Speaker 1:
From the Library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision in global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for more than 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and seven clearing houses around the world. Now, here's your host, Josh King, Head of Communications at Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
What is the world's most efficient way to market a product? Of the 20 most watch TV broadcasts in US history, 19 are Super Bowls. The other one, the series finale of M.A.S.H. It's no surprise then that the Detroit Lions play at Ford Field, NYSE ticker symbol F. The Dallas Cowboys play in AT&T Stadium, NYSE ticker symbol T. The New York Giants play in MetLife Stadium, ticker symbol MET. I could go on, and on, and on with these corporate tie-ins through the ranks of NFL teams before I land on such stately throwbacks as Arrowhead, Lambeau, and Soldier Field.
Josh King:
On television, watching the spectacle of 22 men hurling each other at the limits of human momentum, billions of dollars are spent to tantalize us with cars from General Motors, ticker symbol GM, and Fiat Chrysler, ticker symbol FCAU, and don't even get me started on beer, mobile phones, and insurance. But what if there are cracks in that super efficient marketing mechanism? What if the humans aren't all they're cracked up to be? Or what if they are? And what if the president of the United States sees the games upon to play in his weekly cadence of coalescing his base?
Josh King:
Still, we watch. When the numbers came in after the vaunted New England Patriots fell to the formerly lowly Lions in week three of the current season, the NFL had notched a 2.6% gain in total viewership over a year ago. I was one of them. So was Mark Leibovich, Chief National Correspondent of the New York Times Magazine, an author of the new best seller Big Game, the NFL in Dangerous Times. We love the game and we have since we were kids. What drives us to consume the drama and the marketing messages week after week? How will that allure glue our kids to the tube in the decades ahead, like it does us? My conversation with Mark Leibovich right after this.
Speaker 3:
Dick's Sporting Goods believes sports matter and that every kid deserves the chance to play. Since 2014, through their Sports Matter program, they have already helped over 1 million young athletes in all 50 states. As they continue in their mission to save youth sports, they invite you to join by visiting sportsmatter.org and donating today. More on Dick's Sporting Goods efforts later in the show.
Josh King:
On page 207 of Big Game, out now from Penguin Press, Mark Leibovich writes about hanging out in the lobby of the Newton, Massachusetts Marriot in the early 1980s, camped out for autographs from visiting players in town to face the often pathetic Patriots. He got there with a ride of about a mile from his house driven by one of his parents or one of mine. I was with him, pen and paper in hand, looking for a scribble from the likes of Nick Buoniconti. For us, it was Xanandu
Josh King:
For the last four years, Mark has been making the rounds of modern days Xanandu, the gathering spots of the NFL, its owners meetings, draft days, combines, and the big games themselves, taking a break from the normal scrum he covers in Washington DC. He's lived to tell the tale free, as far as I can tell, from any concussive run-ins with league security and he joins us now inside the ice house. Welcome, Mark.
Mark Leibovich:
Good to be with you, Josh. And yes, there are some childhood illusions that we'll be reflecting on in this conversation.
Josh King:
First, let's make some news. What's your message for Robert, and by Robert, I mean Robert Kraft, and the hood of genius. As of this recording, their team is one and two with embarrassing losses to the Jags and Lions. What's happening with the Patriot way?
Mark Leibovich:
Well, they are off to a very slow start. Panic is everywhere in New England, but we've seen this movie before. This has happened off and on for the last several years. By the end of the season, the Patriots tend to get better. So we take the long view.
Josh King:
You watch some of those episodes of Tom vs Time and they're out in the Yellowstone Club with Danny Amendola and Julian Edelman from a couple years ago or last summer. It looked like these mid-range receivers were totally in sync with Tom Brady, but none of those guys are on the field.
Mark Leibovich:
Yeah, no. Well, as often happens with the Patriot way, they leave. I mean, once they get traded in for cheaper parts, unless you're Tom Brady, you go off and Julian Edelman's been out. We'll see. Look, it's early in the year. It's a September panic.
Josh King:
As you write, you move pretty well for a 52-year-old with two-
Mark Leibovich:
I do.
Josh King:
... reconstructed ACL injuries.
Mark Leibovich:
Thank you for point... Yes, that's true. I was 52 when I wrote it. I'm 53 now.
Josh King:
As Al Michael would say, you're not slow to get up.
Mark Leibovich:
Yeah, I have not been hit by... I mean, luckily... As you can attest, I was a great kicker. I mean, we actually kicked some long field goals in your front and backyard, but now, what is interesting though is that NFL coaches have been dying for us to get out there and try out for them, but we're just not going to do it, because the game's not safe.
Josh King:
But with all those injuries, did the four years following the league inflict any new injuries? I mean, was there any brow beating from 345 Park Avenue, the owner's offices? The people who would say, "This guy who normally runs in the corridors of Washington isn't purpose built for this kind of work?"
Mark Leibovich:
It was surprisingly easy to sort of get into those worlds. I mean, one thing I did find is when you write about politics for a living, as I do, everyone's interested in politics these days. I mean, other than the NFL, it's the best reality show we have going right in America. Everyone in football, or at least a lot of the owners in football, think they know something about politics. Many of them have personal relationships with a lot of the politicians, certainly Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and they're all quick to name drop.
Mark Leibovich:
They would see me on TV and I would do like pundit work occasion only for like CBS or NBC. They would think that I knew stuff. I think they also liked the idea of talking to non-sport writers. That was helpful, but no, it was a bizarre way. I just sort of wandered in, they didn't quite know what to make of me. I think at this point, good riddance to me. But I think I bore some scars, mainly to my liver, especially going down to Dallas and spending some time with Jerry Jones. But anyway, no, look, I'm back to being a political reporter again. There's all kinds of hazards and scars to be had there.
Josh King:
The first lady, the shield hasn't tweeted either from herself or from a pseudonym against you?
Mark Leibovich:
Yeah, Jane Goodell, Roger's very protective and I thought very just delightful wife, has no, she has not. I loved meeting her. I mean, she's far more personable than her husband was.
Josh King:
So Mark, let's look at a comparison. The Newton Marriott in the early 80s that I spoke about in the introduction and the Boca Raton Resort and Club, the league meetings in March, 2016, the owners were chagrined that they didn't have the Breakers to go to. And you compare that to the way the Marriot lobby used to be.
Mark Leibovich:
The Marriot lobby to me, and I assume to you, it was Shangri-La. I mean, this was like a beautiful, state of the art I guess chain hotel in the 70s. I mean, it looked like a royal palace. I thought it was one of the great properties in the Marriot Pantheon. But so, yeah, no, but my first owner's meeting was at the Boca Raton Resort and Club and all owners were retching about why aren't we at the Breakers?
Mark Leibovich:
Once you've seen the breakers, once you've had your meetings at the breakers, which the NFL usually does when they do Florida, you cannot go back to anything else. They were very angry and they thought that the fact that the league could not get the Breakers during that March meeting and had to settle for the Boca Resort was another sign that the shield might not be as invincible as before. I will say, parenthetically, that I was in Palm Beach this weekend, and I stayed at the Breakers. So I have prevailed. At least as far as book touring goes, the Breakers is still the number one choice.
Josh King:
So over piles of shrimp and stone crab, you have a moment to perhaps grab commissioner Goodell. Before you can turn around to engage him, poof, he's gone.
Mark Leibovich:
He was gone. This was a couple months after I had profiled the commissioner for a piece in the New York Times Magazine. And like every piece he pretends not to read, he rarely gives interviews, so I was very, very lucky to have gotten that interview. I went up to him, I heard... I don't know what he had thought of the piece, but he claimed not to read it. He always did. He said it was good to see me again. A balloon popped because the league thinks of everything. They had a magician and a guy doing balloons for the kids. Balloon pops, I looked in one direction, he was gone.
Josh King:
What is it... You talked about the kids around the pool of the Boca Raton Resort and Club. They're there, their eyes are so wide seeing these players, agents, members of the press, officials. I mean, it is Shangri-La for them in 2018, in the years that you were writing the book, but for fans like us coming up in the 70s and 80s, I want to take a quick listen to the voice and the rhythm him that shaped our perception of the storyline unfolding between the sidelines. The great John Facenda is the voice and the writer, Steve Sabol.
John Facenda:
The autumn wind is a pirate, blustering in from sea. With a rollicking song, he sweeps along, swaggering boisterously. His face is weather beaten, he wears a hooded sash, with a silver hat about his head, and a bristling black mustache. He growls as he storms the country of villain big and bold, and the trees all shaked, and quiver, and quaked as he robs them of their gold.
Mark Leibovich:
What is he talking about?
Josh King:
He's he's talking about the Oakland Raiders, and John Madden, and Gene Upshaw, and all the players.
Mark Leibovich:
So he was talking about the... because that is poetry, man. That is great.
Josh King:
And you know, I read your book.
Mark Leibovich:
There are echoes of that.
Josh King:
And there are echoes of that, there is that kind of poetry. When you're in an interview, you can't conjure the same type of thesaurus work that I know you do in front of a screen when you put these books together. But if you listen to Facenda and you listen to that kind of music that we so connected with, what was it that you write maybe in the first 20 pages of the book that made this game so special for you?
Mark Leibovich:
You know what's interesting about the NFL? I don't think I've said this before, but they're just marketing geniuses. I mean, from the earliest days in the league, or at least since television really became the dominant part of the sport, which is obviously in the 60s, which sort of coincides with when the NFL has been dominant, it's a perfect television sport, but they've also, along with that, just been brilliant marketers having just listened to that. I mean, it's way over the top. It's flowery, it's purple, it's mellow dramatic, and it's great.
Mark Leibovich:
It's not subtle. I think one of the first very simple things that the marketers of the NFL realized is that it's much easier to sell non-subtlety than it is to sell subtlety. The problem with the modern game or one of the complications of the modern game is that life keeps intruding. Politics keeps intruding, science, and health, and issues like domestic violence keep intruding. It doesn't allow football to be the escapism, the story book, the reality TV show that they bill itself as.
Mark Leibovich:
But look, I mean football, it is told as a story. They he got this John Facenda guy, it was his voice. He is this I guess this Philadelphia newscaster, I don't know. He didn't particularly like football, but that he had this voice. He's the soundtrack of our lives. I think it's great. Even in retrospect, I think it's great. Is it hokey as all hell? Hell yeah. But it's the escapism we look to in our sports.
Josh King:
We watch the weekly wrap up shows, NFL Today now airing on Showtime. You write extensively about Adam Schefter's Nuggets, and ESPN's Sal Paolantonio, but they are reducing this to 200 characters, or per league sources say. That's so far away from the storytelling that Facenda, he was our only outlet to the game between Sundays.
Mark Leibovich:
It is, which is... Look, if the NFL stayed stuck in the 60s and John Facenda, they'd be dead in the water. I mean the NFL, like every other company in America, is trying to evolve. Especially, an entertainment company, they're trying to find the right platforms that people want. I say this in Big Game, the back of the pro transactions in the sports page that we used to look for, like who's injured, whether so and so is questionable for Sunday's game, that's now commodified information that Adam Schefter, and Ian Rappaport, and Peter King, and whoever else are fighting over to try to tweet out first so that fantasy owners can... maybe they're more likely to be the go-to purveyor of these things. It's a great business proposition for ESPN, or NBC, or whoever. That's the way this has evolved. I think the NFL, like any other company, is trying to try to keep up with that.
Josh King:
Myth making at 345 Park even extends to the league administration. So you get into a conversation with Greg Aiello and he introduces you to Tod Leiweke and they speak in mountain metaphors about the work the commissioners doing.
Mark Leibovich:
Well, that's Tod. Tod Leiweke, who's no longer with, he was the COO, he was Roger Goodell's number two. He climbed Mount Rushmore with Roger Goodell when he was, I guess, working with the Seahawks and he did some United Way campaign. There's a long story there. Anyway, yes, he loved the mountain metaphors. Neither Greg nor Tod are with the company anymore. But that is sort of part of the awkward evolution that many of these sort of modern day executives are trying to stay into the NFL.
Josh King:
Let's move out of New York because of the great political stories that you've written about for the Times magazine in the past, they focus on California. Celebrity politicians like Arnold Schwartzenegger and Gavin Newsom, but in Los Angeles and Oakland today, the drama involves people like Stan Kroenke and Mark Davis. As you write of LA, the promised land had gotten along fines since the Rams and Raiders had fled from there two decades earlier. Here's a little bit of local news from KABC last week talking about the progress of the new stadium in Inglewood.
Speaker 6:
... that tour and it's such a unique opportunity to really show you the progress of this massive construction and how all of these pieces are coming together. Take a look at that red and white crane for example. We're told that's one of the largest cranes in the world. It measures nearly as tall as the length of a football field and it's responsible for lifting the canopy steel. The first piece weighed about 2.4 million pounds. Our cameras got to go inside the stadium and standing in that bowl is what really puts it all into perspective. It's actually about 52% completed and it will be the new home of the Los Angeles Chargers and the Los Angeles Rams. It's set to open in 2020 in time to host the Super Bowl two years later, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2028 Olympics.
Josh King:
She's almost beside herself with excitement.
Mark Leibovich:
Can I tell you something? Stan Kroenke, the owner of the Los Angeles Rams, you know what the only thing he'll remember from that report is? The fact that she said the Los Angeles Chargers and the Los Angeles Rams, she started with the Chargers. That will rankle him to no end. But look, I'm mean, the NFL... There's this cool structure going up in LA. It is like a Disney world they're building, I guess.
Mark Leibovich:
It is a stadium, or as the NFL like to call it in the collective, the stadium, because everything is kind of Roman in the NFL. We won't talk about what happened to Rome, but I mean, it's all very over the top. LA is, look, it's imagination. We will see what that thing looks like, but I remember... Actually, Roger Goodell was talking about the stadium, and he was saying, "It's coming out of the ground now. The bowl is coming out of the ground."
Mark Leibovich:
It's like are you talking about some kind of like extraterrestrial... the bowl is coming out of the ground. This is like something that Stan Kroenke, a very successful real estate to a developer, married to the air of the Walmart fortune, is putting maybe $5, $6 billion into before this is all over. That's the star. Now, whether they need two football teams there, who the heck knows?
Josh King:
The Raiders was sort of jilted at the altar. You write about Mark Davis. Big Game might be the only football book that is in existence that references Gertrude Stein speaking of Oakland, there is no there there.
Mark Leibovich:
True.
Josh King:
What's Oakland's fate as it looks toward its move to Las Vegas?
Mark Leibovich:
Remember, Oakland went to Los Angeles, the Oakland Raiders were the Los Angeles Raiders for what? Let's see, probably about 20 years or something like that. I still call them the Oakland Raiders. They belong in Oakland. Now, Vegas, it's going to be different and kind of maybe interesting, because the NFL in Vegas, I mean you're talking about two huge sort of spectacles, and I'd be kind of curious to see what it looks like, but they should still be the Oakland Raiders. I mean, it's one of the iconic franchises. By the way, the San Diego Chargers should be the San Diego Chargers. I still haven't met a Los Angeles Chargers fan. I don't know, this is the natural order of things and the NFL evolves, but I think it's very, very clunky at some times.
Josh King:
It all seems to be working toward this overall annual league revenue goal of going from where it stands now to this holy grail of $25 billion. I emphasize it in that way because that's the way Jerry Jones might do it, taking a cue from his dad, the grocer in north Little Rock, Arkansas, J.W. Pat Jones, who might say, "Mark, we're going to make $1 million."
Mark Leibovich:
Million dollars, right.
Josh King:
Not just a million. Tell me about Jerry Jones and his involvement in LA and where this all stems from.
Mark Leibovich:
Yeah. Jerry Jones is a larger than life personality. He owns the Dallas Cowboys and he told me that his father, Pat Jones, used to drive him around. Jerry once made a mistake of speaking casually of $5 million or something. Pat was very, very, very insistent, that he says, "Jerral..." that's his full name, "Jerral, when you say $1 million, you let it roll off your tongue. I don't care if you go from St. Louis to Chicago and it takes you that long to say the words 1 million, sit with it, feel it. Just let the words roll off your tongue." It's right out of Austin Powers, right? It's like $1 million. Now, of course, that would be in the billions now, but I think that was an important message from Jerry.
Josh King:
Here is Mr. Jones giving a tour of his Shangri-La, AT&T stadium.
Jerry Jones:
This stadium, I thought, "What could we do to recognize what cowboy fans and what this franchise might have meant to the NFL?" They should pass a law to let someone like me make these decisions, because if you can get ahold of enough money, you'll go crazy. That's what I did. First of all, let's just take this big digital board that goes from the 20 yard line to the 20 yard line, 72 feet tall. We have cameras in this dressing room, with discretion.
Mark Leibovich:
With discretion.
Josh King:
That's a sanitized version of Jerry Jones.
Mark Leibovich:
Yeah.
Josh King:
You're a new England kid, venturing down to Dallas, welcomed into this environment a little bit by Mr. Jones.
Mark Leibovich:
Yeah.
Josh King:
Culturally, what was that like, that transition?
Mark Leibovich:
Well, he invited me onto the-
Josh King:
a visit-
Mark Leibovich:
I went to do the visit, yeah. Everything, especially Southern gentlemen of a certain age, you're always visiting. If you talk on the phone for five seconds, it's a nice visit, right? Or if you go to interview Jerry Jones and you're invited onto the Dallas Cowboys' bus, it's a very memorable or forgettable visit. But no, so I was sitting there interviewing Jerry Jones, and he offered me, after about half hour, a shot of scotch.
Mark Leibovich:
I'm like, "Sure." I mean, it was one o'clock in the afternoon. Why not? But by shot, he meant a large, probably 24 ounce, Dallas Cowboys souvenir cup full of scotch. And the interview sort of went downhill from there. It took five hours. I didn't come out of it terribly well, but the tape recorder worked, and the rest is history. But Jerry Jones likes to lubricate his visits with Johnny Walker Blue, which is his preferred beverage.
Josh King:
Now, in a lot of your interviews and podcasts that I've watched, you're pretty quick to say that these 32 owners wouldn't immediately be top candidates for boards of directors. And yet, following the American dream, whether you are Stan Kroenke or Jerry Jones, son of Pat Jones of North little Rock, Arkansas, or Jerry Richardson, owning Hardy's franchises in the Carolinas. They've done what they've needed to do to make a whole lot of money and have purchased their franchises and convinced city fathers and corporate sponsors to build edifices like AT&T stadiums. So maybe the interviews that you've done have allowed you to sort of paint these colorful pictures of people, like Jerry Jones, but if you think about what these guys have accomplished in their, perhaps not mainstream ways of becoming billionaires, even Bob Kraft.
Mark Leibovich:
Yeah, sure.
Josh King:
I mean, they've been very successful in what they've done.
Mark Leibovich:
Yeah. It all begins and ends with the NFL. I mean, everyone wants a piece of the NFL, whether you're a sponsor, or you're looking for some kind of sponsorship relationship, or a broadcast deal, I mean some kind of exposure, it is the great spectacle of American life. I remember, right after I did my first sort of NFL story for the Times magazine on Tom Brady, the first person, or one of the first people I did a story on right after was Donald Trump, then candidate Donald Trump, who wouldn't shut up about, one, how great friends he is with, with Tom Brady and Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick.
Mark Leibovich:
But also, at a certain point, he said, man, the NFL, that is a spectacle. I think that was his exact word, spectacle, like who wouldn't want to be a part of that. He was saying that in a sort of hostile context, because he had very hostile feelings towards the fell. They wouldn't let him in. But look, spectacle is what Donald Trump loves. It's what the NFL loves. It's people sort of basically in their own fractured tribal way, coming together to pay attention to an event. Political campaigns have become like that, political convention. There's a piece of this that's reality TV, because you just don't know what's going to happen.
Mark Leibovich:
There's a piece of this that is basically warfare. There's a piece of this that is great athletic accomplishment. There's a piece of this that's my town versus your town. I mean for as global and as singularly spectacle ridden as this all is, this is sort of small town, parochial, is Dallas better than Washington this week. I mean, that's sort of what it comes down to. And look, people pay attention and people watch the Super Bowl. And as the ratings bear out, people care, whether they are vowing to never watch another football game again, they care, because if their teams in the playoffs, they're probably going to watch.
Josh King:
After the break, we talk with Mark Leibovich about the head of the league, its biggest star, the man who thrusted into the political spin cycle and the challenges the shield faces in the generation ahead. That's right after this.
Speaker 3:
Billions of dollars in funding have been cut from youth sports programs in recent years, leaving millions of students unable to play. Dick's Sporting Goods believes sports matter. Sports build character, increase confidence and motivate kids to stay in school and aim for higher education. Since 2014, Dick's and the Dick's Foundation have committed $50 million, through their Sports Matter initiative, to combat the youth sports funding crisis. To date, they are humbled to have helped over 1 million young athletes in need across all 50 states. Learn more about this crisis of youth sports at sportsmatter.org.
Josh King:
Back now with Mark Leibovich, Chief National Correspondent at the New York Times Magazine, author of This Town, and now, Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times. As a PR guy, Mark, we always face the question of whether to expose our bosses to writers like you. Around 345 Park Avenue, the question is, when a call from Leibovich comes in, what is the upside of this?
Mark Leibovich:
That's always the question. It's not just 345 Park Avenue, and it's not just me. I think whether you put your person in front of a journalist is always a cost benefit analysis. And yeah, I don't know why Roger or others agreed to talk to me, but I'm very glad they did.
Josh King:
A guy has total authority over his league, but he also has 32 bosses.
Mark Leibovich:
Correct.
Josh King:
Paint a picture of the king's court. You write about Jeff Pash, the league's general counsel who has this "excessive tendency to lawyer up over everything." How does the world of Roger Goodell compare to Pete Rozelle and Paul Tagliabue and the respective staffs? I mean, you mentioned that there is some frustration that Goodell feels maybe spurred on by some of the owners that, "The people around you aren't as good as they should be, Roger."
Mark Leibovich:
Right. Yeah. I think, look, Roger Goodell has not historically in his 12 years as commissioner had a lot of strong people around him. He has run off a lot of people. He hasn't really found a successful number two. Tod Leiweke, who you mentioned, is no longer with the company and he was going to be basically his, the guy who runs the day to day of the league. That didn't work out. PR has been a huge problem for the league. They've gone through a lot of heads of communications.
Mark Leibovich:
Look, Roger Goodell, like a lot of leaders, some of whom might be insecure leaders, has not, for whatever reason, been able to surround himself with people who might be seen as replacements for him or who might give him too much of a hassle. I think he, Roger Goodell, as part of the nature of his job, is so focused on keeping the owners happy. They are his bosses. He is their boss.
Mark Leibovich:
It's a very strange dynamic, that sometimes I think he doesn't let the day to day of how an organization works at a big basically entertainment and production company just should work, in that you just don't have a lot of executives around him that you would sort of pick and say, "Okay, he's number two, number three, number four of one of the top entertainment companies in the world. And let's make him the CEO of Netflix or something like that." You just haven't seen it.
Josh King:
You and I both were regular subscribers to Sports Illustrated-
Mark Leibovich:
Still am-
Josh King:
... for all of our childhood, and you still are.
Mark Leibovich:
Yes. Are you not?
Josh King:
I don't think so.
Mark Leibovich:
That's all right.
Josh King:
There was one particular issue, a non-athlete on the cover of Sportsman of the Year. It was Pete Rozelle.
Mark Leibovich:
The first non-athlete to be Sportsman of the Year, I think it was in the 60s, sometime. Yeah.
Josh King:
As you were sort of mining around the stories and the video of Rozelle and compared it to the Tagliabue era that you write about, and how Paul sort of outlived his welcome with the owners and vice versa. And Goodell today, Goodell is the son of a US Senator. He is a back slapper and shaker of hands extraordinaire, as you write. But what was the difference in the pixie dust that Rozelle had compared to Goodell? Or was it just such simpler times of John Facenda and no concussions?
Mark Leibovich:
You answered a big part of the question, right there at the end, it was a much simpler league. The union. There were certainly union issues and workplace issues, but it was very different. I can think the classic example of this was when Paul Hornung of the Green Bay Packers and Alex Karras of the Detroit Lions, two of the biggest stars in the league in the early 60s were busted for links to gambling, right? There was a long investigation.
Mark Leibovich:
The league did it themselves. There was a brief, Pete Rozelle basically said, "All right, these guys have to be suspended for a year." He calls in Vince Lombardi, the iconic coach of Paul Hornung. He says, "Look, here's what we found. I'm going to suspend him for the year. What do you think?" Lombardi reads the brief and said, "Yep, you got to suspend him. Let's go have a drink." They had a drink, and that was it, it was done. I mean, today, you would have all kinds of lawsuits, and the union would be right in the middle of it. And there'd be all kinds of language in the collective bargaining agreement and all kinds of back and forth, media wars and everything.
Mark Leibovich:
So very much simpler league. And look, I think Pete Rozelle was a very smooth figure. I didn't quite realize this when I was a kid. But in retrospect, when you hear people talking about him, and maybe it's through the gauzy eye of nostalgia, he clearly had a handle on things. He knew how to handle people. He was much more confident. He didn't have as many lawyers in his ears. He didn't have of as many market research people in his ears. He didn't play as scared. He really had command of the league. I think, at the root of it, is it was a much simpler league and a much easier league to run.
Josh King:
Let's talk about your sideline chat with Goodell in Charlotte. It's a very interesting day, I think, because if you think about the weather patterns that were going up the east coast, the commissioner, as you write, is shoveling the driveway in Bronxville so that he and the first lady of the shield can go out to soul cycle before they get on their Gulf stream and fly down to Charlotte. You, meanwhile, are driving through the slop from Washington DC trying to get there.
Mark Leibovich:
It wasn't slop, it was heavy snow. There was no way around it. There was no flights leaving Washington and my wife was not happy about this, but they said, "Hey, you want to speak to the commissioner? He wants to do it on the field." Now, I'm sure there was strategy involved in this, because it was a terrible place to have an interview. Really loud, constant interruptions, and the commissioner could only speak for a certain amount of time.
Mark Leibovich:
There was always an escape route. It was strategically kind of a bad place for an interview, but also, it was actually... One, it was cool to be on the field before the NFL championship game, I saw a lot, but also, you sort of saw him in a very political element. He was just greeting people, he was slapping backs, and doing his whole Goodell thing. Then, Jerry Richardson, then the owner of the Carolina Panthers, shows up on his little cart and I got to see Goodell just lock in on him.
Mark Leibovich:
This is by far the most important person in this stadium of 70,000 people. It's the most important person I will talk to this day, because he's one of my bosses. At this moment, he's unhappy because he didn't like the way the LA thing was resolved, even though his team's about to play for the Super Bowl. Yeah, it was an interesting thing to watch.
Josh King:
Yet, you had important questions to ask him. I think this was your chance to get in some questions about concussions. This is the way Goodell answered a similar question to Charlie Rose back in 2015.
Charlie Rose:
Where are we with respect to concussions today?
Roger Goodell:
Well, we've made significant changes to the game at the NFL level, which I think has impacted all levels of the game. We've had a 25% reduction in concussions just last season, that continues a three year trend, which is about 35%. I think a lot of that is because there's more awareness, there are better processes in place with our medical personnel to identify the injury, but we are preventing these injuries through rule changes, through equipment. We saw a significant reduction in hits to the head.
Josh King:
You write about the Rams quarterback, who was it?
Mark Leibovich:
It was then Case Keenum.
Josh King:
Case Keenum. You also wrote in a different part of the book about the game that you and I were both watching in different locals, a Patriots playoff game, and Julian Edelman getting his bell rung.
Mark Leibovich:
Yeah. The Super Bowl against Seattle. Yeah.
Josh King:
And what goes through the psychology of a viewing fan, whether they care about Case Keenums game or not, in most cases, you and I don't, but we certainly care about Julian in the Super Bowl, but we're wrestling with our own psyche. I hope he's okay. Please, don't let the injury ref see.
Mark Leibovich:
Yeah, no, I remember saying that exactly. By the way, I wasn't wrestling at all. I just wanted him to keep playing because he was probably the best receiver on the field in that moment. I mean, it is a cognitive dissonance that every football fan goes through, because there's the part of your brain that says, "Wow, I don't want this guy to be hurt." But then, there's the part that says, "We need this guy.
Mark Leibovich:
He wants to get up. I think I saw him sort of stagger a little bit, but look, maybe he's going to hide it. Probably everyone on the sideline wants him to hide it. If the referee up in the booth doesn't see it, he can keep playing, and we can keep driving down the field, and maybe we can make up this 10 point lead." But look, it's a constant... It's not easy sometimes to just let go and be an NFL fan. I think the awareness is a curse in that way. But look, I think I'd rather have the awareness.
Josh King:
Bring us into 345 Park or Boston University and the CTE program. I mean, what is really happening in terms of deciding that whether you or I want Edelman to get up, we can't afford to let these guys get up and stay in the game.
Mark Leibovich:
Look, the there is a constant... I'm personally of a belief the game will never be safe at any speed. I think the risk is inherent. I think, again, awareness is good and that people will know what they're doing more and more. I do think that the commissioner's somewhat mealy mouth approach to this, which is maybe throwing a few statistics out there. They always talk about the number of rule changes and how they're preventing concussions.
Mark Leibovich:
Then, there are these new figures that show concussions have in fact gone up this year and down the next year. Then, all these studies on dead football players' brains show this. I mean, it's going to be a mess. There's always going to be some kind of statistic or testimonial or something that's going to give people pause. But the fact is it's an unsafe game, you can probably affect it at the margin with equipment, rule changes, but it's something I think people are just going to have to accept or not.
Josh King:
There's one person who seems not to be too worried about the concussion problem. I remember the time that I was working in the white house, helping the president celebrate Super Bowl victors, it was a pleasant tradition. I might call it an Anthony pleasant tradition, which is an inside joke.
Mark Leibovich:
Yes.
Josh King:
But in 2016, into the phrase steps the current president on the campaign trail. Himself, as you mentioned, the former USFL owner, and a long time aspirant to the membership, let's hear President Trump.
Donald Trump:
What used to be considered a great tackle, a violent head on, violent, if that was done by Dick Butkus, they'd say he is the greatest player. If that were done by Lawrence Taylor, it was done by Lawrence Taylor, and Dick Butkus, and Ray Nitschke, right? Ray Nitschke. You used to see these tackles and it was incredible to watch, right? Now, they tackle, oh, head on head collision, 15 yard... The whole game is all screwed up. You say, "Wow, what a tackle." Bing, flag. Football's become soft.
Josh King:
He wants to return to the Halcyon days.
Mark Leibovich:
What's interesting is that clip broke off, but the other part of the quote is, "Football has gone soft," and he said, "America has gone soft." And that was on the campaign trail, it was at an event in Reno, Nevada, about a year before Kaepernick started kneeling, and before Kaepernick became his own sort of Trumpian target. But Donald Trump, as part of his odd genius, was able to identify football as his culture war field.
Mark Leibovich:
For as much as the left has always sort of said, "Look, we're suspicious of the NFL, it's too violent, people get hurt, it's not safe," Donald Trump at that moment sort of identified football as something that was being ruined by political correctness in the same way that the America that was allegedly great, that he was trying to make great again, had been ruined by political correctness. Had been sissified by liberals. It's the exact same kind of metaphor. That was sort of one of the things he identified early on as a campaign theme, again, well before Colin Kaepernick came along.
Josh King:
You write about the spectacle of the NFL draft. What was once contained nicely within Radio City Music Hall has now gone on the road to increase both excitement and revenue for the league. I want to hear the reception the commissioner got when he came to the draft at Dallas earlier this year.
Speaker 11:
Here comes Roger Goodell to open the draft and he is joined by some special guests, all former winners of the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award, presented by Nationwide, and also Cowboys royalty.
Roger Goodell:
Welcome football fans-
Mark Leibovich:
It's amazing.
Josh King:
They're not cheering, "Boog Powell," are they?
Mark Leibovich:
I don't think so. Unless Boog Powell was out on the stage. I mean, what's interesting about that is the NFL PR mavens have always been trying to put human shields around him, players that you couldn't possibly boo. I mean, just people beyond reproach, and they surround the commissioner with that, and yet they still find him, and they boo lustily. It's he's become this Vince McMahon character and I still don't for the life of me know why they put him through that. Why don't they just find... You're in Dallas, okay? Get Roger Staubach to come out and announce the draft, hug the players. You're in Chicago, get Dick Butkus to do it or Brian Urlacher.
Josh King:
I mean, he had Troy Aikman and Staubach right with them, all these great Cowboys.
Mark Leibovich:
Make them do it. I mean, pay them something. Really, how hard is it to go out, read an index card, and hug a guy in a suit.
Josh King:
But you mentioned Vince McMahon, WWE, NYSE ticker symbol WWE. You look at that video, filling AT&T stadium, the spectacle, and the TV rights, and the commercial opportunities involved. You almost say, "I'll take those booze for a few minutes if it gets people to tune in." You also write about this amazing example at one of the drafts, I think 2016 Laremy Tunsil, because Tunsil was headed for a top 10 pick, and you can tell me what happens, but in the end of the day, it was almost accepted as part of the drama of draft day.
Mark Leibovich:
The reality show, yeah. Laremy Tunsil, I mean talked about as like a top three pick from a offensive tackle for Ole Miss. Great player, he's feeling all good about himself, and then as... So this is in Chicago at this old theater, forgot what it's called, but right as the draft started, and people might remember this, there was this... Someone hacked his Twitter account and put out a picture or a little video... It might have been Instagram. No, no. It was his Twitter account, a little video of him smoking out of a bong with a gas mask-
Josh King:
A gas mask bong.
Mark Leibovich:
... attached to it, a gas mask bong. Which is a bizarre site to see anyone in a gas mask, let alone an enormous like six foot seven guy with a bong attached to it. A very troubling look, I would say. This thing is the only thing people are talking about, it's viral is heck, all the media's going crazy. He's dropping like a stone. He doesn't go one, two, three, four, five, so all the mock drafts that had him going in the top five, out the window. Teams that needed an offensive lineman, there's the question, is this guy going to be drafted at all?
Mark Leibovich:
What is this? Is it authentic? What was he doing? Who took it? It was bizarre. That became the story of the draft. This kid, Laremy Tunsil, eventually was drafted by the Miami dolphins at 12, but he probably lost tens of millions of dollars and watching his reputation and this nightmare play out, riveting for three hours. Again, it was a great story if you're watching, it's like watching a train wreck. Then, the next day, Roger Goodell, and this was one of the many sort of inelegant comments he might make, on an interview I think with Colin Cowherd, or it might have been Mike & Mike, one of those safe sports interviews he does the morning after, he said, "Well..."
Mark Leibovich:
He was asked about the Tunsil story and he said, "Well, that's what makes the NFL draft so exciting." Basically, hey, it's reality show fodder. Eric Winston, who's the President of the NFL Players Association, played for the Bengals, he then just absolutely went on the Twitter tirade against the commissioner for saying, "Hey, so this kid gets humiliated on national television, his dream just gets raked over the colds, and all you can think about is how this is great for drama."
Josh King:
All of this marketing and decoration of the site was all about welcome to the family.
Mark Leibovich:
Yeah.
Josh King:
The NFL is a family and this is the day for these hundreds of kids to realize their dreams and get assigned to one of the 32 teams. But in fact, it's all business.
Mark Leibovich:
It's certainly all business, but yeah, you go over... Wherever the draft is held, certainly that year in Chicago, there's banners all over the city with the NFL logo on it, the shield, and it's just like welcome to the family, because these great football players are joining a family, at least for a total of 3.3 years, until their non-guaranteed contracts are ended by the players. Yeah, if this were a visual thing, I would show you on my iPhone, I have a picture of me standing with my arms folded in front of a welcome to the family sign in Chicago, but it's no one's family.
Josh King:
To bring our conversation to a close, Mark Leibovich, you write about the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, and two men that are destined to have their busts immortalized in bronze are certainly Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. Belicheck has this ambiguous place with the league, participating in this sort of how we did it retrospectives on his five Super Bowl wins, but also getting, as you write, [foreign language 00:42:46] when he's forced to play south of the border.
Mark Leibovich:
Yes.
Josh King:
Here, a little bit of Belicheck reacting to that game once they got out of town.
Bill Belichick:
I think we're fortunate there was no volcano eruptions, or earthquakes, or anything else while we were down there, and we have two NFL franchises in an area that I don't know how stable the geological plates were below us.
Speaker 13:
Those were the-
Mark Leibovich:
Wow.
Josh King:
So we were there when Belichick made his strange move to the Patriots, and the Jets, and started this run that has won him five Super Bowls. But we continue to endure his hooded curmudgeonly-ness all these decades. Where is his place going to be in the pantheon of the league?
Mark Leibovich:
Well, look, great coach. Probably the greatest coach ever. As a consumer of the league, I don't particularly like watching his press conferences. I think his act has... I mean, again, personally, it's worn thin, but I don't have to play for him. I think his place in history is assured.
Josh King:
And then, there's Brady. It was his email to you that started you on this journey. It brought you into his family in San Mateo, to their last Super Bowl trip to Minnesota, the action playing out, not at US Bank Field, but at a bowling alley somewhere outside of Minneapolis.
Mark Leibovich:
Edina.
Josh King:
My kids and I, over this weekend, we binged on Tom vs Time, the Facebook series that you write about as well. When you got into that final audio file that he sent you earlier this spring, did you feel like the myth of clock management had really run its course?
Mark Leibovich:
Not really. Look, Tom Brady just wants to keep playing football. Again, if you were a linebacker, a safety, it'd be harder, because his body would be much more beaten up. But Tom Brady is someone that, despite all of the resentment around him, the noise around him, the speculation around him, the snickering around his diet, his training regimen, is a fairly normal and simple guy in his own way. He loves playing football. We can look down on it. But look, I get to do what I want to do, you get to do what you want to do, until we're, I don't know, 60, 70 years old.
Mark Leibovich:
I mean, we don't have any physical limits. I think if you find something in life that you love to do so much, and it's supposed to last only a few years, and you have found a way to cheat time, and then sort of, certainty play time to a standstill when you're into your 40s and you amass what he's amassed, why not just try to keep going? But I think the other side of that is what's it going to be like to walk away? I mean, I've talked to so many people who used to play, who just couldn't.
Mark Leibovich:
I mean, it's like they don't realize how exhilarating that life was. Not so much the lifestyle and the wealth. I mean, that's obviously part of it, being often, there's not a lot of wealth. It's just the exhilaration of being on a football field. I guess you become addicted to that in the same way that we became addicted to playing football in the backyard after school, but that didn't pay as well. But no, I think it's a time... It's like, look it's mortality, in some ways.
Josh King:
One of those people who are addicted to playing on the field and you write about this is Tony Dorsett and you ran into him at a league event-
Mark Leibovich:
In Canton, yeah.
Josh King:
In Canton, during the process of writing the book. I want to hear that 99 yard run and reflect on what it means.
Speaker 14:
... the Vikings, the handoff, Dorsett up the middle. Here he goes. Touch to his right, going all the way. Go. To the 30. To the 40. He's got two men to beat. To the 40, to the 30, to the 20, to the 10. Come on. Touchdown. Unbelievable. Tony Dorsett is in the record books, 99 yards.
Mark Leibovich:
Amazing. Yeah. A 99 yard from scrimmage, Monday night football against Minnesota. I remember it vividly. I walked right up to him in Canton, and like an eight year old I, all of a sudden was again, I said, actually I would've been 14. “Hey, I'll never forget that.” He said there were only 10 men on the field. That thing we just listened to, there were only 10 men on the field for that, because Ron Springs, the fullback, was confused and he was on the sidelines.
Mark Leibovich:
He also pointed out that record could only be tied, never broken. He remembered everything about it. But I've read enough about Tony Dorset's post-playing career to know that, like many great football players, there was an incredible physical toll. He can't remember what he did 10 minutes ago. There's someone helping him at all times. He's in chronic pain. You have these encounters, and certainly in reporting big games, I had those encounters a lot, where you are always mixing the glory with the pain and what the game has done to you. For as sweet as the memories are, the toll is real.
Josh King:
And a guy like Dorsett has those NFL film highlights to look back on, we all do, but not a lot more that he was able to create. You think about this creation of the six part series of Tom vs Time that was in some ways a revolt against the box that the NFL puts its elite players in. "You will conform to the story that we absolutely want to tell of you."
Mark Leibovich:
Absolutely.
Josh King:
But in your reporting, what did you see about how Tom made the decision to show parts of this Chestnut Hill, Yellowstone Club, China life doesn't conform to league mythology?
Mark Leibovich:
It's interesting, because one of the phenomena of modern athletes is that they have social media. I mean, this wasn't true 10, 15 years ago. They can control their message to a point. In the same way that Bill Belichick and stonewall, the media, on a day to day basis from his coaching bunker, but then sort of open the kimono and tell NFL films how smart they are, and make his coaches available to talk about their Super Bowl game plan. Tom Brady is the same way. He decided that, "I'm going to take control of my story. I'm going to go into business basically with my friend Gotham Chopra," who is a filmmaker, who I got to know.
Mark Leibovich:
A very, very talented filmmaker. The two of them basically work together to say, "What story do I want to tell about my life? I want to let people in, I want to give people a sense of reality TV, but I want complete control of it." When you're Tom Brady, and when you have a social media platform, like Facebook, in this case, at your disposal, you can do that. I thought it was pretty innovative. He caught some heat, because he was putting himself above the team, but I found it fascinating and very, very well done.
Josh King:
So on the field, in the injury tent, at the White House, and at 345 Park, the NFL has its fill of challenges. As a fan, as a watcher, as a reporter, does it get beyond them? Will we still watch? Will it remain the greatest marketing vehicle the country's ever created?
Mark Leibovich:
Maybe not. There's no guarantee. I mean, I think the going's good now, right? There's always a story some weekend, whether it's the guy retiring at halftime for the Buffalo Bills or I mean, I had this great little wise ass opener at the Boston thing. I said, "Hey, thanks for coming out tonight and missing the Browns-Jets game." That got a good laugh. Then, go back, catch the second half, lo and behold, the Browns are coming back, and Baker Mayfield's on the team, and everyone in Cleveland is going crazy. This is the biggest story in football for the next 48 hours.
Mark Leibovich:
They can't wait for the next Browns game. Look, it just surprises you. I mean, week one, everything was gloom and doom, the anthem thing, Trump's weighing in again. Then, all of a sudden, Sunday night comes along. There's speculation, "Oh, are the ratings down?" Then, Aaron Rogers comes out, they're getting killed by the Bears at halftime. Then, he pulls like Willis Reed, Kirk Gibson, and then, they come back. I was texting with David Marinus, who, great Packer fan, very ambivalent football fan, like-
Josh King:
Lombardi's chronicler?
Mark Leibovich:
Great, great Vince Lombardi biography. I said, "Hey, go Packers." He said, "I love football." I know that he has a very love/hate relationship with football. But at that moment, Aaron Rogers made his week and he and his son were texting back and forth and going nuts.
Josh King:
That's the memories we make.
Mark Leibovich:
That's what the magic of the NFL is. That's what saves it. There might come a time when the NFL won't be saved, and there won't be something to come along, whether on the field or whether it's Fox wanting to spend however billions of dollars for the Thursday night game to bail everyone out and to sort of keep everyone coming back.
Josh King:
Thanks for joining us in the ICEHouse.
Mark Leibovich:
Great to be here, Josh.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Mark Leibovich, Chief National Correspondent of the New York Times Magazine and author of Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times. If you liked what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @NYSE. Our show is produced by Pete Asch and Ian Wolf, with production assistance from Ken Abel and Steven Portner. I'm Josh King, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties expressed or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein. All of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice.
