000 Just sitting there getting my hair cut.

00:32:16.000 Supercuts are one of those cheap places, 15 bucks.

00:32:19.000 Lady, 60-year-old white woman, big football fan. 0.99

00:32:23.000 She wanted to talk about football.

00:32:24.000 She said, because I said we'd gone to the game.

00:32:25.000 First question she asked me.

00:32:33.000 Very first question she asked me.

00:32:36.000 So there is a fundamental disconnect between people who don't understand how much of the base of the very foundation of the NFL's business is being impacted by this,

00:32:45.000 There's a cottage industry of people out there that want to pretend these people are not real, that there aren't a lot of people with entertainment options who decide on Sunday morning, am I going to watch the game or not?

00:32:54.000 The numbers reflect that they're leaving.

00:32:56.000 I don't think that cord cutting suddenly hit two years ago.

00:32:59.000 I don't think that suddenly people said, I love Netflix or Amazon or anything else.

00:33:03.000 I think the NFL's core fabric of their audience is being attacked here by getting political.

00:33:09.000 And I think the NFL has to fix it.

00:33:12.000 And I think the way you fix it is just by saying, guys, the business is collapsing.

00:33:16.000 Let's be honest.

00:33:16.000 I know this for a fact.

00:33:18.000 The television partners last year, NBC, CBS, Fox, and ESPN, they missed their budgets by over $600 million last year.

00:33:28.000 Off of their television ratings.

00:33:30.000 Down nearly 20% over two years.

00:33:32.000 How about you?

00:33:33.000 Over $600 million is real money.

00:33:35.000 The NFL players don't see it because their contracts are guaranteed for multiple years.

00:33:40.000 But if that money was being pulled out of their contract, I think they would police the league.

00:33:45.000 Think about wherever you work.

00:33:46.000 If you knew that 20% of your paycheck was coming off because your co-worker had an opinion about abortion,

00:33:52.000 Would you say like, hey, shut up about abortion at work, do whatever you want elsewhere.

00:33:56.000 We're not going to talk about abortion at work because people, this is not our business.

00:33:59.000 So I just, I think it's substantial and I think it's seismic.

00:34:03.000 And I don't think that the NFL can tiptoe up to this.

00:34:06.000 I think they needed strong leadership.

00:34:08.000 And I don't think that Roger Goodell is providing it.

00:34:10.000 Okay so let's talk a little bit about meritocracy in sports.

00:34:13.000 So one of the reasons I think that the sports media are getting it so wrong when it comes to who watches sports is they're forgetting that the reason people actually watch sports is because sports is in some ways the most conservative of all institutions in the United States.

00:34:25.000 Amen.

00:34:25.000 It's a meritocracy in which if you suck at basketball you're not playing in the NBA and if you suck at baseball you're not playing in the MLB and yet leftist politics is so much about

00:34:34.000 sympathy for the person who's not able to make it on merit, that it cuts against the very fabric of sports itself.

00:34:42.000 And so you end up in bizarre battles, for example, over transgenderism in sports.

00:34:46.000 For two years, ESPN has done nothing but talk about transgenderism in sports, and you get ridiculous arguments where people like Jimmy Connors will say, well, you know, it turns out that Serena Williams is the greatest female player ever, but she's not necessarily the greatest player ever, because that's ridiculous. 0.53

00:35:03.000 And suddenly, he's getting just shellacked over it.

00:35:06.000 You know, how is it that folks in the sports media don't understand that when they make these arguments, they're actually undercutting the reason we watch sports in the first place?

00:35:15.000 John McEnroe, by the way.

00:35:16.000 John McEnroe, thank you.

00:35:17.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:35:17.000 And he said that Serena wouldn't be one of the top 700 men's players, which was insanely generous.

00:35:22.000 I talked to a lot of former tennis players and they said she wouldn't make a men's first round, like, college team.

00:35:28.000 That's right.

00:35:29.000 Sure, sure.

00:35:46.000 And so, even the most talented women's tennis player of all time would be a pinprick of a men's player against the greatest men's player in the world.

00:35:55.000 Now, she would crush your average metal tennis player who plays for fun and might be really good, right? 1.00

00:36:00.000 It's not to say Serena's not good.

00:36:03.000 I think that this is a great example.

00:36:05.000 The McEnroe story was a great example of how delus—like, I always say to my kids all the time,

00:36:13.000 The only hand you can rely on is the one at the end of your sleeve, right?

00:36:16.000 It's ultimate individual responsibility.

00:36:20.000 If you were in a locker room and your coach walked in and he said, guys, we're probably going to lose this game because those kids go to a better high school, better facilities.

00:36:30.000 Their weight room's a lot nicer than ours is.

00:36:34.000 They haven't had a broken rim in their gym.

00:36:38.000 They don't have single parenthood issues.

00:36:41.000 So, we should get 20 extra points before this game starts.

00:36:45.000 Every single person who likes sports would say, wait a minute, what in the world are you talking about?

00:36:49.000 Like, the great thing about sports is the meritocracy.

00:36:52.000 When you step on that field, or court, or into that arena, or wherever you are, everybody is equal.

00:36:59.000 It's literally the perfect place to allow the meritocracy to exist.

00:37:03.000 And who your dad was, where you went to school, how much money your parents made, where you grew up, none of it matters.

00:37:10.000 All that matters is, are you better than the guy or girl across from you?

00:37:14.000 And I think what happens is, there is an element of not wanting to acknowledge that.

00:37:22.000 And so, when you talk about the transgender issue, the transgender issue was amazing to me because when you really break it down,

00:37:30.000 The city of Charlotte decided they were going to be uber inclusive and make sure that something that wasn't an issue was not going to be an issue, right?

00:37:38.000 And this ends up tying in the NBA and the ACC, right?

00:37:42.000 Because they pulled their games out.

00:37:43.000 But think about the root of this conflict.

00:37:47.000 There's nobody standing outside of the bathroom right now, to my knowledge, like Crocodile Dundee genital checking people, right? 0.92

00:37:52.000 Like, Paul Hogan's not there, like, that's a Sheila or whatever, right?

00:37:56.000 Like, you, if you look like a guy, you go in the guy's bathroom. 0.89

00:37:59.000 If you look like a girl, you go in the girl's bathroom. 1.00

00:38:00.000 That's been the rule for as long as I can remember.

00:38:03.000 I think we fight about such minor things now.

00:38:07.000 There's no issue, right?

00:38:09.000 People can use whatever public bathroom they want.

00:38:11.000 Charlotte politicians decide they need to protect Charlotte from making sure that something that isn't an issue doesn't ever become an issue, right?

00:38:18.000 And then the Republican legislature says, wait a minute, why is Charlotte doing this? 0.91

00:38:21.000 The amazing thing about Charlotte was they were being uber-inclusive, and as a result, they lost the All-Star game and the ACC title game, which the irony on that is amazing, right?

00:38:31.000 But so I think that there is a recognition that

00:38:36.000 Really, what we're fighting over isn't that significant, right?

00:38:41.000 99.9 whatever percent of people are whatever gender they are.

00:38:44.000 And the idea that we need to be fighting over this, this is a great question for you.

00:38:50.000 You're a deep thinker on this.

00:38:52.000 I got into a discussion with people in sports recently.

00:38:54.000 I said, what's next?

00:38:56.000 Like, let's say that I am the most uber-inclusive person imaginable on the planet right now.

00:39:02.000 The reason why I'm a First Amendment absolutist is because I think we need to have all marginalized opinions able to debate, because a marginalized opinion 20 years ago might become one that's very commonplace now.

00:39:13.000 So I'm like, what would you argue in favor of?

00:39:15.000 Can you even think of one that is considered societally unacceptable in 2018, that in 2038, when we are grandparents potentially, our grandkids will be like, I can't believe Grandpa in 2018.

00:39:28.000 Maybe eating meat?

00:39:29.000 Yep.

00:39:30.000 That's the one that comes to mind.

00:39:31.000 But other than that... Like, it's almost impossible to even think where the inclusion train can go next?

00:39:35.000 It could go some ugly places.

00:39:36.000 I mean, it could go to victimization of children, theoretically, because... Or polygamy?

00:39:41.000 Right.

00:39:42.000 And you may think that's ugly or not, but I've said before, like, if you follow the logic of the Supreme Court's decision in allowing... Oberstdahl.

00:39:48.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:39:49.000 Then theoretically, if consenting adults decide, if three women for their poor decision decided they wanted to be married to me, or if I wanted to marry the same woman that three other men did, in theory there is not a prohibition to that happening under the same logic, right?

00:40:03.000 But I think that's a tiny minority opinion.

00:40:05.000 A percentage of people in America today would like 4% of people or 1% or something would be like in favor of polygamy.

00:40:11.000 It's almost impossible to even think of what's next, right?

00:40:15.000 And so what I would say is there's this belief that things can't be good.

00:40:20.000 Right?

00:40:21.000 Good is not good enough.

00:40:22.000 I walk around in America today, I'm like, it's pretty awesome.

00:40:25.000 Right?

00:40:25.000 Regardless of what race you are, regardless of what gender you are, there's a reason why by and large people come over here and they think they're going to be radicalized.

00:40:33.000 And most of the time they're like, I could go blow myself up or I could get a job and go buy a 50 inch flat screen television and go watch Stranger Things.

00:40:40.000 Right?

00:40:41.000 And what's amazing to me is what I loved about sports was

00:40:45.000 Sports, and the Jordan era in particular, was about making us all recognize that we weren't that much different after all.

00:40:52.000 Right?

00:40:52.000 And that's to me what's so great about sports in general.

00:40:54.000 Why I love my kids playing now, regardless of what the other backgrounds of the kids are, you learn that you all have a lot more in common than you do different.

00:41:02.000 And that's what I love about sports.

00:41:03.000 And I think what's happened is there's been a desire to try to make us all think that we have a lot more not in common than we do.

00:41:10.000 And it used to be, you know, if you think about Jordan, and I would even include Barack Obama in this, but Jordan, Oprah, Will Smith, if you think about Bill Cosby, The Cosby Show, all of those, you know, sort of the rise of the African-American meritocracy.

00:41:24.000 We're not about saying like, oh, I'm black, I'm raising my fist in the sky, you're a lot different than me. 0.62

00:41:29.000 It was about we're all pretty similar, right?

00:41:31.000 The Cosby Show was about trying to make us think, man, you know what?

00:41:34.000 We're not that much different after all.

00:41:36.000 And so what I love about sports is anybody can win.

00:41:41.000 Right, like your kid could end up being the greatest heavyweight champion of all time.

00:41:46.000 You're not going to happen.

00:41:47.000 Probably not genetically going to happen, but in theory it's one of those great questions like, you know, what do we say like that every time a man has sex like there's like four billion sperm or whatever.

00:41:56.000 I would love if I could get my four billion sperm and look at them.

00:41:59.000 Is there a Clay Travis produces LeBron James level athlete sperm?

00:42:03.000 We're good to go.

00:42:20.000 Tiger at the PGA Championship was a great example.

00:42:22.000 Tiger has had all sorts of issues in his past, right?

00:42:25.000 And the last decade for Tiger has been really bleak.

00:42:28.000 But when you watched him walk around, I looked at the crowd, all white dudes, right, almost at the PGA Championship, when Tiger Woods walked up onto that 0.99

00:42:36.000 We're good to go.

00:42:54.000 And so, I just think the great thing about sports in Michael Jordan's era was, I rooted for Michael Jordan when he stepped back and pushed off on Brian Russell and drained that jumper.

00:43:04.000 I rooted for him because I was a Jordan guy.

00:43:06.000 The fact that he was black was inconsequential.

00:43:09.000 The fact that Tiger Woods is a Kaplan Asian is inconsequential relative to his dominance. 1.00

00:43:14.000 The best person wins.

00:43:16.000 And, you know, I have this great section in the book, I think, where I say, can you imagine if the most uber-inclusive person bought an NFL team?

00:43:23.000 Right?

00:43:23.000 And what if you followed the logic of diversity inclusion so far that you said, okay, half this team is going to be, 51% of this team is going to be female, and it's going to be the most representative football team that's ever existed.

00:43:35.000 49% will be male, 63% will be white, 12% will be black, 6% will be Asian, whatever the math is of the latest census.

00:43:43.000 You'd have a beautiful kaleidoscope of a football team for the team photo, and you might never score a touchdown.

00:43:49.000 Right? 1.00

00:43:50.000 You'd get your ass kicked all over the place. 1.00

00:43:53.000 Meritocracy works. 0.99

00:43:55.000 You know, the most talented person in sports wins, and I'm afraid that we're trying to turn sports into another version of politics, as opposed to the best thing that I think politics can aspire to.

00:44:05.000 All right, so I want to talk about some of the non-political problems with sports.

00:44:08.000 Yeah.

00:44:08.000 Because there's some, it seems like if you had to invest, let me ask you this question, we'll just start with this.

00:44:12.000 Yeah.

00:44:12.000 If you had to invest in a sport right now, you've just got a hundred bucks, you've got to invest it in a sport, you get to be an owner in one of the sports, which is the sport where you invest and why?

00:44:20.000 I would sell the NFL today.

00:44:22.000 I think the NFL has peaked.

00:44:23.000 If I had a $4 billion NFL franchise, if I was Jerry Jones, I would sell. 0.92

00:44:28.000 Watch this in 20 years, I may be an idiot, it may be a $40 million franchise, but I would sell. 0.92

00:44:31.000 I think the NFL has peaked. 0.99

00:44:33.000 I think the NBA has peaked.

00:44:34.000 I think their television dollars are so out of whack relative to what the brand is actually producing an audience that I wouldn't want to buy into the NBA with the valuations that current teams are getting down in Houston and Clippers and everything else.

00:44:47.000 So I'd sell the NBA.

00:44:49.000 Major League Baseball I wouldn't be very comfortable in either.

00:44:51.000 I mean, I'm bearish in general in the world of sports because I think there's a television sports rights bubble, which is a fascinating business kind of proposition to examine.

00:45:01.000 But if I were going to buy one, it's funny, I would probably buy something like lacrosse or something crazy like Ultimate Frisbee, which is so undervalued that I think you could put on television and people would care about and they don't make any money now.

00:45:14.000 So I think you could invest

00:45:16.000 You know, $100,000 and buy a franchise, or make a million, or I might put my money in esports.

00:45:21.000 Because I don't know about you, my boys play Fortnite all the time, right?

00:45:26.000 Like, it's insane how much my boys love Fortnite.

00:45:28.000 And I was coming home with them recently from the Titans preseason game, and I was like, well, how was that?

00:45:33.000 It was like, it was pretty cool.

00:45:35.000 It wasn't Fortnite, right?

00:45:37.000 So when I was a kid, I got to go to an NFL game.

00:45:39.000 I'm like, this is the greatest day of my life.

00:45:41.000 My boys are like, well, it was cool.

00:45:43.000 But I mean, if I had to give up the NFL or Fortnite, I would give up the NFL.

00:45:46.000 So I think some of these e-games, the challenges with the e-games, I've tried to look into it in investing, is I feel like you might buy in to the USFL.

00:45:55.000 You know, you don't know what the league is going to be that's going to be successful.

00:45:58.000 In retrospect, you're like, oh, of course the NFL was going to end up huge, but you could have bought into the USFL or the AFL.

00:46:04.000 You can be wrong on, you can be right about the industry and wrong about the way that you choose to invest in the industry.

00:46:09.000 So I would go like a lower tier sport.

00:46:12.000 I mean, I would go, like, it may seem crazy to say answer, but like lacrosse or ultimate Frisbee or something that's almost off the radar.

00:46:18.000 Yeah, no, I've thought about that before, like a paintball league.

00:46:20.000 Yeah, right.

00:46:21.000 It would be insanely popular and fun to value.

00:46:23.000 And the same thing with these eSports leagues.

00:46:25.000 I don't play video games now.

00:46:26.000 I grew up playing them.

00:46:29.000 Mike Tyson's another good example.

00:46:30.000 Mike Tyson's punch out.

00:46:31.000 I could probably do a whole show, I bet, on awesome sports video games as kids growing up.

00:46:37.000 But yeah, I'm not bullish on buying big, successful sports teams right now.

00:46:42.000 And it seems like a lot of these sports are experiencing severe problems that have nothing to do with politics either.

00:46:47.000 So the NFL has a serious concussion problem.

00:46:50.000 And it seems to me that there are more and more parents, like I wouldn't let my kids play football for love or money at this point because just the level of head damage is too high.

00:46:58.000 And also because there's a basic lie at the root of the NFL, which is that it's safe.

00:47:01.000 Yeah.

00:47:01.000 At least when you're watching UFC, you know people are getting their brains beat in.

00:47:04.000 Yes.

00:47:04.000 When you watch the NFL, you're being told by people, this is safe.

00:47:06.000 Everybody's going to be fine.

00:47:07.000 And then you look at people five years later, and they're completely destroyed.

00:47:10.000 Oh, I mean, look, if we did this, if we'd done this talk 50 years ago, I would have come on.

00:47:13.000 I would have said, Ben, horse racing, boxing, and baseball are always going to be the biggest sports in America, right?

00:47:20.000 And what's happened?

00:47:20.000 Nobody pays attention to horse racing except for the Triple Crown.

00:47:23.000 Boxing, you talked about not letting your kid play football.

00:47:26.000 Nobody, like who has a college, I mean the number of people who have college degrees and let their kid box, there's like four in all of America.

00:47:35.000 It's almost unheard of because you're like, I've seen what happens with the syndromes and everything else.

00:47:39.000 I'm not letting somebody get hit my son or my daughter or whoever in the head.

00:47:43.000 And so I think there's going to be a lot of that in the NFL.

00:47:45.000 My theory on the NFL, this is another reason why I wouldn't want to buy it, is where's that impact going to hit first?

00:47:51.000 I think it's quarterback.

00:47:52.000 You think about where the quarterbacks are coming from.

00:47:54.000 Two-parent households.

00:47:55.000 They go to college even if, typically, even if they weren't playing quarterback.

00:47:59.000 They could play baseball.

00:48:00.000 They could play, you know, lacrosse.

00:48:03.000 They could play another sport.

00:48:04.000 You know, you look at the Cam Newtons, Russell Wilsons, Tom Bradys.

00:48:07.000 All of these guys that are quarterbacks at high level in the NFL right now are double-parent households.

00:48:12.000 So I think the first place that's going to get hit is quarterback.

00:48:16.000 I think there's always going to be a lot of kids who will say, you know, like, I'll let them play.

00:48:20.000 Fat kids are always going to play on the offensive and defensive line. 1.00

00:48:22.000 Like, what else are they going to play?

00:48:24.000 But a quarterback has a lot of options.

00:48:26.000 I think defensive backs, you know, the best defensive backs could certainly have been great strikers in soccer, right?

00:48:32.000 So, I think it's going to be a massive hit to the NFL.

00:48:36.000 Now, if I were the NFL, I'd just go all in and say, look, our sport is violent.

00:48:40.000 Exactly.

00:48:40.000 Totally agree with this.

00:48:41.000 Everybody is assuming the risk now, and they're making millions of dollars a year, and if these guys weren't doing this, they might make $60,000 a year.

00:48:50.000 My grandfather, long before I was born, worked in a coal mine in Kentucky.

00:48:55.000 The reason why he did that, and everybody else around him did that, was because they had no other options.

00:49:00.000 But the money was so much better.

00:49:02.000 They were willing to take that risk in exchange for the money.

00:49:04.000 You assume risk.

00:49:05.000 If I'm the NFL right now, I'm saying, look, it ain't pretty, but these guys are making millions of dollars, and in exchange for allowing their legs and their bodies and potentially their brains to be beaten up,

00:49:15.000 They're taking money for it.

00:49:16.000 That's what the UFC is doing, and it's working for the UFC.

00:49:18.000 As far as baseball, the big problem now, obviously, is the strikeout ratio, that nobody knows how to put a ball in play, and nobody can lay down a bunt.

00:49:26.000 And it's boring to watch, frankly.

00:49:28.000 I mean, as a lifelong baseball fan, I was always fond of teams that knew how to steal a base and knew how to manufacture a run, and manufacturing runs has gone completely the way of the dodo bird.

00:49:36.000 Is there any way to fix baseball other than lowering the mound, basically, at this point?

00:49:40.000 It's a great question.

00:49:41.000 I mean, they've never seen anything like this, where there are more strikeouts than there are balls in play.

00:49:45.000 And, you know, it's challenging.

00:49:46.000 Also, I think baseball's issue is a guy like Mike Trout.

00:49:49.000 The NBA does a better job, I think, of broadcasting their stars.

00:49:52.000 And we talk about this sometimes.

00:49:54.000 I think it's because you can watch a baseball game and the best player in the world can look very average.

00:49:58.000 Whereas if you watch LeBron James play basketball, he's going to be good every game.

00:50:02.000 Mike Trout can go out, go 0 for 4, make a fielding error, and you're like, ah, I'm not sure he's that good.

00:50:07.000 So I think the level of excellence in baseball is much more difficult to achieve every single game.

00:50:12.000 Should they allow the intentional walk?

00:50:13.000 I went to an Angels game recently.

00:50:15.000 They intentionally walked out three times.

00:50:16.000 Yeah, I think the sport is what's crazy.

00:50:18.000 As you watch the game now, I think baseball has changed more than any other sport.

00:50:22.000 Because you look at the way the guys line up on the field, right?

00:50:25.000 When we were kids growing up and we were tearing open the Ken Griffey Jr.

00:50:29.000 1989, you know, upper deck card, like, oh, number one card, you know, like, that was amazing.

00:50:33.000 There's a left fielder, there's a center fielder, there's a right. 0.88

00:50:34.000 Like nowadays you look at the shifts and everything else and it's a totally different game.

00:50:39.000 I think you need to diminish the power of the pitcher, but I think you simultaneously can't diminish the power of the pitcher too much because the other thing about that is the home run rate is staggering.

00:50:48.000 So you're basically like home runs or strikeouts and there's very little middle of the ground, middle of the road, which is where all of the strategy comes into play and everything else.

00:50:56.000 I don't know the answer for baseball.

00:50:58.000 I think baseball is in a challenging place.

00:51:00.000 And by the way, we mentioned NASCAR, right?

00:51:02.000 I talked recently with NASCAR people.

00:51:04.000 They peaked in 2005.

00:51:06.000 Nobody can even figure out what happened with NASCAR in the last 13 years.

00:51:09.000 The sport has almost disappeared, right?

00:51:12.000 So, I think the one thing we've got to keep in mind, and the reason why maybe I mentioned using the football, Ultimate Frisbee, or what sport I would invest in, is things happen really quickly now.

00:51:25.000 So you can go from some being the top of the world, which I think the NFL was to two years ago, to being significantly in an issue in 10 years in a way that you couldn't have 50, 60, 80 years ago where you had to build for a long time and things didn't change that much from year to year.

00:51:40.000 With regard to basketball, what do you think is the problem with basketball?

00:51:44.000 Putting aside the politics, is there a problem with basketball?

00:51:46.000 Because it seems like the sport itself is pretty robust.

00:51:48.000 It has a lot of big stars right now.

00:51:51.000 There are actually some people who can shoot now, which is better than it was.

00:51:55.000 Everybody wants to be Steph Curry.

00:51:56.000 When we were kids, everybody wanted to be Michael Jordan.

00:51:58.000 My kids now, everybody wants to be Steph Curry.

00:52:01.000 The problem with basketball, I think, right now, and I'm not sure if it's cyclical or if it's a more substantial issue, is if you make the playoffs in the NBA, you don't know that your team has any chance.

00:52:10.000 There are 16 teams that make the playoffs.

00:52:11.000 There's about three or four teams that can win a championship every year.

00:52:14.000 Major League Baseball, you make the playoffs, you can win the World Series.

00:52:16.000 NFL, in theory, you can win the Super Bowl.

00:52:19.000 Certainly hockey, God forbid, anybody can win hockey if they make the playoffs.

00:52:23.000 The 8th seed in the East or West can win.

00:52:25.000 I think the biggest issue that the NBA has is long regular season, 82 games.

00:52:29.000 The Warriors can win.

00:52:31.000 The Rockets, maybe.

00:52:33.000 I don't think the LeBron and the Lakers are going to be very good.

00:52:36.000 Maybe the Celtics.

00:52:37.000 There's like three or four teams that can actually win a championship.

00:52:41.000 When you've got 30 teams, I think in this really sort of complicated era where there's so many different things to compete for your entertainment dollar and your entertainment time, as Reed Hastings says, we compete against sleep now.

00:52:54.000 If you're competing against sleep, why do 27 teams want to pay attention when their team has no chance to win a championship?

00:52:59.000 Okay, so back to the sports media for a second and the media in general.

00:53:02.000 So obviously you made a big splash several months ago when you used your slogan on CNN and everybody lost their mind.

00:53:08.000 I wanted to get your reaction to that.

00:53:10.000 I'm banned on CNN.

00:53:11.000 So the book starts, I always say when your wife texts you inside the house and you don't have like tiny babies that are sleeping, it's probably not a good sign, right?

00:53:21.000 So I did that, so it's funny, on that Friday

00:53:24.000 It was September, and I was doing a bunch of hits talking about Jemele Hill, the politicization of sports, everything else.

00:53:30.000 I told my wife, hey, I'm going to do this last hit on CNN, and then we're done, let's go get pizza, we'll take the boys out, and we'll get ready for a weekend of football, just kind of chill.

00:53:38.000 It's been a busy week.

00:53:39.000 I've been doing a lot of, you know, we work all the time.

00:53:41.000 And I was like, let's just go chill, we'll have pizza, we'll have a chill night.

00:53:44.000 So my wife is watching downstairs. 0.97

00:53:46.000 And I finish the interview and they basically kick me off the air and shortly thereafter my wife texts me from inside the house and it says, just this one line, do I need to put the house on the market?

00:53:58.000 Because my wife's fear, and this kind of goes to what we started talking about, is my goal every day is to tell you exactly what I think.

00:54:05.000 That can be very dangerous.

00:54:06.000 And so my wife's fear from the get-go is, like we're talking right now and everybody's listening, if this camera went off, what I'm saying to you and hopefully our conversation would be no different if we were sitting down and just relaxing and watching a game together.

00:54:18.000 So when I talk for three hours every morning on the radio, I try to talk like I'm sitting at a bar watching games with guys, right?

00:54:25.000 That's my target audience.

00:54:27.000 And I hope women are entertained by it too, but 90% of my audience is gonna be guys who like sports.

00:54:32.000 And so I try to be as honest as I can.

00:54:33.000 And my wife's fear has been that the mob is gonna come for me, right?

00:54:37.000 Like the mob has come for other people.

00:54:38.000 So my response, I went downstairs and she's like, I think this is gonna be really bad.

00:54:42.000 You know, I think this is gonna be really bad for us.

00:54:44.000 And it's funny, like I've been saying, things are going so well.

00:54:46.000 I said, you know what?

00:54:46.000 It wouldn't shock me if we got invited to the Trump White House.

00:54:49.000 My wife voted for Hillary Clinton. 1.00

00:54:51.000 So I was like, you'd go to the White House, right?

00:54:53.000 And I didn't vote for Trump, I voted for Gary Johnson.

00:54:55.000 But you know, I'm not an anti, like Trump's driving me crazy.

00:55:01.000 We were having an argument about whether you have an obligation to go to the White House regardless of who the president is.

00:55:05.000 My argument is yes.

00:55:06.000 If the president wants to meet with you or you get a chance to go at some point, shake a hand, you go.

00:55:10.000 I've never met the president.

00:55:11.000 I'd love to do it at some point, regardless of party.

00:55:13.000 And she's like, no, I wouldn't go.

00:55:15.000 I'm a Hillary Clinton supporter.

00:55:17.000 And so we were having that discussion.

00:55:19.000 And I go downstairs.

00:55:20.000 And so things have been going pretty well.

00:55:21.000 And she's like, I think this is going to be really bad.

00:55:24.000 And the truth of the matter is I almost got fired from my radio show over this.

00:55:28.000 And thankfully, the people who were in positions of power at the radio show were like, no, we're not going to fire him over this.

00:55:34.000 It's not a major thing.

00:55:37.000 And first of all, I've been saying that the First Amendment and boobs is a funny line to me, because if I just say I'm a First Amendment absolutist, it goes over everybody's head. 0.57

00:55:44.000 Right, because it's such a cliche to say that really it's when you unpack it that it makes sense.

00:55:49.000 So I thought, you know, it's like the great line from Sling Blade back in the day, like, and I'll probably get in trouble for this, but I think like the character said, I got an issue with midgets and antiques.

00:55:59.000 We're good to go.

00:56:20.000 I don't know.

00:56:41.000 We're good to go.

00:57:04.000 And it was all lies. 0.98

00:57:05.000 Again, I mean, these are people who were, like, Kathy Griffin was simulating oral sex on national television on New Year's Eve with members of the CNN crew, and they were getting on your case for spelling out the word booze. 0.99

00:57:15.000 Well, they were smoking weed live on the air at the most recent, and Brooke Baldwin said, like, that she has bigger balls than Don Lemon. 1.00

00:57:22.000 That's right. 0.98

00:57:23.000 I'm fine, like, if you want to, outrage culture in general drives me insane, but that was just such, frankly, bulls**t. I mean, there was no truth to it at all. 0.97

00:57:31.000 It was really absurd.

00:57:32.000 OK, so what are your fixes for the media?

00:57:34.000 So we've been very critical throughout this show of everything that the sports media is doing.

00:57:39.000 I totally agree with you that a little bit of diversity at ESPN would go a long way.

00:57:43.000 Yeah.

00:57:44.000 Like every time I'm at the gym and somebody turns on Around the Horn, it's like, oh good, five people who agree with each other.

00:57:48.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:57:49.000 Perfect.

00:57:49.000 Just what I've always wanted.

00:57:51.000 I am big and increasingly have become more so every year on the idea of I like to have conversations with people from a variety of different perspectives, right?

00:58:00.000 And so having a lot of people who look different and think the same is very much in vogue in media.

00:58:05.000 I think it needs to be the exact opposite.

00:58:06.000 I think we need to focus less on what people look like and more on what they say.

00:58:10.000 And so in my book, and I keep referencing the book because I've spent so much time thinking about this,

00:58:14.000 I say, the idea that you preface your opinion by what your identity is, is to me insane.

00:58:20.000 Like, if I said to you every opinion that I got, I look in the camera and I say, as a white man with green eyes, I believe, you'd be like, why do I care that Clay Travis has, you know, like, is a white guy with green eyes or brown hair or whatever else?

00:58:32.000 My opinion is what it is, so the idea that my opinion has more validity if I'm female or trans or whatever else, I think this cosmetic diversity,

00:58:43.000 We're good to go.

00:58:58.000 I think if you have an opinion, make it clear that it's an opinion, not that you're trying to argue that this is legitimate news.

00:59:05.000 I see this in sports all the time.

00:59:08.000 Like Dak Prescott came out and said that he was going to stand for the National Anthem, and they tried to turn him into, you know, like a modern day Uncle Tom, right?

00:59:16.000 And the article on ESPN that I read about it said, a couple days later, it says, Dak Prescott sticks to Anthem Stan, despite the fact that he has been almost universally criticized, right?

00:59:26.000 And it uses all these examples of, like, Get Out.

00:59:30.000 Like, they're like, oh, this is the guy from Get Out.

00:59:31.000 It has all these different— And Sunken Place and all that.

00:59:33.000 Yes.

00:59:34.000 It's supposed to be a news story.

00:59:37.000 But it's only saying that he's been criticized, right?

00:59:40.000 Many say.

00:59:41.000 There are a lot of people out there that said, you know what, good for Dak Prescott.

00:59:44.000 Dallas Cowboy fans who were very happy with that decision.

00:59:46.000 So, I think the idea that you are covering things objectively, I also think, just come out and say it.

00:59:54.000 Like, I say exactly what I believe, but I also give you my background.

00:59:57.000 Like, I didn't vote for Donald Trump, I voted for Gary Johnson.

01:00:00.000 I worked in democratic politics.

01:00:01.000 You can agree or disagree with me, but I think just owning it, like even in sports universe,

01:00:06.000 I grew up a fan of the University of Tennessee, right?

01:00:08.000 I talk a lot about Southeastern Conference football.

01:00:11.000 If that means that you don't trust my opinion on Alabama, that's fine, but I'm going to give you my entire roster of background.

01:00:18.000 It's amazing to me.

01:00:19.000 You know, ESPN doesn't employ a single person who has publicly admitted to voting for Donald Trump.

01:00:26.000 There are a lot of people out there who came out and said, I voted for Barack Obama, right?

01:00:31.000 Tons of people.

01:00:32.000 They are so afraid, the Trump voters are, that if they come out and admit to voting for Trump, that they'll get fired.

01:00:37.000 Well, that's not fair.

01:00:39.000 That's not a, and I know by the way, a lot of the people that you see on the air who would have voted for Donald Trump.

01:00:44.000 And so whether you like Trump or not, I think it's scary that we, you hit on this a lot, and this is why we're so simpatico on many of these things.

01:00:51.000 I think there's a big difference between, you talked about like the,

01:00:55.000 The sort of atmosphere of what's allowed to be said.

01:00:58.000 The reason why I found myself moving more right wing, and right wing is the wrong thing, but towards the middle, like whatever you want to say.

01:01:05.000 Away from the left anyway.

01:01:06.000 Away from the left.

01:01:07.000 Well said.

01:01:08.000 Is there's a difference between I disagree with you because, and I disagree with you and your opinion is not acceptable.

01:01:16.000 And the left wing in this country now embraces the idea that there are acceptable and unacceptable opinions to have.

01:01:23.000 And I find that terrifying.

01:01:25.000 That's the most threatening thing, I think, in our country today, alongside of identity politics, is this idea, like you said, there are some opinions you could have, like Adolf Hitler is a great human being.

01:01:35.000 Somebody will probably pull that and they'll be like, look what Clay Travis said.

01:01:38.000 If you wanted to have that opinion, I think that's so far outside the bounds of acceptable opinions that that's okay.

01:01:44.000 But even still within that scope, this we have expanded what is acceptable and unacceptable to the point where it's like a pinprick, right?

01:01:52.000 Like so that Kurt Schilling cannot believe that North Carolina has the right to pass a law responding to Charlotte.

01:02:01.000 And so it really, it drives me crazy.

01:02:04.000 And I spent so much time as I wrote this book, like trying to dive into it.

01:02:08.000 And I think just honesty is a big part.

01:02:10.000 I say I have four goals every day.

01:02:12.000 Smart, original, funny, and authentic.

01:02:14.000 And if I can hit those four, I know that I have succeeded for the day.

01:02:17.000 And some days I do, some days I don't.

01:02:18.000 But the authenticity I think is the most important one.

01:02:21.000 Well, Clay Travis, it's great to have you here.

01:02:22.000 Listen to Clay every morning on Fox Sports Radio, 6 to 9 a.m.

01:02:25.000 Eastern.

01:02:26.000 And check out his new book, Republicans Buy Sneakers Too, have left his ruining sports with politics.

01:02:30.000 It's available September 25th, so go check that out.

01:02:32.000 I'm sure it's going to be fantastic.

01:02:33.000 Clay, thanks so much for stopping by.

01:02:34.000 I really appreciate it.

01:02:35.000 I appreciate your work.

01:02:36.000 Thanks for everything you're doing.

01:02:43.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is produced by Jonathan Hay, Executive Producer Jeremy Boring, Associate Producers Mathis Glover and Austin Stevens, edited by Alex Zingaro, audio is mixed by Mike Caromina, hair and makeup is by Jeswa Alvera, and title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.

01:02:57.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

01:03:01.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 26, 2018

Clay Travis | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 16

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