Because before taking 50 professional football was really the second or sport. It wasnt something even close to boxing or horse racing even. It was in the background really if you will because it didnt unrated. Ay think about the rhythms of an nfl game. Once television to get a part of peoples homes, given mind 1950 less than 10 ad of american homs have Television Sets. By 1959 it is 90 postwar boom, the growth of technology, spreading of suburbanization, the growth of the Television Set an nfl football fit in perfectly the matrix. In the late 50s you have what was called the greatest game, the game of the century between the Baltimore Court and the new york giants that end in overtime. That became this remarkable event a water colluding everybody start to talk about and then into the 1960s with the title town in green bay and the growth off pencil barty and the ascension of super bowl. 1969 with a great team from the american Football League, theas new york football jets led by joe namath and his problems to be the baltimore colts. After that super bowl three i think was done. America was fully in love with this new National Holiday that is super bowl sunday. It is worth pointing out that we live in a time where there are tons of cable channels. People on facebook, twitter, social media. Theres so much incredible focus on alternative medias and peoples, theyre so much competition for peoples eyeballs. And yet the super bowl year in, year out draws in more viewers. That is a remarkable thing on this Cultural Landscape whether one loves the super bowl or hates the super bowl, people are tuningub in and the tuna for all sorts of reasons as well. You dont even have to like the team. I cant stand either of the teams like her up with the right of the table. Cant stand the new England Patriots. I am genetically unable to read for any team from the boston area. The Los Angeles Rams, not a a n of this team. I dont like teams that move. That breaks the holy world of sports. Theyso with the st. Louis rams d the Los Angeles Rams. Dont like that. It hurts and bases and hurts communities. Despite that people tune in to watch the commercials, tune in to watch the halftime show. They will tune in for all sorts of reasons and people who hold parties just for the purposes of commercials. So thats really a very long answer to question, thats what we are with the super bowl. The one thing im surprised that is them have moved again to saturday or declared a month after the super bowl in National Holiday so people can recover. Host the department of Homeland Security has declared this as a National Security event, and send secret service down for this. Guest and since 9 11 the whole temper of the super bowl has changed in the big way and becomes this kind of National Security event where, i mean, its kind of like a miniature version of everything that is a great deal of the olympics and the world cup, where you have the militarization of public space and displacement that takes place for the purposes of creating this security zone around the super bowl for the purposes of, as you said, Homeland Security because it is seen as a target for terrorist actors but that in and of itself produces a a tremendous weightn the shoulders of the communities themselves. There is a tremendous photojournalistic article in todays New York Times about the largely africanamerican neighborhoods that exist in the shadow of this years super bowl and of the mercedesbenz stadium which is the latest new stadium in the atlanta area, and how these communities have suffered in the shadow of the super bowl. So its a fascinating look at what i h would argue has becomea substitute for urban policy in this country, which is hosted at mega events and why there is such competition to host an event like the super bowl. Host you almost have to have new stadium to w host it anymore, correct traffic absolutely correct. Last year was i in minnesota, a state we know very well but that was illustrative in and of itself because it showed the ways in which if youre able to get your city or state to pony up 1 billion for new stadium, the net that will look upon you with favor. Even if itt means holding their annual prom for the corporate sponsored in and if private that involves subfreezing weather. Host so the mercedesbenz stadium right next door to the georgia dome which got imploded. Didhe arthur bloch pays for this or didth the community . Guest it was a mix. It was hundreds of millions of dollars of public money we need to build the stadium. Arthur blake has an article in the New York Times,es has attempted to like fund these committee programs in the areas around the stadium. But churches were knocked down to build this. Communities were displaced to build the stadium and souris attempted to do some charitable or philanthropic good work to make w up for the damage the stadium has cost. Now there is fear among his investing in these neighborhoods will lead to an onset of gentrification and People Living very precarious housing will be forced out, which is another feature of what happens when students get built in neighborhoods is the areas around them become more highend, and that makes a lot of the folks who live there have to be forced out. Weve seen that in washington, d. C. With the Capital One Center where the wizards and the capitals play, which of course used to be the verizon center, used to be the mci center. Before that it used to be chinatown and now its only chinatown really in regards to the starbucks and the fuddruckers that has chinese lettering underneath the names of these big Branded Stores and there actually is not very few actual chinese and chinese American People left in chinatown. Its because of the role that gentrification plays when the students come into neighborhoods. Host how would go so, and you talk about this in your book, game over, said that politics and sports should not next. Guest he was saying rule number one is jockocracy, should not mix. How would go so with some whos read political as a person that he is talking there is specific about the way as he put it, the jockocracy functions, like the elevation of former players like his hated rod castmate Frank Gifford would be elevated to the highest as the former jock and because he was a former jock he is somehow given this platform to google to speak out. He was saying this was as a critic of the jockocracy, and this idea that if you wanted to speakrs about politics in this construct you would find yourself isolated, find yourself iced out and you would find yourself without a place in this world. If you want to be somebody who is a sports commentator, if you want someone who is an exathlete who wants wants to be a part of this world, or even if youre a pro athlete who wants to use your hyper exalted broughtt you by nike platform to like to sayr, something about te world, you will pay a price for that. That is the role of the jockocracy and, of course, we are watching this game this year, the shadow of Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who i would argue has been colluded against to be kept out of the National Football league, his shadow looms so held over this game. I can explain how if you like him but because he violated the rule number one of the jockocracy about mixing sports and politics and protested Police Violence and racial inequity during theinin National Anthem by taking a knee. He was on his last season, he threw for 16 touchdowns and only four interception. He finds himself without a job inh the nfl and effort to t his been an ongoing pollution case against the nfl. For this use game you have a ton of highend halftime acts like rihanna, cardi b. Thats the first time cardi b has been mentioned on cspan. Pink, all of these artist refused to play at halftime show of solidarity with Colin Kaepernick who has critic this artistic picket line for it was a difficult for them to find musical i acts who could actual, and play the halftime show, which has been this sub story. Its been such a story, actually i called itit a sub story like a subterranean story that really is a being talked about at the super bowl but its such a big deal that the ship the National Football league canceled their annual Big Press Conference with halftime act because they were scared that groups like maroon five were going to be pressured by the press to say why are you performing when so many are discussing it will not do this in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick. Host so nike in a sense is a good Corporate Citizen by taking Colin Kaepernick on as the client and building an ad Campaign Around him, correct . Guest itss interesting. Nike has taken part in what is now referred to on madison avenue as local advertising. Its this i did you appeal to peoples social justice instinct woke advertising identify a product with positive social justice at you for people who you believe of course Colin Kaepernick is pushing for for a positive agenda and i cannot the product sale. For nike weve only seen this, proven to bet very lucrative. People mights remember when nike and feel its Colin Kaepernick campaign, there were predictions by the president of United States, his fate and escapes me, but the president of United States said that nike would suffer terribly for this ad campaign. Country Music Artists put out tweets with a filled socks with the nike swoosh and the cut them up and it was like this is going to be the future of nike. It will be destroyed. The opposite took place. Theirr earnings shot through the roof because of the association and approved to be very lucrative. And this is important to this weekend is that nikee also produced a Colin Kaepernick jersey, a black and white jersey with his number seven on it and this we can people like lebron james and kevin durant, the two highprofile stores argument in the National Vessel association autographed themselves wearing the jersey. Its like his shadow over this game. Zi two years after his plate and the National Football league is substantial. Host is it fair to say that nike saw this as a moneymaker . Guest yes. I certainly think so. Nike doesnt anything for free and it doesntso take prisoners. So i view it as a very canny attempt i niketh because this is something nike is been doing for over 30 w years, which is they take whats on the pop cultural edge. They take rebellion and they stripped it of its content. There was a people who brought in a person who at the time was a littleknown independent film maker named spike lee to fill with Michael Jordan these incredible blackandwhite ads about its got to be the shoes. They also had an ad campaign with john mcenroe at the height of his tennis powers and the athlon was a rebel with a cause. You never found out what he was rebelling against and you never found out what the cause was. Yett john mcenroe was a rebel with a cause. This is really noteb new for ni. To me its just the latest iteration of them attempting to take rebellion and strip it of its political content andse then repackage it and sell it to consumers. That being said, it also i think that a very positive Ripple Effect when he did so because it showed a lot of athletes that okay, you may violate rule number one of the jockocracy. He may find us on the outside looking in ofre the sport you dedicate your life two, but that doesnt also mean youre going to be thrown into the memory hole. You are not going to be a commercial afterthought. You are somebody who can reemerge stronger, if you will, league that the could damage your brain and damage your body, and so you could almost have your cake and eat it, too. Host want to show some video from september 22, 2017. Get your reaction to this. Wouldnt you love to see one of these nfl owners when somebody disrespects our flag to say get that son of a bitch off the field right now . Out. Hes fired. Fired. [cheers and applause] guest racism. Iba think that host where do you see racism . Guest this is very clearly, the speech was in rural alabama and he was very clearly met too do what this president does best i e would argue, which is demonize and the fight people. In this case you would have a very specific set f of circumstances were almost entirely lacking if the players that were taking this stance, not against the military and not against the flag. There was so specific about that come through when they talk about it. They were taking in the to speak about the gap between what we are told the flight in this country represents and in the lit reality of africanamericans in the United States, particularly in their interactions with the police. Taking a knee is a longstanding luca protested it dates back at least to dr. King and dates back in sports the 1959 when a track rider sat during the anthem. I believe her name was Rose Robinson. I will look that up in the break but Rose Robinson in 1959 protested the cold warte and the nuclear buildup. This was nothing new. Instead of doing what i would argue the president would and should do which is try to engage intellectually withas wise why people take this exporter step, instead he chose to demonize and divide. Whats interesting is as where doing this interview right now, the transcript of Donald Trumps face the nation interview has always been released and is asked about this. Very interesting to see how his tune changed. He did say think aboutic s. O. B. S on face the nation. He didnt say w anything about they should be fired. He was as a Colin Kaepernick in the protest and he said we were able to pass Prison Reform which president obama was not able to do. So he immediately liked took it to this achievement about criminal Justice Reform and then pivoting toot criticize presidet obama. I just thought that was a remarkable pipit away from the kind of raw meat and potatoes these are s. O. B. S and they should be fired for disrespecting the flag and disrespect our military. Instead, he was like we are trying to do criminal Justice Reform. I thought there was a very different kind of answer. When he made the speeches come in the same speech i believe that you showed, the also a comment about how the nfl has gotten soft and about how its not as serious physical leak anymore for real men and all this sort ofy like manly toxic masculinity stuff about how real men get hurt and the league is trying to identify the. He was asked by face the nation how we feel about his son, his 12yearold son played football and he said it would cause a tremendous concern. So those are two for significant pivots from the political line on the nfl that took place and part of me wonders if this has to do with the 2018th election results, part of me wonders if it has to do with the fact that nike did not go down in flames when they embraced Colin Kaepernick. Region wasw what the behind this, but the pivots themselves to be a significant relative to the raw meat and potatoes that are being servedp before. Host your book a people search of sports in the United States, the subtitle is 250 years in politics and sports. Guest thats the thing. Its called, howard coso as this said call the room and what of the jockocracy the sports and politics dont mix. Sports and politics of always mixed. One of the questions i sometimes ask people just for fun is, i see who is the first president to ever invite a sports team to the white house for a pr event . And i i ask you for fun or should i host william mckinley. Guest thats a great answer. William mckinnon is a great answer. Oftentimes people say john kennedy or people say Richard Nixon knowing that they were both exports people, or theodore roosevelt. Because of his interest in sports. I say no, the answer is johnson. Not lyndon johnson. Andrew johnson. Goes back to 1866 where he invited a professional Baseball Team to the white house for a needy opportunity. And because johnson was very candidly using baseball as a way to speak about the nation, together in the wake of the freaking civil war. So think about that. You had a civil war and the United States, thousands of people dead in the fields of this country and there needed to be an effort to bring the country back together. And so baseball was seen as a way to do that by andrew johnson, adenosine as way to do that by the people who promoted baseball after that, particularly Albert Spalding as in spalding sportinggoods who made up this idea that agenda by the name of Abner Doubleday invented baseball in cooperstown, new york. There is no record and thats what the Baseball Hall of fame to the state is in cooperstown, new york. There is no record whatsoever that Abner Doubleday ever set foot in cooperstown, new york, and distal i do that we have company did the fifth knew the difference between a baseball and a rattlesnake. Yet Abner Doubleday was put forward because he was this civil war general hero. It was his idea associating baseball with the warnt which meant associating baseball with patriotism which meant associating baseball with the Northern Army and the coming together of the country following the civil war. Host we have seen a few sports teams say no to going to the white house after championship during the Trip Administration. Is this the first time this is happened . Guest you have at individual athletes who refuse to go to the white house over the years for s political reaso. You had, for example, a goalie by the name of tim thomas for the Boston Bruins who is on the right side ofne the political persuasion wouldnt go meet with president obama. You had different players during the bush yearste who would not. I think what of the most famous ones backri in 1992 when you haa play button in the craig hodges of thebe Chicago Bulls who did o to the white house. He showed up wearing i do shaky any given a letter to president George Herbert walker bush outlining, outlining issues with the state of the United States with regards to the war in iraq and with regards to race and race relations. Once the guinness like this is not a new thing of players attempting to not just merely the photo opsle for president , t in the Trip Administration will probably never seen anything like this in terms of athletes, particularly black athletes, refusing to go to the o white house because they object quite explicitly and specifically to who is in the oval office. Host going back to craig hodges, we interviewed him on booktv. That was not a career making move for him tragic it was a career ending before it. And craig hodges was whatifs of athletes in the 1990s. Another one was from the Denver Nuggets protested during the National Anthem, sensory smillie. That was 1996 and the found themselves trumped out of their league. People talk all the time today about why is the he being more accepting of protesting athletes than the National Football league but the nba has its own legacycy of these political athletes find themselves without a home. Precisely because he used the platform to speak up about politics. They violated rule number oneedf the jockocracy, and i think one of the big game changes between the 1990s and today has been social media and the ways in which players, Colin Kaepernick is an example in the nfl, certainly in the nba, players build own personal brand and they built it around politics and to develop a following and makes it a lot more difficult to marginalize them. Like i think if craig hodges was around today they would be like hashtag signed craig hodges, or mahmoud abdulrauf, hashtag mahmoud abdulrauf, it would be just so much ferment semantic the political situation that would have been difficult a modular synth and remove them from the sports. Host from a book you cowrote with Michael Bennett, Seattle Seahawks guest now with the philadelphia eagles. Host things that make white people uncomfortable is the name of the book. Guest he wanted a to call things that make white people uncomfortable at dinner. Host with covered this book is well on booktv but heres a quote. Thats what makes me i so uncomfortable when people on the business and accounting side of my life ask, how are you building a personal brand . It rings rains so ugly in my es because the brand is a product. Guest i think Michael Bennett is one of the most extraordinary and Exceptional People ive had the privilege to meet what i have been doing sports victories what iro did, e book with them in the first place is because who he is, Michael Bennett. Esp to work i within and i met m on stage in front of 750 people in seattle at seattle town hall. I was asked if i would interview him publicly several years ago. That is where i i met him was n stage, and we just, we provide so well and i was so moved by what he had to say that afterwards he said hey, i think that doing a book. I think things that make white people uncomfortable. I said i do about the title. We might deed to do something method but i did honor to work with you. When Michael Speaks about that, about brands, it rings so true because we are at a point now where athletes are like corporations with legs. They have a whole set the people who work for them and work with them. They have the person get the person behind the person. Its easier to get to Vito Corleone and to get to some athletes. Michael is somebody who just walks the streets were relives and lives his life and does command activism and you dont have to get through people to get to him. Hes trying to live an authentic life, very inauthentic world which is a world of professional sports. Host good afternoon and welcome to booktv on cspan2. This is our monthly in depth program. One author, three hours to answer your calls. This itnd is offering Sports Writer david simon, the author of several books, also the nations Sports Editor and writer. Here is, the nation magazine i should say. Here are his books. His next book and then a coauthored book with the the john carlos story about the 1968 olympics and some background to that as well, game over how politics has turned the sports world upside down 2013 2013 brubrazils dae with b the devil the world cu, the olympics and things that make white people uncomfortable we mentioned that coauthored with Michael Bennett, and his most w recent book jim brown last man standing well be talking about all the topics in those book. The number are up on the screen 12027488200 for those of you who live in the east and centrao time zones, and 12027488201 if youia live in the mountain ad pacific time zones. If you cant get through on the phone lines but still want to make a comment we have social media avenues for you. Were going to scroll through those as well. Well see them on the screen, just remember book tv is our handle for those. Dave you mentioned one bookn how owners are ruining the games we love bad sports, ioo was despair dged to write that wabook by being a longterm residenttb in the washington ar. And the ways in which over the two decades ive lived in this town thuation in which that Football Team became to be the sporting life evolved, to now being thee sort of thing where people are tired of this team, exhausted of this team, and exhausted with the owner of this team. Exhausted with what hes done. Disorganization, and seeing that, and seeing the way it actually hurt people i cared about. People in my barber shop, and people around me, and also seeing the way consciousness grew around the name of the team and how it was seen as a racist name, a slur, and his inabilities to have any sort of sensitivity towards that issue whatsoever. Thats really what inspired me to write that book in particular. Although hes certainly not the only owner i speak about. Peter you do a whole chapter on dan snyder and game over, but you never mentioned the red skins. Dave thats a rule at pacific a, we say burgundy and gold, but we dont use the name itself. And thats something we stand with proudly, and i try to adhere to that no matter what media im on. Peter what has he done, dave ziren, to earn a whole chapter in game over dave zirin he was suing ticket owners who were unable to renew their tickets. He bank erupted a woman. Theres the ineptitude of enforcing his will on the club, and hiring and firing coaches. How he charges for the littlest things at the stadium. Finding he was buying a bags and bags of Airline Peanuts and attempting to pass them off as fresh to the fans. So its like its the small indignities and the big things as well. At present hes attempting to secure a ton of public funds in real estate to move the team into washington, d. C. , including attempting to push some legislation into the congressional budget that was not able to be passed at the end of 2018. And so, in all of those ways you have dan snyder as this person, and coupled with his utter inability to try to talk or meet with people, particularly in the native American People who object the name, its been exhausting to have him as a leading sports figure in the dc area. Peter ive been around washington long enough to remember when everybody here ate, breathe dranks the teams, the redskins, and it seems to have faded over the years, but the franchise is still very valued. Dave theres an expression about being an nfl owner, its like being a bartender at spring break. You would have to be utterly incompetent to not make money. The things about this Football Team it was by far the most lucrative franchise in the Football League. It was a National Brand, and yet today, i believe its number four on the list of most valued franchises with teams like the patriots and the dallas coins ahead of them, and nobody sees them as a National Brand, its not like with the cowboys, their a negation of what a National Brand is. F if you go to a game, or a Pittsburgh Steelers game in landover maryland you may be in pitt. The fans come out in full force, and take over the stadium. Its nothing like it used to be where the whole stadium was rocking with burgundy and gold. Those days are done. Peter can the nfl fire an owner. Dave no, the nfl cant fire an owner, they can force them out if the owner b acts in a way that is seen as not being in the best interest of the league. And thats true of all the sports lesion. You talk about Donald Sterling saying racist things about magic johnson, the nba forced him out because it so embarrassing to him. He was forced to sell his club for 2. 5 billion, to be forced out in such a kind way. But thats really the only way to have an owner leave, if they do something so incredibly embarrassing, just being a Franchise Owner is not enough to get you out of the league. If anybody would qualify, those, it would be doin snyder. Peter laura ingram had comments about basketball players and their political actions. Laura ingram if they ask ljames and fellow nba stars ken durant about what she descrieks as trumps racist comments. Sa i feel like our team as a country is not ran by a great coach. Its not even a surprise when he says something. Its like laughable. Its like its laughable but its scary. Right, right. Because i shouldnt be num to your racist comments, or numb to this behavior. Im numb to this commentary, must they run their mouths like that. Unfortunately some adults and kids take these comments seriously. There might be a cautionary lesson in lubron for kids, this is what happened when you leave High School Early to join the nba and its always unwise to seek political advice to someone who gets paid 100 million a year to bounce a ball. Andme lubron, and kevin, youre great players, millions elected trump to be their coach, but no one voted for you. Keep the political commentary to yourself, m or as someone once said, shut up and dribbal. Dave and the backlash she received was so satisfying. Because the idea of shut up and dribbal, you may as well say shut up and dance, sing, entertain, its telling people they need to be less than fully formed human beings who have thoughts and feelings about politics. It tries to push the idea that politics are just for people who have bad hair cuts on capitol hill and not something we shoula all have the right to be able to speak on. And in respects i think what lubron is talkingri about. And has a bigger social media efollowing than the president. I think it connects with millions of people, and athletes historically whether were talking about muhammad ali, billy jean king, theyre often able to be our Truth Tellers in society. They are able to speak about issues that do in fact connect with tens of millions of people. I view laura ingram as a Police Officer attempting to make sure the players shut up and dribble. What lebron james did was take that vile phrase and turned it into a miniseries. Where he spoke about the history of politics and the National Basketball association. So its brilliant, and also shows that i feel very gratified about this that were not the only people having these discussions about sports and politics its not broken out into the mainstream, and i think thats why people like laura ingram are so panicked because there is a recognize of the influence they have. Peter and youve written about the miami heat wearing hoodies, after tray von martin. Dave that to me was the game particularly in the National Basketball association because you saw other players pose with hoodies, put them on social media, and this is at the beginning of twitter a as this phenomenon people would use. So you saw them going around the traditional filters of media, and producing these viral photographs of players wearing hoodies and the way in which mthat influenced discussion abt that particular case. And i mean thats really remarkable what took place Trayvon Martin was from florida, and this is an important point. There had already been dozens of walkouts and around the Trayvon Martin case, that shows to me one of the things i think is so important. Oftentimes when athletes are political, we decontextualize in a way thats unhelpful. The way it works is the protests invariably start off with you, and then they ricochet to people, where athletes respond to them. Thlike mohammed alley did not create the Antiwar Movement but then these athletes can then influence what takes place off the field. So theres this incredible interesting dialectical boomeranging effect from one end to the other where its like a conversation from protests off the field and on the field in ways in which they can serve to grow each other over the course of this dialogue. Peter why did you choose jim brown as the subject for your latest book . Dave i found the issue of jim brown the person as fascinating. Le theres been only one biography, but if you lack at how many biographies there are about muhammad ali, they sell thousands of books. The idea that theres been only one other biography of jim brown, when i was looking at his life he was arguably the greatest Football Player in nfl history, someone who made a contribution to the black freedom struggle i of the 1960s where he created these things called the black economic union. It was a interesting formation, and there was the experience in hollywood in the 1970s where he starred in some of the eras most known or notorious films. There was an effort to try to make hollywood more racially equal and balances in terms of voices behind the camera and in the production areas and his inability to do that, but his efforts to do so i found fascinating. Theres his work with gangs, in his organization he called a and so in looking at all of this, in total, i was like this is aee person who has managed to be relevant and active over the course of six decades. And then right now, hes been in the news very recently, and i was fortunately able to touch on this in the book. His support and interactions with donald trump, and him trying to be a voice in favor of donald trump, and a voice that inside the white house. So just this way in which jim brown is constantly restless. And wanting to be not in the public eye, but making some form of public impact, i found really fascinating. And something that i felt like i really wanted to write about and tackle. Its a difficult subject because what i found is that jim brown, its a very polarizing person, whether youre talking about his support of trump, his personal life,f or his work in the 1960s where from v doing the researche was very critically of Martin Luther king, and the ideas of civil rights marches and protests. Just like hes been critical of john lewis, the civil rights veteran who is a member of congress. He refers to civil right marches as parades. Thats something jim browns been doing for 60 years. Someone whos had a very course of politics that are controversial and polarizing, so that was a very meaty subject for a book. Peter has america been a successful organization. Dave i would argue its been very successful. And jim browns ability to leverage the celebrity to reach atrisk youth is something that he should get all the praise in the world for. Its a remarkable set of work. Now, whatum i try to do in the book though is have people a understand that his workers for example, with donald trump, and his black with work with the blk economic union, they all reflect the common team in terms of where he sees changes coming from. Which is not from the government, which is not from struggle, which is not from protest, and i thought that was so important to write about because i know a lot of people who i write about this in the book who when he came out in support of donald trump were shocked and appalled. They were like this is not my jim brown, and what i try to write in the booked is to say ts is jim brown and if you look back over the course of 60 years youll see this is somebody who is using his politics over the half of the 20th century. Peter this is video of trump tower, 2016. Couldnt have been a better meeting. The graciousness, the intelligence, the reception we got was fantastic. What are some of the specific policies you guys talked about . I think if you talk about what were trying to really do from the urban development, and job creations are everything. But i think were talking about what entrepreneurship looks like individuals themselves. And i think what America Program as done for many years, we have 3040,000 game members and people who have changed their lives. What we believe with the Trump Administration is if we can combine these two powers of coming u together, forget blackr white, black or white is irrelevant, the bottom line is job creation and urban development in these neighborhoods to change the scheme of what our kids see. How would you characterize of americans during the campaign. Do you feel it was appropriate . Hes been wide open to helping us change. You go back 22 trillion since president johnson was around, and you think about what that is or what we saw in poverty. 22 trillion we havent addressed yet. So for us as a black community, for trump to set up there, and say im going to do that, for mr. Trump to go up there thats what we like today. Were not here to talk about the past. Were talking about going forward. Ive been live listened to and we definitely have a partnership. As an extension of the Outreach Program you followed so closely, mr. Trump made a commitment to improving the lives of African Americans in this country and this is going to continue the work we started during this campaign with the national coalition, and now with jim brown, ray lewis and their organization. And the president lect was enthusiastic about it and committed to doing it. Dave theres so much i can say about that. First and foremost that was right after the election in 2016. The first thing i would ask is where has the Economic Development been . Where are the urban programs . Where are all the things trump promised . He controlled congress for two years. What was hisis praise what do you have to lose for voting for me, whats been gotten is a lot of racial demagoguery or its been used as a racial demagoguery about the nfl players, which what made ray lewis, and jim brown seem like a betrayal to a lot of people in the nfl and sports world particularly when you have athletes like steph curry, and Colin Kapernick standing up to the trump agenda. I dont have to go through the laundry list but when you have a president called outs for unfair housing practices in the early 19370s, fastforward to what hes done as president and some of the comments hes made. This has been a place where racism has festered in this country. The growth of white nationalists, and clan in the streets of this country, its been a difficult time in the last couple years. So this question to jim brown does he feel like the support is worth it, i know how jim brown would answer it, he would say yes it has, looking forward to having the ear of the president , i would disagree with that. Peter did jim brown cooperate in your autobiography. Dave i was able to go to his house, and stay there for a couple days. He was generous with his time and i was able to interview him. Ite wasnt the sort of thing we were working in conjunction with one another. But i was able to get several days with him, be able to sit out on his deck which oversaw the whole of los angeles, out in the West Hollywood hills, and it was the sort of thing where jim jubrowns a tough guy. He is a tough guy. Os and he wasnt knowing to talk about anything he didnt want to talk about. So i was, as a writer, trying to get what i could from him. Most of the time what he was talking about was just looking back on his time on the world and look forward as to what we saw in the future. What was interesting is like he still had this restless i wasnt surprised at all when he came out for donald trump and willing to make himself a lightening rod of controversy. Willing to criticize john lewis, and go against the kapernick push for social and Racial Justice because hes always looking for that next fight. And hes not comfortable. Keep in mind the Cleveland Cavaliers they won the World Championship in 2016, in the nba, and they were the first team from cleveland to within a championship since jim brown in 1964. S when they won in to 16, they brought jim brown on the stage, they said he passed the trophy to lubron james. If jim brown wanted to he could sit on his laurels, and be lauded,te and people wouldnt talking about violence against women, and his past, and hes chosen instead to align himself with the president who has his own issues of violence against women, and both of them willing to excuse those in each other to create a partnership. But im not sure what the partnership is for other than the promotion of kanye west political actor. Peter dave ziren in your book a quote, im not saying the only reasons ive gotten in trouble with the police or that im black and outspoken, although if you study history those are two damn good reasons. Dave when they have intersectded with the issue of violence with women the idea that well, this is something thats only taken place because of being black and outspoken. And i challenge that line of cugument in the book, because i think when you do that you then erase the experiences of the people who have come forward, and particularly in this me too era of having their truth be heard and not be drowned out, and for speaking out you may criticize somebody like jim brown. Peter are you a sports fanre and do people enjoy watching sports with you . Dave one, i am a sports fan, yes. And two, if anybody wants to watch sports with me i promise you youll. Have a good time. Do i like talking about stuff thats not really xs and os in sports . Absolutely. Do i likent to dissect the commercials or policies. Absolutely. Or saying i interviewed that player, do i like talking about that . I like doing that too. That feeds my enjoyment because i like looking at the players as individuals and not merely as laundry running up and down a field. And i coach my sons basketball team. Im involved in sports on the level of more than just this kind of critic. I like being immersed in it. We had a game yesterday, the dragons, home park, we did very well. Peter okay, now time lost because i didnt want expect that to be the last words out of your mouth. Dave my son hit a 3pointer, it was very cool. Peter i appreciate you helping me get back into rhythm. How did you get into this. Dave i always thought it was in my dream to do but i never thought it was possible. But when i was Teaching School in washington, d. C. , i was a thirdgrade teacher in my early s20s, i was getting ready to e married, and my wife to be, who im still with, said to me you really want to do the sportswriting thing its now or never, because were going to create a family, and this is the time to take risks and figure it out. So what i did was called every newspaper in the maryland, dc area and said hey, ill do anything to work there, but in return all i want is a little space to write a sports column, and then just pay me whatever crud you have left over. So my first job was sort of the thing where you made a few hundred dollars a a week, but i had to sell a few hundred dollars a week in ads to make my but i was given the space to write a sports column, and it was the best education i could ever have. I didnt go to journalism school, i learned to write at newspapers, and im absolutely indebted to everywhere that gave me a chance. Peter what was the path from that first job and where was that to be the nation Sports Editor. Dave that was in st. Marry county in maryland. Then i worked for the prince georges post, which is a blackowned newspaper, and i overheard my editor there, a man named Augusta Floyd speaking to a friend about politics. It turned out we had a lot of shared political views about the world. I said to him hey id like to maket my sports column more political, and he was very open to it. And once i started writing it in the prince georges post my brotherinlaw, wasga into this new thing called social media, and it was new in 2004. He put my column out nationally on these lists. Im very indebted to him, and robertlipsight who is the great chronicler of muhammad ali, he got in touch with the nation and said i think i found your guy. Peter and youve been with the nation ever since. Dave and robert lipsight has been a friend and mentor and i have no words for how amazing he is. Peter where did you grow up . Dave i grew up in new york city, i grew up a huge fan of the new york football giants, jets, nicks, nets, and growing up my room was people like keith hernandez, lawrence taylor, dwight gooden, i had no idea they had serious cocaine issues. It was like the tony montana allstars all around me. I was a huge fan of sports, and i memorized every statistic, i would read the back of baseball cards. I never really thought too much about the politics of sports mahmoud made the decision to knock them out for the anthem. I was able to interview him about kaepernick, and i was able to say to him,o you should know you changed the entire course of my life by doing what he did. He was so gracious and humble, it was remarkable. Hand it was cool to interview m because id been trying to teinterview him for 15 years because of the influence he had on my life, and his political stance, and he never really wanted to do an interview. And after Colin Kaepernick made his stance, it made mahmoud more available to make his stance. He said a set back is nothing but a set up for a comeback. Peter i was able to site the 1972 lineup to him. Dove i bet he was impressed with that. Peter no, because he was watching the horse race. Dave i a interviewed peat rose before, and count him to be disturbingly gregarious, and he wanted to talk about everything. So i had a view of him that he hes beyond peter lets take some calls, and hear from glen freeland, michigan. Caller thank you all very much. And i like the al puchino scarface reference there. Im a trump voter, im not a blind supporter, but about trump and the black community, under trump we have the lowest black Unemployment Rate in u. S. History now. Trump just signed that criminal Justice Reform bill that was applauded by people like jones, and the black environmental ryactivists from the obama administration, hes pardoned black felons that obama never did, and as far as his history on race, Jesse Jackson, and people like that applauded him for all he did for the black community for years and years before he became a republican. Peter okay, we have the point, dave . Dave first and foremost what i was talking about specifically was programs aimed at urban america, that we have not seen. Infrastructure projects and the like of it and there were tremendous promises put forward ho make that reality. The low unemployment is a product of an economic expansion thats been ongoing for years. Honestly. Thats the first thing. The second thing is when we talk about criminal justice, and oriminal Justice Reform, this isnt about doing a compare and contrast with president obama, this is about thousands of people the Grassroots Level who have been fighting for criminal Justice Reform for years and put extraordinary pressure on the federal government to finally dc something about prison expansion, three strikes and youre out laws, and the like. Ih think its important to contextualize the climate in which these have taken place. And lastly, i think Jesse Jackson would take issue with the idea that for years he supported donald trump as a friend, there are these awards that trump won in the 1980s, that are often trumpeted that people shouldcu look at the twitter feed of kevin kruz. He shows where the awards come from and why. And theyre not awards that are have to do with Racial Justice. Caller guys, im not a sports fan butak i found out frm an excellent documentary about larry dobe that he was the second person to break the color line in baseball, why isnt he mentioned more often . Dave he should be mentioned more often, and big shout out to boulder, colorado, larry dobebl integrated the american americae with the white sox. Larry dobe was an absolute trail blazer, he came on the seen shortly after Jackie Robinson, i think the fact that Jackie Robinson had so much success with thehe dodgers, and the dramatic arc of what Jackie Robinson went through playing for the brooklyn dodgers has obscured larry dobe. It shouldnt have. We need larry dobe education, book, and his story is one that deserves to be held aloft. Peter and you write instead ofly about Jackie Robinson, his testimony, and was Branch Rickey a hero, or in your view . Dave its not the same as we were talking about in regards tw nike. Branch rickey saw a moneymaking opportunity. He saw the country as having made a big shift awards to world war ii, awards of the number of African American soldiers who fought and then returns home to desegregation of the army by harry s truman, all of those things were coming together, and Branch Rickey thought of the moment to integrate Major League Baseball. The commissioner who upheld the generation to keep the league white. Until someone else was put in place. Branch rickey saw these factors coming together, and then he looked for a type. People should realize theres a lot of people in the black community that were not happy that Jackie Robinson made the choice. They thought it should be jack gibson, or someone who kept the negro league a lot. Jackie robinson was seen as a hothead who came out of ucla, Branch Rickey was looking for a type and he found that type. It. Peter i have heroes growing up, now with social media we find out the things that disagree with and never knew do you have to put on blinders to become a fan . Dave i think we have to take the blinders off and be conscious sports fans. I think well be better sports fans for it. Its important to look at what we like and dont like about sports and the individuals who play sports who we can challenge it to change, and challenge sports to be better. Peres nothing wrong with doing that. Its something wevewh historically asked of other culture parts of our societyre whether youre talking about music or film. You see these questions coming up with the me too movement, and yolk theres anything wrong when you factor in the fact these athletes are role molds. We can talk about how much better it would be if firefighters or teachers were role mold models, but its the d expression you dont have to believe in gravity to fall out of an airplane. We should ask the question what in fact are the athletes modeling. Er peter is it insert your team here or play against the new England Patriots. Its hard to find teams to cheer for because the patriots are playing the l. A. Rams. Dave i have a hard time rooting for the patriots. Let me say this before massachusetts and connecticut, and rhode island, before that falls on my showers let me say piits difficult to not have an incredible amount of respect fon the new England Patriots have done. 13afc championship games in 17 years. This is a league that is built to create parody. Its a league thats brilliantly constructed salary constraints, and scheduling, and so a team that was terrible one year could be great the next year. So you go unlike with baseball i wouldul argue you go into every season with hope that you have a superbowl contender in your hometown. Unless you live in washington. I had to throw that in there. Somehow dan snyder has managed to beat the parody rules. And bob belichick, and tom brady have been able to beat the rules of parody, and make the championship games in 17 years, this will be their ninth superbowl, but going to nine superbowls inn an nfl career, when going do one is a incredible career implement is remarkable. That being said im from new york city, and i cant get over the fact they are a massachusetts team, and their success torments and tortures me. Thats where i am with the new England Patriots. Other people will say thingsng like they cheated, they deflated the balls, they were filmingte opposing teams. That to me i dont take too seriously. Partly because i think every team in the nfl, is and this is my experience, and i can talk about more off the air, but ive known teams who have looked for edges when you play in the National Football league. These are the most competitive people on earth. Whoever the patriots did or didnt do, i would say they did it better than other teams to get ahead. The l. A. Rams are tough for me to root for because the way they left st. Louis, was a difficult thing to swallow. There are currently four lawsuits against the team for how they left the city. The city is going to be paying for the stadium until 2021. The city offered them 500 million in public money which was turned down by the owner of the team stan kroenke, and the thing about him is he was named after two greatest stars in the cardinals. So idea of this son of st. Louis, named after the great cardinals would give the city away and go for Greener Pastures in california. My dads from brooklyn and it summoned up the memories of growing up about the way the dodgers left for los angeles, and the old jokes about walter omalley, the owner of the dodgers, that are a little offcolor for cspan, but enough of them were told that i knew growing up that abandoning your hometown for l. A. Is the act is a traitorous act in the sports landscape, very difficult to vote for the rams or patriots, im going to root for good commercials and food. Peter those of us old enough to remember it was the l. A. Rams long before it was the st. Lieu allows rams. Dave theyd been in st. Louis a good 22 years, and in that time theyd won a superbowl, theyd been to two superbowls. Theyve certainly made a home for themselves in scientists allows, and it also hurts because st. Louis is a serious intense sports town. And los angeles there have been news reports about this. People are only barely aware that their team is in the superbowl. Theres a lot to do in los angeles, and los angeles is a place that for years, until the rams and the chargers came in the last couple of years, from san diego to l. A. , they didnt have a team. Second largest media market in the country. Not the world, the countrys most popular sport did not have a team in los angeles. And now they have two, and theres no evidence that people have necessarily noticed. Peter dave, why did you say wed have to talk offair about the edges the top 1 of athletes have taking. Dave because i think when you talk about the teams, whether you talk about the medicine they shoot themselves out with, they can get out on to the field, the sacrifices they are made to their physical bodies, they could get out there on the field, and what teams do to find out what other teams are doing to prepare the proper game plans. Theres a reason why the coaches when you see them on television theyre always talking to each other with the clipboard over their faces. Because theyre scared of lip readers. And so its not just this paranoia that exists in a vacuum, there is this great deal of competitiveness, and willingness to win at all costs, and vince lock bardy, ethos, we know that this idea of winning isnt everything, its the only thing. This ethos that says that theot end has to justify any means when it comes to winning a Football Team, which is relating to something we talked aboutm before. Isnt the most healthy thing to model. Peter is there ever a good reason for a city to build a stadium for a private sports zone . Dave i think wed moved beyond the point where its a question of opinion. Because we have so much data. Now were at the point whether its debating whether the sky is blue or not. We have so much data, and there have been so many studies that show that building a stadium with public money is just not an effective use of public money. One of the most famous quotespe about it is that youre better off dropping a billion dollars from an airplane, and letting it land in the streets and having people pick them up and use them in stores. That is a better use of a billion dollars in public money than building a stadium. And it makes sense when you think about it. You have to think about an nfl stadium, how many days a year is it open . Unless youre talking about playoff games, eight times a year, maybe a couple concerts in there, or other events but what happens to the neighborhoods around the stadium when there arent games . All the various bars and restaurants, theyre like ghost towns for goodness sakes, people should do that, go to the neighborhood of your nfl stadium, when there is not a game day. And just walk around. And see what the atmosphere around it is like. There might as well be big bales of hay floating through the streets. This is where we are. And the jobs that are created tend to be nonunion, lowincome, and seasonal work. And so there are better ways to spend money. And then theres the basic moral fact that youre giving a billionaire a billion dollars in 500 million to a billion dollars of public money to build a stadium instead of them building their own stadium. Peter next call comes from margaret in arkansas. Caller good afternoon. I have a comment and a question. My comment is football causes brain injuries similar to boxing. And football and boxing are forms of human sacrifice. Despite these facts is in on football in junior high and college, and the coaches make a living and get very rich off the sacrifices of their players. The players get very little frequently nothing, beginning in sixth grade, boys come to believe they will become rich proFootball Players though these boys began neglecting their Academic Studies in order to devote more time to football. They get very far behind in their academics, and the truth is its more likely, and easier for a boy to become a doctor, than a professional Football Player, partly because of the limited number of jobs openings in professional football. Peter okay, lets get a response to those statements from dave zire in. Dave the way people look at football can be seen in the fact that was a call from fayetville. Peter home of university of arkansas right . Dave this is where football is at its most against and we hear from margaret, and margaret is the voice of a growing chorus of people who are starting to ask this question about whether football is something that will exist into the next generation or two. And football for all of its economic success we talk about at the start of the show, its also something that operates currently with this great existential fear that it may go the way of boxing, the way boxing used to be the number one sport in the United States. And people get up for a big fight but its less and less. This cultural phenomenon that people evolve around, and discussing the rankings over the water cooler. Football has changed, and its changing because science is not footballs friend. The more we learn, the more facts we get, the fact that you had donald trump today on television talking about how he doesnt want his son to play football. When he criticized to nfl for being too soft, and criticized obama for saying something similar. These are important data point we should keep track of as the cultural wheel turns. James revenuesen is a great journalist, he once said the media is much better at covering revolution than evolution. There is no revolution against ocfootball taking place but thee is an evolution. President tony tweet a lot of the discussion so far has focused on male athletes, can dave speak more about women athletes andf the way their contributions are marginalized when we with talk about politics in sports. Dave great question tony. I write a great deal about female athletes both ithistorically and in the prese, what you see with women athletes i think theres a really interesting historical continuum, where its a social question oftentimes the role in placement of female athletes in the broader society. And so when women in general are a part of social movements for womens rights in a particular decade you see the elevation of women athletes, and when those same athletes are pushed barred then you see sports pushed backwards as well. You see that in the 1920s where you have the emergence of postsuffrage momentses and the fact that some of the most celebrated athletes in the country were women, swimmers, in the 1920s, athletes, this was a different kind of era in the 1920s, women in the 1940s when they were entering the factories and they were able to start the allamerican girls professional baseball league, and in the 1950s you saw the way women were pushed off the field with the backlash against women thin the 1950s, then you cant separate the Womens Liberation Movement and speaking about the rise of people like billy jean king, and the great track star of the 60s who is one of the founding legend of the women track foundation. I mentioned Rose Robinson earlier, the woman who did not stand for the anthem in 1959. When you talk about the general sports its not discussed in the way it should be. Of and this needs to be changed. I think today as youve seen a lot of athletes, particularly the incredibly heroic women with u. S. Gymnastics who come forward and influences by the me too movement to speak out against in usa gymnastics you see the way you cant separate what happens off the field with on the field, and the tremendous athletic accomplishments usually accompany accomplishments and a push forward for womens rights in general. Peter and you write rather extensively about a woman named Althea Gibson. Dave the great tennis player, Althea Gibson, 1950s, and really a trail blazer, and someone recognized as serena williams, what makes her very interesting is that shes somebody who believed unlike Jackie Robinson that her play itself was a political statement. Jackie robinson believes, and she would often speak about Jackie Robinson in a compare and contrast mode because she was referred to as the jackie inrobinson of her sport. She believed her play would do the talking for her. And the mere fact in this very restricted lily white world off tennis, that in and of itself is a political statement, and that had a lot of influence in my thinking when i read about Althea Gibsons thoughts about that. It made me realize you really have these two kinds of political acts. You have the ones who are extremely representative, the mere factou theyre on the field is a political act, and then you have the ones who are with it. The ones who use their platform to speak about politics. And Althea Gibson you have one of the great representative athletes, and with Jackie Robinson you have both representative and explicit in terms of him being willing to speak out about politic, in particular after his retirement, as well as somebody who when he took the field it made a profound political statement. Peter i was a mets fan down to the marrow of my bones, thats why for countless fans and me this story has been painful like no other, the ugly truth has been unveiled. The mets werent my team or new york citys team, they were bernie may doffs team. Dave they have been in financial problems for years, which is being a new york team in a publically funded stadium named after a bank, playing ind city field as they are. Citi, and yet the owners of the team, they had a ton of money from them stolen by bernie made off, and its made the running of the team on a weektoweek basis incrediblyg difficult. And on a yeartoyear basis. And even when theyve been able to develop talent that talent eventually is sold by the found. So thats been a very difficult process. To try to remain a mets fan in the context of a team you feel like used public money. The many that went tobled city field, and the profits invested in that invested with bernie madoff, you never like the idea of your team being a Money Laundering operation. It makes it difficult to root for the team. This is where i think it relates to things earlier. Is it difficult to be a sports fan in this climate. Sometimes it is difficult when you learn about the way a team actually runs. When you see how the sausage is made, ifpl you will. I think its so important to focus on the art of the play. Because there is art in sport, and something beautiful about seeing athletes, male, female, what have you, out there on the field. I getos so much out of watching the wmba, and i love going to those games because one of the things it reminds me of is why i fell in love in the first place. Peter title 9, has that been a success . 20,000 people will attend a malo basketball game in the ncaa, 1700 will attend a womens but the money is there for both, right . Dave you go to you con, youll fill out, in a rabid environment, title 9 has been a profound success. Its difficult to even come up with pieces of legislation that exceed title 9 in terms of the actual impact its had on the number of people that its had the impact on. Signed into law by Richard Nixon, and that in and of itself is a lesson. T because it showed the way that public pressure and movement are the context in which title 9 was able to become law, and a lot os but if they dont they should know that title 9s language doesnt say anything about sports. What its about is equal opportunity, and equal funding in places that receive government funding. And that there needs to be equal opportunity for men and em with, but its in the sports world where its had the most incredible effect. The last statistic is one out f three young girls play sports. Before that it was one out of 29. And young girls who play sports, thereshe so many positive thins youre talking about that come out of that socially, Mental Health, whether youre talking about their physical health, and these opportunities with would not be there without title 9, and when you think about the tens of millions of young women its affecter, and i think it changes the way young men see women as well. And i think thats important because when we talk about fighting sexism, the first and foremost is not a discussion not with women, its a discussion with men. And sports is the yardstick for how we understand the question of equality. And it has been since the foundation of organized sports. Thats why i talked about womens sports being a social question. When you think about the ways in started. Rts on was started with the mythology of the level Playing Field, yet women and many people of color were denied a place on that plays field, if you had a push to find a space on the field it both exposed the Playing Field as not being level, and it pushed to make it even more level in a morality play that was m for the public to see. Peter william youre on with dave zirin. Caller last season i became transfixed by bell the running back with the Pittsburgh Steelers, absolute houdini onpo the field. Do you have any insight or information as to why he did not report this year . There seems to be an issue or issues there that go beyond his mere personal contract . Dave yeah, i think this connects with the discussion we were having about what we know about physical health and Football Players. He is a running back with the Pittsburgh Steelers, he is equally adept catching the ball and hee made the decision to not report this year. Hell be a free agent going into the offseason, and hes turned a lot of money down, just under 900,000 a week because he believed hell get more money on the free agent market. He did not want to risk getting hurt this year. That kind of business decision is something thats been unheard of in the nfl. So what im finding out is that there is so much savviness and the willing to resist public and organizational pressure because people feel like this is my one shot, this is when im going to make 99 of the money of my entire life, and the average career is 3. 5 years. He sat out and was going to test free agency, well find out if that was a intelligent decision or not. If nothing else, the new york jets are willing to spend a lot of money on a player whether they can play or not, so theres always the jets. Peter it was estimated that 75 of Football Players out of the league, and 60 of nba out of the league are either bank erupt or in financial disrepair. Dave those numbers dont surprise me. Theres so little financial education. Its better now, they do it with the rtc emphasis the rookie transitional program. People speak to them who are Financial Experts to speak to them about how to put moneyoe aside, and the importance of savings. And for a lot of players that kind of Financial Literacy doesnt exists, and for myself at 19, 20, 21, folks should ask themselves what was your level of Financial Literacy at that age, and would it have made a difference if you had 100 or a Million Dollars. I got in trouble when i was buying 4 subsandwiches, and i didnt realize i was writing checks that were beyond my account number. If i was doing with that 4, i would have done that with 400,000, and it would have been a car instead of a sub. And so it doesnt surprise me. I can the league i think the league and union will take important steps to make sure the number goes down in the future. It is pretty harrowing when you meet players and ive met players particularly at these rookie transitional programs. These players are heros and they say you saw my allstar games i now have no money. Their whole life have been just about themselves and just about their threepointers or ability to run and all of a sudden but its always been about them to yeah, its amazing the amount of blinders one has to have first of all, to even go to that level but then the one and done program, it exposes the ways which are institutions of Higher Learning are the Minor Leagues for the National Basketball association. I think we have to take a step back and ask yourself do we approve of that as a starting point. I dont think there should be a one and done role. If you are 18 years old youre old enough to fight in war or drive a car so youre old enough to do these things and should be old enough to get a job and play in the nba. If the nba wants his players to play here and bring themselvesve to both the college into the audience where theres more excitement to come into the league and were developed physically and mentally they seem to play in the league but as a rule it does not seem very just for even constitutional list to think about the idea that we will constrain your ability to make a living because of the fix we have in with the ncaa. Host next call is joseph, new york, go ahead. Caller yes, hello. Im a fan of the mets and the Giants Stadium and the mets is the home team played against the giants but anyway, i used to play for i had a friend of mine and he had just such a high iq in the game and i had a high iq but made it as a freshman but here is the thing. You are in politics, too, every game has these rules you have to follow the rules. With democracy you have to follow the rules but for some reason 1 and im not a harvard graduate or something but these people i have 100 times more than i would ever need but look, [inaudible] do you know the captain of my best quality was bobby brown and i felt like i was a part of him so i was working downtown and he was a broker host i apologize but were getting a little off track butt im not sure where he was going. Guest i think he sound like hes got some Amazing Stories and he said one thing i want to pull out of that which is one of the reasons why we are so attracted to sports because there are rules in politics and rules in society but oftentimes you see those rules get flaunted lately and no one has to pay a price for that and at least in sports between the lines there is a set of rules that make sense. His wife cheating makes people so upset in the world of sports. Its like steroids in baseball and the p rose betting against his own pictures and games made people so upset in the idea of tom bradydy deflating the footbl made people so that because you want to feelre that at the very least this could be one space where rules are respected and everything is aboveboard and onr the level. Host richard, massachusetts, good afternoon. Caller good afternoon. Hello, david. I know so many people like donald trump [inaudible] recently he had an interview on fox news and heco was caught and that trump is serving to the bestst interest for the country and [inaudible] my question is that i these interviewers never follow up but what is it about him youre thinking is in the best interest of the country, taking children away from the country and putting them in cages . And defending the white nationalists march in charlottesville, virginia, yelling and screaming about the jews and also before you probably saw that Jackie Robinson the 42 out of the hundred New York Times instantly and i thought that was a great event showing jackie from the beginning to his whole life more or less, im sure you sought. Host richard, thank you. Guest it was wonderful. I think what you mentioned was the we have to keep in mind is that as much as pro sports owners any mention bob kraft like to brand themselves with their team you know, these teams were hours before it was ever there is. If you love the patriots it does not mean you have to love bob and you can also be critical because youre right. Shocking that this did not happen on fox and friends because it would have been a great followup question in what ways do you think the president is working in the best interest of her country and can you give us concrete examples. He would be as flummoxed as i would be if asked a similar question. Host you say the teams trust and not the owner but is there an owner out there that has done a good job. Guest i love the owner of the green bay packers. Host how does that work you. Guest they are a Community Owned team. You buy shares and you get for buying shares from the packers is i thank you get a piece of paper that say you are a shareholder in the green bay packers. You know dividends and stock from it but the satisfactionn that you are somebody who owns a piece of this team and by owning a piece of the team you are guaranteeing two things which are very important. First they will not move on like the cleveland flash or Los Angeles Rams for example but you are getting more than that and also know that publicly the public pill is not going to get hosed for things like stadium improvements or roads because they sell more stock and then more people get to own pieces of the team so its almost like this active Community Solidarity to be the packers in green bay and its something that is written into the nfl bylaws then no other team is allowed to be owned in this way but grandfathered in for my back when the nfl was this rinkydink small operation and trying to think of a way the team in green bay. Host there has to be a thing to make sure the team buses show up on time and manage everyday affairs and make decisions so who are the they . Speak to the they are the vast apparatus that runs the team but that they exist in green bay and there is an apparatus at the top and executive group that makes these decisions and certainly there are greater and muscle evil owners out there and i like to look to the ones that use their own money for stadiums and rely on public funds and the other thing that makes a good owner under like gary jones and the cowboys that only because they alleging they have to be have unique insight into what makes the team and they hire experts to hire their job and leave them alone which is something to his credit he has done. This is Bill Belichicks team and Bill Belichick has shown himself to be a master at operating nfl Football Team but if jerry jones is the owner of the newington patriots and Bill Belichick will last three, four years not unlike Jimmy Johnson whose another incredible stinker about football who owned the last of years and one of her bowls and him and jerry jones went completely. Host fedex field, Wrigley Field in chicago, when you think about the corporation or corporate this of naming stadiums and getting advertising insights its happened with soccer for years and years and even in nba they are wearing guest yeah, now they were the locals. Host ge on the boston celtics. Guest this is not something new but back in the day when people would go to oakland doctors games it was a ball hits here, when a free suit at harrys. There was always been advertising in the stadiumts ana recognition about how its become big business. Corporate naming rights are something that are a part of the advertising when you talk about American Airlines youre talking American Airlines arena and i think one of the things about it is most of these stadium contracts that money goes back into ownership i like the sellig of that naming rights and that something thats always been bothersome to me and youli consider how much public money goes into funding the stadiums. Let the public have that money as well for roads, schools, libraries what have you. Host lets hear from ethan in arizona. Ethan, are you with us . Not there but lets hear from steven, massachusetts. Steven caller hello, guys. E eat show. Many questions. Im going to say in the 60s when i was a teenager i was a huge fan, baseball fan of the white socks. And the cubs one of those rare persons at the Football Teams but i looked at Baseball Players almost godlike and in the late 60s the sky came out with a book called and read that and instead of cutting me off from the sport he gave me a seat to the players and the teams and to see them more realistically and i wanted your take on that. Guest i love this call. I will tell you why. Steve is talking about paul for about the 1969 season he spent with a team that no longer exists, seattle pilot. When he wrote this book it was about the ultimate violation of what wee talked about at the top of the show, the role of the jock that sports and politics dont match because he did an incredibly important act ripped away the curtain and talked about what players do when theyre bored and when players drink and how players meet women on the road and all the things you read the book now and its almost quaint in terms of what the players did and how they live their lives. It is sweet when you read it now like a sweet look at a bygone era but that at the time jim found himself harassed out of the sport and our friend pete rose we spoke about earlier was famously got up on the dugout and cursed him out and derisively called him shakespeare was a big software pete rose. I truly love this book that if someone asked me can you read five books about written by athletes, its at the top of the list is a classic. The one he wrote after that fall five, paul six because he gets so into his life and family that he would do updates about them and i dont know if the brown family is watching right now but i done a couple over the years and just a terrific human being. Host next call, sherry in illinois, youre on with dave zirin. Caller i want to piggyback on the last call because i was the big white socks and and i remember when had to take a streetcar from the south side to play ball with the white sox at kaminsky park and i have a correction any question. Host jerry, were listening. Caller okay. I know you are knowledgeable, dave, larry came in with the Cleveland Indians and be to isolate set up, im sorry, i thought. I misspoke. Caller the only reason i bring it up its so important. Guest that was the case of i absolutely note. Indians are very redfaced right now. [laughter] caller my question is im a big hockey fan and i see in the nhl maybe one person on the team of africanamerican descent or non, what is going on . Host washington capitals. Guest theres a history of a lot of exclusion and racism in hockey which needs to be addressed. It one of the things we know about sports is when young people have access they play. It becomes a question of access and becomes a question of Player Development in question of reaching out and not having this exclusionary system and i appreciate the color very much for bringing that up. My goodness, i did say larry play for the white sox, what a ridiculous error on my part. I apologize. Thats what i call it on first error. Host well good he was listening and you that right away. You talk about some of your favorite books and we ask the authors on this program with some of their favorite oaks are in the top of the list is Redemption Song, mohammed ali and the spirit of the 1960s. Guest this is a book i mentioned beforepl about when made his stance in 1996 and maybe one to explore the intersection of sports and politics but Redemption Song that may meet once become a sportswriter. Mike writes aboutrh the politicl history of mohammed aliki in a y that has so much rhythm and nuance and excitement that im reading this and thinking to myself why cant sportswriting be like this and why can it be political and why cant they talk aboutes what is being said off the field or outside the ring and how that influenced what happened inside the ring and its a way he holds that story. And maybe want to become a sportswriter. I recommend it to people all the time. When they say to me with one sports book i shouldld read, i always say dont read mine but read Redemption Song by mike. Host the other three books tu sent to us are not sports books. Song of solomon, american tabloids, fear and loathing on the campaign trail. Guest lets start at the bottom. Fear and loathing on the campaign trail by thompson is a book a friend ofur mine said toe when i said i wanted to go into journalism he said read this book and read it twice and ill give you an idea of what journalism should look like and sound like. Fear and loathing on the campaign trail have this great impact on me because i was reading it and its so fun when you read something with this greater purpose in mind when you say to yourself im going to try to figure out not just the entertained or be a consumer of what im reading but the art of how it is being written and thats how i read that book and it affected me very strongly. In reverse, american tabloid by james on roy im a sucker for those kinds of books and i love historical fiction and give me american tabloid. Read it three times. Song of solomon by Toni Morrison is the greatest fiction writer to ever walk the earth and i think nobody does the final line of a book or final paragraph of oue book better than Toni Morrison. You should be reading all her books and recommending them to others and what other people Say Something like im having a little trouble getting throughge bluest eye i always say to them, keep reading. That last paragraph will knock you on your behind. Host currently reading, football for a buck, crazy ride and crazier demise of the us as well by jeff he wrote a terrific book about my nets from the 1980s i believe it was called the bad guys one, i hope i got the title right. Every time Jeff Pearlman writes a book im into it. Hes an interesting writer in that he writes with the kind of bourbon excitement that i think bring the sports alive and i grew up a fan of the uss out and love this ragtag Football League that was playing in the spring with quilting names and the memphis showboat and the pittsburgh maulers and the new jersey generals and this was a lot of fun for me. Host did President Trump have hand in ischemic. Guest thats a big part of the story thatd President Trump brought this lead down to the very popularity and trump was the owner of the new jersey generals and it was President Trump who had the book outline to control the league to try to move from being spring football to taking on the nfl in the fall and argument of the book is the President Trump was hoping to do is to get the league to the nfl to take in the us as as all teams and he would be the owner of an nfl team which was his goal the entire time. That blew up in their face but its a wild story and told very well. Host colorado geezers tweets into you guest in the United States. Host talk about what felix due to the cities. Guest shot out to the people of boston who pushed out the summer fed. I spoke about this earlier with the super bowl and it ties directly toe the olympics about get displacement in the materialization of public space and its been a feature of every Olympic Games and its the reasonon why city after city toy has been across the world have been standing up voting and referenda and trying to keep the olympics out of their hometown because particularly in the post 911 era the weight of hosting these games is destructive to the city not constructive and in brazil if you know what happening right now in brazil in terms of its political and economic turmoil you cant separate that from the fact that it made the decision when Economic Times were good hosting the world cup in 2014 analytics and 2016 back to back and i wrote a book about that brazils dance with the devil and the devil in this case is these mega events and the old pics and the devil is the world cup in the operation that pushes for what i would call a sporting shot doctrine to use the words of naomi klein with a sporting events come into the country and theyre able to play a role in remaking the economic priorities of the country but because they come wrapped in sports there able to be push the. Host 2016 the summer olympics were in real. Guest yes. Host whats been the effect of all the stadium and all that housing going into the city of rio . Has it been a positive guest no, it destroyed an entire neighborhood like the place i went to and it displaced people and created a situation where a lot of Public Services that people were counting on were underfunded anda created a situation where these mega events were granted with the Ruling Workers Party and open new far right leader to come take power. A lot of political analyses are not talking about thissp but iny opinion, is a scary figure in many respects for how we speakse about women and gay people and what he wants to do to the amazon rain forest when Indigenous People in the Brazilian Embassy and in the political analyses that im looking at there is nothing about the ways in which the world cup in the limericks helped pave the road for him to take power because it bred anger and satisfaction. In 2013 before the workup there were mass marches taking place on the stadium as they were being built and the resilience by the thousands protesting soccer. Think that would be like new yorkers protesting pizza. You never see that. You thought it was a. Host 1968, mexico city, don carlos did not just come out of a vacuum. Guest no, he did not. Tommy smith and john carlos, they know that moment where don carlos [inaudible] they dont realize it was also a movement called the olivia project for human rights. Not just a moment but a movement in this moment was built for the liberation of black athletes and built as a way to organize not just a protest but a boycott of the Olympic Games. It was doing so around a series of demands like this inviting south africa and rhodesia from the old pics andav getting aver, head of the International Olympic committee for sticking with slavery avery for what were perceived as his racism is head of the international of the committee. It was builted around the series of demands and the boycott did not happen thomas smith and john carlos felt they needed to do something to commemorate the struggle and so in october 1968 summer olympics were in october that year and people were taken aback by that but it was the storm season in the mexico and they did not want to have a limited but in october 1968 they raised their fists but did not raise their fists with gloves on each hand but werent wearing shoes to protest poverty and they were wearing beads from her neck as a symbol of the history of violence of lynching in the United States and their armoring funds that said olympic project for human rights has to be mentioned in the silver metal he was an australian runner named peter who was also wearing a button. A tremendous show of solidarity and an image that has stood the test of time that in my standing over sonny are the two most famous sports photos of the 20th century. Host john carlos, the giancarlo story is coauthored by dave and we covered mr. Carlos back in 2011 on book tv talking about his book and heres a little bit of what he had to say. I go upstairs and im knock on the door and a guy comes to the door and looked for me and invited me in and i go in and they offer me cookies, soda, say much, whatever i want and im sitting downpupu in some of thee people look to me and ive seen them on tv but im still not putting the dot together in terms of where i am. And then after2 20 minutes, 25 minutes a door open here comes a Living Legend and the first thing im thinking to myself oh my god, my mother used to be iraq in my pocket because doctor king walked out of the room. Who wouldve ever thought that little Johnny Carlos would be in the room with doctor king . Ul he was like gods First Lieutenant sent to earth. When he came and i realized right away that not only was he a civil activist but if he wanted to be on saturday night live stand up as comic he knew how to crack jokes and relax the people and he sure relax me because he had me shaking a little bit. I was there in with the big boys. He went on and made the statement and said i want to come out and support this olympic boycott and i want to support the ohmic boycott and i dont want to be in charge but i want to be second in command under harry edwards. We went on and had strategy about what we do and how we would do it and then he says out of nowhere that he received a letter in the mail and letter said they had a book with his name on it and he would not have to wait long. He when he said that, thats ringing in my brain like a big dong. At the end of the meeting he said you have any questions and i cannot wait to hold my hand up. Yet, i have a couple, talking. First question, did you play basketball and did you box, could you run . He said i could not play groupsd why did you involved in the big movement and he said to me listen, imagine a vote in the middle of a lake and everything is still in the water is calm and he said you take this rock on the vote and hold on the side and drop it what happens . I said they get vibrations and he said yes, it creates ways. Ill go far out into the lake and he saide that olympic boyct is that rock. He said if you guys chose to step back from the all of the games the greatest thing is you are not killing anybody. Not putting anybody down. As a man, woman youre making a statement in choosing to step back and he said to me also imagine what wouldve happened if the black socialists decided to not step back and not go to work would it be as great as it is today . I put that in my basket. [laughter] he said to me john, you had another question and i said yes, doctor king, i have another caution. You said they had a letter with the bullet with your name on it so why would you go back to memphis . Us what he said and what he was about to say no one i pulled my shades down and i wanted to look at his eyes and i did not want to look through no glass. Why would i look in his eyes, baby girl . Why you think so . No, if a man tells me that will kill me, i should be shaky. I look to see if he was afraid to die. He was solid as the rock of gibraltar and not only did he not have no fear but when you look at someones eyes you know when love is in the eye. He loves society so much until he was ready to give his life and when you look at a picture of gandhi your seen love and when you look at rosa loves parks you see the same love. For carl robison, my hero john brown look at his eyes you see the same love and these individuals made the most awesome commitment, not a partial commitment but john collins did not make a partial commitment in 1968 and it was partial, i would not be here in 2011 my day is done. But my day is not done because the war we started years ago a long time before 68 is still goes on today. 1968 [applause] i will tell you guys about that applause in a minute but i got to they have a time schedule so you to keep up. Anyway, in 1968 when you sit back and think about it we were young and idealistic and had a vision of a paradigm in terms of how can we make society better. We looked at individuals stood upep and all those individuals died. Its like that one individual that tried to move that pebble and could not do it by himself and doctor king died. Donnie died. Rosa parks all of them, died. They were out there by themselves. It was the leaders by themselves. Then we said lets get these young individuals and make them understand this thing called Olympic Movement is 15 minutes in the sun for any individual that goes your 15 minutes. Who one the mile unless the olympics, you cannot tell me that if i asked you to mexico, was the hundred meter winter you cannot tell me. Now you got 15 minutes. Idealistically we decide to get this theory going to get on the strain and have discussion well, i dont know about me boycotting felix and i promise my church i would win. I was praying too hard and my mother is expecting me to end and i cant give up my opportunity but ill get this jobavwe and we say look all we t to do is try to have dialogues we can have exchangehi tell you what you can do greater than that 15 minutes. Okay, ill do that. We get on this hypothetical train would start rolling down the tracks and all the people out of the train or waiting god bless america. We are russia, we are cuba, bring on the gold they are all excited. Now we come to the conclusion that we going to do this thing an attempt to make this olympic boycott possible and everybody understand we will make a better situation make society better. Everybody is at the crossroads just like you facing your crossroads in your life. Now, weve got to say where we on the same page will attempt to do something collectively that we come together as unit and now that we say will do this lets stop the train put out the banners and black athletes synthetic to the cause in 1968 olympic boycott of the train and now we start to train up again the people are waiting they are gone. Why . Because america was we talk about boycotting the games i dont want to hear that. You aint supposed to be concerned about yourself but about america and be concerned about me. That is the question. Now we sit back and say okay, all the people out there waiting for gone but we replace them with firebombs and missiles they shot and that the 43 years that tommy smith and peter normal were out there, 43 years we dealt withth arms in chaos and murder and mayhem and then you sit back and say 43 years later and now life has changed from the we the heroes now. Host that was giancarlos back in 2011 talking about the 1968 olympic. Olympic games bring together nations in a contest of as lyricism and its a solid good thing to do. Guest i am not there. I will tell you this. If they could structure a deal of the games so they would be in one set location every four years then we could start to have a discussion about them and how they operate. The fact they go from city to city in an almost viral fashion and leave behind this wreckage of displacement and hyper militarization that is the sort of thing that i could never get my head around. If the obex were coming to the sound i would be protesting. I would protest not out of some altruistic belief about the olympics are but id be protesting because my wife a Public School teacher. I would be concerned about what felix would you two School Funding and concerned about what would happen to her students when you have the hyper militarization that takes place in these states of exception for the presentt military hardware into a city for the duration of the obex and surveillance technologies. We spoke earlier about the super bowl and the ways in which the commercials for such an attraction the way madison avenue loves the super bowl because its their time to shine acyclic. The olympics are where the surveillance industry and thats where they see as their time to time. The hope these incredible expos where the people who run the x come out and see the latest doodads in terms of recording people in finding out where they are going and how to be operational in a way that removes any pretense of civil liberty we might want to have. Often times that maintains itself and ill never forget i was in london for the olympics they had there in 2012 i wasnt there to go to the event but there to do reporting and there was i heard a Police Official asked about the surveillance equipment and he was asked the question what is going to happen to all the surveillance equipment and he said in a british accent, its not like we can put them back in the box, can we . I said the box is a heckuva metaphor in the situation. This idea of a mans comes out of the box and its very difficult to put back in and at the obex are used as a lubricant to make that a reality thats a real problem. Host we had here in washington years ago one of the quarterfinalist for the world cup, didnt we . Wasnt that soccer, that went pretty well didnt . Guest i think thats going back to 94as. Its worthwhile to mention. Host im trying to segue into soccer and i guesst my example was pretty bad. Guest no, no, 911 has been such a game changer in terms of surveillance and militarization that makes it difficult and the world cup its a question like theyre about to have the world cup and theres been all this Media Coverage about slave labor to create the stadium and the deaths that are taking place to make the world cup hospitable and habitable for a country like carter and its so much more difficult to stage in a place where in the United States you could do it in stadiums in the stadiums that exist and have that intensive investment you develop these problems and issues because of the demands from the world governing body for soccer are such that it will create and i will use these phrases again the militarization of public space. Host from brazils dance of the devil, its infamous for insisting with regularity of a metronome the matter the host country that the old stadiums are simply not good enough in the country must build fee for quality stadiums and you refer to him in his book as the slithering had a pizza. Guest no longer the slithering had but at johnny boy and tino. Host johnny infantino. Guest johnny boy i love their names. You have johnny f boy and people can infer what they are saying but i think that the problem with this demand for people quality stadium is a means the existing structure is not good enough. Because the existing structure is not enough the demand for these Construction Projects and these Construction Projects are invariably rushed and workers die on these projects because of the rush to get them and invariably they are so hyper investment focused and yet after the world cup is over what is the use for the stadiums . There was talk in brazil about using one of the stadiums is an open air prison after words. Another stadium theyre talking about renting it out for weddi wedding. Theres not a lot of use particularly if theyre built in the space that is not necessarilyye a soccer mad environment, for though countries bigger than the current to dental us, not soccer mad everywhere and building stadiums in areas that arent going to use them in the world cup was done and that is why there are so many protests focus on the stadiums because they became these living symbols of a set of economic priorities that absolutely meet people obsessed. Host if you want to have a chat with author and sportswriter dave zirin 20274 2027488201 oh mac and youre not the only writer in your family, are you . Guest my dad has written a couple books very proud of him and they are terrific books. One is called the mother court for the Southern District of court, its core thats gotten publicity for reasons you may be familiar with. Theres my dad on screen. He wrote a book about the Supreme Court and very proud of him and love my dad. Host hes not a writer by d trade. Guest lawyer by trade he wants me to join the Legal Profession but i did not. Now hes joining the writing profession. Makes me feel, kind of good in a circular sort of way. Family treat going full circle. Love my dad lots and he is actually hero to me because he went to sundance because he interviewed in a movie about Donald Trumps relationship with roy, the infamous lawyer and fixer in new york and he got interviewed for that and they sent them out. Host was your dad acquainted with mr. Cohen . Guest i thank you met him a couple times but they were not acquainted, no. Host next call for dave zirin comes from ben in new york city where dave was raised. Caller day, how you doing, ben shapiro. Guest hey, ben shapiro. Caller to be clear, at the rightly funded ben shapiro but a billion baseball minded and shapiro. Important clarification and thank you for that. I was wondering your thoughts on the upcoming baseball season and also how you see given its racial issues . Host mr. Shapiro, telus myself, what you do . Caller i dont like that much anymore but it was for a period of time that baseball writing for Bleacher Report and have a twitter handle and dave and i have met a few times. Guest ben is really good. He knows a lot about baseball, more than i do. You should be answering thishi question. Ill give my answer and if you have a different one looking that will be remembered possibly as a transformative figure but first of all, giving his success on the diamond and now his refusal to go to the white house. It puts him very much in the crosshairs in the history of boston sports of people who might not like their black athletes to be political and yet i think he will transcend that and be the player who people rally around and that is what will make him important to remember beyond what he does on the field. H caller i was going to say i thank you got a chance to leave his mark in a number of ways a Major League Baseball, as well. The factor will be whether he stays in boston and you never know in this crazy baseball world but i would say that going all out to resign him he is i would say after brady right now he is probably the most popular athlete in boston which is saying a lot even boston sports history speed. Guest author one more question at ben, what you make of all these free agents not being signed and what is that a about and is that a failure of the union . Caller i know a lot about baseball, dave, but you know more about the history of the union that i do and i would go so far as to suggest and im not only suggesting this but there were probably end up beingre occlusion investigation if it continues because machado and harper its rare to get two free agents of that caliber in the same season and their really isnt that much heat around them but more owners out there saying they dont want them than they do and i know theyve had issues reporting on the attitude and the fat and the other but theres no questioning the use of sobriety remain unsigned is going to be a good question and the owners will have to answer point. Guest them and hundreds of others and host ben shapiro mentioned collusion. Guest he means the owners actually deciding among themselves just like in the nfl they allegedly have decided to not sign colin cap next or lisette what the lawsuit portends but they decided they will not find too incredible free agents. He mentioned them by laughing, many machado, famously with the Baltimore Orioles and finished the season with the dodgers and bryce harper with the washington nationals. Both of these players were rumored to get 300, 400 million contract. Host there saying is only we dont want to go there be to write and theyre not allowed to do that but its a violation of union law and when they had been caught doing that in the past its cost them tens of millions of dollars. This cost him hundreds of millions of dollars but very difficult to prove collusion and there needs to be a smoking gun and needs to be a whistleblower and needs to be a paper trail and its not enough to say in cap next case, there are so many many quarterbacks how could he not be signed and its ridiculous or in this case this is bryce harper and many machado and these are generational talents are they not been signed and is not enough to prove collusion. You do need something thatea is transparently concrete. Host dave zirin, you mentioned the la dodgers at Dodger Stadium is one of the icons of the league and no controversy about Chavez Ravine . Guest so many controversy about Chavez Ravine. A once known as the poor mans shangrila is a community of latino mexican immigrants and apparently it was this incredibly beautiful bait they created among themselves as a place to settle in los angeles. Word of the ravine and this format should go off which reach this lake of the border to mexico was a pilgrimage in this area and that area was torn apart and interestingly it was first torn apart by Public Housing and they try to protest and sat in it Chavez Ravine and then there was this incredible twist like a novel by james elroy about selfindulgent list for the people who are promoting Public Housing were accused of being and brought in front of the house of american activities and you had this land and the land was grabbed but with the help of an actor by the name of Ronald Reagan who promoted it heavily and they were able to create this stadium for thehe nw Los Angeles Dodgers but at the time their plane and the calci calcium. Host and not been open since 62, i believe. Guest yes, the First Stadium landgraf. Terrific musical out called the battle of the Chavez Ravine that goes through the entire history. Host raymond, kalamazoo, michigan, hello, raymond. Caller yes, [inaudible] this was so long overdue, you are such a hero of mine one giant energy this platform is long overdue and his voice needs to be heard and there should be more journalists of integrity as mr. Zirin. What a great show this is i want to say thank you. God bless you both so much. Host thank you for calling it. Guest thank you, i sit here and imld a huge in kalamazoo. I joke. I appreciate that. One of the things that when i started doing this work back in 2005 i made a joke where i said take all the political sportswriters and have our annual meeting inside a phone booth. It was not the thing that people did but a very shallow time when its been gratifying in recent years to see this generation of people fighting politically about sports and athletes speaking out and understanding the power of the platform which i think ive forgotten for solid 20 years as it became more about corporate sponsorship and making money and the disavowal of politics. Host not sure what league it is but kalamazoo has a professional hockey they play at the fort wayne comments and in the midwest they used to be the International Hockey and to call it semi pro or you call it guest you might call it minorleague hockey and fort wayne a place where you have roots of course. Host absolutely. A lot of minorleague teams in that area. Do they have the same issues we are talking about here with the professional teams . Be too great question. I would imagine so because of the pipeline not producing the players but i would need to investigate that further. As ive said to me often i talked to canada my hockey knowledge is not nearly what it should be with regards to host are some of the issues were talking about unique to the us or are they international issuestl . Guest they are international. They play themselves out in a different character like racism can play itself out differently in europe than here and sexism plays itself differently than south america and they are common denominators internal progress in terms of movement and in terms of leading figures and those things are very indigenous to the country themselves but as far as the broader basic struggle like how do you eliminate racism in european soccer and how do the women soccer teams in south america a greater recognition and funding these are battles that happen International Component and fastening to study and compare and contrast how it plays outio and wanting ive learned is that what happens in the United States has an impact on the world and things like title ix or the movement of women in sports and when common cap next to any players of color were taking any insect release from the world what happens in the United Statesen its watched very closely by these different leagues around the world. Host comes from michigan, john tv. Caller hello, dave. Peter. Time color on book tv and youve done a wonderful job over the years, peter paid i love your style. Question for dave today being super bowl sunday and the nfl we all know a lot of money and i was wondering about the ncaa and the pay for play what your thoughts are on that. Host thank you for calling in. John, do you have an ncaa team you follow . Caller oh, yes, im a notre dame irish guy. Host there you go. Guest in michigan which is very brave. Nicely done, sir. So interesting. Im against the idea of these players not being paid for what they produce and the ncaa athletes who produce revenues should be paid for the revenue they produce. Its somethingro. Absolutely unseemly about coaches who get paid millions of dollars in Television Deals the rake in billions of dollars and yet the position of the player is largely powerless. S. This is a problem and it needs to be rectified. The ncaa is the source of the problem and that its the great protector of the system but the nfl is part of the problem as well and they love having this free minorleague that allows them to develop talent and invest in money. People investing in the money are the students and the public and the rise of things like activity fees on College Campuses and the rise of tuition on College Campuses and that goes into supporting these bigmoney high revenue Sports Programs and the color mentioned notre dame and when you look at a place like notre dame it says so much about the way sports is developed in this country. College football in particular. Notre dame used to be a Small College in a textile committee in south bend, indiana that had a Football Team got national recognition. But now notre dame is the industry in south bend is a marked textileleou industry in h bend. Its whether or not notre dame has a good season is such an economic Ripple Effect throughout south bend. We dont take a step back and ask ourselves is this a healthy state of circumstances where the entire town and entire small city is dependent on the success of what our socalled amateurs playing the sport for coaches who make millions of dollars. host and Michael Bennett look what make white people and comfortable is that ncaa will give you ptsd. Guest this comes from michael. The book is my goal through and through and this was his formulation about posttraumatic stress system of playing in the ncaa because there are a couple things that happened when you play in the ncaa and you play bigtime college football. The first is you become addicted to theset accolades and fame and become addicted to what robert we mentioned earlier is a great Sports Writer for the New York Times and you become addictedm to the warm of these people idolizing you and when that warm goes away theres only a tiny minority of players who make the pros so when the warm goes way they all of a sudden feel like theres nothing there for them. That creates a form of ptsd and the other part that michael was referring to is an addiction of violence. An addiction to the feel and the emotion of basically getting into what amounts a car accident in a week whether talking practice and playing as well. He mentions a player in the book who was caught on camera running through a plate glass window just to feel something again. A lot of players also talk about Michael Speaks about this in the book about players who after the fact i think im depressed and there is nowhere to talk about Mental Health and no space to talk about it and no space to talk about the adjustments of being on the College Campus and getting this warm and finding out you really are left with nothing when it is all said and done because you are allowed to take the classes you wanted to take and devote the time to your studies were take advantage of that scholarship and thats what people always say. You cant payha the players are getting this great education. They dont ask what the substance of the education and what are they able to study and learn and what is that degree worth when they are done. Host army in the evolution, not revolution, period of athletes being played guest absolutely. Its moving faster. I wish there was a word for it. You are seeing more and more athletes stand up and assert their power and i just interviewed recently quarterback for northwestern when they attended a forum at northwestern and that was incredible story in and of itself. You are seeing more and more playersak like opd and social media helps with this but openly speak about their recognition being exported b. All that would take is a couple teams refusing to play and wanting things like healthcare before they got back on the field or wanting to be able to have mediation process they felt like they are being worked too hard. Seventeen players have died in offseason drills that the year 2000. In the ncaa. Pe that number was in the nfl there be congressional hearings about the state of the sport. These things happen and they are barely remarked upon. This news came out with the death of a player youre off at the university of maryland. His name is jordan mcnair. Theres so much that needs to change with the ncaa. Whether or not they are going to change without being forced to change is another question but one thing we saw couple years ago was the players at the university of missouri made the decision that they were not going to play as a protest against racism and the School President that he would hang on and laugh because there were these protest on campus last testedhe week because they would have to sacrifice a Million Dollars a week if the players were not taking the field. Host who is the head of the ncaa and what is he or she get a connect. Guest mark numbers and his pay is something that is subject to a lot of scrutiny and questions. He is believed to be over 2 million a year but keep in mind the ncaa is a nonprofit. The nonprofit. Host is that not like the about . Guest it stripped away its own nonprofit status because it is so much stuff for that fact. The ncaa and the nfl as recently as a few years ago were both declared nonprofit. Stunning if you think about it. I dont know a lot of nonprofits where there are 14 Vice President s each of whom make 400,000 a year and upwards but that is how the ncaa operates. I view it as a the great civil rights writer views it as, taylor branch, the cartel is a closed operation that exists as for the explication of these athletes. Host but it exists because to get, butproduct was still on their product players were paid. Thats the part that he, is the most transparently wrong about their arguments. If players received some sort of salary for the revenue they brought in and the money is there. The money is there when you see coaches have 9 milliondollar contracts, annual contracts, 10 million in the sport has changed so dramatically. I did an interview in sports radio show speaking about this very subject in the person and i was talking about important players being paid and at first the host said to me, if i had you on my show ten years ago i would have called you a knot and made fun of you and gotten colors to call in and make fun of youou but now when i look at the money being generated i cant make fun of you anymore. It is too obvious. I said well, thank you, i think but either way i hear what you are saying. The coach of clemson, they just wanted ncaa football and the coach made seven and half Million Dollars a year somewhere in that range with the bonuses he got but clemson won the t National Chairmanship in 1981. Their coach danny ford made 50000 that year. How does a 50000 a year job become an 8 milliondollar how does that happen . You look at the growth of Cable Television and look atee the growth of corporate advertising and then you ask yourself, why do the people who put blood, sweat and tears and create the sportsp not get some of that . Host where can people hear your radio show . Guest thank you for asking. I do a podcast called the edge of Sport Podcast and get that off of apple. And itunes. I do a show called the collision on wp fw out of pacific radio here in washington dc. Available online. Activeisms and he weaves i together in a beautiful way. He is truly and did i said that right so we do this showing to and we have a lot he is truly generous as wef say. Did i say that right . And so we do the show together and we have a lot of fun. Peter if you look up eds of sports youll find the show. Tom thomas has appeared on book tv. Go to booktv. Org, type in dave zirins name up in the search bar and you can watch them all on asyour leisure. Thanks for being here on book tv. Caller great talking to you dave. I want to get back to the Public Financing of stadiums and one thing that is never talked about, ive never heard one word of it in a public environment is about the idea of imminent domain. Now we dont want bureaucrats seizing and running the teams, but why couldnt we have giv, or builts a stadium for a team why shouldnt they have the right to imminent domain to keep the team from moving, just to hold the team . My own personal belief i think that model for a sports Franchise Ownership should be the green bay packers. Peter something we talked about a little bit earlier. Dave im sure our caller from vancouver is still smarting over the sonics. Which is due to Howard Schultz selling the team to the Bennett Family who moved the team to, as everyone knew they would to Oklahoma City to create the Oklahoma City thunder. The use of imminent domain is somehow into the sports bylaws of Major League Baseball to say this would not be allowed. They wrote it into the bilaws after joan chronic passed away. Wanted to leave the padres to san diego. They said no, citys can not own teams or run teams. When to me it makes sense. Imagine every time you saw a jersey or a flag waving from the back of a car from your local team that you know that money was going back into your city, instead of the aforementioned dan snyder. And that would say a team could not move, so the seattle sonics would still exist in seattle. And it is a tragedy that professional basketball does not exist in seattle. Peter so who is the government of the big leagues, is it the owners . Period. Dave they act like moses came down with the bilaws, and the bilaws can never be changed, because thou shalt ordain that cities cannot run teams. It really is their owners, they have their ownership meetings and the board of governors, who are a select group of owners, but all the owners have an equal say how the lesion are run. Peter so theyre looking out for each other. Dave oh, yeah, i heard from one owner he funded his own stadium, and he told me about how much backlash he got from other owners. Even though it was his money and his business and his team, and all the rest of it they were upset by him because of the precedent that would create. And it could create pressure on them as well. So, there is this kind of mutual solidarity and distress. Art model, the late owner of the Cleveland Browns and baltimore ravens, he called football owners 28capitalists who act like socialists, so whether he was trying to get he was a bit of a jokester, but what he was trying to get crootsz was these are 28, at the time it was 28, these are 28 incredibly wealthy people who made their money through private ownership, who then look out for each other, and pool the money, and create a situation where they watch each others interested in the broad scheme of the league and arent trying to destroy each other within the league because they know that if say one team is perpetually terrible it hurts the entire product. Peter lets hear from christy, she is in portland, oregon. Caller thank you for your invaluable contributions to the public dialogue. The books have been the fates of strength for my annual fests for years. It is very popular. Dave you mean im f part ofa fest invoice holiday tradition . Caller absolutely, since 2010. Dave that warms my heart, it really is the holiday for the rest of us. Caller so continuing with the same as you know weve had to resist against the paulsons trying to build a baseball stadium and they may be successful at some point, it continues to come up. We had success with our soccer teams the portland pilots because there was an existing baseball stadium so there wasnt really we didnt have to do a major investment and reorganizing our economy, and that sort of thing, and its been very successful. And thats great. Franchise but at this point, other than making city counsels around the country, required reading game over, what can we do. Because these are very complicated concepts and i think that governors and senators they have the apparatus around them to be informed. They can fight back the studies and things like that but a local City Council Person who ends up makingon unfortunately a bad avdecisions on deregulations and other kinds of local things that basically they dont have the apparatus to understand really the peter christy, well get an answer, are you a sports fan at all christy . Caller absolutely. Im a huge oregon ducks football fan but just ducks all the way. And i just prefer college sports. It has changed a lot through the years with the influence of money but i still feel like its a game where people can politics are a part of it but you dont feel as much as professional sports. Peter have you read the Book University of nike. Caller i have not. Peter well christy, thank you for calling in, well spend a little bit of time with what you had to say. But before we get an answer, i want to add something what she was talking about. This is from your book from bad sports. At the same moment his father was demanding 700 billion of our money to bailout banks, merit paulson was agitating for his own little piece of the action he embarked on a Public Campaign for 85 million in public funds from the city of portland, oregon, to build a new Sports Complex from the beavers, and an upgrade on the timbers stadium, who is merit paulson niand who is his father . Dave merit paulson son of hank paulson. Victory of treasury in the end of the Bush Administration who was in charge during the big bailout. T so its a Sports Writer, you live for these kinds of moments where you have hank paulson demanding all this money, and you have his son merit paulson, and what a tirveg dekensian name. Also demanding public funds as well. And the city of portland was very heroic in opposing this. And i think to speak to something directly that christy raised, i think we dont realize how powerful City Council People are in this process. You ask what could be done. If we can get our city counsels to pass legislation that we reject the use of public funds or we demand for every dollar of public funds that go into a stadium project one dollar goes into a library or school fund, youd be surprised at how powerful and binding that kind of legislation can be even in the face of lobbyist, and morrials, and power grabs and the rest of it. So i would argue for people to stick fighting on the Grassroots Level and not give up on the idea that your city council can be a place where pressure can be applied to make sure the stadium land grabs dont take place. Peter did the policiens get theirst money during 20082009. Dave i dont think they got it in full because people had the right opposition in portland. Peter then christy said she was a ducks fan. This is from your book game over i visited the university of oregon. Buildings are crumbling and the faculty and staff have been t,forced to take unpaid furlougs to makeep up for budget shortfalls. Yet the school is not in a state of disrepair. Thanks to nikes em in charge, the schools athletic department, particularly the Football Program is flushed with cash. Forget vegassal, you havent seen exsays until you towered the new 41. 7 million athletic center, welcome to the ncaa in the 21st century, about a corrupt and mangled institution that exists on the sports land. Dave first and foremost, its an interesting experience when your own words are read back to you. I did ride write that. I did events, and the influence of nike is really remarkable. You mentioned the book called the university of nike which i read and was quite good and it details the corporate influence of nike on this particular university, and that exists at other universities as well. And i just think that we have this devils marriage between highoctane, highly financed seorts, and institutions of Higher Learning. And it tends to mangle it. It does. Ande when you have a situationt the university of p oregon that deals with these kinds of budget short. Falls while the Sports Program is flush it sends a message to the community that this is a place p where we stage Football Games that have step classes on the weekdays. Peter fill knight speaking inde 2012 at the memorial servie for joe putern o. He the president of the school the matter was in the hands of a worldclass university, and by a president with an Outstanding National reputation. Other than the details of the investigation are, this much is clear to me. There is a villain in this tragedy, it lies in that investigation. Not in joe putern os response to it. [applause] [applause] dave yieks. Wow. Theres so much there. I mean theres the attempt to whitewash history. Theres an effort to change the legacy of joe paterno when people were reckoning with what he knew or didnt know about child abuse that had taken place at theti hands of jerry san dus, his longtime assistant. And theres the way in which the relationship, that nike and penn state has been lucrative for both parties. There was a whole Performance Center at the Nike University campus in beaverton oregon that was named after joe paterno, there was a Performance Center named after lance armstrong. We get these figures and build them up, and then we find out the truth about them. I think the important thing about them, you have to reckon with the history and the actuality with the history, not attempt to whitewash it. And i think what we saw was a degree of demagoguery at a Public Service. What he said was dishonest. Theres some of what he said thats true and defensible in terms of how the investigation took place, certainly the role of the ncaa after the investigation, and certainly, and i wrote about this, the way the influence that took place in tterms of the governor of the state and what they knew of theiron investigation of san dusky. But the idea that joe paterno escapes all culpability in this process is ridiculous. Peter he got quite a standing ovation. Dave thats called getting a hometown pop. Peter ron in rapid city, south dakota. Caller dave, just a couple of short issues for you and then ill hang up it up and they takr answer off the air. The first one, a couple of callers ago stole my thunder but ill still interested in i bought and read your book, bad sports, and what i want to know is, why in the hell, dont these cities use their powers of condemnation to take these teams over and hold them in the cities . You know and and ill say you know for years i was a municipal corporations lawyer, and i know that you know you can use that thpower of imminent domain for virtually anything. And i dont know why rather than s for stadiums and so forth, that these cities dont take use that power of imminent domain to take these corporations over, and thats not something that you addressed in the book. And i think it deserves a lot more attention than youre giving it. Thats the first thing. Peter ron well have to leave it there. Dave its a terrific example. Ii do address it in the book in concrete examples in term of imminent domain. How many advertisements has it been historically in a way that benefits people, as opposed to i think Eminent Domain is used much more to actually build stadiums as opposed to using them to effect the ownership of stadiums. Its never used to effect the ownership of n stadiums but Eminent Domain is used, it was used here in the dc area, part of building a National Park as a way to take out some of the neighborhood to build the stadium itself. So some of it is how Eminent Domain is used in our society. But hes correct, the power is there, if were willing to fight for it to be exercised, but it will b not be exercised by accident. Because i think politicians have etfist complex, theres nothing they a like more than funding the stadiums because Everybody Loves sports, and you can pores next to the stadium, and what you did. And people associate it with joy, and good feelings, and maybe they can say well the team would have moved if we hadnt built it, yet at the end of the day its not a good investment, and instead it becomes monuments to corporate greed and welfare. President donald emails in, the kneeling insults the nation andte all races and anyoe that u has more discipline than ego. You cannot achieve what footbal players have w without that eth. We reject the protest because they are ungrateful and selfdeceiving, if black lives matters, the players would teach what it takes to succeed. Dave the idea that players dont work extensively in their communities to try to teach young people what it means to succeed, shows this particular person who wrote in has no idea how players spend their time when theyre not in the field. Calling them ungrateful, thats a very ugly word. Because what theyre trying to do is use their platform to speak a reality to an audience that is not hearing that reality. And thats i think what made the reaction so visceral by White America against these protests is that what the athletes were doing is invading their space to speak about police brutality, and say hey, this matters, andte if we matter to you in terms of athletes, and in terms of people to cheer for then this should matter to you as well. Because this is a concern in our community. Theresi nothing ungrateful abot them doing it. Whatit they did showed tremendos risk, if you didnt you wouldnt get responsed like that. I think that response would show what the players were reckoning with when they made the decision to take the knee. It was a powerful statement, Colin Kaepernick lost his job because of the statement, and i think the risk in itself means and translates into our respect whether you agree or disagree, they sacrificed something because they saw a greater issue that needed to go brought to the floor. Peter email, linda, the cost of attending sporting events is not affordable by average working folks, is there any need for franchises to address this. Dave no, ticket sales is not where the money is. The money is in what is called pls, or personal license seats, thatset when people purchase a seat. The money is in the corporate sponsorships. The money is also in sweetheart cable deals, and the money is not in the average fan being able to enjoy their game. Now what i wrote about in others and bad sports is that i think ubthis is owners being incrediby shortsighted. At the end of the day your team is only going to have the energy that demands the public support to get the subsidies to get the sweetheart cable deal if working class fans are into it. So thats where the energy really comes from. It comes from an entire city being behind a team. And if owners dont make it so, regular working class folks can actually attend games theyre knowing to lose that energy. If they lose that energy theyre going to lose public support for their teams. Peter a few minutes left, with our guested mohammad in dearborn, michigan, youre on book to book tv. Book tv. Caller i spoke back in 2012. My question is i wanted to know i think you just mentioned should our professional athletes are they still being considered role models for other teams or only the small activism theyre playing in. Peter mohammad did you grow up with athletes as role models. Caller yes, muhammad ali, kareem abdul jubar, i watched them on tv all the time. Peter thank you sir. Dave athletes are and will continue to be role models. Should they be in a absolutely sane world of our making then the would be the people who sacrifice of themselves on a dayin dayout basis. Nurses, teachers, firefighters, these would be the role molds of our society. I can its because of our addiction in the country to fame, and money, and our addiction to sports itself. Something many of us take part in our youth that creates the necessary soil for the growth of athletes as role models. So thats what i was saying earlier in the show is that these athletes are roll molds whether we choose to see them as role models or not. If a player walked into my sons Elementary School time would stop. It would bee so intense if that took place. So we do need to ask ourselves what are they modeling. So i think the idea of saying to athletes,r okay, having a social conscience is also about having a social responsibility. Towards the young people who look up to you. I think thats very fair in this political climate. Peter ynext call, miles in brooklyn, good afternoon. Caller hi dave, you covered a lot of good ground here today. Its been a good show. What i want to ask about is the nfl Players Association, probably the weakest of the union for the big 4 american sports. And im wondering if you see pathway or a labor strategy for them to get guaranteed contracts . Because you know, in a career thats so short and the participants absorb such brutality, it seems criminal that theyre the only ones that ndont have guaranteed contract. So it seems like it would be important for them to achieve that. Peter you say they dont have guaranteed contracts, can nyou give a little background there. Caller well owners can fire a player and stop paying them any time they want to. Unlike in baseball or basketball, or even hockey. Where the union isnt very strong either. And Football Players have the shortest careers, they sorb the most punishment on behalf of their job. And yet they have the weakest union, the least solidarity, and the worst cleft Bargaining Agreements, and it seems upsetting, and i would like to see that changed dramatically, and i dont know if theres a way among these the players to move in a more positive direction. Dave theres only one way and thats the power of the strike, the players withholding their labor. When o the next Bargaining Agreement comes up. If they do that this is a golden goose, i mentioned it before owning a nfl team is like being a bartender on spring break. It is the most lucrative of the four sports. If the players withheld their labor the power would be the power unleashed would be unbelievable. Gs the question becomes can players strike. Can they feel like they can afford to strike, or afford to sit out a year and sacrifice a year of earnings whether as the average career is only 3. 5 years. Theres an old expression in the labor movements isse that the bt way to win a strike is to prepare for one. Players wouldt have to save mony over the course of years, and be frugal with their money for the purposes of a strike because the nfl owners are not going to give that up. From their perspective the injury rate is high. And the injury rate in the nfl is 100 percent. And its their line about that my response would be the players deserve guaranteed contracts and let the market pay them what they think theyre owed, and lets see what happens in that regard. Not just money, i want to underline healthcare as well. Should be something guaranteed for every player for years after retirement. Peter nflr Players Association preparing for lockoutin in 2021 this appeared in the post. Dave weve known this is on the table for some time. Whether its f a lockout or strk will be interesting to see how that works. I know for a fact the nfl association has been willing to prepare those players for that inevitability. Peter steve in ohio,. Caller im a 71yearold vietnam veteran and i remember thee old american Football League, 19601969. Curthe gowdy was the announcer d i loved it. I believe the american Football League really let the black Football Players they were really acknowledged from that league, not so much in that Football League but the american Football League gave them acknowledgment and recognition. Speedy duncan, i remember them all. And as far as tommy smith and john carlos, and muhammad ali, they made me proud of being a blackk man, thank you. Dave thank you, and ohio the home of the great dave megathy who walked away from the league at a protest to the vietnam war because he felt the league was building up an appetite for war. And he wrote a book about that called out of their league. I love that call because i think the history of the afl is forgotten and theyre willing to promote black playersnd is something thats forgotten, and i really appreciate that call. And i have to say ive heard this so often about tommy smith, and john carlos, and the pride that they instilled in people for an act they were demonized for. It made people feel proud because there was this gap that existed between how olympic athletes were treated on the field. Given laurels, and medals, and all the rest of it and treated when they came back to the iUnited States. And im specifically talking about black athletes. So to have them stand up for that, and not just stand up for themselves, but stand up for people who couldnt or wouldnt stand up for themselves, its remarkable the way in which thats ricocheted across the years. I cant tell you how many times ive done talks with john carlos, weve toured the country, and theyy could be between the ages of 1880 and they could talk about them having the photo up on their wall. Peter have you figured out what it cost a community or the taxpayer to host the superbowl game or what a superbowl game cost the American People with the flyovers, and the security, etc. The police the local police,. Dave it varies city to city in terms of the amount of security they feel is needed. Dand the ultimately of security the nfl might demand for a particular event. Course are talking in the millions of dollars, the flyovers alone i believe it takes 12,000 in gas just for the takeoff for the flyovers, soea were talking about a significant amount of money. And people would watch without the u circumstances. Andri so many people are able to get wealthy from it. Really the closest thing to an american religion, the closest thick to an american language thatg transcends all barriers is people tuning in to watch the superbowl, and stuff themselves silly. Peter are you having a Superbowl Party . Dave ica am. Were going to watch the game, and you know im i maintain i have nobody to root for. I cant root for the patriots, or the rams, but i am going to root for a good game and for seeing my neighbors, and im going to have a good time. Do you think new orleans fans have a legitimate lawsuit in suing . Dave absolutely. My heart broke for new orleans, there was an obvious pass interference call that had not been called, and new orleans would havee won the game against the Los Angeles Rams. I know the city was heartbroken when this took place. They are trying to bring lawsuits, the lawsuit was dismissed. To me new orleans will always have a case because its one of the great cities on the face of the earth, and im not talking about just football. Peter jim from california, we have about 60 seconds for you. Caller thank you and my question was about superbowl the new york jets defeated the baltimore colts and ive heard some comments from time to time that some kind of fix must have been in and what is your comment. Dave no fix. Great win by the jets, 167 and a moment that changed football forever, and the last superbowl the jets have ever won so please dont take that away from us. Peter from bad sports dave writes in the 21st century far too many sports fans have a headache that is rapidly entering my grain territory. The headache is from loving something that doesnt love us in return. Dove i count myself among those. Sometimes it can feel rewarding and sometimes it feels like an abusive relationship, i think we all need to challenge ourselves to make the abuse stop. Peter whats your next book. Dave im putting out an adult book based on things that make white people uncomfortable that will be offered in juvenile facilities, and schools and libraries, very excited about that. As far as the next book, im toying with this idea it relates to the last caller im writing about the mafia in sports. Peter dave zirin has been our guest for the past three hours. Thanks for your time. Hurting mcdonald her most recent book is the diversity delusion, shell be joining us on march 3, well see you then. Cspan where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television company. And today, we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court, and Public Policy events in washington, d. C. And around the country. Cspan is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. Now on book tv a portion of a recent program, the manhattan institutes