Latest / Go Long Podcast / Peter King, ‘The Game’ and a life at the eye of the pro football storm

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Peter King, ‘The Game’ and a life at the eye of the pro football storm · Go Long Podcast

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Man, this is awesome.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I always smile when I get the chance to see Peter King,
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: whether we're here on Riverside recording a podcast or having a beer or two
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: at Big Ditch Brewing, Brewing downtown Buffalo.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think that was shortly after Sonny was born.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: We all got together.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: That was awesome.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Man, it is such a pleasure to welcome the legend, the great Peter King onto the Golong podcast.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the book, The Game.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Peter King, I'm in it.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's unbelievable.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: My expectations were through the roof, and you are surpassing those expectations so far.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: How are you, man?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: How's the book tour going?
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: How's life?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Everything is going well.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's been fine.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Tyler, I like talking.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: I like myself.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: I like my book, so that's a good combination.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I also,
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: I do want to say,
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: if you don't want to get the print product,
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you like listening while driving or writing or walking.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: I recorded the audio book and it took me nine days because the book's 192,000 words long.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so even I got sick of hearing me.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I really thought that
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: because so many people know my voice that I should do the audio book.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: I really didn't mind doing it because, you know, it was funny.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: I caught a few errors that we ended up fixing in the final product.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: I recorded it in June.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And there was still a few days of time before it went to press.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I managed to fix a couple errors.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a valuable part of it.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: But it was also cool to kind of refresh my memory about a few of the things
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: because Jesus took me 18 months to do.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so you kind of forget, oh, yeah, I did.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Jimmy Johnson did tell me this down in Isla Morata, Florida and all that.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that part of it was good, too.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: But, hey, look, it was a labor of love.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: I really enjoyed doing it.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think everybody out there should realize,
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: too, Peter isn't just going to the old filing cabinets and pulling out.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Spiral notebooks and folders and just rehashing,
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: which I would definitely buy that book as well because you're one of,
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: if not the best to ever do it.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: But you hurled yourself back into the reporting.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're traveling the country.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're talking to coaches,
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: to players, and there's a lot of fresh reporting into the game, isn't there, Peter?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't think people really have any idea how How troubled Bill Walsh was
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: in his last year of coaching.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: I had always heard about that.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: That was a question I always had.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: I always heard that it wasn't so absolutely clean Reggie White going to the Green Bay Packers.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what about the other suitors?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if you read this, you say, man, maybe he really didn't want to go to Green Bay.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: He loved Green Bay, by the way.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely loved Green Bay.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I think in a different world without a salary cap, he might have gone somewhere else.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I also think that people don't realize,
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: that Paul Tagliabue was legitimately worried about a second strike on America and
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: a lot more than whether football games should be played in week three of
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: the 2001 season.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: you go to more modern times, too,
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: because,
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: even more recent things like I had done a lot when the Eagles beat the Patriots in
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: the Super Bowl,
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: but I hadn't really delved into the psyche and the approach of Nick Foles.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: And how in the world can he beat the great and all-powerful Belichick
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: and beat Tom Brady when Brady throws for 505 yards?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Not only how did you beat him,
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: but how in the world were you so preternaturally calm And we're
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: so perfect mentally going into that game.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And there will be some stories about here that even the most ardent Eagles fans won't know.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so those are the kind of things I've wondered about over the years.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I really wanted to, when I entered this project, I wanted to get answers for it.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love the Bill Walsh chapter.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: That blew my mind.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it kind of resonated with,
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: With a story we had recently at Go Long on a two-parter on Matt LaFleur
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: where there's somebody pretty high up in that organization that brought up
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: the Bill Walsh shelf life theory.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like 10 years is a long time to be a head coach.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: For many reasons, right?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: A message can grow stale.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Stagnation can set in.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: But as you reported here, the fatigue and how the job can drain you.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And this is somebody...
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Who won a couple Super Bowls.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the way that you bring that back to life.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: You feel like you're right there.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: In those meetings with Bill Walsh.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And Policy DeBartolo.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Ed Policy is dead by the way.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's right in the middle of it all too.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: The great thing about that.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Is that.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: And also.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: About the Reggie White chapter.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know you have a lot of Green Bay people here too.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Tyler.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: The great thing about that is that.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Carmen Policy was involved in both and he's got a pretty darn good memory.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so not only could he tell me the stories of Bill Walsh crying at the table,
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: at a table in Eddie DiBartolo's condo in Menlo Park,
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: California at the time,
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: but he can also tell you about desperate sounding phone calls from Reggie White
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: To he and Eddie DiBartolo about, geez, can't you make a better offer?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Green Bay's offer is just so good, so much better and all that.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: But those,
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: what I found is that with almost every story,
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: there are a lot of people, I mean,
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: obviously Reggie White's not alive,
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Bill Walsh is not alive,
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: but a lot of people who were You know, intricately involved in those stories.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: They're alive.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And they haven't talked about these things in many, many years.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: And for whatever reason, they're a little blabby.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think,
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: real football fans will be the beneficiaries of this because,
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: and again, I'm not saying I'm any, you know, poobah.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: But if I'm surprised by a story that Readers are going to be perhaps very surprised
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: by some of these stories.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Can you just zoom out to Peter and take us into your world, your process, how you do the job?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because I loved your writing style.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody loved your writing style those Monday mornings.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was very conversational.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was honestly ahead of its time in a way.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: I know when I made the move to Substack and independent journalism,
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: it You know,
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: there's a newspaper way of doing things,
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: and it's good when that's ingrained into your system.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: But people appreciate that back and forth,
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: that conversational, like bringing the reader places that they can't go.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're all watching the game on a Sunday, but they're not in the locker room.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're not in the coach's office.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're not at dinner with a player.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I always appreciated the way that you wrote because it was natural.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was like you're talking here on a podcast or talking to a buddy.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Over a beer.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: But the root of that all is relationships, isn't it?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it's humans talking to humans.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that gets lost in the coverage of football today
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: where everything is pushed to podiums and press conferences and kind of regurgitated
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: for social media consumption.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you always found a way to distill pro football and the coverage
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: of pro football down to exactly how it was always intended to be.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's nice of you to say.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I,
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know, Tyler,
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm extremely fortunate because when I got to Sports Illustrated in 1989,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: you're able to travel the country and see everybody.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody, you know, SI was a big deal.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's in 3.2 million mailboxes every week.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: When Tom Brady was in middle school,
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'd come home on a Thursday or Friday and ask his dad,
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: hey, anything on the Niners and SI?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what a lot of people did in those years.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so not only do I have the reach and the prestige of working for SI,
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: I also have the expense account.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because there are many people,
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: certainly today,
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: where even at the biggest companies, somebody says, oh, wait a second.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: You mean you want to go to San Francisco and interview Brock Purdy.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's a, let's see, that'd be a $2,500 trip.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Is that really worth it?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm exaggerating here, but SI never asked me anything about where you go and what do you do?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I just went, filed an expense account, and nobody ever said a damn thing to me.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because, honestly, because I was delivering.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was, you know, sitting with Brett Favre in the 90s and all that.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that Has been part of the process.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: But I think,
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: the bigger part,
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: and I tried to, I was just in Athens, Ohio at my alma mater, Ohio University.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was talking to some students and one of the things I said is, listen,
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was extremely fortunate because,
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: you know, I covered Andy Reid and Honestly, I covered him for almost 30 years.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: I met him in 1995 when he was tight ends coach of the Packers and formed
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: a relationship with him and talked to him year after year after year,
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: multiple times.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: So when it came down to the end of my career,
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: the last live game I ever covered was the Super Bowl in Vegas.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: afterwards I'm sitting in a Closed door office alone with Andy Reid,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: my videographer, Andy Koblitz, alone for 13 minutes.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, 75 minutes earlier, he was calling plays on the sideline in the Super Bowl.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: But the reason is because I had known him for a long time
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: and we had developed this relationship.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I always tell people,
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: listen, don't get lazy with relationships, you know, nurture them, cultivate them.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Send text.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's easier now because it's easy for somebody to not answer the phone.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: But if you got their number, you can text them and say, hey, good game.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't do it anymore much.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: occasionally,
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: like if something happens in a Niners game,
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: I would text Kyle Shanahan,
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know, and just say, holy crap, you guys did a great job today.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Or I might text and say, why did this happen?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Or why did that happen?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and I'm just doing it out of curiosity now.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Not because I'm really reporting.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I just think you have to nurture and cultivate your relationships over the years.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Don't take them for granted.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And always wake up curious.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to ask you about that.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: That curiosity.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it always would come through with every Monday column.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Every feature that you've done.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all your TV stuff too.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're a genuinely...
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Curious person.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Where does that come from, Peter?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then can you also share a tease from,
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's the first chapter,
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: like your curiosity just kind of leads you right into a car with Boomer Esiason.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: I love that story.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it just comes from the fact that when I was in high school,
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was always,
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: my mother would always Always try to walk away from me at some point during the day
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: because she couldn't take me anymore.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because she told me later, she said, you just never stopped asking questions.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And at some point, I just want to live my life.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, she just couldn't.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: I always just wanted to know how things work, why they work.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: But and then in high school, I just was totally, totally fascinated.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was the first night of my senior year.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was a captain on the soccer team.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: We had practice and I walked in after practice.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: One night,
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: my mother and father are there in the living room watching TV
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: and they're watching Richard Nixon resign the presidency.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I I said, wow, this is a big deal.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And because I was into journalism at the time and thought I might want to do it for
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: a living,
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: I immediately started wondering,
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: wow, these two guys from the Washington Post really took down the president?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And they sort of did.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just thought, now that is a noble profession.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I just decided at that point, that's really what I wanted to do.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: And look,
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: I just think either I don't want to say you're born curious or you're not curious
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: or you just don't wonder about things.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: But I think most people are fairly curious people.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: You talk about the Bengals thing and look, I was 27.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know any better.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: I found out the flight information of the first and second round picks,
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Pete Koch and Boomer Esiason from the University of Maryland on draft evening, 1984.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to the airport in my two-door Volkswagen hatchback rabbit.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to the gate.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: In those days, you could walk right up to the gate.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: They walked off the stairs of the plane onto the tarmac and walked into the airport.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And here comes Boomer Esiason and Pete Koch.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: I introduced myself and said I was there to take them downtown to the Bengals.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And Boomer Esiason looked at me and he goes, a media guy?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: The Bengals sent a media guy to pick us up, and I just played dumb.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: But there was a driver for them waiting in baggage claim,
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: and I just took him out a little bit of a different exit,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: took him to my car,
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: and Boomer just couldn't believe that he was going to have to crawl into the back,
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: 6'5", 229.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: He's going to crawl into the back seat.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, hey, listen, I did him a favor.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: At least I took my daughter's car seat.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Out of the back and put it in the trunk.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: But, but, and we,
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: I turned the key to the car and we start going and,
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: and he goes, well, welcome to the bleeping NFL.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I, I don't know, Tyler, I just felt like that wasn't a crime.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't particularly.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: Nice, per se,
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: if you're, I mean,
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: I never even asked anybody at the Bengals,
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: but I'm sure if and when they found out,
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: they were probably pretty ticked off about it, but I don't know.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: I used to think of things like that,
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: and I think one of the things in my life is that it's kind of hard to say no
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: to me sometimes because I'm annoying, and I Don't say, I don't take no very easily.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're a nice guy.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I am a very nice guy.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if the answer is no, I'll take it.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't argue with you, but I might try to go in different ways.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the other thing, Tyler.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: This is, this, for all like young reporters, here's the thing.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the dumbest things you can ever say to an athlete,
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you really want to do a story,
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: the dumbest thing to say is, hey, here's why I really want to do this story.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: What do they care?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: If you walk up to Dak Prescott and say, here's why I really want to do a profile on you.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Here's this, here's that.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like, what do they care?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: They don't care.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: They care how much of a pain in the ass is this going to be for me?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Why should I do it and all that?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, When I,
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: in 2015,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: one of the last big things I did,
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: I did a week in the life of a quarterback with Carson Palmer.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to put myself in Bruce Arians' shoes and in Carson Palmer's shoes.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Why would I do this?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Neither of them wanted to do it, honestly.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And Bruce Arians, it took me a while.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was lucky that he was having a couple of seven and sevens the night I had
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: the meeting with him to convince him to do it.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: the way I told Carson Palmer was, I said,
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: listen, one day you're going to want your kids to see what you did for a living.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to spend a week with you and watch you and I will totally stay out of your hair.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we arranged all this different stuff.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I wasn't in his hair much at all, but I still was able to see exactly what he did anyway.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: When I went back to him and talked to him about it,
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: this is less than a year ago,
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: a few months ago, I asked him about it and I said, I've always been curious, okay?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: You really didn't want to do this.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Are you glad you did it now after 10 years?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, absolutely.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a high school coach.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to give this story now to my senior who's going to play in college and
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: to say,
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: if you really want to be good at this,
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: if you want to play at the highest level, Go Long.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Go Long.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Go Long.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Then for somebody 10 years down the road, 10, 12,
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: 15 years down the road to read a story and it still has value,
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: that's incredibly rewarding and it feels rewarding to this day for me.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: That was amazing.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: I can remember reading that.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: The second it dropped, it takes you right into that room with Carson Palmer.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just chuckling for a couple reasons.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: So also in that chapter on Boomer Size and the Bengals,
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: it blew my mind how you were in Sam Weish's office.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he's just telling you, here are the guys we like.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Here's who we're going to take.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine that today?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's nuclear codes.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I have to tell you, I thought of Bob McGinn when I was rewriting this.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know why I thought of Bob McGinn?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Could you imagine in the 900,000 phone calls he makes before a draft
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: if some coach said, hey, Bob, listen,
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: don't tell anybody I told you this,
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: but here's who we're going to draft in Green Bay this week.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, can you imagine?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Bob's head would have exploded.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I had just taken the job.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: At the time, I was 26 years old.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'd never covered anything as big as this.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I just remember thinking, Even though I was excited about, oh, this guy's pulling my leg.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: I got to find out if he's real.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because somebody tells you who they're going to pick.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: They just said, hey, don't tell any out-of-town writers.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because remember, in those days, all sports were local.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing was national.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Except if you got written about in SI or if you're on a national game or whatever on TV.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: But everything else was done,
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: you didn't really know very much in 1984 about what the Bears were thinking about
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: before the draft.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that was an amazing thing.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: And he told me about these guys and they ended up picking them.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, Sam is not with us anymore, but.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: I always kind of thank my lucky stars that for whatever reason, Sam White said that to me.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, do you want to know who we're going to draft?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yes, yes, I do.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you like wrote in the story before the draft,
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: like Bengal targets, like here are the guys I think.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: So then you look smart, right?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: My sports editor that night after the draft happened,
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: I walked in the sports department in those days.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: You ran back to the newspaper to write.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that night he said, hey, how you doing, Nostradamus?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to explain to him, Greg, listen,
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just telling you, I didn't know whether he was pulling my leg or it was real.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it was,
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: in the immortal words of Sidra and Jerry Seinfeld,
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: it was real and it was spectacular.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: Phenomenal.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I, oh my gosh.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: So you met Sonny.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say he was just a few weeks old.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I was laughing too, because he's, Curious as hell now.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's five.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: He's asking questions around the clock.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: And my parents say, Ty, that's exactly what you did.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: I would just be asking a million sports questions.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: And my dad at some point, they would be like, it was NBA then.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: The most points that Glenn Rice scored in a game.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Alonzo Mourning, Larry Johnson.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: He was just like spitting them out, making stuff up, I'm sure.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: But then one day, I got to do this with Sonny.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: I still remember it.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was probably like six years old, seven years old.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I had my NBA magazine on the beach.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're on vacation.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And my dad goes, hey, have you ever heard of Eric Skopanski?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, yeah, he plays for the Clippers, Skopanski.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: I must have looked through that book.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: It drove me nuts all week.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: I got my little stat book.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm taking notes.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just he just completely made up this Eric Skopanski.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: He did not exist.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: He wanted to keep you busy.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe your mom was something like that back in the day.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, Chapter 13, The Unsung Hero.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: We both know Ron Wolfe really well.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: What's something about Ron Wolfe that you think our viewers,
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: listeners, readers should really know?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because I agree how you put it.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: The Reclamation Project in Green Bay,
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: it's one of the greatest turnarounds in In all of sports,
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: and also reading that chapter as an aside,
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: I never knew that there was that scout,
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Red Cochran, who was trying to convince Bart Starr to take Joe Montana.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Joe Montana, and he wouldn't do it.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's wild.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: That was pretty amazing, yeah.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Tyler,
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: I've always felt that Ron Wolfe,
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: even though,
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: how do you say that somebody who's in the Pro Football Hall of Fame is underrated?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: How do you say that?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, because he is.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: And he doesn't get the appreciation that he deserves.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Nor, by the way, nor, by the way, does Bob Harlan.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because Bob Harlan hired, you know, somebody.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Tom Brotz was the GM at the time.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Lindy Infani was the coach.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the Packers were just sort of stumbling along.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they were a AAA franchise.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: They were a member of the NFL team.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And oh, isn't it great to have the tradition of Green Bay?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Boy, it'd be great if they could ever win again.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I want you to think about that.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: That was 34 years ago that Ron Wolfe entered the Packer universe.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: So just think about this.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you were,
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: if you right now are 43 years old or younger and you are a Packers fan and you live
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: in Menominee,
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: or whatever,
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: you're somewhere in the bowels of Wisconsin,
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: and you live and die with the Packers every week, even in May, June, and July.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can't wait for fall Sundays.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Just think,
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: if you're 43 years old,
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: 39 years old,
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: whatever,
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: you've been out of college for 20 years,
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: whatever, You, in your waking sports fandom life, have never had a horse crap team.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Ever.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then think of the 20 years before that.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: You never had a good team.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so all of that is directly related to Bob Harlan hiring Ron Wolfe.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Ron Wolfe taking the job,
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: and in his first 15 months on the job,
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: hiring Mike Holmgren,
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: trading for Brett Favre, and signing Reggie White and Free Agency.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: It changed the Green Bay Packers forever.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: But the one story that you probably won't know until you read this book,
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't think you would know,
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: The one story about Wolf is that,
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: as he told me,
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: he was less than a week on the job and he had to go and meet with the board
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: of directors because he told Bob Harlan, hey, listen, I'm going to trade.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: If I have to trade a one,
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: I will, but we're going to trade a one for Brett Favre of the Atlanta Falcons.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: And first of all, Bob Harlan didn't know who he was.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: When he looked at his name, he said, Favre?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so he said, okay, I've given you the keys to the car.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can do that.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: But you're going to have to go and talk to our board of directors and run it by him.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's how we do it here.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: And Ron thought, oh, Christ.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, he went and talked to the board of directors.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: And he laid it on a little thick.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't really know who Brett Favre was either.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: And he laid it on thick.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he said,
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: when Brett Favre's career is over,
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Every kid in Wisconsin is going to have a number four jersey and he will have done
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: for the Green Bay Packers what another famous number four did for
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: the New York Giants or New York Yankees, Lou Gehrig.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: And Wolf told me,
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: he said,
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: I can just imagine when I walked out of that meeting,
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: all those guys had to have been looking at Bob Harlan.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Who is this idiotic rube?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: You put in charge of our team who thinks this guy we never heard of is going to turn
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: into Lou Gehrig.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: What an idiotic move you made, Bob Harlan.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: And before he died, I asked Bob that same thing.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: I said, here's what Ron said about that.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, no, they didn't say that.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think they probably trusted him.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a good thing they trusted him
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: because he ended up turning around this franchise for the last 34 years.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: Man, Ron has always told me to,
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: like when he took over,
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: he looked,
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: you can look at all the disadvantages and
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: how Green Bay is described as Siberia
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: and who'd want
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: to play there, this and that.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: And free agency is created.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And as you covered extensively, holy hell, is this entire franchise going to become irrelevant?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: But he really recognized the advantage, the inherent advantage of It's all football.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's no other BS.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: You come here, if you're interested in football and winning games, this is the place for you.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he played off of the tradition.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: The legendary names around the bowl, the stadium, he brought them back.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And there is an inherent advantage to no ownership.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Andrew Brandt talked about it last week when he was doing all the contracts.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: He said, nobody's telling me if I'm doing a good job.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't matter if it was a league minimum contract I signed or $100 million.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's...
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing this job.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Coach is coach.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: GM's GM.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Players play.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have that overbearing voice behind your ear.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're breathing down your neck from an owner,
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: which I guess sometimes that pressure can be a good thing if change is necessary.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: But McGinn always says on our podcast, no, Tyler,
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: that is an advantage to not have one singular owner and to just let
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: the football people make football decisions.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: So like you just detailed, You can take the chance on Brett Favre.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can draft Aaron Rodgers and then let him sit for three years.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: He can draft Jordan Love and let him sit for three years.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's why Green Bay is just different, isn't it?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: He trained the people,
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: and it's not only, I mean,
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: it's so tribute to Ron Wolfe that the two sort of football czars
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: and their respective organizations met in the Super Bowl last year,
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Elliott Wolfe and John Schneider.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: And they both learned from Ron.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Brian Gutekunz learned from Ron.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure people over time, Ted Thompson learned from Ron.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: And people learned how to do it the Ron way.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: And they really did not vary their approaches very much.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: But the one interesting thing I thought, and I remember...
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: Ted Thompson,
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: and obviously he's passed away,
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: but Ted Thompson talked a lot about when he got the job and then through the years,
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: the lessons that he learned from Ron.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: And the one thing that he learned and the one thing that Brian Gutekunst learned
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: and they still do to this day is they view themselves as caretakers of
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: an incredibly important resource.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just a football team.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: And they understand that one of the reasons why,
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure Ted Thompson felt like when he was taking Aaron Rodgers,
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: boy, this might piss off Favre.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: But Ted Thompson at the end of the day said, if it does, it does.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if drafting Jordan Love is going to piss off Aaron Rodgers, if it does, it does.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: Brian Gutekunst, you know, cares about the franchise.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't care about a golf date with Aaron Rodgers that might get screwed up
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: if he drafts somebody who will eventually replace him.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: Amen to all that.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: I gained so much respect for Brian Gutekinds in that moment because
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: if we know what we know about Aaron Rodgers,
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: imagine what he knows about Aaron Rodgers and what that reaction
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: is going
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: to be
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: to this day.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: He did a podcast before the season.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Asked, I think he was asked, will you be back in Green Bay?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so many words said, well, we'll see if such and such is there anymore.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: That takes balls that a lot of GMs do not possess.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Rodgers, I remember standing on the field at Lambeau with him.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was doing a story for NBC.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's that story I did where I went down and I got Bart Starr,
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: who was really in rough shape at the time.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: But he really wanted to say some nice things about Aaron Rodgers, which he did.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was before the
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Bears-Packers season opener on NBC in 2017 or 18, I forget which year.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway,
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: and I remember I was going to interview Rodgers about Bart Starr and why he meant
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: so much to him.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: And we're just waiting for the camera to get ready and we're just standing there BSing.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we looked up at all the names up there and I said, you'll be up there.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, maybe.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think he was really dubious about whether when it ended for him
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: that he would ever be back or ever be back in the good graces or whatever.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Aaron,
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: I said, this team, this organization, this city fell back in love with Brett Favre.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: He very publicly wanted to go to the Minnesota Vikings or secondarily the Bears.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: And he kind of wanted to stick it up the Packers rear ends, you know.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so I said, believe me, believe me, water will go under the bridge.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: You will come back and you'll get the biggest standing ovation you've ever gotten in your life.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think he was really skeptical that that would ever happen.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: He probably still is skeptical.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, you're in the middle of something.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: You can't really see it.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: I said, not that I know anything,
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: but I mean, I said the same thing to Brady, his first year in Tampa.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: I said, listen,
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: you and Belichick are going to be on the dais in Canton 15 years from now
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: or whenever, 12 years, I don't know.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: Whoever goes in first,
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: the other one will be there and there will be a legitimate hug between the two
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: of you and you will be grateful for what he did for you and he will be grateful
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: for what you did for him.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because life moves on, you know, and you can't live it bitterly and I think...
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, look,
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: there are not many instances of Terry Bradshaw and Chuck Knoll in sports history
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: that once you cut the cord, it's cut, and you never heal the wound.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: But Aaron Rodgers' wound will be healed.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's not going to be that bad.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, totally agree.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: I have a street named after him.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: They all do.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: The number will be up there.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: He'll get a street.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: All that good stuff.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to ask you this too, Peter.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're talking 40, 50 years being in this sport, this game, this league.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: What has really changed for the better?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: What has changed for the worst?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: As you're throwing yourself into the game, again, it's right here.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: Purchase it.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to it.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Make it part of your life.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's extraordinary.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: But you probably had these moments of reflection looking at how the game has changed.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I know we're in alignment with how we feel about gambling and getting into bed
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: with all these companies and how gross that is.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: But what has changed for the better?
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: What has changed for the worse as we sit here in 2026?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, not everybody would view this as the better, but I would.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: The NFL, the first year I covered it in 1984, had one
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Off-season event.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: One.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: One.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was the draft.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: It was held on a Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. ESPN did a round and a half.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: And as Mel Kiper told me for this book,
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: do you know what they went to when they dumped out of the draft?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: A tractor pull.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: And there were 125 people at the Omni Park Central Hotel in New York City watching the draft.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: And they did it all in one day.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: It ended at 1225 or something like that.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: They did it all in one day.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: And after that,
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: there were no more football events until deep into the next summer
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: when preseason games started.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: That was it.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: Paul Tagliabue's or Pete Rozelle's view,
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: excuse me, Is that they're going to come back licking their chops.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: Fans will come back.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: They can't wait until football starts again.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: And to some degree he was right.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: But Tyler, the first year I covered the NFL, Monday Night Football was 25th in the ratings.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: 25th.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: And Scarecrow and Mrs. King had a higher TV rating.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: In the prime time ratings.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so something had to change.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: Roselle leaves at 89.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: Tagliabue comes in, starts making more things more prominent.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: They're forced to add free agency by a judge in Minnesota, David Doty.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so they go kicking and screaming into the free agency era.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: But what free agency did was it gave pro football a hot stove league that it never had before.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: They basically didn't do anything in the offseason.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: And now they had people all excited about that.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: Then all excited about the draft.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then they would televise the combine.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: And everything.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: Everything just exploded.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: And Roger Goodell took it even further.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's what's changed for the better.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: What's changed for the worse is the insatiable greed.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: Which I'm not saying is new, but...
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: You tell me one good reason,
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: one good reason why,
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: first of all,
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: you should never have added a 17th game and why you should add an 18th game.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're adding the 18th game for one reason, one word, and it's greed.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: You can make more money if you add an 18th game.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so the NFL says, we want to make more money.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Does it make it a better game?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Is it better for our players?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: No and no.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think you're going to look back at this era of NFL history and say,
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: yeah, they grew the game.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: The phenomenal game.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: You can't turn away.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: It magnetizes all of us to it all through the fall and winter.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: So great.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's fun.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's all fantastic.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: But the fact is that when you have something as special as that,
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Then there's always going to be a cadre of people associated with the game
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: who just want to build it and make it more.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm absolutely fine.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: International football, great, wonderful.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: I love games in different cities in the world.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: I've been to two of them.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: It is utterly fantastic.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I've got no problem with a lot of things like that.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: Those are great.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: But let's not ask players who in 2021, starters who were asked to play 62 more plays a year.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: 62 more opportunities for head trauma plays a year.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: And now let's ask them to play 62 to 65% more plays per year with an 18th game.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: I just think it is...
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: When you talk about player health and safety,
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: it is a non-starter to even discuss,
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: to bring up an 18th game, but I am not preaching to the choir, shall we say.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: You are to our choir.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's music to the ears.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's the height of hypocrisy and I guess that's the norm.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a lot of virtue signal going on.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: I love that Chris Nowinski pointed it out.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was Pablo Torres' last podcast on these guardian caps.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: I always wondered, how much is that really helping?
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he's at the forefront of everything concussions,
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: everything CT. And he's like, it's not really doing much.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the NFL can point to it and say, we care about player safety.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: We care about head trauma.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you do, then don't add another game like It's a real change.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let's all live in reality of what the sport is doing to your brain and
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: to your body instead of having your head in the sand like an ostrich.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in fact a Guardians cap fan just because the way I feel about it is that even
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: if mentally a player thinks it might be helping and even if it is helping 1%,
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: 1%, to me that's better than not wearing it.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't,
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't,
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: obviously it's not a big deal,
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: but I just think it's probably better than not wearing it.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: But again,
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: and I understand the virtue signaling part of it,
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: but I don't see, I've felt a guardian cap.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's light.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't really see the harm in it.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I also don't think that you should say, hey, we got them guardian caps.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: We can have them play more plays.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think those two things are mutually exclusive.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Have you read Chuck Klosterman's book, Football?
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: No, I haven't.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: I have it.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: I have not had a lot of chance to read lately, but I definitely will read it.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, you've been grinding on this.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: Chuck's great.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: You would love it the way he thinks life, let alone football.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's outside of the box and then there's Chuck, right?
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: But he really digs into the future of football.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think the chapter is called Nuclear Football and forecasts what's going
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: to happen 40, 50,
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: 60 years down the line and really does believe this bubble is going to burst
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: for several reasons, some of which we're kind of touching on here.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: But you've been immersed in this sport.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: Arguably more than anybody who has covered the sport in the last half century, Peter.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: 40 years from now, what is the NFL?
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: What is football?
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: Where is this going?
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: Tyler, I would say it was 22 or 23.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: I found myself in Dallas.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to cover a game there one of my last years.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was Sunday morning.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still a newspaper guy and the Dallas Morning News hard copy was there at
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: the hotel where I was.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I sat there having breakfast before going over to the game, flipping through it.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: And there are two open broadsheet pages in that paper.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: That had every high school football score from the state of Texas on Friday night.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now, how many scores were there?
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm guessing over a thousand.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, though.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: It might have been 1,500.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: It might have been 800.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: But whatever it was, imagine two broadsheet pages.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: Open pages with the only thing on them.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: Is the scores of every high school game in the state of Texas on Friday night.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so I bring that up just to tell you,
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: can you imagine if you walked into Abilene High School one day,
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: 10 years from now,
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: and you're with the health department in the state of Texas and you say,
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: hey, by the way, uh, We're not playing football anymore in this state.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's not going to be a sanctioned high school sport.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we're canceling all football programs.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: Youth football, high school football, college football, everything in the state of Texas.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Football is not going to be played anymore.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I will guarantee you that that health person from
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: the health department either would not get out of Abilene alive
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: Or he would be held hostage until he said, just kidding, or never mind.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: The point is,
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: there are too many people for whom football is truly ingrained as a part
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: of their everyday existence.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: Football's not going to go away.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: There will always be a group of people who want to play the game for whatever reason.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: They view it as a way out of their financial situation, family situation, whatever.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think,
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: and plus,
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's nothing like it from a popularity standpoint in the United States.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I never say never.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I will be very surprised if 40 years from now, football is not still very popular.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: Might be not as popular as it is today, but it'll still be popular.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're the modern-day gladiators doing something that most of the populace can only dream of.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're drawn to it, right?
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: As long as there's that inherent risk in the sport,
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: and then Chuck would even make that point too, we're going to watch.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: Peter, this was...
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: I want to end here because everybody should know how awesome,
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: amazing of a person Peter King is in addition to all his NFL coverage.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you even remember the first time that we talked in person.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: It would have been,
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was the summer of 07 when I was an intern in Green Bay,
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Wisconsin,
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: like the Shawano leader,
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: Packer Report, the year before Brett Favre tried to take his job back.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: We were in the Don Hudson Center, OTAs.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I just, you know, went up to Peter King, shook your hand, introduced myself.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, I'm a college sophomore.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: I know I want to have a family one day, have kids.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I also hear the horror stories of,
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: you can't have any of that stuff if you want to cover the NFL or work in newspaper.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm trying to rack my brain on how am I going to make all this happen
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: in life, in my future?
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I just, in so many words, asked you how in the hell you were able to do it.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: And what you said rings true to this day.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'll never forget it.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: I forget what time you said you wake up.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was insanely early.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: You said you'd wake up in the threes, maybe the fours in the morning to get a ton of work done.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then you take the kids to school, come back home, pick up where you left off.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: And there's just that beautiful window.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: Super early in the morning where you can get a lot of writing done and then still be
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: a dad, still be a family man.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I have not forgotten that.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: The alarm is set at 4.15 a.m. most mornings here.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you very much, Peter.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's pretty good.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're not quite Gruden level, nor was I.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, if you really want to do something, really want to do it, you'll figure a way.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we were always able to do it and we're the lucky ones.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well put.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: Peter King, The Game, right there.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: Make it part of your life.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: It is A+.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm only about like 200, 250 pages in.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait to dive right back into it, Peter.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for making time for everybody here.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Tyler.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: Join us again anytime you'd like.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: Really appreciate it.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great day.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: You too.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 48:33
  [music]