The Problem With Jon Stewart - The Problem With the NFL: Keyshawn Johnson Explains

Episode Date: November 4, 2021

Fantasy football legend Jon Stewart sits down with real football legend Keyshawn Johnson to discuss coach Jon Gruden’s leaked racist emails and how the power structure of the NFL enables such behavior. Jon is also joined by Kris Acimovic and Kasaun Wilson, who don’t hold back on the Gruden controversy.CREDITSHosted by: Jon StewartFeaturing, in order of appearance:Kris Acimovic, Kasaun Wilson, Keyshawn Johnson, Henrik BlixExecutive Produced by Jon Stewart, Brinda Adhikari, James Dixon, Chris McShane, and Richard PleplerLead Producer: Sophie EricksonProducers: Caity Gray, Robby SlowikAssoc. Producer: Andrea BetanzosSound Designer & Audio Engineer: Miguel Carrascal Senior Digital Producer: Kwame OpamDigital Coordinator: Norma HernandezSupervising Producer: Lorrie BaranekHead Writer: Chelsea DevantezElements Producer: Kenneth HullTalent: Brittany Mehmedovic, Haley DenzakResearch: Susan Helvenston, Andy Crystal, Harjyot Ron Singh Theme Music by: Gary Clark Jr.The Problem With Jon Stewart podcast is an Apple TV+ podcast, produced by Busboy Productions.https://apple.co/-JonStewart

I apologize for the the setup. It is like watching like an old man It's almost like do you remember the who is the mobster? Chin gigante used to wander the streets of Greenwich Village in a bathrobe And that's kind of what it looks like watching me get ready for a podcast. None of us got that None of us for real. Yeah, Chin gigante. No, have you ever had a reference so obscure you have to ask them how to spell it so you can Google it Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast big episode this week. We're gonna be talking about Football from now on this podcast is a fantasy football podcast. No more Politics and issues and I don't know we're here with Kay and Chris. They're both writers on the program. Welcome guys

Hey, hey John. Yeah, we have an opportunity to talk to a gentleman named Kishan Johnson Who was just a hall of fame receiver all world one of super playing was the number one? Draft pick in the entire draft as a receiver went to the Jets played for the box played for cowboys. Yeah Kind of bounced around phenomenal player. He played for John Gruden and so Kishan is going to speak about that but more importantly, I think to talk to him about that weird disconnect between a league that is majority black and brown and Run by overwhelming majority white and whiter and and and what's that like and

First of all, let's jump in with are you both football fans? Yes I was born and raised a Denver Broncos fan to my emotional detriments I was so tied up in it that like it was emotionally unhealthy I'm from Jersey. So I grew up with Jets fans now before we we get going I want to set the stage here. John Gruden was the coach of the Las Vegas Raiders So John Gruden it obviously in the big news had just horrible hateful shit in his emails that he was sending out and apparently felt Very comfortable sending them out, but and had to resign. Did you see any of the Gruden emails? Yes, it was such It was kind of like

Sexism racism Homophobia gangs all here kind of a deal like no when you're talking about inclusivity He really he really did it He went after everybody. I believe it's it's what they refer to as locker room talk. How much of it? Do you think is? Reflective of deep ignorance in his soul and How much of it do you think is? performative masculinity I get the sense that this is a deeply ignorant dude my grandmother always says any racism you see is is just overflow

Like it's what you couldn't keep in yeah, just pouring out of your body as soon as he said rubble lips I was like it's time to lick the spoon cuz the cake is in the oven. This is not the cake. This is just us Licking the spoon. It's a lot of icing you used Where is the cake cuz you you got it? You've made a lot of icing and that's what this is Unfortunately John Gruden has given us all racial diabetes and we have to live with it Cuz it does you know you get the sense where they say like oh well people say things on emails that they would never say You're like right, but even emails aren't the depth of what you would say to people in person Right and by the way the idea that John Gruden is an anomaly in the national football league only one the only one

Bonkers, you know you can make Gruden the scapegoat and you can pretend that this is an issue with him But this is a league wide Yes, like these guys are comfortable enough on their emails to be saying this shit like that's how comfortable that's how The ease is and if that's the case I'll guarantee you it ain't Gruden and out like this is the way they talk Oh for sure the conversation from here on out isn't we shouldn't be saying this stuff on email. It'll be Everybody make sure you delete your emails. Yeah, also, but it couldn't happen to a nicer guy as they say The biggest part of the story to me is that the NFL is not releasing any other emails

That means people were hitting reply all and they were not disagreeing with him Do you think do you think it was a whole bunch of his rich friends who are like hey? What y'all want for lunch today? He's like I don't care as long as we ain't got no rubber lips in them And they're like come on John, you know, we don't talk like that Chipotle is open like no This is how they talk and he just happened to be the fall guy it's the it's The idea that they did this exhaustive search and Gruden was the only one they came up with is dubious at best well, they didn't that was the whole time and everybody

was angry at the Raiders for making a mockery of The mockery that is the Rooney rule that is their rule that you have to interview a minority candidate And you don't have to hire the person you just have to send them through that's right I'm not even sure you have to talk to him. You just have to say you're gonna talk to him Yeah, it's the interview starts out with we all know this is a formality, right? Here's the first question they ask the black candidates. Do you know where your car is parked? You can go back there now Make sure they get a picture of you leaving the interview

So we know they ask every black candidate is your flash on In Instagram or it didn't happen my friend it was clear they wanted Gruden So they did a couple of performative interviews there and they hired him to some Utterly insane contract right all right in honor of John Gruden's email scandal and his really just I think piss poor Roasting ability just not just didn't seem polished didn't seem focused I mean, I'll have to go back and look at the tape But there's a lot of things he can clean up a lot of things that we can correct there And I just wanted uh, k and chris

Any roasts of John Gruden that we might be able to throw out there, you know, sometimes it's helpful For a young guy to sit and maybe on the sidelines watch some people roast Pick up some things so that when he gets back in there, you know, he can be a little bit more polished Do you guys have anything? Yeah. Yeah, we got some stuff Okay, let me let me let me hear a little bit what you got and then we'll go from there And by the way, these are not recent. These are roasts that k and chris wrote over the last 12 years We've been doing it since 2011. We've been exchanging emails Absolutely about gruden. What do you got? John Gruden looks like the mechanical baby from toy story

Here's the thing John Gruden left his job at ESPN to stop doing color commentary And he just lost his job as an NFL coach because he would not stop doing color commentary You know who is really gonna suffer the most from all this And this is very obscure, but frank caliendo is is probably He's made a living off of doing John Gruden impressions and now he has to find a way to work Lips as big as michelin tires into his next ESPN appearance Okay, John Gruden managed to do in his emails what he could never do as a coach

Put together a strong offensive line That's very you know what that's actually Remarkably clever. Yeah, I I enjoyed that very much. I thought you were going to go with the roast like Fuck that Pillsbury dough boy Looking chucky doll. I didn't realize that you guys were going to go in with classy and clever Yeah, we got to show him how to not resign when you get in a roast battle Yeah, we we wanted to leave something for dangling. We wanted to elevate the discourse in the NFL That's our goal. I was going to go in with like, uh, he's the only NFL coach whose dick is considered an ini

Can you can you confirm that with kishan, please? Yes, John Gruden is so misogynistic. He was fired from a job where beating your wife gets only a two game suspension Oh wow That yes Boy and brutal. I like that one. Okay, John Gruden's son is named deuce. Did you know that he's named after his father? Who's a piece of shit?

Is that really true? Yeah His name is deuce. How old is his son because now he's a grown man. I wasn't gonna touch this and then okay If you want to be racist and people not know what you're saying Here's what you don't do. You don't text someone who runs the washington redskins. What is That's the one person who you do not text. You never saw oj like fax ted bundy like you don't do that You don't you don't hit up people who are doing the same thing as you it's not safe It's not safe for you here. So so did you hear that john gruden is against women being referees? No Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's afraid he'll get 15 yards for not knowing where the clitoris is

Beneath the hood I believe that's referred to as illegal procedure Or illegal use. I think illegal use of hands. I think All right, that's tremendous guys now, uh, next up we got the interview with quiche on johnson Uh, I'm gonna say something about this interview. We had to make some changes because of some technical difficulties So you might think to yourself like this sounds Different and maybe not as good as somebody else. You know what? Fuck you You're not the technical difficulty police I'm doing the best I can

All right. Well, you can still understand it pretty good and uh quiche on was super interesting. So uh, here you go Please take a listen We are talking right now with quiche on johnson legendary NFL wide receiver. I mean 14 is one of super bowl all these uh different accolades now. You're obviously Busy from sunrise to sundown doing all the shows and and espn. Yeah, thank you for taking the time to talk to us quiche on Oh, yeah, no problem, man. We finally got it together. We had a little technical difficulties earlier, but We work we worked we worked it out

We worked it out and i'm here. Absolutely turns out it's not easy to get uh a media football star named quiche on johnson together With an 80 year old man who looks like he should in the movie up. Thank you for joining I wanted to talk to you a little bit not just about, you know, uh the john gruden situation, but really the broader issue in sports, uh About the disconnect between the coaching class and the ownership class And the player class you you played with gruden. Yes Yeah, I played for gruden. We were together at temp a buck in years and uh, you know We went to the super bowl won the super bowl and then in 2004 I played with him

For about half the season and then I was Deactivated and went to work for fox for about seven weeks and then eventually was traded to the dallas cowboys But talking about gruden you know This is not justifying what he wrote, but it feels like he's the fall guy He can't be the only you know, this is one of those situations like uh, uh, you know I lived in new york city for a long time when you found a roach You knew that wasn't the only roach that was sitting around in your kitchen

Nobody's that comfortable on business email accounts. Yeah, if that's not how they actually speak to each other We all know that in this situation john that There's more People That need to be uncovered. There's no question about it. Right. Um, I don't believe That those emails came directly from the nfl I don't personally believe that I think somebody

within the washington football teams Headquarters organization lawsuits along that way Right release the emails Because of his relationship with bruce allen Who has a relationship with the grudans? That's just my conspiracy. That's interesting You're saying that might have been a way to get at bruce allen who was the the executive of the washington football team and grudan is just roadkill in the middle of that

I believe that's how that got leaked out even though the nfl Has the 650,000 emails as well. They saw other things in there Right, and they don't want those other things released right and grudan got caught in the wash of it Which i'm glad he did get caught in the wash of it because it's going to uncover a whole lot of stuff eventually Now that's interesting because when you say you glad you got caught and it's going to uncover stuff Is the type of stuff that you're talking about similar this kind of

casual racism casual bigotry against Really many of his own players, you know john. I don't know if it's Going to uncover more racist Bigotry behavior right sexism none. I don't know what but it's some dirt that's somewhere I don't know if it means that we buried eight bodies in the back of the stadium I don't know you don't know what it is right? You just know that there's something because why else would you hide? In not disclose right 650,000 emails to the public or to the individuals That have these lawsuits the women that have these lawsuits

Against the washington football team and the nfl is saying well We don't really want to do that and that gets us to the crux of the kind of conferences I want to have with you because the one thing that the NFL does I think better than almost any other organization In the country is protect its ass protect its name You know first of all it's a league where only three of the coaches Are black and the league is maybe 70 percent african-american. So they put on everybody's helmet and racism And they do all these symbolic gestures But the truth is there are no minority owners other than con in north carolina

And there's only three coaches head coaches and here you have something that exposes I think an underbelly Of of the way that they've done business since their inception and how do you feel about that? You know having been involved in it. It's not that You don't like the ownership or you don't like the coaches, but structurally the nfl Is antiquated You know john I got a lot of different feelings a lot of different views on how the nfl is structured and how it's run and

The way it is I start by saying I just uh released a book called the forgotten first the reintegration of four black men Back into the nfl from in 1946 And a lot of research was done In this space by all the racism back to the the inception of the national football league to where we are today and I think that When you start looking at

Owners Let's start there right And we talk about minorities, right? And and Let's keep it honest when we say minorities. We really talking about black people. We ain't talking about Shot con and we're talking about black people african-american people that look like me right when you talk about ownership Of something in the national football league the majority of the owners that own these teams

Either was handed these teams down right from family and generation from generation to generation So think about when football first started you think they're gonna let our black ass get a slice of of of ownership back then Hell no, we were slaves to them. So why would they give us a piece? so it goes from Great great grandfather the grandfather the son to you know, and it just keeps going on and on and on right? It's a legacy. It's a legacy piece every now and then there's a Team or two every 15 years or so maybe a little bit even longer than that they pop up

and when they pop up We as a black community we don't necessarily have the economics to buy a team Based on the standards in which the nfl has set To be able to purchase a team. You're probably in your head going. Well, that's not true Oprah can buy one magic Johnson could buy one jz could buy one. No, they can't No, they can't because the owners that are purchasing these things Based on the standards that are set. You got to have a certain amount of money in the bank

liquid right not paper Right, you I'm buying a team for three billion dollars. How much do you think? the governing body of the nfl want to see That you have In your bank account liquid and ready to go right they want to see Six billion well who in the hell has six billion dollars laying around So that's one of the main reasons right that you can't even get to the table And they just don't they you know?

Yes, imagine you're gonna sell your house and everybody in your neighborhood Had to vote to accept the people that were coming into your house I mean right there is a structural barrier Against yes an ownership group that they feel doesn't follow the same Rules of old money or whatever it is that but it's put John is put in the place some time ago Right, so when you look at the nba structure the nfl team averaged probably Two and a half three billion dollars to purchase the worst team in the worst market Right, probably a three billion dollar purchase off the top of my head

Bring by an nba team for a billion bucks right so that's a lot easier for us as blacks to participate in Because we got closer to a billion and we do six seven eight ten billion right Michael Jordan can buy an nba team Michael Jordan could not buy an nfl team Even though he's a billionaire right because of the guidelines That's set that he will never meet those criterias to start with in your opinion has this

Structure stayed in place because the status quo is reluctant to change or is it more purposeful than that and and So i'll give you an example. So i remember when they were talking about It was this is all within the discussion of Colin Kaepernick and black lives matter and vik fangio who is uh Was he the coach at denver right denver broncos give a broncos head coach So he comes out and he says, you know, I look at the locker room and it's a meritocracy You know, it's not we don't have those issues here in terms of Race and all those other things because this room's a meritocracy and everybody knows

That you earn your spot here Based on your performance And and i wanted to say to vik fangio. Hey man turn around Look at the owner's box. That's not a meritocracy. Like you said, that's a hand me down on a legacy In a monopoly of 32 people and he's trying to tell you that Football doesn't have the kind of racial injustices and inequalities that you see in general society because you earn your spot You know what they should have kishan. They should have a fucking combine for owners They should have a combine for owners and for head coaches and let the players put them through their paces

Yeah, it's you know vik fangio was delusional in that statement People don't like to talk about the issues because people get uncomfortable when you start talking in in race and things of that nature Because they're uncomfortable in their own skin. You know in my book We did some some investigating obviously with the runy family and the whole deal So in 1933 art and runy We had just purchased the pittsburgh stealers franchise right and at this time the other owners Headed up by George Preston marshal who was the owner of the washington football team, which at that time was a washington redskins

Uh did not want black players in art runy Prior to his passing told his grandson one of the the biggest mistakes of his life not career his life was that he did not push back in the 1930s To have black players integrated into

The national football league he kind of was new so he didn't really want to you know, he didn't want to get pushed out but he regretted that and His son dan runy Is one of the spearheads of the runy rule right for diversity because he realized what his father had Been through And so when you look at that when you have owners like that trying to make things better It will become better right right and that's I think the point gi sean is the pace of

How they talk about it like I don't know when the runy rule was put into place, but it was a long time ago yeah, and It really is a symbolic gesture that appears to be An easy workaround for all these teams. Well, that's because that's because they don't follow the rule john They won't do it, but pissberg followed the rule. That's why mike tommen is still there. That's why he's successful Because they practice what they preach And the other owners don't practice what the runies preach They just don't do it. It's like the general manager has the same agent as the head coach who has the same agent as the

Offensive defensive coordinators. Right. It's it's it's this whole Little slick monopoly. You have to intentionally dismantle it, but I think it's probably more jarring in the national football league because The league is 70 black players. It looks like exploitation. It looks like Extraction of value to the detriment of these players. I'll give you an example You know, you're dealing with a league where it says end racism on everybody's helmet Yeah, they just announced. Oh, yeah, you know, we're gonna stop Putting a deficit score on black players concussion index because it kept us from paying out

the You know that health fund that they pay to people who suffer damages from Concussions and protocols for playing football. Well, they were scoring black players lower on a cognitive index test so that if they're test scores on Cognitive judgment were lower. It wouldn't pay out Yeah, and that's just now Yeah, because we're living in a different world now

In the last things that you want to do is get caught with your hand in the cookie jar doing something Despising that you've been doing for many many years Um, so I joke with my bosses at ESPN all the time right now. I tell them I say, yeah, I'm gonna give what I want right now The next couple years because y'all because y'all got to do what I say, you know, I'm joking with them But at the same time, that's what it feels like it feels like all of a sudden Because the heat is turned up from a national perspective of how you deal with minorities Right, we almost feel like we got to get ours right now because in about 18 months We ain't gonna be able to do nothing

right Kishon, why do you think because I was thinking of, you know, how do you get around this? And I think the things that you said earlier stuck with me and and it made me think of something You know, when they do expansion in the league Why don't they make it so that if you're gonna do an expansion in the league has to be black owned You have to go through a different Ownership structure or even, you know, I gotta remember, you know Think about Hollywood in the 20s and 30s and all the artists of Hollywood got together because they were tired of being exploited

By the owners of these studios and they started their own studio. You know, what are the chances of changing the dynamic In the league? Well, I think that that's a good way to do it. But then you go back to The original bylaws of ownership, right? What are you going to change the bylaws of ownership? You got 32 owners already saying a certain thing needs to be done a certain way and Now if you say well needs to include a black owner who is out there willing that's black economically to put their money Into an nfl franchise in an nfl city

Right, it's it becomes one of those deals, right? Because the next time that they expand That team might be worth 10 billion dollars They've got to kick in I think they will john at some point we will see Black owner, I don't know when that is but I think at some point we will see one Because Wealth is being accumulated in different stages around

Somebody like jz might have an opportunity to get a piece and then he can buy another piece and another piece and eventually own it outright right, uh But they're so damn expensive that It just takes so much money to get a franchise right now in People just don't have that type of net worth Laying around what they could just do you think this dynamic is going to change then and and for the most part are the players okay with it

Not changing. Yeah, but but one of the things that I would say is that The decision makers the owners Mm-hmm higher people that are the presidents and general managers that make the decisions on who to hire right so most of these owners Are businessmen with toys that don't know how to operate the toys So they look for other people to advise them on how to operate the toys If woody johnson and his brother christopher johnson would have called me six years ago

They'd be in the superbowl and have won it already by now But they are reluctant. I'm sorry kishan. I just for a second. I blacked out I thought you said the jets and the superbowl in the same sentence. So i'm sure that's I did I did no that kishan. No, I did if they communicate with me Right, I could help them understand how to put a team together So why don't they because they're listening to the good old boys with the gray hair. That's their buddies That tell them oh, well, this guy's great. You should listen to him

He knows everything because he won in 1965. They're outdated. They don't get it. And so it's hard to Get to them But him to even be able to want to sit down and have a real conversation with you Because it's not their idea And they don't want to be seen as lackluster and not smart It becomes an ego thing on top of that. They call paid manny Shit, what what huh, huh? Let's be honest, right? They call paid manny. Yeah, they talk to him

but They're more comfortable with that Right, it looks like them. So it's comfortable You know, maybe on a more hopeful note What is the leverage that players have in this league to not just Get a little more of the slice of the pie that people are making On television deals and all the other ancillary businesses that go along with football because the shelf life for a player is so small But what's the way for players to build equity in this league because equity seems to be the answer to

Really structurally changing these kinds of imbalances Well, I think first of all, you got to start with the owners. You have the first you got to have the first owner to be able to say, you know what? I'm going to give him a piece of my team He played for many years here I'm going to give him a slice of the pie Because I got a whole piece in the crumb ain't going to hurt me So you got to have that first guy take that step Did you have do you have an idea who that owner would be?

I don't man quite frankly be honest with you. John. It doesn't even matter. Just be an owner Hell, I don't care who it is Right when when you look at the south of cisco 49ers They didn't have a problem higher might John Lynch my former teammate to be their general manager with zero experience and in the front office, right zero How did they even come to that arrival? How what made you come to that did you come to that because you talk To a handful of people that look like you in the league and they say he'd be a great general manager

It comes at comfort cultural comfort Absolutely to to bring it all full circle then what happens to grud Is he just the sacrificial lamb for this structural inequality and he goes away or does he come back or how does no He's toast he will he'll never coach again Because he couldn't get the respect of the people in the locker room. The world is different now, man This isn't 20 years ago You can't you can't attack People the way you could have 20 years ago. You cannot do that. Yeah, he'll never coach again. He'll never coach in college

And and his career is over with it. It's unfortunate but that's the reality of it a lot of people think oh he'll be forgiven no you you that that that won't happen because at that point you will start to lose players in respectability from fan bases And you can't have that happen within the football world How much sympathy is there for him in this situation?

Do they view him as a victim or do they think he got what he he got what he got because that's what he deserved I think a lot of people Look at it both ways. They're trying to figure out. Was he really a victim? Right because what they're trying to figure out was he thrown under the bus and run over to To shed the light on him and not on them And then also at the same time when you speak that ill of people You get what you deserve Because that is pure hate you can't do that people can't tolerate those things anymore

Because it hadn't come to the surface and they have been doing it for longer than that If their country clubs and their private yachts with their friends and flying on their jets with their friends and cracking jokes It was fine until somebody actually said no, this is not acceptable until the rarefied air got punctured And that's what happens. Well, I really appreciate it kishan. I know you're busy man So taking the time to talk about it Really insightful and I thank you so much and I hope to get a chance to see you soon and I hope you do Get woody johnson on the phone and tell him how the jets could win. But before you do that If you could tell the giants how to win, I'd really appreciate it

Maybe I have a talk with steve tish one day kishan. Thank you so much man. All right. Thank you All right, we got one more thing we'd be before we go and then I think we're gonna have snacks We are gonna have we got one more segment. It's henrik blitz, you know, henrik is a degenerate gambler Did you guys know that no never would have guessed never if people knew henrik they'd be surprised and because this is a football themed podcast henrik blitz is going to give gambling tips for everybody Welcome to rick's tips This week i'm giving you my top four nfl betting tips brought to you by wing dungeon Come get strapped to a chair on game day while our torture team feeds you hotter and hotter wings every quarter

so tip number one Place your bets before the game starts tip number two brought to us courtesy of dude mortgage Dude mortgage will help you find a sick spot with one folding chair and a tv This tip is to make friends with the players and get tips from them. That's a rick's tip Tip number three comes in courtesy of viking face skincare for guys who don't give a fuck what they look like I beat the betting markets every week because I don't bet on teams. I bet on fields Do they use astroturf grass synthetic fibers? A few hours inside each stadium with a magnifying glass and a notebook to track soil conditions goes a long way tip number three

Bet on the fields. You just got ripped in the tip tip number four is brought to you by pain drink The only energy drink slash protein shake slash beer on the market Guaranteed to leave you fuller drunker and angrier than you've ever been My last tip Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. You just got tips all over your rick And by the way, this is my favorite thing now on sports radio, which is every 30 seconds They're like on fan duel make a five dollar bet on whether or not either basketball team will score And you'll get a hundred and fifty dollars at the end of that

They always do this if you're having a trouble gambling responsibly call one 800 game But obviously gamble responsibly. All right, everybody. That is our that is our podcast Please if you want to know more about it go to the website at theproblem.com you can head to that We also have a newsletter. By the way, if you have not watched the apple tv plus television series That is not an issue There's actually a link to the show In the notes and you can go there everything i'm telling you right now could be completely wrong by the way But I believe in you and I believe you're savvy enough

to wade through My lack of specificity To know what to do If if you're still interested and I hope you are still interested because I'm interested in you Although you've given me nothing to click on And as always k and chris Uh, it was a joy. It warmed my heart. It warmed old gramps heart. So thank you. You're welcome The problem john stewart podcast is an apple tv plus podcast and a joint bus boy production