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Mark interviews WOR midday Host Clay Travis from Clay and Buck. · The Mark Simone Show

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  Speaker 1: Insight from the inside.
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  Speaker 2: This is seven to ten woors markon show.
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  Speaker 1: Well with us right now, Clay Travis superstar. Of course
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  Speaker 1: you listen to Buck and Clay and every day twelve
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  Speaker 1: noon to three, the Clay Travis Buck Sexton Show noon
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  Speaker 1: to three every day right after me. Seem all over
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  Speaker 1: television of course, OutKick all that stuff. And he's a
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  Speaker 1: best selling author. This is another bestseller that has just
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  Speaker 1: come out. His new book is called Balls. It's actually
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  Speaker 1: a fascinating book. And Clay Travis, thanks for actually coming
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  Speaker 1: into the studio.
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  Speaker 2: Well, thank you for having me. Most importantly, thanks for
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  Speaker 2: being a tremendous lead in for the show for all
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  Speaker 2: these years. And you are dominating in New York City
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  Speaker 2: as you long have, and we appreciate you passing the
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  Speaker 2: baton to us at noon, and we get to talk
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  Speaker 2: to a lot of people all over the country and
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  Speaker 2: certainly a lot of people in New York who are grappling,
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  Speaker 2: as we were talking about off air, with what has
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  Speaker 2: been a challenging week, I think to say the.
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  Speaker 1: Least, Yeah, it's been a long week. I don't know.
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  Speaker 1: We'll get through this, and let's talk about the book first.
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  Speaker 1: That's an interesting subject because it's called balls, but it's
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  Speaker 1: about sports, and you know, I never thought about it.
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  Speaker 1: I read this book The Democrats going into all these
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  Speaker 1: dangerous areas with people, but screwing around with sports. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: that's bad.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I think there's a sense among young men that
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  Speaker 2: they have been villainized for many things that they've had
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  Speaker 2: absolutely nothing to do with at all. And I think,
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  Speaker 2: when when I think about my lifetime, I feel I
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  Speaker 2: grew up in the era that girls and boys should
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  Speaker 2: be treated equally under the law, and Title nine probably
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  Speaker 2: is a is a strong component of the era that
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  Speaker 2: I grew up in. But it wasn't that there was
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  Speaker 2: something wrong with being male or being female. It was
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  Speaker 2: that both sexes should be able to aspire to be
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  Speaker 2: the high level of success possible, which seemed very very
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  Speaker 2: healthy to me. And then in the last I would
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  Speaker 2: say decade, certainly we moved into a world where being
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  Speaker 2: male would there was something wrong with it and and
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  Speaker 2: something toxic with it. And so many young men who
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  Speaker 2: are growing up in this era are looking around and saying.
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  Speaker 2: There's a couple of anecdotes in here, but one of
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  Speaker 2: my favorite is one of my kids friends came home
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  Speaker 2: one day with me, and he said, mister Clay, we
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  Speaker 2: learned today at school that white men cause all the
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  Speaker 2: problems in the world and we're the reason that everything
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  Speaker 2: is awful. And they told us, you know that we
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  Speaker 2: have all this power, and he said, my mom doesn't
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  Speaker 2: even let me pick what I eat for dinner. Mister Clay,
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  Speaker 2: what power do I have? And it's a silly, funny anecdote,
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  Speaker 2: but I think it kind of gets at the representative
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  Speaker 2: issue here, which is we have created a world where
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  Speaker 2: young men feel like they're blame for everything, given credit
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  Speaker 2: for nothing, and in this twenty twenty four election, they
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  Speaker 2: pushed back against that in a pretty aggressive way.
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  Speaker 1: So do you think Democrats targeted sports thinking it's too
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  Speaker 1: macho or was it just a yeah.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know how targeted it was or how much
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  Speaker 2: it was just a natural outgrowth of their attempt to
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  Speaker 2: take overall culture. But this book goes into to me
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  Speaker 2: when it really began in earnest and you may remember
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  Speaker 2: this story, some of your listeners will, but it kind
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  Speaker 2: of feels like a long time ago now because so
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  Speaker 2: many stories have happened since. But Michael Sam was a
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  Speaker 2: star defensive end for the Missouri football team in the
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  Speaker 2: SEC SEC Player of the Year defensively, I think, but
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  Speaker 2: like a lot of guys going to the pros, they
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  Speaker 2: saw him as not an ideal fit. He wasn't big
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  Speaker 2: enough to play defensive end, he wasn't fast enough to
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  Speaker 2: play linebacker. There were all these issues, and so he
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  Speaker 2: ended up getting drafted late. And when he got drafted,
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  Speaker 2: he made out with his boyfriend on ESPN. You know,
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  Speaker 2: they were sitting there with a camera right in his face.
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  Speaker 2: And then the entire Michael Sam's story was obsessively covered
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  Speaker 2: by ESPN. And that was the first time I remember
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  Speaker 2: someone becoming a star of coverage without being a star
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  Speaker 2: on the field. The only reason people were following that
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  Speaker 2: story was because he was gay. And when I go
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  Speaker 2: back and look at it now, then you had Caitlin
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  Speaker 2: Jenner situation, certainly Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. They tried
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  Speaker 2: to turn sports into politics by any other name. And
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  Speaker 2: you know, I came one of my prior books as
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  Speaker 2: Republicans by Sneakers Too, which is from the Jordan era,
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  Speaker 2: when hey, I want my excellence in athletics to speak
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  Speaker 2: to anybody, why would I want a way into politics?
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  Speaker 1: In alien?
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  Speaker 2: Eight half the country, which I actually think is the
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  Speaker 2: way that a super smart sports league or a super
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  Speaker 2: athlete would be. And by the way, this all culminated
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  Speaker 2: to me with Leah Thomas winning a women's swimming title
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  Speaker 2: as a man, and also in the for those people
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  Speaker 2: who remember it, in the twenty twenty bubble, when the
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  Speaker 2: NBA players actually took their own names off the back
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  Speaker 2: of their jerseys and replace them with political slogo, which
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  Speaker 2: is it's all crazy, but that is chronicled here as
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  Speaker 2: as what we saw in twenty twenty four was I
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  Speaker 2: think a backlash to that era.
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  Speaker 1: Well, get the book. It's fascinating. It's Klay Travis's new
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  Speaker 1: book called Balls, and it really explores all this. But
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  Speaker 1: why did guys like Roger Goodell? Why did they cave
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  Speaker 1: to this? Why didn't they stand up for their sports?
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  Speaker 2: Because they did what was best for them personally that
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  Speaker 2: was worse for the league's I think it's such a
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  Speaker 2: good question. If you're an old white guy and you're
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  Speaker 2: making forty million dollars a year, as Roger Goodell is,
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  Speaker 2: and your league is made up of majority black athletes,
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  Speaker 2: do you want to be the guy that steps in
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  Speaker 2: front of the media train to be seen immediately by
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  Speaker 2: all of the sports media as the old, racist, white
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  Speaker 2: guy who is trying to run the league. I think
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  Speaker 2: he recognized, and certainly the owners did that this was
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  Speaker 2: bad for the overall brand of the league and bad
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  Speaker 2: for the outreach of audience. But they did what was
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  Speaker 2: in their best interest to preserve their jobs as opposed
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  Speaker 2: to what was in the league's best interest.
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  Speaker 1: Now, there are some psychologists to say that's the reason
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  Speaker 1: the Democrats go so crazy about Donald Trump, that's the
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  Speaker 1: reason for this Trump arrangement syn him, that he's such
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  Speaker 1: an old fashioned, macho, kind of fifties kind of guy,
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  Speaker 1: And you think that's part of.
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  Speaker 2: The well, look, I think the reason why the left
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  Speaker 2: hates football in general is because it represents alpha masculinity.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, there is no woman who's ever going to
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  Speaker 2: make a football team, And in order to play football
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  Speaker 2: at a high level, you have to be a physical
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  Speaker 2: beast who puts your body on the line every single play.
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  Speaker 2: And you know, there's a reason that football, and obviously
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  Speaker 2: it's much less serious, has been analogized so often to warfare,
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  Speaker 2: because it's just physical carnage on the field. Our most
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  Speaker 2: aggressive There's a great quote at West Point, one of
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  Speaker 2: their football coaches, and I'm not going to remember it perfectly,
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  Speaker 2: but on you know, basically, the idea was, at West Point,
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  Speaker 2: we train men through football to be able to eventually
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  Speaker 2: win on battlefields because it's about following orders, it's about
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  Speaker 2: being in the right position, and so there's always been
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  Speaker 2: a militaristic component of football that I think also makes
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  Speaker 2: left wingers a little bit uncomfortable.
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  Speaker 1: Well, talking about Clay Travis Gain his latest book, it's
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  Speaker 1: already a bestseller, but go get the book. It's called Balls.
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  Speaker 1: You'll love this book. Hey Clay Travis, you found it
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  Speaker 1: out kick now? Yeah, I ask you way back in
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  Speaker 1: the beginning, all the big sports sports Illustrated, ABC, ESPN.
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  Speaker 1: How come they didn't see you coming? How did you
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  Speaker 1: get ahead of them?
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  Speaker 2: It is I think we have the most culturally influential
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  Speaker 2: sports site now at OutKick, and Fox now owns it,
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  Speaker 2: and we have a lot of impact. I think that's
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  Speaker 2: part of what I write about in the book is
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  Speaker 2: I think there's an advantage to being sort of a
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  Speaker 2: speed ship, a speedboat when everybody else is an aircraft carrier,
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  Speaker 2: because it allows you to adjust on the fly quickly
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  Speaker 2: and see oncoming issues without having to run everything through
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  Speaker 2: a bureaucracy in order to make it happen. And so
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  Speaker 2: I think also the thing that is remarkable to me
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  Speaker 2: is not that OutKick worked and continues to work so
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  Speaker 2: well for Fox. It's that no one's ever competed with us.
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  Speaker 1: You know.
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  Speaker 2: I sometimes look around and I say, boy, it's like
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  Speaker 2: IV beer, and nobody else will come out with their
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  Speaker 2: own version of a beer. So that's maybe the most
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  Speaker 2: remarkable thing about it. And if people aren't familiar with
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  Speaker 2: the story of OutKick in sports, I think there's a
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  Speaker 2: business and entrepreneurial story that is built into into this
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  Speaker 2: book as well.
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  Speaker 1: Absolutely, we'll get the book. It's a brand new book
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  Speaker 1: from Clay Travis. It's called Balls. You will love the book.
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  Speaker 1: Listen to Clay Travis and Buck Session today noon to three,
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  Speaker 1: and of course you'll see them all over television. But
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  Speaker 1: the book is called Balls. Go get it. Clay Travis,
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  Speaker 1: thanks for starting.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you for killing it for us for so many
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  Speaker 2: years as the lead in. We really love this station
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  Speaker 2: and everything you guys do, and we look forward to
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  Speaker 2: talking with you guys for years and years to come.
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  Speaker 1: All Right, we'll do it. Again soon thank you wo