CHUCK KLOSTERMAN Talks Football, Violence, American Identity

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 00

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• 1:13Adam Friedland?

  How much do you attribute like it's like success on television to Cletus?

• 1:18Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:19Adam Friedland?

  Cletus.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  Cletus?

• 1:21Adam Friedland?

  He's the robot that plays electric guitar.

• 1:23Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. How do you know his name?

• 1:26Adam Friedland?

  Um, cause I like sports.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know, but I like sports, but I-

• 1:29Adam Friedland?

  You see him getting defensive? He wrote a book on football.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  I know, I know. This is gonna be-

• 1:32Adam Friedland?

  You don't even know who Cletus is?

• 1:34Speaker 00

  I have, that's right. You're tied, you're tied.

• 1:37Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could have consulted with me. You should have had a whole damn chapter on this-

• 1:41Speaker 00

  I thought you were talking about the Simpsons character for a second.

• 1:42Adam Friedland?

  I believe his name is Cletus. And if his name isn't Cletus, I'm gonna be really embarrassed because someone's looked that up. It's Cletus dominated once again.

• 1:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:51Adam Friedland?

  Clip that.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:52Adam Friedland?

  Clip that.

• 2:22Adam Friedland?

  Hello and welcome back to The Adam Friedland Show. I'm Adam Friedland. First off, I'm doing Helium Comedy Club February 19th to the 21st. And also, I will be in Los Angeles at the Regent Theater, May 9th. Here's a link in the description. There is a link.

• 2:40Adam Friedland?

  It's a different word. There is a link in the description. There is a, there's a link in the description for tickets.

• 2:49Adam Friedland?

  That's fine. I'd like to thank our members for supporting us here on youtube.com. As always, you guys are the ones that make the show possible. You keep the lights on. And if you'd like to join at the second or third tiers, you can get your name in the credits of this fine program. Click "Join" at the top of the page, or click the link in the description below. And there's also a link for Patreon if you prefer Patreon. And guys, merch is available. TheAdamFriedlandShow, check it out. My guest this week is American author Chuck Klosterman. Chuck is known as one of the country's premier cultural critics, tackling any and all facets of pop culture through his writing for the last 30 years. His newest book, Football, is about exactly that: football. The game's past, present, and future. It's a perceptive look into what entices us about the uniquely American sport.

• 3:33Adam Friedland?

  And it's on the shelves now, so check it out. Football. Got the big game coming up. You might want to read it before then, so you can understand the big game. Now, before we begin, I'd like to introduce a new segment called "My Two Cents", where I give my two cents on topics of the day. Today, in honor of our guest, here's my two cents on football. Like Chuck Klosterman, I'm a football fan. Or at least, I was, up until they started doing that so-called "dancing" in the end zone. If I wanted to see that garbage, I'd stay up past 10:00 PM and turn on VH1.

• 4:09Adam Friedland?

  Whatever happened to scoring a touchdown politely? Handing the ball over to the official, saying, "Thank you for being you." "Go you," that's what I would say. "You go you." Getting back to doing your job. And if you want to celebrate with your win with a dance, we could just, please, keep it classy. Instead of the jerk or the soldier boy dance, how about the foxtrot, the bolero, the Viennese waltz? But hey, that's just my two cents. Please welcome. Please enjoy.

• 4:44Adam Friedland?

  Chuck Klosterman. I like that. Our next guest is the writer Chuck Klosterman. His new book, Football, is out now. Everyone, check it out. Everyone, Chuck Klosterman.

• 4:58Adam Friedland?

  What's up, dude?

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 5:00Adam Friedland?

  I'm really excited.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Well, it's great to be here. I appreciate you having me on. I guess I was a bit nervous because, you know, I've seen clips from your show where the subject comes across as a moron, but that's not your fault.

• 5:14Adam Friedland?

  Really? Well, I try to be the moron.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Well, it's a straight moron or the straight man, yeah.

• 5:19Adam Friedland?

  Certainly not. Certainly not, uh, straight. Don't tell the family, Ollie. My girlfriend's cousin is doing sound. This is not making the episode. I'm a big fan. I used to read you from the time I was like, I think, late high school.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  I know, it's weird to hear that, but I understand it.

• 5:37Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, it was like, what I, I think the way I found out about cool things, because it was prior to like Spotify or whatever. I'd like go to like Barnes & Noble and like open up Spin Magazine. I'd write names of bands, and then I'd download them on Kazaa. And through that process, I became familiar with you.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Well, when I was at Spin, it was the early, you know, like 2002 to 2006. And it was strange because the perception at the time then is like, the cool part of Spin was over. That everyone believed that had happened in the 90s. But I guess then when we left, 10 years moved on, and then people said the same thing about our little period, so.

• 6:14Adam Friedland?

  I, yeah, no, I, yeah, I remember I read, yeah. Your books and I thought it made me feel cool, I think. But, but for the audience and the people that don't know you, it effectively what you kind of write about is kind of, it is the nonsense that me and my friends spend hours over. Like, you know, like, you know, what would have happened if Drew bled so, you know, didn't get hurt? You know, like speculative kind of, but then the intersection with that and culture, I suppose, yeah.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Well, it just, it seems completely unmeaningful now. The idea of writing about culture seems very common. It was less common in like book form when I first started publishing. It was seen as sort of this strange gimmicky novelty thing. And now it's like, it's not weird at all.

• 7:01Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, I think for me it was like David Foster Wallace and you. I mean, those were the two guys that were writing about like-

• 7:06Speaker 02

  That was the cheaper version, yeah.

• 7:08Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, really?

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure.

• 7:10Adam Friedland?

  I thought, I thought pretty equal, actually. Were you guys, like, did you know him?

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Never met him.

• 7:15Adam Friedland?

  Never met him? Do you think he would have been mean, you think?

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Uh, no, I don't think he would. What they always say about him is that he was very kind. That doesn't necessarily mean he was nice.

• 7:25Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  But everyone had always said that, at least outwardly, he was, you know, over the top kind. That it was rare that someone had an encounter with him that was negative. Although now like, there's like a biography about him and completely changes the way that-

• 7:40Adam Friedland?

  That he stalked that lady, right?

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Yes, and there's, and the one that thing that's a little disenchanting is like, I mean, he was, he was probably the last writer who really did sort of influence me. Like, in that I would read this and I was like, I wonder if I could do something like that. And I feel like you become a writer when you stop that. But, the thing that was kind of a bummer is it sounds like the most interesting things from his nonfiction work were the parts that he made up.

• 8:05Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  And that's, that was, it's, because you know, those are the things that are so memorable. Like, he wrote this very famous essay about going on a cruise ship.

• 8:12Adam Friedland?

  Of course.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  And there's one section in there like where he's playing chess against some random little kid. And it's just, it's an amazing passage and he's memorizing these moves and all these things. And maybe it turns out like that didn't happen. So the thing I remember most is the thing he added. But, you know, that's crazy. Native nonfiction, I guess.

• 8:28Adam Friedland?

  Two things that that reminds me of. One is, did you see the last Scorsese-Dylan documentary?

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did.

• 8:36Adam Friedland?

  The Rolling Thunder.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Oh, that one, yeah, the fake documentary.

• 8:39Adam Friedland?

  So, yeah, it was like half fake, which like kind of made it like, but there was something about it that was true. You know what I mean? Like, because it was half fake, like narratively, it's like we buy, basically, when I learn about Bob Dylan or The Beatles, it's like looking at a picture of your parents before you were born, right? It's not real, like you weren't there, right? You create a story, right? And that's what I found to be the brilliant thing about that.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  What I wondered about that film was if someone liked Bob Dylan but knew nothing about the movie, so they just came into it cold, I wonder at what point in the movie they would have been like, "Oh, yeah, this couldn't have happened." Because if there's one, you know, he wore like white kind of pancake makeup for a while.

• 9:21Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  And in the movie, he's saying like, "This girl went and saw Kiss and she came back and told me about it." You know, and then, you know, Bob Dylan has written with Gene Simmons, they have some relationships. It's like, could it be? You know, I knew going in, though, that this wasn't all real, so, but I was thinking about myself. Like, when would I have figured this out?

• 9:38Adam Friedland?

  I don't think, I think people probably would have bought it, because it was presented as a documentary.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  It is, you know.

• 9:43Adam Friedland?

  And people know Bob Dylan's real. And also, it could, you know, like, it doesn't matter at a certain point, right?

• 9:50Speaker 02

  It doesn't. Well, I mean, I think Dylan would say it absolutely doesn't, that he would probably argue that whatever myth you project on him is the most important thing about his identity, outside of the music.

• 10:00Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. Have you, have you seen that, that film, I'm Still Here, the, with Joaquin Phoenix? That's kind of like, that's one of my top five favorite movies ever, actually. Basically, it's this documentary that you later find out is, was like kind of a project that Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck were doing for a year, which is, he presented that he was going crazy and wanted to be a rapper, and he was, he went on Letterman famously.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  That was the big thing. It was almost like the promotion for that movie was as important as the film.

• 10:33Adam Friedland?

  Right, and I what you find at the end, there's like, he goes to Costa Rica or something, or like, I forget. He goes to someplace where his father lives, and he's in a like a rainforest, and he goes in this like lake. And there's this baptismal kind of scene at the end, but you realize like, this man is exhausted. Like, it doesn't matter if it's fake or if it's real, because it happened, right? Like, and kind of that blurring, I'm like, oh, that's what art is, you know? And like, that's, it kind of like made a huge impression on me shortly after I was probably reading stuff written by you.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  I mean, what's interesting about that, though, is because of when it happened, you know, in the 21st century, as opposed to happening in the 70s, there's almost an assumption, there had to have been from them, that of course people are gonna realize that this isn't real. Where there was a time when you could have done something like that, and the artifact would just be what it is. And people would say, is this real, is it not real? It's, I don't know if they were like steering into the fact that we can do this because eventually people will know. Or if there was actually, if that was the last attempt to legitimately fool people into thinking something false is actual. I mean, like, I would guess that there were some people, when Spinal Tap came up,

• 11:49Speaker 02

  they might have watched the first few minutes of it, especially when there's talking to the people in the, you know, the crowd shots. They might be like, well, this, I'd never heard of this band. The band Anvil had a documentary, and people wondered, is this real or false?

• 12:00Adam Friedland?

  That amazing documentary, Anvil.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  And is real.

• 12:04Adam Friedland?

  And I will say, when I was a little kid, I thought Spinal Tap was real.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Did you?

• 12:08Adam Friedland?

  I thought it was a real band.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  What age did you see it at?

• 12:10Adam Friedland?

  Maybe five.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 12:12Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Because I saw it when I was like a junior in high school.

• 12:14Adam Friedland?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  But, uh...

• 12:16Adam Friedland?

  It must have been like 93.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Why were you watching, this is Spinal Tap at five?

• 12:21Adam Friedland?

  My parents let me watch anything, yeah. They covered my eyes for the sex parts, though.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Well, there's no sex in that.

• 12:27Adam Friedland?

  In any movie, yeah, yeah. They covered my eyes for sex and let me watch violence.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  So what was the most insane thing you saw at the earliest age?

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Like would they let you watch Nine and a Half Weeks or something when you were a kid? Or like Faces of Death, were you watching that at seven?

• 12:45Adam Friedland?

  No, I wasn't watching like, fuck you. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't watching. I wasn't watching Red Asphalt, the driver's ed movie. You remember that? You remember the driver's ed movie?

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Or like Last House on the Left, you would be like, oh, he'll love this. He'll teach him about neighborhoods.

• 12:57Adam Friedland?

  I was watching mainly just like this, your neck snap. I was watching a lot of Dolph Lundgren, John Claude Van Damme.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 13:04Adam Friedland?

  Schwarzenegger, Stallone. Yeah, I was watching all, I watched all of those movies with my dad. A lot of the like, secure the perimeter. Yeah, lock it down. Like a lot of that. And then a guy's neck gets snapped. But I think, this is kind of like a tangent, but I think because they covered my eyes for the sex and let me watch all the killing, I think killing, I didn't want to do it. Because, because it was, it wasn't a taboo, but sex, I was like, I wanted to do sex because it was against the, you know.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  It is a common thing you'll hear people say, it's like, they'll, you'll be like, oh, it's crazy, you know? We'll let kids watch violence, but we won't let them watch sex. But actually, that makes, it actually makes sense because the fact of the matter is, people are going to encounter sex in their life. And if they watch a film version or pornography or whatever these things are at an early age, it's going to warp their perception of this thing that's actually going to happen to them. They're probably not going to encounter like a mass shooting, and if they do, I would almost want my kid desensitized to it. I would rather have him be able to be like, I, I, I understand that this can exist in the world, you know? It's like, it does seem weird to, to demonize sex more than violence. But the fact of the matter is, sex is something that's part of the life, the average person's life.

• 14:18Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Violence is not.

• 14:19Adam Friedland?

  One time a guy did a splits and then punched me and I was like, I'm desensitized.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was comfortable with that. You knew it could happen. You knew it could happen.

• 14:26Adam Friedland?

  John Claude Van Damme, I'd seen him do the splits and punch a guy, so I was like, this is, finally, it's.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  I mean, if there ever was.

• 14:33Adam Friedland?

  It's happening.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  If, if there ever was a zombie apocalypse, there are plenty of people ready for that. Like they have learned what to do, like where to shoot it, you know, all these things.

• 14:43Adam Friedland?

  Those are some of the worst people in society. The ones with the sticker, they're like zombie. Defense unit or like on their car. Those are the worst guys. Well, them and Patriots fans, I guess. Okay, let's get, let's get to you because I, going back to the David Foster Wallace thing. You guys were both kind of doing this social criticism, I guess, or what would you? How would you describe like kind of what you've made your bread and butter doing?

• 15:11Speaker 02

  Well, you know, he would have said that he was a novelist and then he also did nonfiction and it was kind of journalism and it was kind of cultural criticism. His journalism was really essayistic or whatever. I suppose for me, like I worked at newspapers for about eight years and it was, it was very, like I loved the job, you know, but it was limiting. And I wanted to be able to do things outside of that. And I was like, the only way to do that is books. Cause I wanted to sort of write about things in a way that, I don't know, was more kind of entertaining, interesting in a different way, you know? So I suppose it's cultural criticism.

• 15:48Adam Friedland?

  Do you think a girl has ever read one of your things?

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Ever?

• 15:51Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Geez.

• 15:53Adam Friedland?

  Probably, it's gotta be like maybe like.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Like, I mean, it's a little bit.

• 15:55Adam Friedland?

  Maybe a triple digits.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  It's a little bit like Being Rush.

• 15:59Adam Friedland?

  I think it's for.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, where it's like, like it was, but I will, you know, this was a bit, you know, I wrote this first book, Fergo Rock City, and it was just about listening like to hair metal in the Midwest. I would do book readings and like 14 people would show up and they were all exactly like me. I mean, exactly like they looked like me. And then I wrote Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs and the biggest change about that is at book readings, there were suddenly now more people, but like a third of them were women. That was, that was very surprising, you know?

• 16:26Adam Friedland?

  Nice, bro. You think because of sex, you put sex in the.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Well, no, I think I talk about John Cusack in that book. I don't know. It's just, it's like, I, I'm not sure what it is. I'm not sure how, why, you know, and then, but, and now it's like Kenny, your career goes up and now I'm kind of on the other side again, sort of moving. I, I assume by the end, it'll like the last time I write a book, it'll be like the first one where like 14 people exactly like me will show up.

• 16:49Adam Friedland?

  That's kind of beautiful.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  It is. That's how it is. That's how it goes for everyone.

• 16:53Adam Friedland?

  It's a rise and fall. Yeah, yeah.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  You gotta expect it.

• 16:55Adam Friedland?

  It's kind of, that's kind of what life is, right?

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:58Adam Friedland?

  Um, yeah, the book is football. I think it's for, it's for women.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's great for your book club.

• 17:05Adam Friedland?

  It's, uh, it's been compared to the, to the, to the gay hockey Netflix show a lot, right?

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Yes, I've been hearing that everywhere.

• 17:12Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have the, the QB one and of course, um, the center.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:18Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  The relationships.

• 17:20Adam Friedland?

  It's right there.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 17:21Adam Friedland?

  It was right there the whole time, you know?

• 17:25Adam Friedland?

  Guys, how were you the first guy to realize that there could be something between a center and a quarterback? I'm sorry, I have the brain of a one-year-old. I literally am a baby.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  That would be good material for a one-year-old.

• 17:39Adam Friedland?

  Okay, um, going back to the DFW thing though, you guys, I mean, he's from Champaign-Urbana, right? You're from North Dakota, right?

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 17:46Adam Friedland?

  Do you, do you think, coming from a place like, you're from North Dakota, like, I, I never think of North Dakota, brother. Does it make it easier for you to be an observer of culture, right?

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Well, I'd say the main thing is it makes me in a better position to do criticism about mass culture, because that was the only culture that gets to like a place where I was from.

• 18:05Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, even, yeah, I, I've mentioned this before, but like, you know, like that, that John Cougar Mellencamp song, like Small Town?

• 18:11Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  I assumed he was talking about like my town with like 500 people. Turns out he's talking about like Bloomington, Indiana, which to me would have seemed like a big place. Like I, like I, I didn't recognize how bizarre where I came from was to most of the country until, particularly until I moved to New York and I would be talking about my hometown and people would ask me questions like, "Did you grow up in Russia? Did you grow up in the Depression?" Like.

• 18:38Adam Friedland?

  I know that's in America, actually. Those people are idiots.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  What, what people?

• 18:41Adam Friedland?

  North Dakota. The people that think that's Russia.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Well, it would be more the description of what like, I would describe like how a wedding would work in our town and people would be like that, it would seem like something that you would read in a Russian novel.

• 18:53Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  What, the entire town get to go to the reception and they would drive the fire trucks out of the fire hall. That's where the dance was. You know, the, the families supplied all the booze and the sandwiches and anyone could come. It was just a totally different thing.

• 19:05Adam Friedland?

  Did you say the first and the last name like a Russian novel? Were you like Bob, like Bob Lundgren? Like, you know how they say both?

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, some people just go by both names.

• 19:15Adam Friedland?

  Igor.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  I feel like you're somebody. I feel like people refer to you by both your names.

• 19:20Adam Friedland?

  No.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  And sometimes, people just refer to me by my first name, which is, I always think, surprising. People who don't know me. Yeah, they just.

• 19:26Adam Friedland?

  People say Adam Friedland to me?

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's how, I mean, I would, if I said just your last name to someone that was going on your podcast, I'm not sure they would know who it was, and if I said both names, they usually do. Yeah.

• 19:36Adam Friedland?

  Is that good, or?

• 19:37Speaker 02

  I don't know. Yeah?

• 19:39Adam Friedland?

  You're one of my heroes now, and you're, now you're making me self-conscious.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Why would you say be self-conscious about that?

• 19:44Adam Friedland?

  Well, I know what it's like.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Why would that make you?

• 19:47Adam Friedland?

  I know where I, what it's like where you grew up, dude.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  You do?

• 19:50Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, there's a guy, obviously, that's in Minneapolis, and he works at a car, like dealership, right? That's, that his father-in-law owns, right? And he's been, you know, am I on to something here?

• 20:05Speaker 02

  You know a guy in Minneapolis?

• 20:07Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  And are you describing the plot of Fargo or something? What's, I, yeah, it's okay, that's.

• 20:12Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. So you grew up playing football, though, right?

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:15Adam Friedland?

  Was it because there were just, there, you were just one of the, there was not enough?

• 20:19Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, in truth, probably yes.

• 20:21Adam Friedland?

  Were you wearing glasses under the helmet?

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Contacts, then.

• 20:24Adam Friedland?

  Contacts, nice.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  I wore contacts in high school.

• 20:26Adam Friedland?

  Because you were a popular kid.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Twenty-three kids in my class, so it was like, the difference between the most popular kid and the least popular kid was not that big of a chasm.

• 20:34Adam Friedland?

  So, so the girls had to play football, too?

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Not, no, no girls. You know, they, uh, because in North Dakota, girls' basketball happened during the fall. They happen at the same time, those seasons.

• 20:44Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Um, but, uh, and also it was the eighties, so no one would have tried.

• 20:46Adam Friedland?

  It was nine-on-nine, correct?

• 20:48Speaker 02

  We played nine-man, yeah.

• 20:49Adam Friedland?

  Right, because why? Because it wasn't enough guys?

• 20:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's like in small, in some states, you know, like in Texas, they have six-man. In Wyoming, they play eight-man, these are, if you're, but we played nine-man. So it's like, on offense, you remove the offensive tackles. On defense, you remove the cornerbacks. And then you try to play football i- i- as close to the conventional way with those, you know? And then, all the teams use two tight ends, basically, so it's still a five-man line. If you were watching a nine-man game, you probably, it would take you a while, I think, before you realize there's something wrong here, like, you know?

• 21:21Adam Friedland?

  Did, did, did like kids try to go Brett Favre-Lambo, no sleeve?

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Uh, sometimes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean.

• 21:28Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, it had to suck.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Well, it was cold, sure, yeah.

• 21:31Adam Friedland?

  Did you have those, like, heat blasters things?

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Are you kidding me?

• 21:34Adam Friedland?

  You didn't, what is, what the hell are you doing out there? Your parents like you?

• 21:37Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 21:38Adam Friedland?

  I don't want you out there with the, in the cold like that.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  That's not how it was where I grew up. That was not, there was, I can't remember. I mean, we, I remember that like they would, they canceled school for two days one time because the wind chill was going to be eighty-five below. So they canceled school on Thursday and Friday. And almost everybody was upset.

• 21:57Adam Friedland?

  Why?

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Every parent was upset, all the teachers were upset. Some of the kids were like, this is crazy. And then we still played our basketball game that weekend. Like, we still came into town for that, you know?

• 22:08Adam Friedland?

  Wait, so, wait, because everyone loved school so much?

• 22:11Speaker 02

  No, it was just the idea, it was, it wasn't that we loved school, but it just, it seemed absurd.

• 22:16Adam Friedland?

  Why didn't you move to Arizona? This is ridiculous, you people up there.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  I, well, that's a, you know.

• 22:22Adam Friedland?

  It's ridiculous that they have two senators? It's like, don't get me started on North Dakota.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  Are you one of the, are you an abolish the senate guy?

• 22:28Adam Friedland?

  I mean, it doesn't make sense. I didn't mean to bring that up, but yeah, it doesn't make sense.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  Well, it depends how you look at it. I mean, in a way.

• 22:35Adam Friedland?

  Well, yeah, I mean, like, God forbid we like let, like, I don't know, like minorities vote or something.

• 22:43Adam Friedland?

  That's what the senate is there for.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Well, it just, well, okay.

• 22:46Adam Friedland?

  Well, let's talk about sports, brother, let's talk about sports. Um, okay, yeah, but you were on a farm, you had youngest of seven siblings?

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 22:56Adam Friedland?

  Really? What, what kind of farm was it? A snow farm?

• 22:59Speaker 02

  Yes, we raised snow by the bushel, you know, we had, for snow cones.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, when I was a, when I was a real little guy, it was like wheat and we had dairy cattle. Then we got rid of the dairy cattle right before that became lucrative and went into beef cattle. And did that until that got, and just before that got lucrative, we sold all those. My dad wasn't always the greatest businessman. And by the end, it was just what was considered row crops. Corn, beans, things that are grown in a row, and we didn't have animals anymore. And then my brother took over the farm, and then now he's retired, and now it's, uh, we don't, it's out of, out of the hands, out of the family.

• 23:35Adam Friedland?

  You guys sold the farm?

• 23:36Speaker 02

  Yep, sold the farm.

• 23:37Adam Friedland?

  How did it feel to sell the farm?

• 23:39Speaker 02

  It was time.

• 23:39Adam Friedland?

  It was time to sell the farm. I remember my family too.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  When they, when you sold the farm?

• 23:44Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, we sold the farm.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Where were you from? You said you're from the southwest?

• 23:47Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, I'm from Las Vegas.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  You're from Las, actually from Las Vegas?

• 23:51Adam Friedland?

  I grew up, I grew up in, uh, yeah, we moved there when I was like first grade, yeah.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  But like your postal address was Las Vegas?

• 23:57Adam Friedland?

  Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada, yeah, yeah.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  What was that like?

• 24:00Adam Friedland?

  Uh, it's boring.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Boring?

• 24:02Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, um, it was, well. A, it was like the fastest growing city in America at the time. Like white flight America, so everyone was from somewhere else. Tracked housing, kinda like, looked like that show Weeds. Have you seen the show Weeds? All the houses looked the same.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  So were you there during the UNLV basketball period?

• 24:23Adam Friedland?

  I was there, the Tark years were like right, I guess as we were moving there, like maybe right before. Yeah, yeah.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  I mean, like, are age differences?

• 24:34Adam Friedland?

  I was there for Shawn Marion, Shawn Marion. So, yeah, I used to go watch UNLV.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Because if we're just talking, it feels like we're the same age. But if we talk about the past, it won't be that way.

• 24:44Adam Friedland?

  Well, I mean, we're both old souls, you know? We love rootin' tootin' football, we love, you know? No, I guess, yeah, that was like, I guess, to segue, I think, to put in context, like if we're talking about things happening right now, the national championship is happening tonight.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Tonight, yes.

• 25:02Adam Friedland?

  Are you excited, you're excited, you're like, and John Cougar Mellencamp?

• 25:07Speaker 02

  He'll be more excited than me, yes. He has a little place to watch the games at Indiana Stadium, his own little cabin on top of the stadium.

• 25:14Adam Friedland?

  So historically, we have this team, Indiana, which was historically, just, they're supposed to lose.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Well, they're historically the worst program in college football history.

• 25:25Adam Friedland?

  And it's kind of a tradition as it is that, like, you know, LSU is good or something, or like, you know, Ohio State is good.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  But even more so because, like, you know, Alabama and these schools, Texas, they have down years. There was no up years for Indiana at any point. You know, I mean, they had years where they weren't terrible. That was the highest they ever ascended to.

• 25:46Adam Friedland?

  And so, I'll let you run with it, but like, how would you characterize their rise in the last two years? Like, and related to the NIL, of course, and the transfer portal and like?

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Well, you know, when that all came into being, when the NIL stuff happened and the portal stuff happened, I think everybody who followed college football was like, well, it's, you know, some team that we've never really expected to be dominant is going to take advantage of this and rise up. And I think people thought like, oh, maybe it'll be a school like Liberty, or maybe it'll... Be, you know, uh, uh, you know, it'll be a school like Oregon or I guess have been good or whatever. No one thought it would be Indiana. I mean, their coach just understands this stuff more definitely than anybody else. He's a good coach anyways. He would be a good coach in the old style, but he's really great at this. I mean, he just, you know, he came from James Madison and he took the best guys from there. He built that, you know, that was a, like a subdivision program and they moved up and then he brought them

• 26:41Speaker 02

  all over. He just really knows what he's doing and he somehow is able to be both things. Like he's both like this very modern sophisticated evaluator of talent who understands that everything has changed, but he seems to coach the guys in the traditional.

• 26:58Adam Friedland?

  Like Bob Knight, like tough Bear Bryant.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, maybe not to that level, but close. Yes. I mean, Nick Saban, I mean, he came from that coaching tree.

• 27:06Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. And, and correct me if I'm wrong, like this is tonight, we're going to see some like 23, 24 year olds.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  I think the average age for the, for Indiana is like 23 and a half.

• 27:17Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Let, let's get into your book and we're going to go back to like the NIL, the college stuff and like, um, your book posits that probably in 50 years, you don't think football will be a relic. It won't be extinct. It'll kind of be like, uh, I don't know, marching band music. It'll be like, uh, well, John Philip Sousa. Yeah. It'll be like something from the olden days, right? Like.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Well, I, I have a suspicion that it will be like a niche interest. Yes. It won't be the cent, like right now, like everyone's like, there's no more monoculture except for football and Taylor Swift. And I think in 50 or 60 years, I don't think even football will have that role. I don't think it's possible. I mean, and I know it seems crazy. Like everybody I, when I get interviewed for this book, everybody wants to talk about that last chapter. And I understand why, because it seems extremely counterintuitive. It seems more likely that football would actually swallow up every other sport in America and it would be the only sport anyone cares about. But I don't think that's, I don't think it'll happen. I mean, I'll be dead. I'll never be able to be proven wrong if I am, but you know.

• 28:17Adam Friedland?

  So right now, 2026, it's incredibly popular.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  It's the most popular thing.

• 28:22Adam Friedland?

  You cite this statistic that 90. Three of the top 100 view like highest rated programs was it last year?

• 28:30Speaker 02

  2023 it was.

• 28:31Adam Friedland?

  23.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  It went down a little bit in 2024 because of the election, but still it was but it was still in the, I believe in the high 80s or 90s.

• 28:38Adam Friedland?

  Um, yeah, what, what? And then the, uh, there were like four more that were called.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  College games.

• 28:43Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. So one thing that that kind of made me realize is like, probably it's, it's a product of how we consume content these days. Like, like the Survivor finale probably would have been on that list like 25 years ago, right? There's no live, there's no live.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  Well, you're saying like the, the first season of Survivor.

• 29:01Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. Like, or like the, you know, like the, the, the American Idol finale, like, you know, there are no events anymore other than kind of, uh, football, right? Like those, these are the things that we consume live still. We'll like go on streaming and we'll binge like a show or something, but like these are the things that like collectively Americans will sit down and, and watch together.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Yes, but even like when you look at other countries, you would think that there would be kind of a similar phenomenon and it's not this dramatic. Like it's just, it, it is like the, the dominance of football in the United States now is, it's like, it's actually like an underrated phenomenon. It, it defies logic in so many ways, you know?

• 29:45Adam Friedland?

  It's interesting because I remember 10 years ago, in the last 10 years, there were a couple of moments where I'm like, this is just isn't gonna like continue. And first was the concussion like thing, but I mean, we've seen shocking things happen. Like you see Sandy Hook happen and then they don't ban guns. Like we saw Junior Sayow. For me, like when I was a kid, I used to get SI for kids. And I remember like the two, the two like guys that would always be in SI for kids were Grant Hill and Junior Sayow, right?

• 30:17Speaker 02

  SI for kids really cared about the NFL man of the year.

• 30:20Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  To that, that was bigger than the MVP. Man, you know, because it was like, oh, look, it's a good person as well, you know? And I, you know, that's, I mean, there was a guy for the Bears who committed suicide and he shot himself in the chest. And he specifically left a note. It's like, so you can study my brain.

• 30:35Adam Friedland?

  Well, I thought Junior Seau did that as well.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Well, he killed himself.

• 30:37Adam Friedland?

  He killed himself, but I think he did the same thing.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  I mean, they were able to look at it, I think they were, I don't know. Actually, I'm not gonna say. I don't know. I didn't see the autopsy.

• 30:47Adam Friedland?

  And then we got Joe Von Belger, like, we've had these shocking events happen. And I'm like, this cannot continue.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  But that conversation was much more prevalent 10 years ago than it is now.

• 30:56Adam Friedland?

  Exactly.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  And part of the reason, I mean, the NFL did something very brilliant. I mean, I guess arguably diabolical. Anytime there was somebody who came out and it was like, I'm a scientist. I have troubling, you know, information about this. They were like, we're gonna hire you to help, you know. So that was like, that's the smartest thing you can do.

• 31:12Adam Friedland?

  Like an oil company.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 31:14Adam Friedland?

  And then also, the other thing I wanted to bring up was Kaepernick. I remember, I was like, this is terrible PR for the NFL. Like, you know, this doesn't look good. We saw this guy in the fucking Super Bowl.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  And I know, I totally agree with you when you say it's like, bad PR. But this is also what sort of sets football apart from all these other things. Is that people actually care about the thing. About, you know, like, bad PR for baseball and hockey and NBA, that is meaningful. It doesn't really matter what happens in the world outside of football coverage. Because people actually care about the product. You know, whenever people talk about sports in general, and, you know, they're saying like, well, you know, the NBA, they're really great at sort of marketing these guys. And you can see them, and like, you know, like, the 20 most famous NBA guys are certainly more famous than the 20 most famous non-quarterbacks.

• 32:05Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  You know, and, you know, in baseball, they're like, you know, can we get Otani to be a person, but that's a mistake. It's a mistake to build your thing around the individual. Because feelings about them change, and the individuals change. Football, by having this almost faceless automaton world, where we're just like, watching this simulation of warfare, whatever, with just clash of colors. That's what people like, and that's why it doesn't really, all these other things don't damage it the way they would damage other, like, you know, boxing was damaged by the perception of violence to it. Football was not damaged by the perception of violence in it.

• 32:39Adam Friedland?

  It's kind of bullshit, like, that they have analysts that are offensive linemen, right? I said this to Nick Wright. Like, I don't want to see you. Unless you were like, did awesome things like sacks.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Why would you, why would you say that?

• 32:50Adam Friedland?

  I don't care what Jeff Saturday has to say about a game.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  But.

• 32:54Adam Friedland?

  I want to see some guy that just like, you know, used to slang it, used to dunk.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  So Gary Danielson was a great analyst for a bunch of years.

• 33:01Adam Friedland?

  Don't care.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you'd rather see Tom Brady, you'd rather listen to Tom Brady because he was better on the field. That makes no sense.

• 33:06Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, Tom terrific, of course, yeah.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  But so like.

• 33:09Adam Friedland?

  I don't care. I don't want to see the big old guy, maybe it's just not, they're not my taste. It's a taste thing.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  But they're talking now, you're not looking at it.

• 33:18Adam Friedland?

  Blah, blah, blah, okay.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  How about Greg Olson, you like Greg Olson, he was tight end?

• 33:22Adam Friedland?

  Uh, yeah, he was because only because of that rap song he made at the University of Miami.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  I know what you're referring to.

• 33:29Adam Friedland?

  It's a good song.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  Well, it is.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Added a new idea.

• 33:33Adam Friedland?

  Ollie, have you heard that song? The Seventh Floor Crew? Oh my God, after the show, I'm gonna tell, what did he call himself?

• 33:42Speaker 02

  Uh, well.

• 33:43Adam Friedland?

  Let's look it up right now.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  He discusses his third leg, I believe, in this.

• 33:46Adam Friedland?

  It's very funny, he was a, he used to rap with his teammates, he was at Miami, they got in big trouble. And then, uh, he said he got, G Reg, did he call himself?

• 33:57Speaker 02

  I can't recall the exact.

• 33:58Adam Friedland?

  I got a third leg, my name G Reg, and I got a third leg. That's, that's very interesting. Do you think the third leg helped him, uh, at the Carolina Panthers?

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Uh, he's been a more charismatic, confident guy, I suppose, you know, and that probably transferred over into the field.

• 34:13Adam Friedland?

  So, so let's, let's do that again. Tell us the story of football. Just tell us like, no, no, seriously.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  I know, oh yeah.

• 34:19Adam Friedland?

  Cause it's this ridiculous thing.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Okay, but here's.

• 34:22Adam Friedland?

  It is like, first of all, here's, here's how I see it. It's this ridiculous thing where you see these, first of all, they're mushing, right? And you can tell these guys are just mushing their heads, right? And then you got the big guys mushing their heads. Then you have this whole like arcane set of like tort, tort law, right? Where like, they have to go and like.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Hyper complicated, yes, yes.

• 34:41Adam Friedland?

  They have to go read the, the fucking Federalist Papers to like, understand like, you know.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Well, that's good for them though, it's good to have a good, I mean, that's valuable.

• 34:48Adam Friedland?

  Did he break the plane and did he, you know?

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Okay, how do you, how do you feel about this?

• 34:52Adam Friedland?

  Then they have a chain.

• 34:56Adam Friedland?

  They have two flags and a chain that they have to bring out and they have the guy come out.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Catches football of the physical world.

• 35:03Adam Friedland?

  On the chain gang, right? And then they have, you know, okay.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  So the origin, like, okay, you know what the believed origin of football, American football is?

• 35:11Adam Friedland?

  And it's a pig. They're throwing a pig at each other.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  His skin. Yeah, yeah. The belief that it's hard to verify this, but the kind of the the kind of the consensus about the origin of football was after the Civil War. There was this belief that young men were no longer going to face conflict. They were not going to be involved. And they and it was going to soften society. So they were like, we need to find some surrogate for going to war and watching all your friends die or whatever. So they invent the sport of football, the football, you know, they kind of create this game. And then it evolves sort of in a way it evolves for, you know, 70 or 80 years and it kind of intersects with television and ends up becoming the thing that we think of now.

• 35:52Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  But that, I mean, that that is kind of believed to be the origin of the game, that it was, it was, it literally was supposed to simulate the experience of going to war for young men.

• 36:01Adam Friedland?

  And who is the first modern football player? You say Jim Thorpe, right?

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Well, no, no. The first modern football player, that's a really hard question because I like, I suppose in some ways it was Jim Brown. In terms that he's the, he's probably the person you can go back the furthest and make a real argument that if we literally transported him.

• 36:22Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Like just in a time machine or whatever, he might be able to still play. I mean, in some ways like Johnny Unitas and Sammy Ba were the first sort of modern quarterbacks, but it's a hard question because the modern version of football, I mean, like no sport adopts technology and modernity as much. So it's much different than say baseball where the way baseball was played by Babe Ruth actually is not totally unlike the way it's played now.

• 36:49Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. And and so in terms of like.

• 36:54Adam Friedland?

  Its popularity, like, how did that evolve over time? Especially in the last 30 years?

• 36:59Speaker 02

  Well, it was already the most popular sport in the country in the 70s, but it wasn't perceived that way, because it was still like, baseball's the national pastime. But already by then, people cared about football more because of the television experience. You know, and, I mean, it's just, it's like, almost the perfect marriage of these two things. Football is the ideal product to show on television. Nobody would, no one could have obviously anticipated that from football's side or television's side.

• 37:24Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  And...

• 37:25Adam Friedland?

  How much do you attribute, like, it's like, success on television to Cletus?

• 37:30Speaker 02

  What?

• 37:31Adam Friedland?

  Cletus.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Cletus?

• 37:32Adam Friedland?

  He's the robot that plays electric guitar.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Well, I think that, I think that widened sort of its popularity among mechanical prog rock fans.

• 37:41Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  And there was a segment of the audience that was maybe underserved.

• 37:44Adam Friedland?

  Who at Fox came up with that?

• 37:46Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 37:47Adam Friedland?

  The CGI electric, because it's awesome, when you see it.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it obviously works. I mean, you know his name. It's like, how do, how do you know his name?

• 37:55Adam Friedland?

  Um, because I like sports.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, but how do you, where did it, where is that, I mean, I like sports, but I...

• 38:01Adam Friedland?

  You see him getting defensive? He wrote a book on football.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  I know, I know, this is gonna be, it's like... I am, that's right, you're tied, you're tied.

• 38:08Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could have consulted with me. You should have had a whole damn chapter on this Cletus.

• 38:13Speaker 02

  I thought you were talking about the Simpsons character for a second.

• 38:14Adam Friedland?

  I believe his name is Cletus, and if his name isn't Cletus, I'm gonna be really embarrassed, because someone's gonna look that up. It's Cletus?

• 38:21Speaker 02

  Oh, you got a fast team here.

• 38:23Adam Friedland?

  Dude, dominated, once again.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:24Adam Friedland?

  Flip that, flip that.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Put that out, put that out.

• 38:28Adam Friedland?

  Sales are going down to zero, Penguin. By the way, um, so it was this proliferation on television, right? Like, TV rights deals kind of like, uh, proliferated football in a way that, like...

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Well, yes. I mean, but also, you know, football is different in the sense that they have this real strict salary cap and no guaranteed contracts, so as the money is inflated in all these sports, football has been able to almost benefit more, because they don't have to pay as much to the talent.

• 38:54Adam Friedland?

  It seems kind of satanic a little bit, no?

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, yeah, I mean...

• 38:58Adam Friedland?

  If you're mushing your brain for two seasons and then you shoot yourself in the chest, like...

• 39:01Speaker 02

  But at the same time, the NFL is probably the greatest example of successful socialism in the United States, so you should be into that.

• 39:07Adam Friedland?

  Is it?

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, they do all revenue sharing, they're, you know, they, they, they, they sort of invented that. Pete Rozell said, "We're gonna do this, we're gonna do this," and none of the big markets wanted to do it, and he's like, "It's gonna happen."

• 39:17Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  And that's why every six years... Or eight years, or whatever it is, the likelihood that some random franchise will be good again keeps happening.

• 39:27Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. But like, it's not fair. If you sign a contract and then like, they're like, "Oh, it's over." You mushed your brain too much.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  So what would be fair? I'm not saying, I disagree with you.

• 39:37Adam Friedland?

  If a company that's making the most money, kind of like, there's remuneration for mushing your brain.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  Well, if you're saying that the NFL should definitely pay for the guys with CTE, sure, sure.

• 39:50Adam Friedland?

  They stand by a contract that you've signed.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 39:52Adam Friedland?

  I mean, I think it's cool that Bobby Bonilla gets a million dollars every year.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  It is a cool fact. Everyone loves to mention that. That comes up every year.

• 39:59Adam Friedland?

  I think it's cool. Yeah. I just think, like, fuck the Mets, whatever, give him a million dollars. Yeah, I guess it's like, there is an aspect about how it's better on TV. Like, baseball is a sport that's better live.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Well, it can be both. If you're in a nice ballpark on a nice day, it absolutely is better live. There's no question. But sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's, you know, especially the way they've changed the way baseball is broadcast now, it has become, again, a good thing to watch on TV. I mean, like, basketball games, if you're courtside, it's awesome. If you're in the rafters, it's bad. The best shot, actually, the best place to sit is really where the camera is for the show.

• 40:40Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Hockey's better live. That's the only sport that's obviously better live.

• 40:43Adam Friedland?

  You can't follow the fucking puck when you're watching on TV.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Also, you can't, most, most sports try to, like, transfer the live experience to television. And you can't transfer the feeling of guys, like, hitting the Plexiglas. But football doesn't try to do that. The live experience of watching football and the televised experience have no relationship.

• 41:01Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. American culture is, is awesome. Like, right, like, if you go, like, to the middle of nowhere, people know who Mickey Mouse is, right? American monoculture has proliferated. Like, if you listen to the Rolling Stones, like, Mick's singing in an American accent, right?

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 41:22Adam Friedland?

  We're, we're so powerful, especially in the 20th century onwards, as a cultural exporter. Why is this the one thing that, it's such an outlier, because it's the one thing that hasn't proliferated, yet somehow, it's the most fucking popular thing that we have going on here?

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, that's actually a really good question. You know, I think it probably is that... Football is, almost as you stated, unnecessarily complex, right? It's a hard thing, like, you can't just get twenty-two guys together and play a football game. Like, you can, but it's not gonna be anything like what football actually is. It took basketball a long time. And if it hadn't been for, you know, the, you know, the original dream team, I think that a lot of these countries would still be probably forty years behind us in basketball. It takes a long time for people to watch a sport, implement it, and also implement it for kids. Because, you know, you, football really isn't a great game to suddenly start playing when you're nineteen, and you need that kind of infrastructure.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  Um, and I also think that, uh, I think probably, you know, it's popular in Germany, I, I-

• 42:27Adam Friedland?

  It's not really, though.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Well, I, I mean, not popular.

• 42:29Adam Friedland?

  The Rhine Fire.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  But what I'm saying is, I, I, I taught-

• 42:32Adam Friedland?

  Do they still have NFL Europe?

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Well, I don't think, no.

• 42:35Adam Friedland?

  The London Dragons, was it?

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or the Barcelona Dragons.

• 42:38Adam Friedland?

  The Barcelona Dragons, yeah.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  But when I, I taught a semester of school in Leipzig, Germany, in like two thousand and eight, and I was surprised how much awareness of American football was there. But, you know, at the same time, I think that, you know, when people, you say how American culture is, is just, is wonderful thing, and you know, as Americans, we can feel that way, but I think for a lot of other countries, they see this sort of oppressive, and football represents, like, the one thing they were able to stay off. Like, I, I remember when I was teaching this class, and all the kids were always like, America has no culture. That was their big thing. And I'd be like, well, all you guys love hip-hop. And they're like, well, that's an immigrant culture. And I was like, well, ki- ah, really?

• 43:20Adam Friedland?

  No, it's not immigrants.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  That's exactly.

• 43:22Adam Friedland?

  It's people that have been here for four hundred years.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  I just thought it was a very funny perception of what they thought of hip-hop as a thing.

• 43:27Adam Friedland?

  Well, they were immigrants four hundred years ago during the slave trade, but yeah. Um, no, I, I guess it's, yeah, but it is, it is weird, isn't it?

• 43:35Speaker 02

  It is, it's surprising.

• 43:36Adam Friedland?

  It's surprising, it's like, why are the Beatles, like, uh-

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Well, they're from England.

• 43:40Adam Friedland?

  No, no, but like, why are the Beatles, like, hearing old rock and roll records, right?

• 43:44Speaker 02

  Like, Chuck Berry records, you're saying?

• 43:45Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, or like, the Muddy Waters records, and then giving us back our culture in like, a new, exciting way. Like, that's, that- Cultural exchange has always been fascinating. Why are you going to Tokyo? And you see American culture everywhere. But it's like they've advanced it. And like, you know, just fashion wise or whatever. They've taken our culture and they're obsessed with our culture. And then they've enhanced it.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Do you feel that way about film? Do you feel that the best films are now made outside of the United States?

• 44:11Adam Friedland?

  No, I'm not that kind of guy. No, no, there are great films made outside of the United States. But I don't.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  Because rock music is the clearest example of that. Where that, you know. And there are other examples, you know, of it.

• 44:24Adam Friedland?

  Can you describe kind of like briefly like how you see the decline working the next 50 years?

• 44:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it's hard to do briefly because like, obviously, it's a long section of that book. And if I describe it.

• 44:38Adam Friedland?

  Well, we could just read it.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  But if I describe it briefly, it's going to seem like too simple. But like, I think that the, that there's going to be this kind of this cultural shift where people have less of an interpersonal relationship to football outside of it as an entertainment, like a distracting kind of entertainment. Like, they won't have played, their father won't have played, maybe even their grandfather. Maybe they didn't know anyone in high school who was on the football team or whatever. They just see it as this thing that's on Saturdays and Sundays and Monday night and Thursday, and they watch it sort of to kill time. So they're, they're, they're, they'll still like it. It will still be very popular because it's kind of a tautological thing now. Football is what you watch on Sunday, so that's what you do on Sunday. But it won't mean as much.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  And I think that the economics of advertising are going to change in 50 or 60 years. And suddenly, these huge deals that, it's not that they're going to disappear entirely, but these huge deals that, that, you know, Fox gives or, you know, Amazon Prime gives or whatever, the number won't go up. The number will either stay the same or go down with some new contract. But the players are being like, we're not going to take a reduction in salary. The league will be like, what are we going to do? Go to 22 games? There'll be this year. There'll be a big work stoppage. And what will be different about this future work stoppage is that people won't miss it the way they would now. I mean, there were strikes, NFL strikes in the 1980s. And people were very, you know, they cared a lot. They like, we got to get these games back.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  If that happened now, it would be like a catastrophe. People would be like, what am I going to bet on? What's my life like now? But I don't think, like the, like two generations removed, I don't think that relationship will still exist. It'll still be this popular thing, but a distraction can be replaced. And I, and, and football is like, it's not one of these things like where it's like, it's too big to fail. Like, it's too big to stop. Covid was a great example of this, when they had to play those games. Like, that's when you really recognized, like, Major League Baseball and the NBA had to go to the bubble and all these things.

• 46:37Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  These leagues could not, like, they kind of tried to position it almost as if, well, you know, people are stuck at home. They, the fans need this, we need this. But that wasn't, I mean, like, the Big Ten was not having classes, but they were still having their football games. They had to do it.

• 46:52Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  And that showed the fragility. The, as the culture changes, it's the big things that can't adjust. The small things are flexible.

• 46:59Adam Friedland?

  What games were you getting in the eighties? I, I wasn't alive. Were you getting 1pm, 4pm, and then Sunday night football?

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Okay, first of all, it was college football, there was one game a week, which was bizarre. Sometimes two, but usually just there would be one game on Saturday.

• 47:15Adam Friedland?

  The last time there was a work stoppage, I mean, like.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  Oh, during the work stoppage?

• 47:19Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Oh, well, well, after I would.

• 47:21Adam Friedland?

  Was there that 10 hours on a Sunday?

• 47:24Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 47:24Adam Friedland?

  So they didn't have that?

• 47:25Speaker 02

  There was, there was, most of the teams played at, I guess it would be like 1 o'clock Eastern, 12 Central or whatever.

• 47:31Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  There'd be a few sort of national games at, for me, 3 o'clock. Usually the Cowboys, if it was an AFC game, it would be like the Broncos or a West Coast team. There'd be the Monday night game. There would be occasion, there'd be games on Thanksgiving and the occasional Thursday. But like for me, as a kid, when in the eighties, I would watch, you know, the Vikings were the local team. I'd then watch the national game, and then I'd get to see half of the Monday night game and then have to go to bed.

• 47:57Adam Friedland?

  Yes.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  That, you know, so everything, it was like, it was a, and you know, it's a strange thing, it was like. Now, there's almost this assumption that if you say you're a football fan, you're supposed to have watched every game. You're supposed to have like seen everything and know everything that's going on. That pressure wasn't, didn't even exist for journalists. Like, it used to always be a big controversy that like somebody would win the Heisman Trophy and they'd be like, "Well, it should have been a guy from the Pac-10 or the Pac-12, but none of these media guys watched the Pac-12 game, it's too late" or whatever. Like, that'd be unthinkable now. It would be unthinkable for someone to say, "Well, I voted for the Heisman and I voted for a guy, you know, from Florida because like I can't stay up for those West Coast games." But that was, that was a totally normal thing.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  That, that conversation came up anytime, like, you know, like Herschel Walker won the Heisman over John Elway. Many people said it was because, "Well, nobody sees Stanford play, they play so," you know what I'm saying?

• 48:51Adam Friedland?

  The same thing has happened actually in soccer. Like, TV rights deals have expanded. You, like, um, there was something called Match of the Day in England, where the only way you could watch like, um, uh, every team's highlights was there was this one program on the BBC. Um, you would usually just get one game. You couldn't get games in Italy, you couldn't watch games on the continent. Um, in fact, like, uh, the old Arsenal, I'm an Arsenal fan, like, their old manager, George Graham, uh, in order to like scout players would have, he would get every newspaper from around the country and he would read and say, "Oh, this guy that's up in, uh, at Leeds is like, uh, he's young and he's good."

• 49:35Adam Friedland?

  And then they'd sign them based on like, uh, just, just reading the local beat writers, right? Like, there wasn't like video scouting even back in the day.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  But I mean, there was, there was also a higher trust society. They trusted those guys way more than they would now. You would never do that. You would never make a decision now based on media reports of a guy's talent.

• 49:52Adam Friedland?

  Right, so, so in the Premier League, uh, like, uh, I watched, uh, I watched soccer and we get it before basically football starts on a Sunday or a Saturday morning also, before college starts. And that's basically how it is. There were three blocks of time primarily blocked out and in the same way as, uh, as it is, and if anything is- Better for television because it's a kind of a dedicated amount of time like it doesn't actually like you don't have overtime.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  That's to me the biggest upside soccer has. If you start watching a game, you know when it's gonna end, like you can say like, I'll meet you at the bar at this time. You're gonna be able to make it.

• 50:27Adam Friedland?

  The wife won't be, yeah, yeah, killing you.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  When I was a little kid, like in the late seventies, nearly eighties, the only way to watch see soccer was on PBS. PBS on like Friday and Saturday night would sometimes show like a Premier League. It would, I mean, I remember my, me and my sister thought it was hilarious. It was the first time we ever heard nil, meaning zero. So we would say that, but it was like, you know, but that was, that's how sort of arcane seemed at the time. It'd be something you'd see like masterpiece theater upstairs, downstairs and Premier League soccer.

• 50:59Adam Friedland?

  But functionally, like there's this aspect of the weekend, right? Like in their society, uh, the British underclass. And they actually, when the Queen died, they canceled the games that weekend. And it was like, there was a big uproar because it's like, we go to the football, right? That's why they say the football, like you work your ass off during the week, you're fucking miserable and then you go to the football, right? Now, uh, you know, they could watch games like, uh, all day in the way that we can on Saturday, watch the college games. And on Sunday, you, you know, you could like have a crappy week and you could be like, this is what I do on Saturday and Sunday. I, I sit on my couch, I drink beer, I watch football.

• 51:41Adam Friedland?

  There's a, there's a demand for that content to fill that aspect of people's time.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Oh, it is, yes.

• 51:47Adam Friedland?

  So like, so when I'm thinking about the decline of football, I'm like, what are they gonna do?

• 51:54Speaker 02

  If that happened now, absolutely. I think two generations removed, I don't think that person will exist in the same way. Just the thing you say about drinking beer, it's shocking to me, the statistics of like. How like a senior in high school and likely has never drank in their life. I think that part of life is going, it's just going away. Now, it may come back, certainly enough time, you know, things wax and wane or whatever. It is, it is hard to think about the future of a sport without kind of projecting the present on it. In the same way, it's hard to think of the past without projecting the, like, the present on it. It's just, it's in human nature to do that.

• 52:32Adam Friedland?

  I don't think our populace possesses the capacity to throw a brick sometimes. And I think it's because there's too much Mandalorian, you know what I mean? Or there's like, or there's this all day on Sunday, right? And it's just like, just like, things can be falling apart outside, but like, we're gonna wanna sit down and just like, watch this.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  Well, I think, I totally agree with you, although I think for a slightly different reason. I think that like, you know, I, maybe we're saying the same thing. But like, a bad sort of dead-end life in America is still not necessarily a terrible life to experience. Because there are so many ways to find meaning within that. Like, even if, I mean, the Mandalorian's an interesting item, but yeah, possibly. Like, that, like, something like that, the idea, you know? I mean, like, what you're saying about football in that way, like, that's definitely, that's like a Noam Chomsky argument. That basically, that these things aren't.

• 53:28Adam Friedland?

  Late-stage capitalism.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Yes, or that, that this is a way to basically, to, to sedate the populace and to have them feel as though that there's something meaningful in their life and they won't think about things that are actually meaningful. Of course, I've thought about that, I mean, I write about it a little in the book, but I also think that.

• 53:46Adam Friedland?

  It's meaningful to us, I mean, sports are meaningful to us.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  You can't, it's, one thing that I, you, you see especially in sort of like the social media world is sort of this idea that like, well. You shouldn't care about anything if I can point out something that's a more important thing. That somehow you are morally failing if you have an investment in this thing. That when these other things are happening that matter so much more, but of course if you shift to those things, there's still a person who's gonna find the next thing. It's like, well, yeah, but yeah, but the climate. It was like, you know, it's like, I just think that that is a kind of an idiotic way.

• 54:24Adam Friedland?

  I'm not saying that we should.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, I know you're not. I'm not in any way saying you said it. I'm saying this is something that I kind of think about. But like, you know, sort of at what point do you have to weigh your actual individual experience against what is happening in the world and how much you're supposed to devote your thinking toward that?

• 54:45Adam Friedland?

  Beyond like saying like, this is an opiate of the masses, this is a way that we could kind of cope with reality, you know? In a large way, like, I think about Arsenal all week long. I think about our fucking starting 11 against Nottingham Forest all week long, and it's, I'm a loser. I feel like a loser that I care, but I fucking do care, you know?

• 55:06Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you say it's a way to cope with reality. I mean, sports are part of reality. Granted, what's happening on the field or on the court.

• 55:14Adam Friedland?

  Your own personal reality, yeah.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  Well, no, the hard reality. Like, it's happening. It's part of the world too. Like, what's happening on the field is a simulation of things. There is a unreality to what's really going on. The stakes are completely fabricated. Like, you know, one thing that's really interesting is, and I'm like anybody else, right? It's hard for me to sit through a preseason NFL football game. Doesn't seem like it means anything. None of them mean anything. No one's gonna die. But yet, but we.

• 55:40Adam Friedland?

  If you win the Super Bowl, then play the next year, right?

• 55:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And it's still, like, every, every, every game, every sporting event's an exhibition. They're all exhibitions. They're exhibition. Now, we impose these meaning onto them, and I like, I'm not so, it's not like I'm beyond this. I feel the same way. You know, it's like, I'm traveling for this book tour. I was missing some of these football games. I was like, ah, I hate missing them or whatever. But, you know, I wouldn't feel that way if I was traveling. At the end of August and I was missing the Hall of Fame game. I would have never occurred to me, it's like, oh my god, I'm missing them. But yet, there are actually more, there's more similarities between those two things in a macro way than there is a difference.

• 56:23Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying. You don't talk about like what could potentially replace it very much.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think anything would replace, I think that, that, you know, I hate always just saying monoculture, monoculture. But you know, it's, I was, interesting deal, like, so, I'm sure you know this, like, so what's the highest rated television program of all time?

• 56:43Adam Friedland?

  A Super Bowl?

• 56:43Speaker 02

  I mean, saying like a, like a broadcast show.

• 56:46Adam Friedland?

  Oh, uh, MASH?

• 56:47Speaker 02

  The last episode of MASH.

• 56:48Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  So, and that will never, ever be, like, everyone has said statistically, because of the proliferation of cable and the way things work, there will never be an audience for a television show like that again. And yet, what were they talking about when that show was on? They were like, "The monoculture's over, we have cable television now."

• 57:06Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  News, you know, USA Today is making, like, all these, the exact, a very similar argument was being made at what we now consider to be the apex of the monoculture. So, I think that it's just a continual erosion of that, of this shared, I mean, you know, there are so many things and I, I sound like a thousand years old, but like, things like Johnny Carson. There was meaning to that in the sense that, that even people who did not care about The Tonight Show or watch it, knew that that's what was on and that's what he was like and all these things. And those things are just not going to be part of life.

• 57:42Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 57:42Speaker 02

  I mean, that's just, that's done.

• 57:43Adam Friedland?

  I want to, we were talking before the show about soccer, because I'm a big soccer fan. For me, football, kind of like, the Tuck game, I remember when I was a kid, I'm a Raider fan. And probably part of me, my waning interest in, in football, I have a friend who's a Bills fan, so I'll watch, I'll watch with him. I love Joshie and it breaks my heart what they go through, especially like, kind of from supporting this team also. I've never seen them win the league in 22 years.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  Do you like the book Fever Pitch?

• 58:11Adam Friedland?

  I, no, I, I like the movie with Jimmy Fallon about the Red Sox.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  Really? Really? Oh, okay. Okay.

• 58:19Adam Friedland?

  No, no, but yeah, I know Nick Hornsby was an Arsenal fan, but it, they are this fucking team that like, it's, they say it's the hope that kills you and it's, it's kind of the, there's a lot of, it's very Billsy. But like for me, the Tuck game, I was like, it just wasn't fair. And it was like, you know, Charles Woodson had that strip and like, it was just like, it's just like, it broke my heart. And I was like, well, fuck this shit. I loved those Raiders teams. I loved like, the, the, the west, the Rich Gannon, Rich Gannon west coast offense, like Jerry Rice.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  The Gruden era, that's a good.

• 58:49Adam Friedland?

  Jerry Rice's last ride, like fucking like, that team, like, uh, Gannon would go like, he'd go like 51 for 62, for 63. Do you remember like all those, those little dunks?

• 59:00Speaker 02

  You know, he'd been, he'd been with the Vikings and he was always like, ah, well, this guy, he's near, but when it was the end of his career, he sort of became this different person.

• 59:08Adam Friedland?

  There was something really lovable about that team, but beyond that, like, um, I, I, I watch soccer now and, and part of it is, is as a, as a, as a product. You know, much is made about that statistic, about 11 minutes of actual action within the four hours of an NFL game. But like, there is two 45 minutes of just flow. There's no commercials, right? Like, I, I fucking hate commercials. You could just sit there and watch the one thing. It's not interrupted. Um, and like, in terms of gameplay, it's just, uh, I feel like, it's the best. Even in the NBA, the last two minutes of a NBA game, like with the fouls and like free throws, it's just like, there is, uh, it, the game kind of slows down. If anything, football has the best, the best last two minutes, I think.

• 59:54Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I, my argument is basically that, you know, there's, there are kind of three kinds of sports. There's one that are kind of almost these non-stop mesmerizing hypnotic sports, soccer, basketball, boxing to some degree, auto racing. Then there's these very cerebral sports like baseball and golf where almost all of the importance is based on what will happen, what just happened, what could happen later. Like the action is just a very small part of it and it's all kind of prologue to the end.

• 1:00:22Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  And then the third one is football, which is a cerebral game in the sense that there are all these stops. And all this sort of, you know, it's like

• 1:00:29Adam Friedland?

  Chess match, yeah.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  But the moments of action are so hyperkinetic and violent that it creates almost the illusion, or maybe just, I guess, the sensation of, of real intensity and a real kind of dynamic thing. So, I mean, like, the idea that there's only 11 minutes of action in a three-hour football game, that's always used like as a criticism of football, but 11 minutes is the right amount.

• 1:00:51Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  It's like the perfect, for the way, I think people, and this is like a weird thing to say, that I can't get in other people's brains, but I think what people say they want from entertainment and what they actually do are very different. I think that the way our mind works actually kind of contradicts what we would say consciously is our desire.

• 1:01:10Adam Friedland?

  Going back to the soccer point, one thing that I've found is really special is that there is a different talent development system.

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, you were saying that, that was interesting to me.

• 1:01:20Adam Friedland?

  With youth academies. So like, when a player plays in a youth academy and then breaks through into a first team, it's almost as if it's like they are, it's a fan's dream, right? Because they've been playing with, like, Arsenal have guys that were there when they were nine years old, right? And the cool thing is when they're playing like the under 15s, they're playing the under 13s or whatever, they're wearing the same uniforms as the guys in the big stadium. And you could tell that there's, there's something that means so much. Like, no one's in the Jacksonville Jaguars youth academy, right? No one's like dreaming for the time that they're 10 years old of like playing on the Jags.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I guess a kid who goes to junior high in Jacksonville, you know, and

• 1:02:05Adam Friedland?

  But then they get drafted in Buffalo, right?

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, they have no control, yes. They can't enter the pipeline, yeah.

• 1:02:10Adam Friedland?

  And, and then there are other stories of like kids that have been cut from academies. Like, there's this guy on Arsenal right now who was cut when he was, I think, 14 years old, and he worked his entire career to get back to Arsenal. Now, we just signed him again, and he's 25 years old, I think, now. And there is like, there's a romance in that, where you could like, members, that we're all members of the club, right? Then we have a board of directors, we have a manager, and then we have our first team, right? And there's a sensation of like, when someone comes through an academy and has been there for a long time and their family has made sacrifices to drive them two hours to training every day when they're like a little kid because of a dream of the family, there's

• 1:02:54Adam Friedland?

  like an assumption of that they're one of our own, right? Kobe Bryant was my favorite basketball player because he was with the Lakers for 20 years. He felt like one of our own and in American professional sports, we kind of don't have that like romance, I think.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  Well, it's really interesting because the way you describe it does sound very romantic. Now, you could describe it in the exact same terms and some would say like, so you like the corporate nature of these soccer factories? I mean, what is interesting that what you say though is that particularly, you know, like in the Northeast here, in the Pacific Northwest, there's a lot of places where increasingly, I think there's a lot of pressure on parents to not let their kids play football.

• 1:03:33Adam Friedland?

  Right.

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  And now in some places, that's not going to change. It's not going to change in parts of Texas, it's not going to change in Georgia and in Florida.

• 1:03:38Adam Friedland?

  And amongst the underclass too, right?

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  But, yes, well, I mean, what do you mean the, like?

• 1:03:43Adam Friedland?

  Like, poor kids are still, like, there's a version against football amongst, like, it corresponds with socioeconomic.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  Yes, it's like the people watching football and the people playing football are increasingly getting separated.

• 1:03:56Adam Friedland?

  Which ironically, in the NBA, socioeconomically, it's changing.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  I know, I know. It's like the idea that this kid is like basketball is your way out, like, no, it's not.

• 1:04:06Adam Friedland?

  It doesn't exist anymore, yeah.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  What is interesting though, is that let's say that this continues to happen, that it becomes almost, you know, most high schools for insurance reasons or just because of lack of interest, they stop playing high school football. Eventually, that's going to impact these college programs. I wonder if in some future world, this is how the NFL could find a way to keep talent. They're like, they could start this system that starts like, you know, if you're growing up in Jacksonville, if you're one of the parents who wants their kid to play football, we will make this happen. We will create a youth Jacksonville Jaguar Football League. The best of those kids will move up to an advanced league. They'll, you know, by that time, college will be a completely different.

• 1:04:48Adam Friedland?

  Or Bama could be in the NFL, right? Theoretically, not not the University of Alabama, but like kind of the Crimson Tide or something, some some sort of replacement of that. Because effectively, college athletics is well at Alabama longer than other places is a professional sport.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  Now totally.

• 1:05:05Adam Friedland?

  Now everyone. Now everyone is Nick Saban.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  Well, it is, it is interesting how that is a thing that people say now. It's like, will the SCC finally, like now everybody can.

• 1:05:17Adam Friedland?

  Now everyone is the SCC.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  What is interesting is that like it's hard, it's really hard for them to deny that because prior to that, there was like the, it doesn't exist anymore, but like the Southwest Conference, this was like, those were all the Texas schools in Arkansas before all this got changed. And there's a like, there's a documentary called Pony Access about SMU and all this thing.

• 1:05:36Adam Friedland?

  Express, yeah.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:05:38Adam Friedland?

  Access, access.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  That's in the documentary. They were called the Pony Express.

• 1:05:41Adam Friedland?

  There was a thirty for thirty about it.

• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. But there's like one guy in that documentary who's like, there were schools giving one million dollars to players who didn't win a game. Which was basically saying like Baylor was giving one million dollars to God, because everybody, you know, I mean that. So the idea that this has been going on forever, of course, everyone knows it. What was, but there still is, like, it is very different now. It has been sort of like they've leveled the playing field, obviously, in this way. And I think in the short term, that's actually going to kind of create a spike of interest in college football because places like Indiana are going to have this experience.

• 1:06:18Adam Friedland?

  I'm watching tonight and I haven't watched college football in years.

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 1:06:22Adam Friedland?

  Because I want to see, I want to see like, well, A, it's the clips of that quarterback after the game. I'm like, that guy is, that guy is hilarious.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  I guess, yeah.

• 1:06:35Adam Friedland?

  Wait, actually, you know, he's getting paid three million dollars a year, I believe, to be at Indiana. His high school, like senior thesis was on why NIL shouldn't exist. Do you know that?

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  I did not know that. I did not know that. But it is, yeah, he is a, he has an interesting way of talking. It is, it is somewhere, it's like somewhere between like AI and like a Christian musician promoting his record. It's like a weird, kind of strange, like he's like a guy from Striper and a machine, but it's like.

• 1:07:05Adam Friedland?

  He's great.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  Well, but yeah, like, that's a great example. Like, you're kind of interested in this. I do think that in the short term, that this is going to increase interest in college football. In a lot of different places, I think long-term, it's probably going to be catastrophic for the idea of what college football is because college football offered all these things that the NFL didn't, like a regional quality, a real emphasis on history. The idea that when you're watching two teams, you are in some sense rooting for the kind of kid you imagine going there.

• 1:07:35Adam Friedland?

  Right, Wisconsin is gonna, it's gonna be 12, 12, 14, final score.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  Well, they play that style. There was a regional quality, all the conferences and that's going to disappear. Like, they're all gonna play, the talent's gonna be equally distributed, just like in the NFL. In the NFL, all these teams fundamentally play the same. It's very rare that you see a team in the NFL who play, you know, sometimes there'll be an outlier on one end or the other, but for like the 15 or 20 teams in the middle, they're basically carbon copies of each other because when everybody has talent, you can't make a guy disappear. You can't use a system to outsmart a guy. In college, you still could. You could still do these things, something like Mike Leach. You know, he would like set up this passing game for Texas Tech or when he was at Washington. None of those guys...

• 1:08:18Adam Friedland?

  Like a spread offense.

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, or just like a system base. Like, you used to hear like the system quarterback. And that basically meant that like, if you were a system quarterback, it meant your coach was a genius who knew how to just run guys open and as long as you could be accurate. Somebody like Kellen Moore, when he played at Boise State, I was like, there's no way this guy is not gonna succeed at the NFL. He seems like he hits this guy every time. But then, when he got to the NFL, there was no shot.

• 1:08:42Adam Friedland?

  Right.

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  But...

• 1:08:44Adam Friedland?

  Because it was green.

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, blue.

• 1:08:47Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, no, no.

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  Oh, the floor, when he entered, the green.

• 1:08:50Adam Friedland?

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• 1:09:32Adam Friedland?

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• 1:09:58Speaker 03

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• 1:10:04Adam Friedland?

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• 1:10:47Adam Friedland?

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• 1:11:33Adam Friedland?

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• 1:15:50Adam Friedland?

  Do you think Bill's gonna be back in the NFL ever?

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:15:52Adam Friedland?

  No. It's crazy to see what's happening.

• 1:15:55Speaker 02

  It is, it's, it's...

• 1:15:57Adam Friedland?

  Pablo's ruining his life. It's all Pablo's fault.

• 1:16:01Speaker 02

  Well, that's, that's an interesting thing.

• 1:16:02Adam Friedland?

  No, it's Jordan.

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  But it's, like, it's...

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  In a sense, it really does show that he is not interested in his perception.

• 1:16:19Adam Friedland?

  Well, no, because like-

• 1:16:22Speaker 02

  Well, why do you say no?

• 1:16:23Adam Friedland?

  Because his entire dominance, I guess, was about completely shutting out the outside world.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:34Adam Friedland?

  Right? And this is completely goes against everything we know about him. The Patriot way was that the locker room, I mean, they could have murderers in there, we'd have no idea. Eventually, we would. But yeah, but like, the Patriot way was about kind of just completely insulating-

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:16:49Adam Friedland?

  -everything from the media. His personal life being a matter of media spectacle is just-

• 1:16:55Speaker 02

  But he like, he doesn't care what we think, is what I'm saying. It's like, he doesn't care people like us.

• 1:17:00Adam Friedland?

  Sure.

• 1:17:01Speaker 02

  Like, you know, it's like, it doesn't mean anything-

• 1:17:03Adam Friedland?

  How were they this year, UNC?

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  Well, you know, they, it was the first game of the year, the opening drive, they look awesome. And everybody was like, aha! This is like, and then it was just kind of, you know, downhill from there. And then, at the end of the year, they did play better, but the damage was done.

• 1:17:19Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  And sort of the plan he has to make, like, he was like, this is gonna be like a, like a way to get ready for the NFL. Like, that's all, that's all our whole thing. We're gonna be a factory for the NFL. And the byproduct of this will be, we'll like, we'll win the ACC. But that's not what had happened. I mean, it's, I-

• 1:17:37Adam Friedland?

  He's probably just gonna copy Indiana, right? He's probably gonna have like 45-year-old, or not 45, he'll have like 28-year-olds, he'll find some way. He's the Dark Lord, he's Palpatine.

• 1:17:48Speaker 02

  It would be incredible if that happened. I, you know, I, I find him just intriguing and hilarious. And I just, I love listening to him talk. I mean, have you, maybe you've seen this YouTube clip where like, a reporter says like, well, this really isn't for my story, but I'm curious, it's like, why do you have to hold a roster spot for your long snapper? Like, isn't that a waste of a roster spot?

• 1:18:11Adam Friedland?

  He loves special teams.

• 1:18:12Speaker 02

  And he explained the history of kicking. extemporaneously for like 11 minutes. And it was like, it was almost like this is the first time anyone ever asked him a question in a press conference. And he was like, I'm going to reward you for this. I mean, it's, it's.

• 1:18:26Adam Friedland?

  Well, that's the surprising thing about Jordan Hudson is like, I had no idea he was into anything else.

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  Oh, you've said.

• 1:18:34Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I don't know.

• 1:18:35Adam Friedland?

  Well, like sex. I was like, it was bizarre.

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  But there was that famous footage that went of him like leaving some girl's house.

• 1:18:42Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, the ring camera.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think that wasn't her house. That was somebody else, right?

• 1:18:46Adam Friedland?

  Oh, he was a Lothario?

• 1:18:47Speaker 02

  I thought so. I thought so. I'm pretty sure. I'm almost certain that it's.

• 1:18:51Adam Friedland?

  It's an Airbnb that Pablo like rented and then got a video.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  I know, I know.

• 1:18:55Adam Friedland?

  Wait, I asked, I asked Nick right this. Do you think that if David Stern were alive, Pablo would be dead?

• 1:19:06Adam Friedland?

  You think that he would just be, I think he would be in a dumpster or trash.

• 1:19:09Speaker 02

  Well, I, I think that like a, a lot of things that Silver has kind of allowed would not have been allowed. So maybe they'd never be in the position for, I know what you're kind of implying, but it's like a lot of these situations. I think that when, when Silver became the, you know, I interviewed him for GQ, I think it was. And I was like, this is a really.

• 1:19:31Adam Friedland?

  For sexiest man in the world.

• 1:19:32Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. And he was like, this is a smart guy and he's really kind of personable.

• 1:19:36Adam Friedland?

  He's a company man. He's like a lawyer, right?

• 1:19:38Speaker 02

  It is, he is, uh, Stern may have been the last pro sports commissioner who will ever be that way. Like, I don't, I don't think that, that I don't know if ownership groups will ever again allow someone. I mean, like, like.

• 1:19:56Adam Friedland?

  Like he exploded the popular.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  He did.

• 1:19:58Adam Friedland?

  Correct me if I'm wrong, I, I was born in the late eighties, but like in the eighties, the NBA was kind of not a thing.

• 1:20:04Speaker 02

  Well, the first time, I was this huge Celtics fan. And when they beat the Rockets in 1981, half of those games were on tape delay. You'd watch him at 10:30 or whatever. And then that did totally change. That did by the, by the end of the 1980s, it kind of felt as though basketball and football might almost sort of be in like this, like in a kind of collision course and then, but then. It was too individually based because the two years that Jordan went away, that was really showed the risk of that because there was suddenly there was the interest in the NBA went down. And then when he came back, the interest went back up and it was like that means they're not really into basketball. They're into this person. You can't build things around personality if you want to have long-term success.

• 1:20:48Adam Friedland?

  Wait, that's I had no idea. Can you just break that down like so Michael Jordan stopped playing basketball?

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  Are you being sarcastic?

• 1:20:56Adam Friedland?

  So why would he stop? Why would he stop playing basketball?

• 1:21:00Speaker 02

  Well, oh, well, I would he.

• 1:21:02Adam Friedland?

  Obviously, his dad.

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  Father died, you know.

• 1:21:04Adam Friedland?

  His dad died? I thought his dad was.

• 1:21:06Speaker 02

  His dad was murdered.

• 1:21:07Adam Friedland?

  Oh, I was gonna say his dad would never let him stop playing basketball.

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  Well, well, his father's love was baseball, though, you know, you see that maybe you've heard that.

• 1:21:16Adam Friedland?

  And so was he good at baseball?

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  Ah, well, you know, he did not have a high rate of success. He, you know, he was been more successful than I think I would have been if I would have tried to play baseball. But no, he did not ever have a great.

• 1:21:28Adam Friedland?

  So his dad got whacked. He went to go play.

• 1:21:31Speaker 02

  Well, it was a random act of violence. Is that really a whacking? It's not like, you know, a Jill Pesci walking into a room.

• 1:21:37Adam Friedland?

  Okay.

• 1:21:38Speaker 02

  He was in a car, yeah.

• 1:21:39Adam Friedland?

  This sounds like it sounds like you're making this all up. I thought that he just hung out with Tweety Bird, Bugs Bunny. I had no idea that Michael Jordan was playing baseball.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  So I mean, are you sort of saying that you actually believe you believe that he was forced out?

• 1:21:53Adam Friedland?

  It seems plausible that the gambling thing maybe needed to cool off for two years.

• 1:22:00Speaker 02

  Um, I I don't know if I find that to be a very credible conspiracy, to be obvious, to be honest. I mean, yeah.

• 1:22:09Adam Friedland?

  And none of this is gonna air because he's a friend of the show, Michael Jordan. Give it up for him, his airness. Uh, I don't know. I it's it seems bizarre that like I don't I don't understand how David. A commissioner that was so powerful, right, could have had the biggest player in the world kind of leave in the middle of his career like that. I feel like David Stern, as some of them so kind of just. Viciously pragmatic and effective. I feel like there had to have been more to that.

• 1:22:44Speaker 02

  Well, when Jordan retired that first time, they had won three championships in a row. And actually, the conversation then was sort of like, well, this is kind of like Jim Brown. Like, he's leaving at the height.

• 1:22:55Adam Friedland?

  He left for civil rights, to be a civil rights leader. He left to be an actor. Well, we know he was a great actor. We've all seen Space Jam. It was phenomenal.

• 1:23:05Speaker 02

  You know, it's, and so it didn't, when he played baseball, it did seem really weird. But then the contract thing, because the Bulls and the White Sox were owned by the same organization.

• 1:23:15Adam Friedland?

  Rhymes for it, yeah.

• 1:23:16Speaker 02

  And then his, if you're David Stern, I mean, if you, if you, if you, if you were David Stern, and you did this, if it is true, it is, it is beyond brilliant. Because his return was one of the most thrilling things of, like, my memory of sports in the 90s.

• 1:23:33Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, the 45 to 23.

• 1:23:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, just the game he played against the Knicks, and it was like, he hadn't been back that long, and it was like, he is, he is instantly the best player in the league again. He has lost almost nothing.

• 1:23:46Adam Friedland?

  Okay, I want to, I want to do a couple of hypotheticals with you.

• 1:23:50Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:23:50Adam Friedland?

  Okay. Let's, let's stay on the NBA. If Tim Donahue, if it wasn't, if the New York Post, I believe, didn't catch wind of the fact that he was a...

• 1:24:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that was leaked to them, yes.

• 1:24:05Adam Friedland?

  What, what, he was going to turn state witness, state's witness, right?

• 1:24:10Speaker 02

  I think that could have happened. I think it definitely could have happened, yeah.

• 1:24:12Adam Friedland?

  My understanding is he was going to wear a wire, and then it became public knowledge that he had been caught in this scandal. Like, how much would that have diminished the credibility of the refereeing and the NBA at large?

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  Well, it would have been a big deal, I mean, it would have been a huge deal, obviously. But I will say this, because it would be an officiating issue, it wouldn't have been as devastating as if a player point shaving situation happened. I mean, this just happened in college basketball. There's all these guys now who got, you know, in trouble for, you know, point shaving in a real obvious way. But what is interesting is, and this seems obvious now, but it never occurred to me, it's like...

• 1:24:52Speaker 02

  It's always, these point shaving situations are always gonna involve teams that aren't good. Those are the teams you go to and because of that, it won't bother fans in the same way. Like, there's not gonna be a point shaving, I mean, I'll say this and it'll happen tomorrow.

• 1:25:04Adam Friedland?

  You know, Juventus, one of the best teams in Italy, historic team, was caught in a match, am I right, Tim? Yeah. Yeah, in a match fixing scandal, and then they were sent down to the second division, actually. So, it was a huge scandal.

• 1:25:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I'm not saying it couldn't happen.

• 1:25:17Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:18Speaker 02

  But I'm saying that, let's say you're a prospective guy, and you want to, you want to corrupt, you want to pay off players and have them fix games. It would be a huge mistake to try to get the kids from Duke, or Kansas, or any of these schools to do it. For no other reason, those games are really visible, and these guys, but if you find some guy from a college that is never on television, uh, there are all different...

• 1:25:38Adam Friedland?

  Indiana football for, for...

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 1:25:41Adam Friedland?

  What do you think of, well, it's not a hypothetical, what do you think about the hypothetical, did you write that, Caleb? What do you think about the hypothetical Beetle? What do you think about the hypothetical Beatles movie yesterday?

• 1:25:57Speaker 02

  Uh, well, I never actually saw it, I guess.

• 1:26:00Adam Friedland?

  No, I saw it on a plane.

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, well, cause I know, I know something about it that, to me, would, is too big of a flaw.

• 1:26:07Adam Friedland?

  Uh, which is what, that the Beatles existed?

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  Well, no. That, like, nothing else changed.

• 1:26:12Adam Friedland?

  Well, no, no, and Sheeran didn't exist. Or he did exist?

• 1:26:15Speaker 02

  Well, he's in the movie, I thought.

• 1:26:16Adam Friedland?

  No, he starts writing for Ed Sheeran. Some, some bands don't exist. Oh, you know what they say, people don't smoke cigarettes.

• 1:26:22Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:26:23Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, cigarettes are popular.

• 1:26:25Speaker 02

  That, that, yeah.

• 1:26:26Adam Friedland?

  Cause we all know that the Beatles were famous for cigs.

• 1:26:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:26:29Adam Friedland?

  Um, do you think that Drake will ever win best actor for, uh, for the Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama biopic?

• 1:26:38Speaker 02

  Is he playing Barack Obama?

• 1:26:40Adam Friedland?

  No, but I've always said this, for the last, like, 15 years, that Drake will, one day.

• 1:26:44Speaker 02

  Uh, will he? Do I think he'll win an Academy, I think he'll be, yeah.

• 1:26:47Adam Friedland?

  For bet, for the, for the Obama...

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  I think he'll be wrongly snubbed.

• 1:26:50Adam Friedland?

  Okay, yeah, exactly, I think so. Yeah, they'll give it to Kendrick Lamar for the, for the Hillary Clinton biopic.

• 1:26:56Speaker 02

  But he's a Canadian, can a Canadian play an American president?

• 1:27:01Adam Friedland?

  If he's acting.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess he is eligible to play up, to be an actor, I guess you had to.

• 1:27:12Adam Friedland?

  Okay, let's just stop calling these hypotheticals because half of these aren't. What's the best, what is the best soup rock supergroup? Like, why are the Wilburys as good as Tom Petty? Why isn't like a super, a super team like the, is really good at basketball? Like, if you have the best players, like, why aren't, why does that?

• 1:27:30Speaker 02

  Why isn't Asia as good as its various components of like?

• 1:27:33Adam Friedland?

  Why aren't the Traveling Wilburys the best band of all time?

• 1:27:36Speaker 02

  Well, because, I, I mean, I mean, I don't know how seriously you want the answer.

• 1:27:41Adam Friedland?

  I would like it serious, yeah.

• 1:27:42Speaker 02

  Well, because when they're.

• 1:27:44Adam Friedland?

  No jokes.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  When they're all coming together at that point in their career, the idea is that we're doing this kind of like, we're almost,

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  everyone is conceding to every other person. Nobody has a real vision. Like, Jeff Lynne is producing the record, but it's for the most part, it's like, well, won't this be fun? We actually produced some pretty good songs. It's interesting that like, you know, it's, it's strange when, you know, I think Bob Dylan was 47 when that band happened. Like, he already seemed so old to me. But like, you know, and like, Tom Petty was nothing. Tom Petty was like in his 30s or whatever. But I, there's, you're not going to be committed in the same way. You know, like, or like a band like Velvet Revolver, I guess that's a, was a kind of supergroup.

• 1:28:25Adam Friedland?

  So they're the best one, you're saying?

• 1:28:27Speaker 02

  Well, no, but I'm saying it's like they, they would, I mean, it's, it's actually hard. It's actually hard to come up with what, what the best, I mean, maybe the Traveling Wilburys actually might be.

• 1:28:36Adam Friedland?

  They still might be the best one, yeah.

• 1:28:38Speaker 02

  Well, because that, that first record was pretty good and their songs are memorable and, and it was, it also sort of changed the way people perceived those guys. It made them seem much less serious and detached.

• 1:28:50Adam Friedland?

  They were fun, yeah.

• 1:28:53Adam Friedland?

  Uh, okay, what would David Foster Wallace, Were You Alive, have made of, of Trump? Because his obsession was television, right? Like, this is the television president. It's kind of like-

• 1:29:04Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it's weird because he was like, you know, he wrote a long thing about, I believe, his obsession with John McCain, I think.

• 1:29:12Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, Up Simba.

• 1:29:13Speaker 02

  Seeing him in this. So, I mean, I would think that he would think Trump is sort of like, almost like, the greatest extension of everything that's gone wrong with civilization, unless it completely horseshoed around. And somehow, he was like, "This is actually what America is not- It's not good for America, but this is like the-" Like, it would- To be, like, to say interesting things about Trump is hard. It is hard because so many people are trying to do it. Everyone's easy, like, he informs every conversation, and yet everybody-

• 1:29:47Adam Friedland?

  In comedy, he's like defeated comedy.

• 1:29:49Speaker 02

  He did.

• 1:29:50Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, because he's funnier.

• 1:29:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:52Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, but it's just like, it kind of, there's so much runway in DFW to Trump, that it's just like, it's so embarrassing that I live in Brooklyn and I'm saying, "I wish David Foster was-" "I wish I could read David Foster was on Trump."

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  Well, it's weird, because like, you know, in Bretius Nelson's book, "American Psycho",

• 1:30:12Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:12Speaker 02

  He talks about Trump constantly in that book. You know, and at that point, Trump was just some guy going around New York, being rich, you know?

• 1:30:19Adam Friedland?

  Well, yeah, we were talking about Caleb Pitts, everyone. Caleb Pitts, everyone? Well, give it up for him. Guys, Jesus Christ, a little bit of energy.

• 1:30:31Speaker 02

  Have you ever considered using a studio audience? That would really change the vibe here, you know?

• 1:30:35Adam Friedland?

  Uh, we have, we have. And they slid out their damn chairs, they got so horny.

• 1:30:41Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 1:30:42Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, Amazonian women. Uh, I'm trying to think, there is in that, in the-

• 1:30:49Adam Friedland?

  What's it called, like the rock and roll circus documentary, The Dirty Mac?

• 1:30:54Speaker 02

  The Rolling, yes. Oh, that, you know, yes, okay. So that's like John Lennon playing with the Stones.

• 1:30:58Adam Friedland?

  Mitch Mitchell, John Lennon.

• 1:31:00Speaker 02

  Also, and that Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath plays with Jethro Tull in that performance. That's the only time Tony Iommi plays with Jethro Tull. I'm sure this is why women love going to my book readings.

• 1:31:10Adam Friedland?

  We're the same guy.

• 1:31:11Speaker 02

  I have this information.

• 1:31:12Adam Friedland?

  What would have happened if Mr. Mitch, Mr. Mitch Mitchell, perhaps to me?

• 1:31:18Speaker 02

  The drummer of Jimi Hendrix.

• 1:31:19Adam Friedland?

  The drummer is an experience. I think one of the most underrated drummers in rock history. What would have happened had he joined after the death of Keith Moon? Had he, had he joined, what do you call it?

• 1:31:30Speaker 02

  The Who?

• 1:31:30Adam Friedland?

  The Who. Wait, what? I don't know the name.

• 1:31:36Adam Friedland?

  The, the band with the Tommy and, what was it called?

• 1:31:41Speaker 02

  Yes. Oh, they're a British band.

• 1:31:44Adam Friedland?

  Who's on, The Who's on first, The What's on second. Okay, let's move on, guys. Can you please support me in my dreams of being with?

• 1:31:52Speaker 02

  Did you, did you bring the Mick Mitchell just to set up that joke? So you could actually, I can't fucking believe you'd do that.

• 1:31:57Adam Friedland?

  I didn't plan that ahead. Chuck, I didn't plan that ahead.

• 1:32:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:32:00Adam Friedland?

  My brain is atrophying.

• 1:32:02Speaker 02

  Okay, I just, you know, because it wasn't terrible. I'm not saying it was terrible. I just did not think that that would be.

• 1:32:07Adam Friedland?

  It was a horrible joke. I mean, it was dog shit. Absolute fucking steaming pile of dog shit.

• 1:32:12Speaker 02

  Well, it was just an art.

• 1:32:13Adam Friedland?

  In front of my fiance's cousin, no less.

• 1:32:16Speaker 02

  It's just, it was, it was an arcane or obtrusive way to get.

• 1:32:19Adam Friedland?

  What if he, what if he joined The Who, though?

• 1:32:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:20Adam Friedland?

  That would have been cool.

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  Well, I think that he probably would have hung with them for a while. And they, you know, but they, you know, they, they kept going anyways, you know, it's like, yeah.

• 1:32:29Adam Friedland?

  What was the best post Beatles career? How would, who would you?

• 1:32:35Speaker 02

  Post Beatles?

• 1:32:35Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:37Speaker 02

  So, okay, so Zeppelin started in 69.

• 1:32:41Adam Friedland?

  Well, no, no, of the, of the four.

• 1:32:43Speaker 02

  Oh, of the four Beatles. Oh, ooh, that's a good question. That's a wonderful question.

• 1:32:47Adam Friedland?

  The first three John are kind of top to bottom unfuckwithable, right?

• 1:32:51Speaker 02

  The, I mean, the best, Plastic On The Band is the best of those records.

• 1:32:55Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:56Speaker 02

  Paul's career was the best. I think that All Things Much Pass, in some ways, is like the record.

• 1:33:03Adam Friedland?

  The number one record of all of them.

• 1:33:05Speaker 02

  Well. I mean, it does, it does have, I think, it's kinda samey at times, but if I think if I had to actually rank them, I would say Plastic Ono Band is probably a better record, but it was, it was one of these things where it was like, it's insane that they didn't let him write more of The Beatles when that record came out.

• 1:33:25Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:26Speaker 02

  So really, it's, I mean, and then, but you know, Ringo was in Caveman, so it's like, you know.

• 1:33:31Adam Friedland?

  So that's number one.

• 1:33:32Speaker 02

  Or no, was it, was it, no, not Caveman.

• 1:33:33Adam Friedland?

  Richard Starkley, number one.

• 1:33:34Speaker 02

  3000 B.C. or whatever.

• 1:33:36Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, that's the best one?

• 1:33:38Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know.

• 1:33:38Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:40Speaker 02

  I appreciate you asking that question, though, thanks.

• 1:33:42Adam Friedland?

  Why are they better?

• 1:33:43Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:33:43Adam Friedland?

  Why is England better at bands?

• 1:33:46Speaker 02

  Well, England was-

• 1:33:47Adam Friedland?

  Like, what's the best American band?

• 1:33:49Speaker 02

  The best American band?

• 1:33:50Adam Friedland?

  I guess Bob Dylan?

• 1:33:51Speaker 02

  Well, no.

• 1:33:52Adam Friedland?

  And it's not even a band.

• 1:33:53Speaker 02

  I would say it would be probably The Beach Boys, The Velvet Underground, The Grateful Dead, Van Halen, possibly Metallica, Creedence Clearwater Revival. Those are the six, I would say. But really, with England, it's really, it's five bands. It's The Beatles, The Stones, Zeppelin, Sabbath, The Who and The Kinks, six bands.

• 1:34:14Adam Friedland?

  The Floyd, my brother, the Floyd!

• 1:34:17Speaker 02

  Okay, you can put them in there. That's actually, that's a good, I agree, that's seven. So it's, and, and, and maybe, and it is probably seven of 10 best of all time, that is weird.

• 1:34:27Adam Friedland?

  Why we letting them bastards over there take our crap and then be better at it?

• 1:34:31Speaker 02

  Well, I just, I think that they-

• 1:34:33Adam Friedland?

  It makes me wanna, the redcoats, they're our enemies.

• 1:34:38Speaker 02

  Yes, that's true. How do we allow this ever? But, that's, I would, I don't, I-

• 1:34:46Adam Friedland?

  It's kind of baffling, when you think about it.

• 1:34:49Speaker 02

  Well, it might, it might have something to do with the singularity of The Beatles. I mean, the way, you know, like, The Stones were just like a blues cover band. The first time they had a, like, a successful single, like, The Beatles wrote it for them in like 10 minutes. So it's like, it's hard to-

• 1:35:05Adam Friedland?

  They went round the pub and just wrote it 10 minutes.

• 1:35:07Speaker 02

  Well, they were like getting in a taxicab or something, they're like, but, so that, that had probably a lot to do with it, that, that created this idea that it's like, well, this is what, we can do this. Like, I didn't know we could do this, I guess we can. Well, 'cause it was the 50's rock, isn't it?

• 1:35:24Adam Friedland?

  Radiohead!

• 1:35:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, it's a, yeah, that's a good-

• 1:35:28Adam Friedland?

  Fuck! Why are they beating us, guys? What are we doing? It's like seeing these goddamn Europeans come to the NBA.

• 1:35:35Speaker 02

  Will you be troubled if Major League Baseball becomes dominated by the Japanese?

• 1:35:40Adam Friedland?

  No, I like that.

• 1:35:41Speaker 02

  You like that?

• 1:35:41Adam Friedland?

  I like that. It's really fucked up what we did to them.

• 1:35:45Speaker 02

  You think that's finally equating things? Like Hiroshima, Nagasaki?

• 1:35:49Adam Friedland?

  It's the only time it ever happened.

• 1:35:51Speaker 02

  Yep, the only time.

• 1:35:52Adam Friedland?

  And to them, it's really horrible.

• 1:35:55Speaker 02

  They handled it well.

• 1:35:56Adam Friedland?

  Did we say sorry like that good? How sorry did we say it?

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:36:01Adam Friedland?

  We were like, "My bad." Truman was like, "My bust."

• 1:36:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:05Adam Friedland?

  Did you say "my bust"?

• 1:36:06Speaker 02

  There seems to be like, well, we did stop firebombing all these cities, you know? But what's really interesting is when you hear how they picked these cities. I watched like a, I don't know, some kind of little documentary. It might have just been on YouTube, like how it was selected. And like, you know, like they didn't want to destroy like, I believe it was like, they couldn't destroy Tokyo or something because they were like, "That's where all the leadership is and maybe they won't have anyone who can even surrender." And like, one city was bypassed just because one guy on the decision committee was like, "I went there. It's a beautiful place." It's like, so they won't go Nagasaki then. It's very incredible how the decision was made. Like this world time-changing decision was made much more capriciously, at least in my opinion, than I would have ever guessed.

• 1:36:50Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Do you think that there is a potential for soccer ever to take the place of football in the United States? Because they've been...

• 1:36:59Speaker 02

  Yes, no, they've been saying that since...

• 1:37:00Adam Friedland?

  Since the New York Cosmos and Pele.

• 1:37:02Speaker 02

  Absolutely. The sport of the future, yes. Well, I, there was a time in my life when I would have said, "Absolutely not. Absolutely, there's no chance." At this point in my life, I would say like, "I don't think so, but who knows?" I mean, every big thing I've ever predicted, I've been wrong about, I think. Every big thing. The only thing I really got right is on...

• 1:37:25Adam Friedland?

  Do you gamble?

• 1:37:27Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 1:37:27Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, because I lose. I lose every one.

• 1:37:29Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:37:29Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Every time I bet.

• 1:37:31Speaker 02

  We had a New Year's Eve party at my house one year and we all had to make predictions for the year and we wrote them down in a book. And for some reason, I said, "Michael Jackson's gonna die next year and there's gonna be issues over his will." And I bring this up every New Year's for the rest of my life.

• 1:37:46Adam Friedland?

  Is the only thing you got right?

• 1:37:47Speaker 02

  It's the only thing I got right. The only thing I've ever totally got right, ever, totally. Like, I remember in 2016, you know, I had this friend who was just totally freaked out about the idea of Trump, you know? And it was like, we're watching the election results come in. It was like 8:15. Eastern and she's texting with me and I'm like, no, don't worry. Like he's not going to, he's not going to win. It was like, I was like literally like minutes before.

• 1:38:12Adam Friedland?

  Every, every white person in America didn't think that.

• 1:38:14Speaker 02

  Well, I know, but what I'm saying, it was like, it was eight 15 or whatever. Like it was, it was probably two minutes before and I was like, no, I just, I am not good at knowing what's going to happen before it does.

• 1:38:27Adam Friedland?

  And read his book about what's going to happen.

• 1:38:30Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:38:34Adam Friedland?

  That's awesome.

• 1:39:21Speaker 00

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• 1:39:49Speaker 04

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