The question of who replaces him is a more important one, I think, for the league.
My suspicion is that it'll be a media person. That's where the league is now.
It's, you know, two-thirds of its revenue comes from media and sponsorships, not from tickets and beer.
You're listening to The Brian D. O'Leary Show, your sanctuary for serious content in an unserious culture.
Brian O'Leary here with you once again.
Today we have for you an interview with New York Times writer and author Ken Belson.
Ken wrote a book published on October 14th, 2025, just a few days ago, published by Grand Central Publishing.
It's called Every Day is Sunday, How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell Turned the NFL into a Cultural and Economic Juggernaut.
In the interview, we talk about the book, of course, and we go off on a few tangents, things that you folks, particularly the sports-minded bent, will be interested in.
It's a history of the NFL essentially since about 1993.
That's where the book picks up, more or less.
And it's a pretty extensive coverage of what's happened.
And like I said, the main characters are Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys,
Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots,
and Roger Goodell, commissioner of the National Football League.
So it's a good interview.
Spend a little more time than we had planned, but for good reason, as you'll see.
I remind you folks to go to O'LearyLetter.com.
That'll get you to our sub stack there.
And Brian D. O'Leary on Twitter.
And this will be on YouTube also.
So at Brian D. O'Leary on both of those.
Or all three of those actually.
So stay tuned for Ken Belsen.
Every day is Sunday.
All right, with Ken Belson here, he's got a new book, Every Day is Sunday, How Jerry
Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell Turned the NFL into a Cultural and Economic Juggernaut
by Grand Central Publishing, published on October 14th, a few days ago.
All right, so Ken, welcome.
Yeah, I just wanted to get off my chest here.
Late in your book, you say, you're quoted here, you're right, podcasts are more compelling
than sports talk radio.
So let's make that happen.
All right. So first of all, main question, I think that could set this whole thing up. How did you settle on the three main characters, Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, Roger Goodell? And were they named in that order specifically, or is that just a matter of language or flow?
Well, there's something of a literary answer to this, which is the law of threes. And, you know, if I had five owners, and I easily could have, you'd still be reading the subtitle right now. So I picked three, that's a kind of good number.
but you know I started the book I was thinking of sort of when does the when does this the beginning
of what we think of as the modern NFL when does it start it started in 1993 with the labor agreement
that came in that year that that settled years of litigation and you got the free agency players
finally got free agency and the owners got a salary cap and most importantly and definitely
underreported was revenue sharing. That was a 50-50 split after that. And that really,
from the player's perspective, that made them partners. And so we've had this labor piece,
which set the foundation for the big media deals, the big sponsorship deals, the big stadium deals,
all the stuff that's since flowed from that. So I picked 93. So once I started with that historical
sort of benchmark, I look back, well, who was doing the most work then on the owner's side?
Dan Rooney, absolutely from the Steelers, and Jerry Jones.
Pat Bolin, also in Denver.
Would Rooney and Bolin be those other two that you would possibly?
Yeah.
But they're not as relevant anymore.
They're now gone.
Yeah, that was part of it, too.
So Dan Rooney, of course, came up through the 60s and the 70s, you know, and that was really, he was still influential through the early 2000s, but had already crested.
so I wanted characters that are still living and and you know still influential to keep the book
contemporary uh but so Jerry was was was a pivotal owner he had come in he was heavily in debt his
team was losing a lot of money and he was trying to find new sources of money both in Dallas and
and outside and he was the first to look at the media deals the way the NFL used to do them they
You used to have CBS and was the NFC.
NBC was covering the AFC.
And then you had Monday Night Football.
And that was pretty much it.
And Jerry said, well, why do we only have three bidders for three packages?
Why don't we get some other bidders in here?
That's just standard.
Like, let's get a bidding war going.
So he had already been in contact with Rupert Murdoch.
And he said to Rupert, if you come in, we'll take you seriously.
And that really changed the dynamic dramatically.
because Rupert said, I don't care what it costs.
I need football to make me legitimate as a network.
And so he overpaid $100 million more than CBS per year,
and he blew them out of the water.
And suddenly the economics of the media, television media,
went from let's break even, let's make some money in a good year,
to this is a loss leader.
And guess what?
The NBA looked at that, MLB looked at that,
and they said, hmm, maybe we need some more bidders.
So that was Jerry Jones's big contribution then in that 93, 94 window.
And then Robert comes in right then.
He had been part owner of an affiliate, CBS affiliate in Boston, and he understood the media.
He had connections to Mel Karmazin, you know, other CBS officials.
And so he was a real schmoozer.
He knew how to get them hyped on the NFL.
Of course, at this point, they knew they couldn't do without the NFL.
So really, those two guys were pivotal then.
And then, of course, I was able to trace them all the way through the arc of the book to today.
Yeah, it's wonderful way that you do that.
I wanted to talk about Jerry Jones real quick.
He is maligned, to say the least, in almost all media.
If you're not a Cowboys fan, and even if you are a Cowboys fan, you probably don't like Jerry Jones.
I came away reading this book with an odd new respect for Jerry Jones.
Yeah, it depends on the lens you have, right? So I'm a business writer, let's just say that. So I'm looking at it from what has he done business-wise, and it's hard to argue with his success. It's a $10 billion franchise now. He made the first franchise to make a billion dollars in operating revenue, according to Forbes.
he's printing money. I mean, the title of that chapter is, I love to stick that Cowboys peanut
butter on everything. You know, anything that's not nailed down, he'll try and sell it. Carmen
Policy is quoted in the book, the former president of the 49ers. And he said, Jerry taught us how to
sell. And, you know, the NFL was big when Jerry arrived, but it wasn't really big. And Jerry was,
he is a relentless seller. There's a great quote from Robert Kraft. You know, I talked about their
different styles. And Robert was talking about Jerry's sort of unflappable spirit for new
ventures. And he said he could charm a dog off a meat truck. That's who Jerry is. He lives out
there. He's a salesman. He probably sells too much. And his methodology has certainly rubbed
the owners the wrong way at times. But he wants to make money. His son, interestingly, because I've
often thought like how much is enough right you already got 10 billion dollars do you need 10 more
10 billion more and his son was quoted as saying it's not the money it's the chase and that's who
jerry is he he is a charmer he can't stop he can't help himself uh in contrast uh robert craft is
very wealthy also and very successful but it's more of a diplomat he's more about how do we take
all these ideas and have a win-win-win solution to where everybody walks away with something.
And that's more of Robert's skill.
Yeah.
And you mentioned a lot of, you don't mention every single owner that's been in the game
for years, but you have a, sounds like you have a profound respect for the, what I'll
called the old guard, the Roonies, the Mike Brown, Al Davis, to some degree, the Hallis family,
the Roonies, of course, the Maras. And these guys, Jones and Kraft, came in and upset the apple cart
to a large degree. And maybe Kraft, not so much, because maybe we can get into this. The way Kraft
acquired the Patriots. I went to school in Boston and I was aware of a lot of the things,
like how Kraft acquired the team, but the brilliance of his strategy is you got to think
back in the mid nineties, he had acquired the team through a lot of these. Well, we'll get to
that in a second, but he, he was about to move the team twice. He wanted to move to a stadium in
south boston the neighbors went apoplectic well they probably should have because now like all the
south boston neighborhood is no longer the south boston people whatever but and then he had a deal
to go to hartford but the way he acquired the patriots was he acquired all the parking around
it around foxborough stadium which is probably one of the worst locations in sports for a stadium but
That being said, he acquired all the land around it.
And when the owner, what is it?
James Orthwine out of St. Louis, Bush family heir.
When he tried to move the team to St. Louis before the Rams moved.
Kraft was like, no, sorry, buddy.
You owe rent until 2021.
And so 2001.
Yeah.
Or 2001.
Sorry.
Yeah.
He had him over a barrel and it would have cost him more than probably the franchise in paying rent in an empty stadium.
So Kraft put together a deal.
And that was, I thought, one of the most brilliant sports business moves of all time.
Yeah, it shows.
I mean, first of all, Kraft was in it for the long term, right?
The Sullivan family was always on its worst run franchise as you said The stadium was terrible the location was terrible the sullivans were always broke they were fighting with each other uh and then uh victor kayem comes in the old remington razor guy a real he was not a local
um and really made a hash of the whole thing but as you said robert was smart he bought the land
first and and the parking revenue so now there was one leg of the financial stool was knocked out
from the owner. And then eventually the stadium was up. The Sullivan's couldn't afford the stadium
anymore. So they put that up for sale. So then he bought that. And by the time Victor Kayyem comes in,
all he's got is the team. He's got tickets, basically. He doesn't have the hot dogs and beer.
He doesn't have the parking. And he has the whatever the shared revenue was from the league.
So he basically and he had this lease that that obligated him to be the primary tenant through the
end of the century. So when Victor Kayyem yells uncle and Orthwine comes in, he thinks, well,
I'll get the team and move it to St. Louis, the same issue. Can't leave. He didn't want to have
a lawsuit with Kraft and eventually he sold. So Kraft was very deliberate. That was a,
let me think about that, that was about a seven or an eight year process. That's what I mean by
long game. And, you know, he wasn't leaving Boston. You talked about the sweetheart deal
in Hartford. And that really was a sweetheart deal. I mean, it was unbelievable how, what the
state of Connecticut was willing to give him, but ultimately he's a Boston guy. And I think he wanted
to stay. He also had a deal dangled from Providence. So, and he, there was that South Boston
thing that was handled poorly and there was a lot of politics involved in local politics.
So Boston Irish. Yeah. Imagine that. You know, it's funny because he grew up in Boston, but he's still considered to the old Boston establishment to be a newcomer, you know.
And so there's a lot of jealousy there and God knows what else. But he got the stadium built and they won six titles. You can't compete with success.
The other thing he was interesting, we're talking about real estate when he built the stadium in Foxborough, the new stadium in Foxborough, he put Patriot Place around it.
And that was fairly novel to say, you know what, who else is going to Foxborough?
Let's build movie theater, restaurant, shopping and medical facilities and really turn it into something and use the power of the Patriots brand for real estate.
And it's worth noting for your listeners, that's the revenue that is not shared amongst the other 31 owners.
So Robert realized that I got this this asset.
that I only use it 12 times a year and then, you know, some other events, concerts.
But boy, I could use the Patriots brand to make a lot more money.
And Jerry Jones has taken in Rome with that.
New stadiums coming in in Cleveland eventually, Nashville.
They're all doing the same thing now.
And it's mushroomed into other sports, too.
I mean, even the Red Sox, they've bought and developed all around Fenway Park and inside Fenway Park.
The Braves are the case in the big leagues for doing a similar thing in their area.
In San Francisco, the Giants, all that real estate across McCovey Cove, super valuable.
Visa put its headquarters there.
Again, that's not shared revenue.
The Giant owners are a lot wealthier.
And private equity now sees teams partly as a vehicle for real estate and other things.
So, yeah, there's people are always finding new ways to mint sports franchises.
Yeah. Like to stick on the Patriots here for a second.
You mentioned that during that whole time where, you know, Parcells left under really horrible terms, I was there.
They had gone to the Super Bowl, win the Super Bowl, and everybody knew he was leaving.
what was going to happen to the franchise after that.
They end up hiring Pete Carroll, former head coach of the Jets.
It was turned into a success when maybe this year, not with the Raiders,
but I mean, great football coach, but he gets fired after a couple of years.
And then you have this situation with the New York Jets.
You talk about it a little bit in the book.
And I'm always curious about this because I'm wondering if you have any insight
or allowed to tell your insight, because the story I've heard is that
you know you've seen bill bell bill belichick interviewed several times about this and he's
like the ownership was in flux you had leon has so you mentioned several times in the book
and then it the there's i don't even know what the situation was they didn't know who the owner
or the heirs or were going to be this ownership situation was in flux so belichick sees this he
said this is his story anyway he says that uh i i can't i can't do this because it's just so crazy
he writes his resignation letter literally on a napkin i resign as hc of the nyj and it's over
and then craft signs him a couple days later now my question here is number one is that is that true
with the ownership situation.
I imagine it is.
But two, was there any tampering
going on behind the scenes
with the Patriots and Belichick's camp?
Yeah, it's good questions.
The issue with Leon Hess is real.
The team was going to be put up for,
his estate was selling it.
Who knows whether the new owner,
whoever that was,
turned out to be Woody Johnson,
would want Belichick.
You know, if you're a head coach and a new owner comes in,
the new owner might say, I want my own people.
Because Parcells was still in charge of the organization
on the football operations side, and he was running that, yeah.
Yeah, but it's perfectly understandable for a new owner
to come in and clean house.
I could see it from that perspective why Belichick wouldn't want to wait around
to find out.
He might end up being a lame duck coach after one season.
And whether he was tampered with, I don't have that specific evidence, but I find it hard to believe that somebody who at that point wasn't very old, I think he was in his 40s, would simply quit without another job on the horizon.
It was January, you know, beginning of January of 2000 that he did that. I can't believe he didn't know there were openings in a handful of markets.
He already had a relationship with Robert Kraft because he was coaching when Parcells was up in New England, and Kraft liked him.
So whether there was explicit conversations about this, I don't know.
The Jets and Patriots ended up getting in a fight that landed in Paul Tagliabue's office, and there was compensatory draft picks given to the Jets.
But as Steve Gutman, the team president, is quoted in the book, he said,
but boy, they got the coach that beat us like high school kids for the next 20 years.
So in the end, the Jets really got the short end of that.
Belichick, you know, I guess he was right in the sense that he didn't want to stick around
and find out what Woody Johnson would have in mind for him.
And it turned out to be a good fit for the Patriots.
And you mentioned Tagliabue, and this dovetails a little bit what's going on with Belichick now at North Carolina.
you mentioned that Tagliabue said to these owners who are considering hiring him to stay away from
Belichick I'm wondering why that was why was he so toxic then he had a pretty successful run with
the Browns and I would say only in 95 with the Browns the only reason that thing went sideways
or in the toilet was because of Modell announcing the move to Baltimore during the season and there's
a documentary NFL or NFL films or ESPN put out Cleveland 95, I think, and you can find out all
about that. But why did Tagli Boots tell folks to stay away from Belichick? I think Belichick was a
complicated and taciturn guy. We know that now from watching him all these years. I think he was
that way then. I don't know whether he was basically saying don't hire the guy, but he was
saying, you know, tread carefully, I think was probably more his message. The Modell thing was
interesting because Modell actually didn't want to announce it. He wanted to keep it a secret,
which in some ways was worse. It was reminiscent of the Baltimore Colts pulling up the Mayflower
vans to Memorial Stadium back in the 80s. But the Baltimore media sniffed it out because it's on
their end because they know the stadium they had purpose built was going to have a new tenant. And
that's how it got out. It didn't come out from Cleveland. It certainly didn't come out from
Odell. And, and he was, there were death threats. He had to leave town. His, his lawyer, Jim Bailey,
who I spoke to for the book, you know, they had to go back with bodyguards. It was an ugly, ugly
situation. So yeah, I mean, look, the, the, that was a terrible environment to play football that
last season, especially the last half of that season. Fans were in revolt. Garbage was on the
field. Yeah, he suffered, but he did make the playoffs. I believe it was the year before.
So I wouldn't say he was super successful, but he wasn't a bad coach. I think he was a complicated
coach. And, you know, Robert Kraft, you know, produced that Dynasty documentary a year ago,
two years ago. And, you know, Belichick sat for it, but he did not change his image. He still
look like darth vader on camera and uh i'm sure that's partly who he is mainly who he is
all right yeah and i guess with that commissioner tagler begets roger goodell who's been there what
since 2006 in charge of the nfl this is an interesting character i uh didn't know a ton
about Goodell's background, he had a mission from childhood to become the NFL commissioner.
And this could be one of those lessons for young folks who are like, I want to do this
and I'm going to do it.
And my question about Goodell, is his success or his rise to becoming the commissioner anything
other than just pure unfettered ambition or my sense is he has just a tremendous love for the
National Football League but as I got from a lot of these different owners and different you know
people that work within the league and the TV they don't necessarily have a fondness for the game of
football as much as some of these coaches say perhaps or the old guard Rooney's Mara's etc
Mike Brown, Al Davis, et cetera. But tell me a little more about Goodell's path.
Sure. Well, I titled the chapter Senator's Son. He was the third of five sons of a senator,
a U senator who took Robert Kennedy spot here in New York He was a congressman before that And he has that sort of political sensibility I don mean left or right I just mean he knows how to operate politically And that
is something he absorbed from his dad. As a kid, he worked on his father's campaigns,
even as a young kid. And so he's kind of a natural politician in that sense. And yeah,
he got out of college or is getting out of college his senior year. And he wrote to his dad and he
It's just that I, this is my ambition.
I want to be commissioner of the NFL.
I think of all the job searches you could do, you know, that's, that's a pretty narrow
one.
There's only one of them.
So, but you know, he wrote, famously wrote lots of letters to all the teams and eventually
gets noticed by the headquarters.
They bring him in and he was a grunt.
He worked his way up by the nineties.
By the time Tagliabue is there, he's getting more tasks.
Tagabue and his deputy, Neil Austrian, the league president, is now giving a bigger task.
Go to Europe.
We're going to host a game in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
We need you to help with the logistics.
He's now helping owners get new stadiums, which turned out to be a very powerful thing to do
because you're helping the people who are ultimately going to hire you.
He was a real go-getter.
I spoke to quite a few people who worked at the NFL then, and some people felt like he was too
nakedly ambitious, you know, too much of a social climber. There was a comment in the book that,
you know, at the owner's meetings, the quarterly meetings, you know, we'd go out to dinner and the
staff would go out to dinner and we'd come back to the hotel and Roger would be getting out of
a limo with an owner. You know, he knew where he was going and he was going to get there.
Having said all that, when I asked Tagliabue about it, he said, why should I complain? He did
everything we asked him to do. So, you know, good on him for,
for working hard and trying to solve problems. So, you know, that's what I mean.
He was nakedly ambitious, but he succeeded and, and, and, you know,
got up to the top of the mountain, so to speak.
I see him in the mold, a bit of David Stern,
where David Stern was very good for the brand,
very good for the NBA and his successor,
Adam Silver is just, it's just not.
and they made money.
I think a lot of these leagues making money
maybe off the coattails of the NFL
and what Tagliabue and Goodell put in place.
But what do you...
Goodell's 65 or turning 65 this year, I think.
I would guess they're going to extend him
the contract for $70 million plus a year, probably again.
But where do you see the future of the NFL leadership
commissionership after Goodell leaves,
is there anybody,
or is this going to be a vacuum like it was in the NBA where,
I mean,
Silver is,
you know,
say what you want.
He's serviceable,
but the NFL,
the NBA just isn't what it was in the eighties and nineties under Stern.
Just not.
No,
that was definitely a sort of glamor period.
You had Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.
A lot of factors.
Yeah.
I mean,
those players were,
you know,
They were unicorns. And the 2000s, you know, not get too far down the rabbit hole in the NBA,
but you had a labor stoppage in 99. You had a truncated season. They've had other problems,
some of which David oversaw. But in any event, you know, Roger has told his friends at times,
I want to step back. But the reality is he doesn't know what else he wants to do.
this was the one job he wanted he's he's been at the NFL for 45 years he's very good at it he has a
very unique resume and you know he has told friends I can't step down because I can't find
anybody to replace me some of his friends thinks that's that's kind of nonsense he wants to stay
he likes it he's still relatively healthy he's had some back surgery but he's still
very influential he schmoozes with all the media people I think he'll get through the next labor
deal, which runs out in 2030, after the 2030 season. So let's see, it's another half decade.
And then from that flows the next set of media deals, they may opt out early. But,
but so I think once he puts that, those two things to bed, he'll be what 70,
be in his early 70s, he might decide that's been enough. You know, maybe I'll go hang out with my
kids or spend more time in Maine or wherever he has his homes, do some skiing.
So, but yeah, he likes what he does.
And, you know, the question of who replaces him is a more important one, I think, for
the league.
My suspicion is that it'll be a media person.
That's where the league is now.
It's, you know, two thirds of its revenue comes from media and sponsorships, not from
tickets and beer and parking and all that other stuff.
That's a much smaller piece.
so they're going to want somebody who can steer the league uh you know through that universe and
of course in the midst of all this we're getting the fracturing of the media universe you know
cable tv is dying uh you know we're getting more streaming how do you add streaming without you
know forcing fans to pay a thousand dollars to watch all the games and you talk about that last
chapter of the book it's like where do we go from here you know it's a real tough thing because
they've squeezed i think they quoted or mentioned something about is squeezing every penny out of
the fans and i find it i used to like to go to nfl games but uh you know with the advent of
stub hub which makes it a lot easier to buy a ticket it's also more expensive than going and
going to the site and maybe scalping a ticket for three bucks or for free or whatever it might be
depending on the game.
And it's also such a big hassle to go to an NFL game
or a big league baseball game or whatever.
It's just more of a hassle these days, and it's more expensive.
And compared to the 1980s, you can watch any game you want, really,
on television or your device, really.
Now, I think since we're talking about the tech and all that stuff.
So it's a much different game.
Yeah.
Roger likes to say that 97% of NFL fans never go to a game.
And so I always think it's a little bit of lip service when he says the fans are our most important constituents.
You know, come on. The most important constituents are the 32 owners who decide what you should be doing and how much you're going to be paid for it.
But I mean, yes, fans are important. But in his mind, fans are TV viewers.
and the guys who want to tailgate, good on them.
I think I write a line in the book that, you know,
the fans in the stadium now are essentially props, you know,
for TV broadcasts.
And, you know, we saw it even during COVID when there were no fans.
People still watched.
Did they really need fans waving terrible towels?
Maybe not.
People still tuned in with the cardboard cutouts of fans there.
They had, what, the Super Bowl in Tampa that year
that was like half the seats were empty.
people will watch football because it's a compelling game.
It's presented in a very interesting way.
All the high-definition cameras and the slow motion and the strategy of it.
It's still a compelling game.
It's a violent game.
Some people enjoy that too.
There's a lot of character to the game that I think sells itself, I guess.
Do you have a few more minutes?
I got a question that comes up throughout the book and really toward the end too, in particular, it's the gambling side.
I was not aware that Jones and Kraft had bought in on a couple of these gambling sites before it was even legal for any sports book, but they saw the writing on the wall, it sounds like.
And now the NFL, like all these leagues, are in bed with gambling.
sports books, online sports books and stuff.
And I just saw news of the Cleveland Indians guy,
the class A, he got banned for a lifetime
for betting on games.
It hasn't been out through games or not.
I imagine he did.
And I went to Boston College.
So if you're familiar with the stories there,
That was, you know, there's a, there's some, it bothers me to see gambling so intermixed
with sports and almost it was, it was like every, yeah, people did it.
People do it.
People bet on games.
People had a bookie.
You could, in Oregon, I don't know, you said you lived in Oregon for a while.
I don't know if they had sports action then, but people love doing sports action.
It was the sports book that you could buy through the lottery.
However, the NFL was never going to come to Portland or Oregon,
even for the Raiders or the Seahawks or whoever wanted to relocate,
as long as they had gambling.
And now gambling is okay.
And I fear for the future of the league and the integrity of the league
with the gambling.
I don't think in the book you make any statement.
Would you like to make any statement on what you see there with the gambling?
Yeah, it's well, two things. One is the NFL is not the only league that's struggled with this contradiction of, you know, doing an about face. I mean, they were petitioning courts to not overturn or to not allow a sports book gambling outside of Las Vegas.
and then the minute the Supreme Court threw it out, they were in business.
So, you know, is the NFL any different than the NBA or Major League Baseball?
No, not in that sense.
But, you know, the NFL is the most gambled on sport.
So they do take sort of outsized attention.
You know, it's worth saying that they make their money now from sponsorships.
You can go to a DraftKings lounge in the Commander Stadium.
uh you know they are making money from the gambling companies but not on the gambling itself
um they have two sources of revenue one is the sponsorships and the other is selling the nfl
game data to the various books uh and that's really where they make frankly most of their
money so um are they promoting gambling by running the ads well sure and you know look
there are no cigarette ads in stadiums anymore because people deemed we shouldn't be promoting
cigarettes. You know, for a long time, there were no hard liquor ads in many stadiums. They've now
decided, eh, people drink Captain Morgan's rum. We can take money from Captain Morgan.
You know, I think for the integrity of the game, and you brought up baseball in particular,
this case with the Cleveland Guardians, it is problematic. I think it's a, you know,
I learned this as a business reporter covering markets and companies. It can take a lifetime
time to build up trust you can lose it in an instance and the minute that fans think that
the fix is in they're going to be pissed and now they have money running on it we're not just talking
about I don't trust you know like there's a whole meme now on the social on social media about
whether the refs treat Kansas City the Kansas City Chiefs differently you know they get they an AI AI generated pictures of Patrick Mahomes handing cash to a referee and all that You know it corrosive
It also changes, I think gambling really changes the way people watch sports. Again, this is not
just an NFL thing, but you know, we went from the days probably you and I, roughly the same age,
you know, sitting down with your dad with a clicker, maybe a can of beer, you had your jersey
on and you watched three hours you watched a drama basically uh you might have thrown some
things at the tv too depending on who you're rooting for i call it reality television for men
the nfl yes exactly yeah and then there were highlights and then there was espn and sports
center and then it got broken up into smaller and smaller pieces and then you have fantasy football
so now you're now you know you're either rooting for a tight end on the team you could care less
about because he's on your roster well then you add money to it and it's a very uh it really
amplifies the um the tension uh sometimes in a good way but but most often you're you're not
going to win so i mean look the the book always wins the sports book's going to win so more chances
than not so uh you know now you got people pissed at the nfl you got pissed at a player or a team
uh i think that's really um sort of damaging um you know there's always been people playing but
Now you're playing on your cell phone. You can bet during the game. You can bet in the stadium.
It wasn't just going down to the corner or calling somebody and put a bet down. Now it's instantaneous.
There's this dopamine effect that people have that's that's kind of distorting their kind of sense of proportion.
And I think that's dangerous. Again, it's not just an NFL issue. They didn't create this, but they are partly making money off it.
Yeah, I'm not Puritan when it comes to gambling, but I mean, in its time and space, and I really think around sports, when the leagues get involved or in bed, it's like, man, it is a slippery slope.
And I understand that they're making money and they're keeping it at arm's length to some degree.
But I just wonder, you know, in the future, the economy gets turned south or whatever.
And we're still in this system and the players aren't getting paid as much or, you know, labor strife hits and like, all right, well, we can make a little money here.
That's what I wonder, you know, I worry about the worst case scenario, really.
And it's not like the guys going to Vegas for a weekend and sitting around the blackjack table.
That's a whole different animal in itself.
But when you bring the games themselves that are, you can do it.
I mean, Shohei Otani, look, we don't know what's going on with him.
You can speculate, but this is strange and it's a cloud.
Well, then add this.
I read a headline that the NCAA was going to allow athletes to bet on football.
Well, just do the math.
a senior at name the university i'm bet i'm betting i i'm assuming some teammates of his
are now in the nfl what's to say they just chat on the phone about so-and-so's injury on some pro
team oh yeah i mean but this has happened this has happened like i know a lot of folks that have
you know when gambling was illegal so-called um that happened it happened but he was they
they were more discretionary about it and they wouldn't, they wouldn't, well, not to say not
everybody, but, you know, putting the integrity on the line so out front. Anyway, I, um, that's just
maybe a, perhaps a peeve of mine. Um, one more, one more, I guess, comment about the book that I,
that I really enjoyed. I don't know if there's a question here necessarily, but the stadium,
stadium relocate or team relocation.
So you go through the whole 90s relocation,
but all these teams were moving.
And curiously, you didn't mention Seattle almost moving to LA,
but leave that be.
You could have written an 800 page book,
but the explanation of what went down in the two LA,
potential LA stadium things,
I could never figure that out just by reading the news.
I'm like, what in the world is going on?
So in this book, I would just congratulate you for, you know, ferreting that out and like, all right, well, some people were pissed.
Some people weren't. And it ultimately turned out really well for the NFL.
Mostly good for all the teams involved, which I was surprised about.
The Raiders wanted to go back to L.A. really and share it with the Chargers.
But then the Rams, you know, through their wrinkle. But then the Raiders now have Vegas to themselves and the Super Bowl and all this stuff.
And the L.A. teams seem to be doing great. And that stadium is world class.
Yeah. Yeah. I think we could circle back to to Jerry Jones for a minute.
But I remember sitting in his office and I guess it was in 2015, like beginning of 2015.
And it was still a year away from that vote they had about which team the Rams or the Chargers Raiders would get the L.A. market.
And Jerry said, you know, we got to make a splash.
We only have one bite at this apple.
If we're going to go back to the media capital of the world, the entertainment capital of the world, we need we need to come in.
You know, we need to announce ourselves.
We want to be like the Lakers, you know, with Jack Nicholson sitting courtside.
We don't we don't want to just have a stadium like we don't you know.
I mean, the Coliseum is lovely.
It's a nice relic, but that's not the future.
Right. That's old time.
And so, you know, 100 years old or more.
Yeah, it's crumbling, basically.
So, you know, but then you so you look at the contestants, if you will.
Stan Kroenke's got I think he was the second wealthiest owner at that point after Paul Allen.
He's a real estate man.
And he bought the 300 acres next to the forum, the L.A. forum.
You know, he thinks big.
He thinks that.
And he was going to build not just the stadium, but NFL Network Studios.
You know, there was going to be real estate around there.
Inglewood's close to the airport.
And then you got Dean Spanos and Mark Davis basically don't have a ton of money and don't frankly have a big vision.
They brought in Bob Iger from Disney as an equity partner to kind of jazz it up.
But they were going to be located in Carson, 20 miles down 405.
That's not a splash.
That's just a stadium and some available land.
It's like the Chargers playing at that soccer stadium they played in for a few years.
Exactly.
So I think, you know, Jerry was really the leader behind pushing the Rams.
There was another Jerry, Jerry Richardson, former owner of the Carolina Panthers, and
he was banging the drum on the dual side, on the Raiders-Chargers side, because he said,
look, we got to solve two stadium problems at once. Both were playing in terrible places in
San Diego and Oakland. Concrete stadium was built in the 60s. If we move them down there,
we solve two problems at once. They get a new home, you know, and obviously Jets, Giants share
a stadium that wouldn't be unheard of. But, you know, it really didn't have the glitz. And that
meeting that you're referring to in Houston in 2016, going into it, Jerry Richardson felt like
he had enough votes. You need 24 out of 32 to pass anything. And Jerry was very influential.
He had a small subcommittee that was scouting both stadiums. Robert Kraft was on that. And they
voted for the dual solution, the Raiders Chargers option. And then Jerry Jones comes in and he is
lobbying hard. And some of those owners who were on the dual side switched. They saw, you know what,
look, this is big money. We're going to come into LA. We want to have a Super Bowl.
This was near the airport. You have views of the ocean, all the bells and whistles.
And one of the key votes or voices in that room was Paul Allen. You referenced the Seahawks.
Paul almost never came to owners meetings, but Roger Goodell called him and said,
you've got to show up to this one. And he flew in and he was like the Oracle.
John Houseman, when so-and-so speaks, when EF Hutton speaks, people listen.
And several owners said that when Paul said, oh, this is the L.A. one, the Rams makes the most sense.
People were like, OK, Paul Allen says it. I'm going with Paul Allen.
And so he helped in his own quiet way swing a lot of votes over.
And at the end of that meeting, and this is one of the joys of the book, you know, I've been I reported on the league for about a dozen years.
There's so much stuff in my notebook, notebooks that I just never put in the New York Times stories.
There's just no space for them. But that meeting, Jerry Jones comes out into the lobby and the media is all there and the lights pop on.
And and he's a pig in a poke. He's standing there grinning ear to ear.
He's got that twinkle. And his guy won. Stan Kroenke. I backed that horse and that's the one.
So I'm standing right behind him and the lights are coming in. He's answering questions.
And I look down to Jerry's right arms down here. He's got a big old tumbler of scotch and it's about this big.
And he's having a good time.
And that's Jerry.
He's a salesman.
He's in it for the thrill.
And he got his catch that day.
Yeah, that's great.
And then that was pretty much the last we heard of Jerry Richardson.
He went on to try and sell the team, eventually did,
not before getting blackballed from the league.
Fought on his way out the door.
Sat into a great football career for Jerry Richardson.
But he made his own bed there a little bit.
And so, all right, well, gosh, Ken, this has been a wonderful conversation.
I appreciate it.
Great, great luck with the book.
Once again, it's Every Day is Sunday, How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell
Turned the NFL into a Cultural and Economic Juggernaut, Grand Central Publishing, October
14th, 2025.
And it is a cultural and economic juggernaut, no doubt about it.
So any last words, Ken?
No, thank you, Brian.
It's a great conversation.
I appreciate you having me on.
And this is an endless source of conversation.
I've been on airplanes with people.
I've seen people overseas.
The NFL is a 365 organization.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I appreciate it, Ken.
Thank you.
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