The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Hour 2: PTFO Sneak Preview Part Deux - Share & Tell with Dan, Pablo, and Mina Kimes
Episode Date: August 30, 2023Are the Arizona Cardinals constructing the most blatant tank job in the history of tank jobs? Are weight loss drugs the future of dieting? And are those noises you’re hearing coming from the depths ...of hell, or is it just the sounds of the latest episode of Undisputed? Here’s a 2nd sneak preview of “Pablo Torre Finds Out,” coming September 5. Show Notes www.pablo.show https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/health/weight-loss-drugs-obesity-ozempic-wegovy.html https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/news/undisputed-hosts-skip-bayless-shannon-sharpe/atobdzudpu86qodnxfy5cvh7 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Alright, so I'm just gonna level with you guys here.
I forgot to mention some key details in this test show you're about to listen to.
For instance, this test show you're about to listen to can be found as a video at our YouTube channel.
Yes, we have a YouTube channel.
Public Torrey finds out is the name of that YouTube channel.
Also, can you guys hear that cricket?
I'm in New York City and I'm here in a cricket.
My building maybe has crickets now.
Also, we have a podcast feed.
You can guess what the name is.
A We're our own feed.
Exclusive stuff is gonna pop up there,
starting on September 5th when we launch for real.
Until then, we're gonna be trying stuff
kinda like me standing on a sidewalk,
front of my building,
talking into my cell phone like a crazy person.
Enjoy.
For the first time in my life over the last four years,
our daily content load has me in a place
where I'm an old man.
I don't have the stamina that I used to for this thing,
so that even though I'm doing something that has a great deal
of enthusiasm for me, I'm like,
f***ing dead at the end of the day.
And I was wondering if you doing everything you're doing now
have noticed any stamina issues,
because of how much you're doing and how little know you say.
Oh, God.
Stan, I'm 36 weeks pregnant.
I'm fucking tired all the time.
Oh my God.
I'm gonna say, I mean, I get tired on Saturday.
I literally had nothing to do.
I guess I was watching a preseason football day.
That was, that was something.
So you were in Nirvana in other words.
Yeah.
No, I feel good. It's good to see you.
I'm I'm I feel animated.
I know it disagree.
Yes, thanks.
Disagree on the good to see you because I'm looking at our video layout for those people who are only listening on podcasts and Dan has the big screen.
This is my **** show.
And still at this company, Dan must have the big screen. This is my fucking show. And still at this company, Dan must have the
big screen. It's in my contract. It's in the metal arc.
Founding doc.
Yeah, there go.
Just like that.
This was set up jokes that maybe we don't want to tell based on one of the topics today,
which is sort of wait. I don't know if we want to start with that one though. No, we should we should wait
to do wait and
we should probably get going
So I wanted to start with another off-camera conversation that I was having with Mina, because Mina called me quote, the world's preeminent tank fan, and I just want to object to this
label, because it makes me sound like I have a fetish for tank jobs.
And I don't, I don't have a, I don't have a TJ fetish.
What I have is an appreciation for incentives, Dan.
I have an appreciation for when it is clearly the right move for a team for an organization like the
Arizona Cardinals, which feels like, by the way, maybe the number one story that no one is talking about
this NFL season, when it's obvious
that that team should embark on maybe the most
unapologetic tank job, the most obvious tank job
in NFL history, which means, by the way,
that their new head coach Jonathan Ganon
cannot simply say, hey, I know we suck.
I know that Caleb Williams from USC
is the closest thing to Patrick Mahomes,
since Patrick Mahomes, the kind of singular franchise
saving superstar that justifies us losing as many games
as we can to get the number one overall pick.
He has to say stuff like this in response to questions.
Well, I'm not gonna name a starter
because I think it's a competitive advantage
for us going to Washington, but we'll know who the starter is
Yeah, and when it's clear by the way that the options for that starter are either Clayton Tune
Who is the rookie mean of the fifth round draft pick they took or Josh Dobbs who joined the team less than a week ago has not taken a single rep
In the postseason a snap in the postseason or in training camp,
you then get questions that are like this.
It's not ideal.
If thousands of behavior guys for whatever reasons, that you start a season without a guy
just taking a snap or even a season camp or trying to camp, how could it work if that
ends up being the case?
I trust in what we're doing is to be the best thing for the team.
That's how it would work.
So this is obviously humiliating, right?
But this is also precisely what he has to do.
Meena, this is what Jonathan Ganon has to do.
He cannot admit that he's tanking the first rule of tank club is that you never talk about
tank club.
He has to play dumb and only express
the truth through how depressed he is in his vocal tone.
The rare white tank commander, by the way, in the NFL. I just want to point that out.
That's a whole other conversation. Yeah. I find this story fascinating because while
he, this is hardly the first example of an NFL team
Doing an egregious tank. This might be one of the most egregious I've ever seen and it raises questions to me
It was already egregious. I mean going back to the draft when the Cardinals traded their first round graph picked to Houston
I moved that I applauded because of the return they got in the future.
I thought it was a major win for Arizona.
That pick combined with their own pick is going to be outrageously valuable.
But I think it raises questions about a couple things.
In the NFL, does it work?
Which I really think it's worth getting into because. Panking in general, you're saying does tanking work? Which I really think it's worth getting into because in general you're saying, does
tanking work? There's a lot of examples in recent NFL history of teams trying to do this and failing,
most recently, the Houston Texans who I alluded to, who their former head coach, Lovey Smith, who did not embrace to take commander job,
committed the Cardinal sin of winning that final game.
I see what you did there.
Handing that first pick to his old team Chicago.
But, you know, I think about New York was in position.
The jets weren't positioned to get Trevor Lawrence.
They won too much at the end.
A lot of times because the NFL is so crazy
and because games are so unpredictable
and so many teams end up being worse than you think,
you can go into a season with a clear intention
to not win and still not win enough.
So there's that side of things.
And then there's the other side,
which is managing this,
both from a fan base perspective internally, trying
to keep things from totally spinning off the rails.
It's not easy.
And a lot of coaches have pushed back on it, Miami being an example.
So I just want to say like Arizona, what they're doing is very obvious, but the sort of distance
they have to travel to get from point A to Caleb Williams is not an easy road.
I don't think that people understand what you just said, though, because as Pablo is out
here actively advocating for not trying for quitting for being less courageous.
It's a misrepresentation.
It's your streamlining efficiencies in a Wall Street way that has wrecked journalism
and Hollywood, but you're not wrong.
Oh, yeah, I am doing that.
You're not wrong that it would be when, because Mena did say what she just said, we are
looking at the possibility that the Arizona Cardinals in a sport that salary captain,
you have to find winning in whatever margins you can find them in,
by being bad for one year,
will have the top two picks in the next draft
that has Caleb Williams and Drake May,
where everyone wants the cheap quarterback that has value,
so the amount of draft capital, the amount of power,
they will have by being bad this year,
is overwhelmingly incentivized.
Like this is a story that's not being covered enough that the Arizona Cardinals have figured
out the only team in the league has figured out, wait a minute, we can game this system
by getting value at quarterback and having a ton of draft picks by having the top two
next year.
If we're bad and if Houston is bad,
and you can't trust Houston to be bad,
because I only know the name David Cully,
because he won more than he was supposed to
when he was handed a failure.
Brian Flores also won more than he was supposed to
when Dominic Foxworth was out here saying
that it was unethical for the dolphin to feel the tail.
Yes, a moral stain.
Yes, a moral stain that they would get physically trampled.
What are your thoughts on what they're doing in Miami? Yes, a moral stain. Yes, a moral stain that they would get physically trampled.
What are your thoughts on what they're doing in Miami?
It's unethical and morally reprehensible as far as I'm concerned.
If you're bad for one year and you get the top two picks, I think most franchises that
don't have a quarterback would want to do that, but they also have a quarterback.
They also have nothing else but Kyler Murray, which I assume also has value.
Well, Kyler Murray who tore his ACL right has value. Well, Kyler Murray, who tore his ACL, right?
Like, there is this question of like, are they just giving up on him entirely?
Is Caleb Williams really that good?
The consensus seems to be Caleb Williams is really that good, Kyler Murray, not good enough.
And what Mena is saying there too, I want to clarify, is that it's really hard to be as
bad as you think you should be in the NFL, a sport where the ball is fucking oblock.
Like, it's a small sample size.
Stuff happens.
You can't tell these guys to lose as much as I am now
cast in the role of Wall Street villain,
even though what I'm really doing is saying,
you gave me these rules.
These rules may be unethical.
Change them, by the way.
Side note, this is the real me talking.
Change the rules. Tanking can be a moral stain, I understand the argument, but
if you're going to set teams up to do what's best for them organizationally, then yeah,
go get Caleb Williams and make sure all of this is redounding to my larger point.
Make sure that you're actually as bad as you want to be.
Go Dennis Rodman on this.
Be as bad as you want to be. Otherwise, the worst thing this. Be as bad as you want to be. Otherwise,
the worst thing, mean, the worst thing is what I've learned in the NBA and every other sport,
is to just be mediocre, in which case you get none of the things you thought you wanted.
I thought just occurred to me that did Dominique Foxworth cost a dolphins, Joe Burrow single-handed leaves. This is a plea for ethics.
Yeah, you might have.
Okay, put yourself in the shoes of a Cardinals fan.
You want to lose.
You don't want to win three, four, five games.
You want to lose at an old time rate.
You want that pick.
You want those two picks.
This is, you know, we can talk about,
I find the kind of ethics thing I don't agree with
Dominique.
It's a rare case because no one is saying the players are tanking, although I think with
coaches, it gets a little bit hairier when it comes to personnel decisions.
Organizations take.
We know this.
Everybody agrees on this.
This is not controversial.
Players do the best they can. They're given shots. They there are guys who are being given
opportunities. The quarterbacks in Arizona that they would not otherwise be given.
Yes, Josh. I do not find that unethical personally.
It's funny though, Mina, it is funny to say that you are so terrible at football that playing
you is unethical. That does make me laugh a little bit because you're really being charitable
towards guys that are only getting a shot that they would not get otherwise.
Well, it's like that cutting Colt McCoy was evidence of how bad they want to be, which
is just a remarkable sentence, by the way.
I really, I did think, I said this on the show earlier this week, I did think that usually
playing Colt McCoy is something that was evidence of tanking.
Yes. See, the idea that getting rid of him would reveal to all of us all wait a minute
the cardinals over under on four and a half wins this season might be too high
because of how blatant they're being here which is uncommonly blatant for this
sport
i have no problem with what the cardinals are doing i think their fans should be
i mean it was a bit trollish of me but I had to pick them as one of my draft winners.
It was clearly the right thing for them to do
to trade that pick and get that haul.
And it was a win.
And, you know, I don't think this is an example of like,
oh man, the nerds are taking over football
and you know, you're playing with spreadsheets.
No, it's the right, you're going to be bad, so be
bad. I just keep going back to the fact that it is unpredictable in football and that's where I
want to introduce the wild card of this all and you alluded to this Pablo, which is the Cardinals
have a quarterback who has been good is currently on the PUP list and is going to want to return at some point to
remind people that he doesn't suck and he, his incentives might be in conflict with the
organizations.
Well, it's dead.
This part is extra hilarious to me and why we're going to be talking about the Cardinals
all season long.
Kyler Murray's rep has been, he doesn't work enough.
He doesn't love the game up, he doesn't try enough.
And here he's in a position where he's being told de facto,
don't play, don't try.
We want you to be exactly the caricature.
Go play Call of Duty for a whole season.
Is what every Cardinals fan should want Kyler Murray to do.
Or come back with a team that has absolutely no talent and watch the most fun football
you've ever seen from Kyler Murray trying to prove himself to get out of Arizona because
he doesn't want to play Bums.
We all know they're tanking, but he wins six games just running around out there because
he can do that because he's still me and you'll help me out here.
But I still think of him as a top 10 quarterback
if he's healthy.
He has played at that,
he's one of the hardest quarterbacks
to project in football right now
because the highs have been so high
and the lows have been so low.
Like there wasn't that long ago.
I think it was the first half of the 2021 season
where he was like, I think the leader to get MVP,
that wasn't, you know, distant history,
but the injuries certainly matter last year when he't, you know, distant history, but the injuries certainly
matter last year when he played. He didn't look great. It's just a remarkable dynamic. Like,
you know, we love he Smith is the thing that steered the Texans tank at the very last
second off the highway. Yes, gloriously crashing the highway. Yeah, it's gloriously crashing the car. They run the risk of being undermined by their own quarterback.
I like, I, I find that so fascinating.
Like, and a quarterback, Meena, you mentioned this and I do think people forget it.
It wasn't but a season and a half ago that Arizona had the best record in the league
and look to me.
Like, people forget this entirely.
They looked to me like a team that could absolutely win the Super Bowl
when they were whatever it was 10 and 2 or 9 and 1.
They started two seasons hell as of recently.
They had to be as bad as they were last year.
Arizona had one more road games than any team in the NFL
over a span of a couple of years.
Like that was a team with that quarterback
that nobody wanted to play.
Let me pay you guys a picture.
It's week 18.
The Cardinals are down a touchdown.
There's, I don't know, maybe not Houston,
but another horrible team.
I'm not gonna throw out a team,
but just some other team is losing.
They're getting their asses kicked.
The Cardinals need to lose this game to win the to get the number one pick and
Graphed Kyler Murray's replacement. The ball is in Kyler.
This is drama on a scale that I don't think is being
appreciated because here's the thing, even when Conn
and Marie comes back, they're gonna be bad.
They just don't have enough talent on this roster to defense is horrible.
But we're not talking about whether they'll be good or bad.
We're talking about will you again to Quo Paolo, will you be bad enough?
And that might be in the hands of a guy who's trying to save his own job. Kyler Murray, doing something to win the game and being booed by his fan base for doing
it unless they are playing the Houston Texans, in which case they get either pick, is the
only way that this does not end in deep therapy.
By the way, a guy who has become Dan, I don't know if you've noticed this, Colors been in mean as mentioned. Colors are kind of a mean of time's reply guy now.
I think we should say this out loud.
Can you guys please help me figure out what the scenario is with game 17, the hypothetical
scenario you've put out there. He's I'm assuming your highest paid player, you have to organizationally step
forward and say, you cannot play in this game. Clayton Tune is the answer to everything
that we're doing here. You will not play.
But if you do that, Dan, you break the number one rule of the tank club, which is you
don't talk about the tank like that. If they were to actually make that decision, can you, I mean, do you remember how out,
Doug Peterson got fired because the Eagles did it.
Do you remember this?
Doug Peterson, Super Bowl winning head coach.
Now, University seat is one of the best coaches
in football, Jack Bell.
He got fired because he did this in Philadelphia.
I think-
The good news, yeah.
The good news is that I just looked it up. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
will be released on November 10th, 2023. So if that game's good enough, you might get Caleb Williams.
But speaking of losing to a dangerous degree, I think Mina has a topic for us.
Not funny. It's such a bad segue.
That's so bad.
Yeah.
I mean, do you know how much we're paying this person to host things like this?
Like he learned it ESPN.
He learned, I mean, it's just a terrible segue.
It's going to reveal itself to be a great segue as soon as Nina explains her topic,
which is about,
this is the easiest joke that gets told around here.
It's about losing stuff. It's about losing stuff. It's about losing stuff. It's about losing stuff.
It's about losing stuff.
It's about losing stuff. It's about losing stuff.
It's about losing stuff.
It's about losing stuff.
It's about losing stuff.
It's about losing stuff.
It's about losing stuff.
It's about losing stuff.
It's about losing stuff.
It's about losing stuff.
It's about losing stuff.
It's about losing stuff.
It's about losing stuff.
It's about losing stuff.
It's about losing stuff.
The subject that I am bringing up for today's show, my obsession. The subject that I am bringing up for today's show, my obsession.
Last time we spoke, it was artificial intelligence.
Right now, it is ozemic or we go v or these weight loss drugs.
I find this all very fascinating.
I sent you guys a couple of articles that were in the times.
Recently, there's been many great articles that there was a really excellent New Yorker long
feature by Geotantino about it. I think earlier this year, New York Magazine did a great story,
but these latest stories highlighted a couple of things that I think are fascinating.
When it comes to the fact that there's now this new crop of weight loss drugs that are very,
very effective, which has never happened in modern or in history.
One article in the Times basically can be summed up
as we don't actually know how these work.
Which I think is so terrifying and weird.
And significant because I think nobody really knows
how to feel and talk about these drugs.
And the fact this massive sea change in healthcare
is upon us.
Nobody knows if we're supposed to be morally outraged
or if it's a good thing.
Nobody knows if we should condemn them
or be happy because of what it means for public health.
And apparently nobody knows how they actually
freaking work other than the fact that there's a hormone
that tells your brain to not be hungry, basically.
And the other article I sent was about how predominant
they are in wealthy communities in New York
and that breathe side, which I do think factors
into the moral side of all this.
But I read everything about this that comes out
and I still find that I, and this, you know,
maybe I, this is my brain being broken by the fact that because of our jobs, I feel like
I have to have the take.
I don't know what the right take is on this.
So I'm hoping you're talking to you guys a little bit.
I want to hear what you think.
I assume you've all been following it as well and reading these stories. And yeah, it strikes me as a very nuanced and complicated subject
and not one that can easily be reduced to good or bad.
And will be reduced to just fat jokes at my expense, I'm sure.
Well, hold on, but I do want to set this up before we get, because I think we should, we
should, again, there's just so many puns here, jokes,
but like we should look in the mirror at ourselves
and be uncomfortable about this,
but I do wanna set up the story a bit more, Dan,
because the big revelation here scientifically
is that losing weight is not just a matter of willpower anymore.
Like that was the conventional wisdom
across science and across society,
was that this was
because obesity was because you didn't try enough. You didn't have enough mamba mentality.
And so there was shame because there was no other scientific solution to losing weight. And now
wagoviozempic, wagoviozempic is the drug that might be surpassing ozempic now in popularity even.
The median weight loss experience per these articles that mean a surpassing it was not big now in popularity, even. The median weight loss experience
per these articles that mean a cent,
it's about 15%.
And so this is revelatory.
Like doctors are saying,
like this is radically changed how we think
about just the concept of what being obese is.
And so too has it landed heavily with me
and Mina as we do jokes still while trying to talk about how we
shouldn't do jokes anymore.
We're paying for it.
We're paying for these jokes.
This is Pablo Torre.
That's segue in those jokes probably cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That's the only thing.
That's the only thing.
But I feel bad about it.
I feel bad, Dan, and I'm wondering in a real way absent any of the word play.
I think Meena and I are both curious like, how does a story like this strike you as we've
been striking you for, you know, the jokes that you've been making?
This is the greatest insecurity of my life.
It has been since sixth grade when I had a pukashell necklace and a double chin, and I
still think of that photo as a kid
who did not have a lot of confidence.
I thought my shirt was also a velour
that was burgundy colored.
It's an image.
It's a year in my sixth grade brain
because I've always been a fat kid.
And when you mention the idea of willpower,
I also have not just a thyroid condition,
but when I exercise, my body doesn't make a distinction
between the cortisol release that you would get
from being chased by a bear.
So the last year of my life, I've inflated and swollen,
even though I eat according to blood allergies,
I eat only a handful of ingredients, I know exactly
how to eat, how to exercise.
And I didn't have to read those
articles because my endocrinologist and another doctor have both offered those things as a solution.
And recommended it. This is perfect for you, an injection that will curtail your appetite.
And I'm like, my appetite is not a problem. What I need is something that allows my metabolism to work correctly and they're
like, no side effects and it's just an injection. It's been recommended to me twice and I'm scared
because when it was recommended to me 10 years ago, just take some human growth hormone.
The only side effect was if you have an unknown tumor, it's going to grow much faster in
your body and I'm like, no thanks, I'm not gonna do hormones.
But now they're telling me no side effects.
They're not telling me we don't know what this does
or how it works.
They're telling me, use this, it's no problem,
it'll kill your appetite, period.
Beyond the aspect of this that's personal for you,
you're actually trying to figure out
if you're willing to do this and how it might affect you
and the uncertainty that comes with that.
Dan, like you just told a story about how you are
a very acutely aware from personal experience
of how weight in this world, weight gain, obesity, et cetera,
are heavily stigmatized, contrary to scientific evidence.
And this has been the story for years.
This is the fact why when I'm reading some of these articles, it took so long for these
drugs to be developed and come out because doctors were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's
a willpower thing.
And scientists were like, no, we have evidence.
Do you feel like upon reading this and seeing and listening to scientists and doctors talk about
it, that this will change that stigma at all.
Or is it just simply going to shift to, oh, you're cheating now, you're taking this
job?
Oh, but I just think this is just somehow one of the last places.
This is the universe's final, funny joke on me as I, you know, deal with the mortality
of my brother.
And like I said, inflate from the pressure of the last year, Dan Wokotard is in the
unsafe purgatory where I'm the only acceptable thing to make fun of anymore in today's
culture.
The fat man, the fat man can still be made fun of,
and I don't believe, actually, Mina,
that this reduces the stigma,
but people will say you cheated.
You weren't meritorious and willful in your loss of weight.
You injected the rich Hollywood drug.
Well, it's gonna be rich is the operative word
to go back to the article.
This is just gonna be, you can now buy your way out of it.
It's going to be a two.
Weight is going to be even more tied to class
than it was before.
That's the thing that probably, you know,
the science of it, I don't know, man,
I can't weigh in on that.
But the money side of it, it seems like at least for a while
until the prices come down, maybe because of supply
and demand dynamics, this is gonna be a class thing,
which is...
Oh, dystopian.
Yeah, dystopian, that perfect word.
Oh, but we're just starting there.
We're about 10 years from old people, rich people,
just being able to buy the youth of poor young people.
Like, we're gonna be able to...
Yes, you're right, yes.
An app is gonna be formed. Hey, young person, are you willing to sell three years of your
youth in exchange for $11,000? We're going to be able to do that in the dystopian future.
So I've been contemplating two things, listening to Dan kind of barrisole about this. One is
that it be very funny if Dan Lebertard was not allowed, like Barry Bonds, into the sports casting Hall of Fame,
because he went on a Zephyk.
That'll be very funny to me.
The second thing though, is that it does feel like
the other person, based on what you just said,
who might still be able to make fun of
in this increasingly sensitive culture.
Is that guy who's like 50, who's been transfusing
his son's blood into his body, and doesn't look younger.
Have you seen the photo of this guy?
He's like trying to do the vampire thing,
but he still looks fucking old.
Can I get out of Canada?
I wanna ask you this,
because when I said this a story to Pablo,
I mentioned something, which is,
upon joining the universe of the show a few years ago,
and seeing that your weight was one of those,
it was fair game, it was something that you guys have
entire elaborate multi-year-built pits built around.
So I jumped in, and this is back when I used
to read my replies more, I saw that it bothered some people.
They said, I really don't like it when you do this,
and I actually kind of stopped doing it.
I probably didn't even notice it because everyone else does it
I kept doing it. Yeah, I didn't do it
But I stopped doing it not because I felt like it was bothering you and you've never ever said anything to me or anyone
But because it bothered other people and I thought you know what that's totally reasonable
You're saying all this like do you feel I've had to get comfortable with it.
There wasn't a choice.
There is.
But you do have a choice now.
Right?
But you stop it.
What I'm saying, well, but why stop it?
That's, first of all, that's my question for you.
Trying to stop it doesn't actually stop it.
So you might as well join in on the fun.
It's not like, hey, social media, I'm vulnerable here.
You won't be cruel about this, right? That's not really the way that one works.
So might as well jump in on it.
But I don't think it, I mean, at this point,
I'm an adult and I'm not pretending to not be bothered.
What bothers me is that my body doesn't function correctly
so that I can lose the weight.
And my choice in my fifties is now to either be unhealthy that comes with obese
because your organs aren't gonna work
if you keep being 250 pounds,
or as I like to say, 6, 3, 2, 15,
or an injection,
or an injection that doctors don't know how it works
and are telling you no side effects,
and I don't trust no side effects like I don't I
Mean it's a very Miami dynamic though with the doctors are saying it's like we don't really know how this works
But you know, I'm sure it'll know but they're still help but they're the history of the show. And you got to do it.
I see you clearly. So when one of you wants to talk like it's not that hard to see if you've got something good.
Great. Damn good job of not interrupting each other. I agree.
Well, that's that's what brings us to our next subject, which do you want me to leave it Pablo or
do you want to leave it?
No, it's my show, but this one I actually want to give you custody of.
Okay.
I just loved so much.
I really did that skip pay list in now feuding in his 70s to try and take the mantle from
industry sports leaders, Steven
Acement, 20 years.
They've dominated debate culture and really changed the face of the sports media critic
and, in debating everything, created an asset of cruelty around the way we treat athletes
because it's all entertainment.
We say nasty things and it's all sports radio and it's all supposed to be content.
And Skip Bayless is trying to keep up with changing times in his 70s by opening the gates
of hell to three generations, three generations of this is the loudest black guy who played
football during his generation, three generations of it.
Michael Irvin, Keesishan Johnson and Richard Sherman.
And of course, when they get together
because they all want to be thrown the damn ball,
all of them are talking at the same time
and skip Bayless shrinks to the size of a postage stamp
on his own show because how the hell are you gonna get
in the way of those three personalities?
And I'm just really enjoying the idea
that skip Bayess is last evolution
is all right, believe it.
Let's let everyone have at it on my show.
I'm going to allow Richard Sherman, Michael Irvin and Keeshawn Johnson to debate me for
the remainder of my career.
That again, I will say, I don't mean this as ageism.
He's 70 years old. This is not, this is not the game for 70 years, olds, but he's going
to try it with three different really cartoonish loud guys.
We need to play a sample of this because Dan poetically described it, but we should
just snort this. I'm for doing and playing that. What I'm saying is, I don't know how you can say it. You can't say it.
What you're going on and not your hands.
It's a little championship on every level.
What I'm talking about doing, I want championships on every level doing.
I don't know how you can say it.
If I were that bad, it would be.
I mean, you'll notice zero words spoken by Skip Bayless.
And what is actually a representative clip from the many clips we had to choose from?
You know the Christmas episode of the bear?
That's the piece of the dishes.
Oh, that's the thing.
No, throw that for.
Watching these clips, that's how I feel.
And there's so many questions that come out of this.
One is, do you think Skip Bayless feels
that he made the right decision,
consigning himself to the life that Dan described?
Second is, is this good television?
That I think is interesting, because, you know, Dan,
I've seen some of your criticisms of debate shows
and debate culture, and I think that there's
the thing that I find very hard to parse personally is, well, is this good television?
Is a good television or bad, but what makes good and bad television in the argument format,
the ratings kind of speak for themselves with some of these shows, that I feel like though
it hits a wall where it's not good for me personally.
I cannot, well, I find that unwatchable. I find it's very challenging for me to listen to.
And it's very different from, I guess,
I'll weigh in here with the personal experience first take,
which I do during the NFL season,
because that show is very much Stephen A. Smith's show.
That does not happen on that show.
There's like, you go into the arena knowing that you're
being incentivized to attack, but there's limits to it. It's very clear who the boss is.
Wait a minute, hold on, Dan. Are you hearing what I'm hearing on this?
I mean, in a's she's not speaking.
She's not speaking between the lines.
That wouldn't happen on Stephen A Smith's show.
But also what wouldn't happen is he wouldn't have three personalities bigger than him on
his own show.
Like because if I were to one cage, Richard Sherman, Keeshawn Johnson and Michael Irvin trying
to make a statement in front of the lights on any unsuspecting hose throughout the history
of time,
they would all have trouble containing whatever that became.
But the word unsuspecting is the word that was circling my brain as I was listening to Mina,
basically, say that she's pulling punches because she knows there are some things that she shouldn't say
because it would be to render the host of the show unsuspecting. I would actually say it's not that I'm pulling punches in terms of the content of what I
say, but the way that I say it.
Now, granted, I don't think it's in my nature to talk about the people.
That's why you stink.
But that's why you stink at the tank.
You've stung at the tank since you got here.
I've gotten better.
Okay.
No, but you got be obnoxious.
It's gotta have a condescension and an arrogance in it.
It has to be something that has an affect that is rude.
Like it's obnoxious.
It has to, it has to sound a little more like this.
You went to corner because it was much easier to do.
You gotta stop over there.
Why you wanna get over it?
You gotta get over between it.
All you gotta do is run with somebody.
Yeah, there.
Just like run.
I don't know, because people love JJ on first take,
and he has positioned himself, I think,
very successfully as a reasonable one.
I'm here, I'm gonna do my reasonable take.
I'm not gonna sound aggressive or condescending
or talk over people.
And when I watch those clips,
which by the way, Steven A loves too.
Steven A, there is a bit of an eaglelessness,
I think, to the way that show is produced.
That's different from Skip being crowded out of his own show.
I find that to be really good television.
And I think a lot of people do.
I think it really works.
I think that was better than it.
But it's also rare, me, because it stands out at least in part because, oh, look,
JJ Rettich is a lot smarter than most of the people who are talking around him and
the points that he's making.
More and more, he sounds more informed.
Like, JJ Rettich keeps going viral at least in part because he sounds super smart.
Well, that's what, that's where I see this through.
That lens is the attention of this, the virality of it, the attention economy of what it means
to be good at anything.
Because when you get a clip, and I want to play one more clip here, the clip where Skip
Bayless kind of for Lorne Lee has to just acknowledge that he doesn't even have the oxygen
on his own show to be skip
failus.
Here's my problem.
All year long, they did not have a closer.
I don't know how closely you watch their games, but I can, we don't have time because
you guys talk too much.
And so I can't, I don't have to run out of time.
I know you're just going to be a great person.
I did, yeah, she talked too much.
Just like that part, that part is funny and it goes viral in part
because it feels like Skib Bayless is not in on this, right?
Like what we're watching,
let's just cut to the core of this.
What we like is that Skib Bayless is being drowned out
as the ultimate sports TV villain.
Even more than Steven A. has ever been by the way.
Skib Bayless embodies that.
For all these reasons, he cannot win on his own show.
He has stepped onto a giant rake shaped like Michael Irvin and Richard Sherman and Kish
on Johnson.
That's why this is going viral.
That's why I am snorting all of it.
It's funny for that specific reason.
We answer the question that you're asking, though, because when you say, is it good television
and is bad television, good television? Ratings do dictate all of that.
Ratings are the ultimate decider on something like this
and the modern currency,
whether you're 70 or on TikTok is attention.
And all of these clips that Pablo just played,
millions of views, which these shows do not have when they're on television.
Not hundreds of thousands, millions of views
just because it's messy,
and that's good for Skip Balus, is it not?
Like whether he's happy about it is a different question,
but of course that's good television.
It's certainly television that Fox and ESPN
will take it every turn, will they not?
Because it's money, It's just numbers.
So skip was the trend number one trending topic on Twitter when this started
whenever the new lineup debuted. You're right. Those clips went viral.
I think the he is undoubtedly a short term winner because attention in our
industry is absolutely a barometer of success, but whether it's sustainable will
determine whether or not this is actually successful.
I mean, first of all, not to be like an industry analyst,
but like, she managed our present-made-us-day view on first take,
right? And I think Pablo's point was really astute, which is these all
environmental, not because of the content of what people are saying or because people
enjoyed it, but because everybody loved watching Skip be humiliated or whatever.
Yeah, but Floyd Mayweather is one of the great businessmen of our time just because people
would tune in to watch him get knocked out. Like, I can't believe
that there is an evolution force kit bailiff at the age of 70 in a game this competitive. But
if he's willing to accept, all right, I'll be the fool. That's a great evolution. I just don't
think he would ever accept that. It feels short term to me. I feel like if there are to have any
success, you'd have to have, you know, like Richard Sherman break out as a voice
that people want to hear or more like interesting debates.
That particular dynamic that you are both rev, literally rev-voying
and that doesn't feel like something people that is going to go viral every week
and get that kind of attention.
It felt like, like, this is novel.
Have you not watched Michael Urban on television? You don't think Michael Urban on television,
who multiple times I have thought to myself,
I don't know if this is cocaine,
but there is cocaine in his past
that wouldn't make it an unreasonable leap
to say this person behaving at this rate of speed
is really amped up, and always I think,
me, now always good television. I don't think
yeah, I think I think that I think my blood better television than all three of us. Well,
he's great. I'm a television. You but then you covered Michael Irvin like on some level, did you
foresee? I want to ask you this question because you had a front row. It was obvious when he was 18.
He was the most charismatic player on all of those university Miami teams that ended up
having a personality type that the country embraced because it was loud, obnoxious, fun,
ridiculous.
Let's just be very honest about what's happening.
Michael Irvin has been plugged in to like every conceivable talk show format because
someone out there is like,
we need him to make this sound at us.
You went to corner,
because it was a lot easier.
The excerpts from that show sound like when you play
like Pink Floyd backwards looking for signs
for the devil or something,
like, you know what it is?
It is absolutely what echoes and sounds like.
The sound made by something crawling the walls of hell.
Absolutely.
You don't think it's sustainable.
That's what it is that you're arguing.
I don't think that's going to continue getting this level of attention.
They have to do other things.
I do not underestimate these gentleman's ability to find other ways to get attention, though,
Dan.
So I just meant that particular dynamic.
It's like watching a dog walk on its legs.
You're like, whoa, haven't seen that before.
That's what it felt like watching Skip Bayless be quiet.
It's back legs, you meant, right?
Because all I've seen is dogs walk on their legs.
Okay, so I'm not noticing a through line here. We're talking about people losing things, but maybe getting better in the process. That feels like the theme of today's show. I feel
like I found some poetry there, Dan. So what did you learn? What did you find out today
on Pablo Tora? I find out. I found out that when three people have worked together for a long time, they can hit
exactly the perfect musical notes, never talking over each other because they have chemistry,
having discourse that can be a symphony as long as three parts and gradients that have worked
together before are graceful, unlike what it is that undisputed was doing, where everybody was
talking over each other and the host of the show couldn't get a word in edgewise. I am
arguing undisputed style that what we're doing around here has more chemistry
than the average podcast.
I thought you were going to set me up first Pablo so that you could end the show
with Dan. I don't understand. I don't know, sorry. That's the kind of chemistry I'm talking about right there Pablo.
That's what I'm talking about.
No, no one is ever seen it.
We are going to end on a failed bit.
What?
I was, I thought I was setting up Dan for me to do the interview.
I'm going to show where we're judging another show for yelling over all of that stuff.
That's the kind of content that I'm talking about.
This show would never be like all the other ending all of that time. That's the kind of content that I'm talking about. This show would never be what all the Indian guys are.
That's me, that's me, that's me, that's me.
And I did metal on in the early,
I could pay by my own money for those magical professionals
sex, if they do as a poor fox.
Because I care about production.
Oh, both of you. down. Woo, sweating balls on Pablo finds out.