HOW SPORTS MEDIA HAS TURNED ON ITS HEAD WITH DAN LE BATARD AND MIKE WILBON - AOL INC

Why do you need to stand around the batting cage and maybe hear what Buck Leonard said before he died? One of the great Negro League players of all time. Why do You need that? You don't, because you got a hot tape. What's up, Danny? No time for pleasantries. We got to cut right through to the content. Got to get right to the crankiness. Wait, wait, wait. My wife is getting me a glass of orange juice so I can survive. And then give me 30 seconds, and then you can cut to the crankiness. I don't know that he has that. I'm not going to gnat off my screen. I don' know that. Well, it's not on my screen, that's an arrow. See how old and stupid I am? You thought it was a gnat and it's the cursor? I thought it wasn't a gnaht. It's an error. It's a damn cursor. so answer this question when we say it's over what happened to us wow it's head spinning dan and i don't know that it has as much to do with our industry as it does with the culture so i i've become fond of saying not fond i've started saying frequently we're just we're not illiterate people we're not and i travel a lot um and when i'm anywhere else in the world almost i find more literate people i know i find it in other parts of western europe when i am on vacation going to see a soccer game or whatever the case may be i see people reading and i see them consuming things and they they got their they got they got this they cross streets like this and should get hit by cars too but not like not like us we're not literate and we we're not ashamed of not being literate we're Not so that trickles down through everything we don't read I think sports radio I tend to blame the corrosive acidic effect of sports radio for for a lot of this but where do you place the blame on that change beyond saying that people are dumber or less literate than they used to be and don't make the distinctions between uh you know somebody who has credibility earned through expertise and years and years of reporting and somebody who just has an opinion you know what i had not thought of it about sports talk radio yes it is largely to blame not entirely largely because you just come on vinny from pasad what do you want to say is lazy there was nothing lazier than sports talk radio there is nothing lazier the sports talk video that isn't well done that is just jump on with callers now there's less of that and there's some really smart people on sports talk Radio and now podcasts it's all essentially the same well I'll tell you that I I saw a very low bar to jump over I was sort of looking at i had arrived at times square and the sports reporters which was the top of our industry i felt a little bit lonely and sort of looked around and said is this really the top this is the the most or the best and i'm like where else can i make some changes in my career and it just seemed really easy you were conscious of it already i was well no but conscious of it because you guys taught me some things right because i was looking at the the work that you guys were doing at pti sort of behind the scenes some of the things that i learned on sports reporters and i was like wait a minute can i jump over the very low bar of the guy who's outsourcing the work to uh vinny on a mobile calling in with just an opinion i'm like i could probably do something a little bit less lonely and different than that it's really where it is that i chose to do what it is that we formed here that became my my only job but you're saying it wasn't sports radio you went how many how many years did you go before you were sort of uh confident about the giving of an opinion on television a couple i was doing those like you was doing it at times square on sunday morning before then flying off to some nfl game and i was reticent those first few years. It took a couple of years for me. And I was doing other TV. I was doing TV in Washington where I was supposed to give an opinion. It was sort of narrowly constructed to football. It was a football show here about the Washington Redskins. And I was dealing with Hall of Famers, Sonny Jergensen and John Riggins and George Michael. And they wanted firmer, stronger opinions. And I wasn't always ready to do that. My opinions needed to be informed. I I wanted to go on the road and find out what Steve Young and Jerry Rice thought before I gave an opinion on the 49ers and Bill Walsh and the West Coast offense. I wantedto talk to them. I wantedt hear what they had to say. And instead, I got, what do you need to do that for? Now, luckily, I worked with somebody at the Washington Post who still valued that underpinning. So I don't, you know, there wasn't some great realization for me. there wasn't some moment of aha the business is going to hell i didn't have that i'm and i'm not that forward looking you are i'm Not well you're speaking you're Speaking as a writer do you still identify as a Writer do you because i i always do even though i don't write much uh these days it's always been mostly i think mostly dan i not entirely yeah a consumer of of information of intel i a consumer right um and i just noticed that we're and we're not ashamed of it we're okay being stupid we are well let's let's keep it though to sports media here and the changes you've seen okay but i mean that that trickles into that that it's more than trickles it pours into it because what do people care more about than anything else sports so if they're stupid in most of their lives and don't care about real information or where to get it or want to label everything this is fake news or that's liberal news or this then it doesn't change sports is just part of that that's sports is just part a big chunk but you cannot separate it I can't I don't and so that's where we are we're at a place where people don't read they don't consume they accept the dumbest things possible for the explanations of why they believe what they believe or why they approach something in the way they approach it. We're not literate and we're not ashamed of not being literate. We are not. So that trickles down through everything. We don't read, we don't consume in the same way, whether it's hot takes, because they don't care about the information. They don't care about information, about reporting. They don't know the difference between a reporter and a columnist. They don't know. And they don't care. This is not, this is not incidental to the conversation we're having. Explain the difference both between a reporter and columnist for those who don't care and explain how long you had to be on beats before you were allowed to give your opinion. I didn't think anybody should have a column before 35 years old. That's kind of where I was as a, you know, as a person in this business. I didn'T think anybody SHOULD have a COLUMN before 35 YEARS OLD. Because you didn'T KNOW enough. You didn'T know enough. You hadn'T been around enough batting cages. You hadn't been in enough shoot-arounds. You hadnT talked to enough people, coaches and people in the industry. You hadn'T done it. So that was my belief when I was 25. And I, you know, I became a columnist too early. I remember when my sports editor, who you know well, George Solomon, called me one day. I was in Denver, and he said, you got to forget about the game story. You got to write a column tomorrow. I was like, what? I don't have an opinion yet. I'm not entitled enough. I'm smart enough to have opinions that matter on this. Reporters report. Despite what they may or may not believe, They go and they ask all these people what to believe, what they think. Expert people, coach, GM, owner, scout, referee, players, senior players, retired players. When you ask all of these people, what do they believe? And you come back, you distill it. This is reporting. And you back with something, research, historical research, all of it. you come back with something not on every day not on every story but you come back with that and you try to make sense of it and you try to stay out of it columnists don't stay out of it we're in the middle of it and what happened what happened in the meantime is that columnists took liberties so when I when I started writing a column I had I had I won't name the coach I had a couple coaches come and say to me hey i'm reading this for your opinion now not just extensive reporting like they were annoyed with me well i i got a column at 26 and it was way too early i should not have had a column i made a 29 too early I made a ton of mistakes because I was just learning from you guys how to do it I was sort of trying to figure out and I wasn't sort of formed in any other ways in adulthood I could write about sports but I wasn't actually an adult yet Dan me either I I I knew that I knew that going in because I could look at the people who were wise in the ways of writing a column and they were adults they were fathers they were uncles they were mentors they were failed uh people in other businesses well whatever they were they had full lives fully developed or more fully developed than I had. I didn't have a fully developed life. So... bringing those... forming those opinions should come about because you know shit. I'll tell you a quick story. So when I was... when I first got a column, George... George Solomon at the Washington Post would only let me write a column on Saturday. What's the paper that mattered less than any other day of the week of a daily newspaper? Saturday. So you can make your mistakes. You could, you know, make your mistakes on Saturday. So anyway, I would get up and go out and do stuff. I would often travel on Saturday to NFL cities or back home from where the college games, whatever. And it was back in the day of voicemail messages, tape, and you had a tape and somebody could take up like a minute of your tape time to leave a voicemile message. Well, the person who did that, who just took it upon himself to do that was Ralph Wiley. And And Ralph Wiley, who was, I mean, before me, as a black person in sports media, there were Bill Roden and Ralph Wile and Roy Johnson, specifically them. And that's about it. There weren't many. There were not that many. Wendell Smith was like decades before. Nobody knows him, which is one of the great shames in American life and sports communication. But anyway, so Ralph would take it upon himself. he would read my column i'm not sure how he got the column in 1990 1989 1990 1991 there's no digital i'm sure how we saw it but i would come home i turn on i hit my voicemail and on that voicemill would be ralph wiley with like a red ink pen bleeding all over my column telling me what was shit what he hated what he didn't like what should have been better what paragraph should have been higher than the other one this went on so I know Ralph Ralph is a friend but Ralph was ahead of me Ralph knew what was at stake Ralph knew that if I failed at this very likely somebody else wasn't going to get the chance to do it and that meant Brian Burwell and that meant David Aldridge and that mean another generation coming behind Ralph and so Ralph bled all over my columns on Saturday mornings. And I'm like, who the f*** is this dude? My son says, Dad, why do you wake up angry every morning? You have a great life. Look at our house. Look at your life. Look at you. Look at all your golf course memberships. How come you wakeup angry every mornin'? And I say to him, you know what? I'm not sure it's a good thing that you don't get it. Maybe it is. I've worked hard so that you won't feel the sting of the reasons I wake up angry every morning because you didn't know your grandfather and I knew my father and I knew what it was he went through which was a level of life just above slavery in post-reconstruction Georgia in the 1920s and so should I be proud that he doesn't know or should I me angry that he doesnt know Well, you won. This is a conundrum for us. But you won, though. You personally won. You know what? I can't fight that. I can. But did we, did I, okay, I won the battle. The war is still being waged, you know? And the fact that he doesn't get why I wake up angry every morning Maybe I did a poor job of that duality, of explaining, of presenting that dualty, the W.E.B. Du Bois called double consciousness. Maybe I Did a Poor Job of Presenting That to Him. I don't know. I mean, I think most of these things don't have an answer. Like, you know, who's responsible for hot takes? I don' t know. Most of this shit, there' s no answer to. if i press you on it how respond you're a pioneer okay you made you are a pioneer whether you like it or not you know this so how responsible are you or do you feel for instigating or birthing an ocean of takes because everyone thinks that they can do what you guys do even though they don't have the chemistry and even though THEY DON'T HAVE THE CREDENTIALS well part of it is not just the credentials they don't HAVE THE INFORMATION i still pick up a phone and call people and trying to find out sometimes what the hell's going on i still go to shoot around i still go to locker rooms not nearly as often let me not misrepresent but i still do that stuff i still want i before the show you know when when lebron's decision was coming i was calling people who were calling me right back i didn't i had to go upstairs out of our studio you know our studio or you can't get calls down there. I had to go upstairs into the sunshine and get some information, some intel on what I was going to say about LeBron and where he was going and what he was thinking. I still do that. Not nearly as much. I don't. All right. So how much does credibility matter, though, when you talk about that? It matters to me. Consider the source. It matters too me. I don'T know what matters to other people. i i i feel very fortunate that i'll get calls or texts you know how this is after uh a show from people who say hey sometimes it could be a league official sometimes it can be an owner sometimes it Could be you know a former player that i've known really really well who thinks hey i know you know what you just said because i know that and thank you for doing that that means a lot. Still, that means a lot. Now, to go back to your question, because I'm thinking about it, how responsible are Tony and me? I don't know. We don't give hot takes. I told Matthew, my son, who is now 18 and a half years old, I said, do you ever come in here? He'll watch. I'm sure he'll watch Stephen. He has no idea what I do. I said to him, I'm not going to give a hot take. I told him, you come in there and say that I give it a hot take. I'm going to knock the shit out of you. Old-fashioned father style 1960s. Don't ever say I gave a hot take there's no hot takes we don't give hot takes i have an opinion and i will give that opinion and it will be as informed as i can make it you say hot takes on knock your ass out what is the distinction you're making between an opinion empty they're bullshit it's a it's a marketing name that somebody came up with very wisely wisely to promote shows like first take and whatever skip was on on fox i can't remember the name of it so that's what they that's when somebody came some producer producers probably people i know very smart people they came up with that to promote it put it in bites and have a hot take it wins though right it wins audience and it's also the cheapest thing the media can make you know what now i'm gonna be now i'M GONNA to be snippy i'm gonna be snipply now then if that's the case how come their shows don't get the ratings we get i mean you have a magical chemistry you have something come on now if all that bullshit if all of it automatically brought you more ratings then how come the younger fluffier haired people can't get more ratings than the two old ball cats who are 20 years older than them Seriously, if talking about the Cowboys every goddamn day is supposed to deliver you the ratings, why are our ratings higher? I love to say sometimes, Danny, we just did a show with cowboy-free football. Cowboy-free programming. I love doing that. That's just to tweak my friends. Well, and you're a Washington guy. Huh? You're a Washingtons guy. I don't live in Washington. You know better than that. i'm not tied to washington sports you know better than that you're just historically washed wait a minute you did all of your learning i don't care about the cowboys and their redskins if i look behind me back here commanders with washington you'll see chicago you'll see gail sayers and ferguson jenkins and and and walter payton you're not gonna see anything back here with wasington i'm but hold on hold on a second hold on when when i say to steven a okay this is one of the reasons that he says that i can be self-righteous and sanctimonious and he's not totally wrong when i do what you do where i separate myself from what he's doing and he says no wait a minute you're in the you're the same trough how is it that you and michael get to be in a different trough than the one right the same it's perceived differently and when you carry it a certain way when you decide to wear tom ford suits every single day i love tom forde when you decide to do that and have yourself photographed walking into madison square garden you put yourself in a different light i don't hear that shit and that's he knows we've done this on his show and i was steven a wants to be the show he wants to b.a show and he's damn good at no he's not good at it he's great at it well he wants it to be howard cosell god bless because you know I mean the rising tide lifts all boats I'm hugging Stephen A when I see him but don't tell me it's the same I tell him that how he says to me how come you can get away with criticism of the same athlete in the same way and I can't I'm like because there's a difference between criticism and ridicule and I know you know it so don't pin that shit on me you know the difference between criticism and ridicule and if you don't and i know he does i do and so there's a way there's a different way that you carry it or you bring it um and he knows the difference because he did it for 20 years first the other way he knows The Difference but i do believe that he clings to the pride of wanting to still seem like a journalist as i do as in some ways i imagine you do right well tony because tony says i'm a yodeler now i'm no longer a journalist you've go of all of that we're not we're not journalists we violate everything we learned I'm a trustee at the the most what I what many of us considered I certainly do the greatest journalism school in America in the world and Medill school journalism at Northwestern I'm a trustee there I violate everything I learned there I am not a journalist it's okay it's all right. We can let it go. And we're, I just say we're know-it-alls. We're know it-alls every day, Dan. That's what we do. We get paid to know it all. We don't know it. We know it's we can't know at all. Cause we can research and find underpinnings for everything. We believe we try to do some of it like Tony and I, and you know, this, because you've been around the process and you've done part of the process, Tony and eye on Sunday, we must talk 15 times during NFL Sunday about what we believe about what we think is legitimate about what we think isn't we talked like four times last night during National League or American League division series I mean that shit doesn't matter let's talk a little bit about the people who have done more for us professionally than just about anyone the family tree of Eric ride home who wasn't someone who had any television experience or media experience a little bit chicago local he co-founded the motley fool was tired in chicago tv before the motLEY FOOL comes to espn with a few ideas and wants to reinvent his career in his early 30s and uh seizes upon both you and tony and invents the you know uh television changing graphics but really changed your life what was useful and useless about the things that you learned through matt kelleher eric ride home and that team of producers that produced our show and your show the show i did with my father and still produces pardon the interruption one i one of the greatest television sports television shows of all time very kind of you i i don't think any of it was useless. There are things that frustrate me that have nothing to do with Matt and Eric. First of all, amen to everything you just said. None of this exists without Eric Ridehome and then Matt Kelleher as his lieutenant, his capable, brilliant lieutenant. None OF this exists without that. And Mark Shapiro. Mark Shapira said, I'm going to put you and Tony on television one day that's gonna be the first thing i do when i'm named like czar of sports at esp and tony said the second thing that's going to happen you're gonna get your ass fired well he didn't and he became president off of the sports century series which learned that sports writers are cheap content that you can make documentaries just putting sports writers on television to give you their breadth of knowledge yeah all of us away mark you want to talk about people who destroyed newspaper sports sections. Mark Shapiro did more of that than anybody. I say that with a smile because I love Mark and I talk to him now still. And Mark has gone on to a different life. It's amazing he's on the other side now. But largely. But I am grateful for everything Eric and Matt have done. I don't know that we went along for the ride. Tony and I know what we're doing. We're sports writers. We know who we are. We know our lane. I know what my lane is. It ain't television. I don't know anything about TV now, Dan. I don'T know anything about television. I don' t know how ratings are kept. I don''t know anything about production value. I know content. I know it makes a good story still. I feel arrogantly that I know that better than you and you and you and that's what PTI does better Tony and I still know that and that is our lane and Eric and Matt and the whole staff of people at PTI we are not mentioning the other names of course you know them intimately they expanded that lane into places that people who watch television weren't even aware and all of a sudden they have it presented to them every day at 5 30 eastern or five o'clock eastern um and earlier in the day with you and your dad i mean those three shows changed the way people consume sports particularly and pop culture to some extent on television but you are saying something there are a number of different things that are interesting one of them is that on not unlike the music producer who can just tell hit music you are somebody the gift that you have the gift that tony has is not necessarily just that you know what's interesting to you it's that you have the flawless antenna antenna of knowing what's going to be interesting to others well thank you i think that's because of because of the reporting because of the reporting for 30 years because of uh of listening and people don't know audiences they have no idea what the audience is This is what angers me. This is why I can't read and consume the way I used to. They have no interest in the audience. You mentioned Mark Shapiro and ESPN did a very smart thing by having newspapers and the credibility of newsrooms on television. You'd see the newsrooms around the horn. You'd traffic in the credibility of sports sections and opinions earned. The New York Times was the only newspaper, the only one that would not allow its sports writers to double dip they were they made sure that their sports writers ended up being exclusive and wouldn't go over to espn because they feared the idea with some with some exceptions rodent did it rodented sports reporters but he wasn't doing the full-time stuff they were more precious about it than anybody else nobody else saw the saw the danger yeah uh was the new york times right and everybody else was wrong or they bailed they were the first to bail the new York times I work for a better section anyway you think I wouldn't take a section with Tom Boswell and Dave Kindred and Tony Kornheiser and Sally Jenkins and David Remnick and and David Aldridge and Jay Adande and I'm I'm skipping a whole generation of people Barry Lord the greatest tennis writer of all time all those people half those people went to television the new york times which bailed on our profession it bailed it took the sports section away gutless mother did i stammer nope nope understood you clearly communicated it very clearly i have a question for you that i don't actually know the answer to i have some guesses but i want it in your words One of the great flatteries of my life is that both you and Tony deemed me worthy of sitting next to you guys on that television show. Well, you say, of course you did, but you didn't. The two of you didn'T agree on many people who you deemed worthy enough to sit next to and replace the other guy with whom you have the sports marriage for all time. Why? because we believe like now it's really hard i just think first of all there are very few people who did what we do when we arrogantly value that we knew you'd been in locker rooms we knew you'd be screamed at by coaches and screamed back how about the stupid suspension of the nfl of my man seaman jeff seaman because he cursed at a player what that's the dumbest shit i've ever heard players and referees have screamed and cursed each other for a hundred years and the nfl fraudulent bastards that they can be when it comes to trying to be a show themselves they act like that's a thing stop now i knew you had been cursed at i've seen you and pat riley go at it i'd seen you you you experienced all the things that tony and i did and we value that yes is it self-indulgent yes we value what we did the show is ours we want people who did shit we did you did frank frank frank does it now you know uh he or he did it in in new york and so there are very few people who's left who's last so it's the reporting it's it's the reporting more than the writing it's the reporting more than reporting it's the reporting I mean they were you know yeah I mean it's it's the experience of knowing what that's like of going to the ballpark every day standing around the batting cage and talking to old ball players about what they value and here Dan what's cooler think about it we've done a lot of great things in our lives we've been done in 1984 in la at the olympics i stumbled upon a story which carried me to santa monica to muhammad ali's gym and in that gym when i drove my rental car there was muhammed ali hitting the heavy bag in 1984 and to go sit then because he told me to sit and shut up and listen to Muhammad Ali. Are you kidding me? Did, did, okay, so that's Ali, that's extreme. But you, you, I know you did this in baseball. We had a chance to do this with, I did this with Krusty Pete Rose and people that I, you know, wanted to hear. There's nobody left like that. They don't know what that feels like. And most importantly and scary, they don't give a shit they don'T think it's important because they can have a hot take and if you can have A HOT TAKE and if YOU CAN BE ON ESPN ON THE E WHEN PTI'S NOT THERE YOU CAN be on it and you can be on Stephen A says huh you can see on that I love this more than anything it's over Dan so all right so so answer this question when we say it's over what happened to us ah life happened uh converse went away so did magnavox so did you know zenith you know i mean so did uh you know ford reinvented itself with these trucks these you know you know this every commercial has to appeal to maga sears woolworths they all think that things have to die is what you're saying i used to go to sears every saturday when i was a kid growing up on the south side sears on 79th street it's all it life happened it just it went away and so we don't do you're gonna we just named we didn't even get started on the things that shaped our childhoods that are gone. They're gone forever. So did I think that this was going to go away on my watch? No. Did I think the Washington Post was going through Yanka's sports section that I worked for for 30 years and six months while I'm in my 60s? No, and I hate them too. Let me not just, let me not seem like I'm piling on the New York Times as the competition. I got plenty of hate for both of them. But so what do you, are you, you're, this is the difference between you and me. A fundamental difference of our lives. You take things to heart and you want to find a solution. And I've gotten to the point where I say, there ain't no solution. You don't want to get to that point. I know you don't. I know it violates every fiber of your being. It might be late 60s instead of late 50s that it happens to me. But you weren't like this at 57 years old. I wasn't. I wasn'T. And I wasn'T. And I don't know what to do. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you. I don't know what to do about it. What am I going to do about it? The Times is gone. The Post is gone, so what do we do? What do we do? I didn't cancel the goddamn newspaper yet. I should have canceled both subscriptions. You got three of them coming to the house and you don't read them, but you're still supporting the industry. I salute you, sir, and as I tell you every time, I love you as well. Thank you for everything. Thanks for taking the time to have this conversation. But people need to know, I need to close this by saying, people need to know that we can yell and scream and do all this stuff and we do this with each other and steven a and tony we do all This stuff but yet you can do that because there's a unbelievable respect and yes love for the people that we're doing that with. So with you, you know, I get annoyed that we don't get to ever see you here, but I understand it. Understand it completely. Invite me back autonomous guy uh i'd love to come back and harass both you and tony one time only pti put it on the agenda before you get out of there 25 years ought to earn you something in terms of autonomy all right uh i love you buddy as always uh excellent as always michael i appreciate uh you just you i'm sure i went too far in new york times uh that's 30 years that's rivalry that's from the embers of when you were hottest on all the things that mattered coming after the new york times because you knew you had the better sports section and you knewyou were writing the better shit and how dare they quit on the game you know yes that's right that's correct quit man oh you got work to do man um i love you I'm going to go get ready to argue with an even older man.