Straight Fire with Jason McIntyreStraight Fire - A Conversation with Legendary Sportswriter and Broadcaster Norman Chad
On today’s episode, Jason is joined by longtime sportswriter and broadcaster Norman Chad for a lengthy interview. During the conversation, Chad discusses the overhaul the sports media space has undergone the last two decades, the importance of putting out content you care about and just for the sake of ‘clicks’, his anticipation level for the upcoming Kansas City Chiefs vs Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl rematch, which sports media personalities he likes and which he doesn’t like and much more!
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This is Straight Fire with Jason McIntyre.
What is up straight Fire?
Bam, It's me Jason McIntyre, Straight Fire for Tuesday, January twenty eighth. Oh boy, do we have a phenomenal guest today. One of the guys I totally enjoyed growing up reading as a columnist, as a humorist, just chiming in on sports takes. I would say, if you said, Jason, who were the most ten of the most influential people sports media wise on your career? Without a doubt, Norman Chad is in that list. He has been like a columnist, he's been syndicated, but that was all during the newspaper. Now he writes columns still for a couple of online outfits and print media. And you know, he's got a podcast because he's Norman Chad and he's got a lot to say and he's funny.
So I thought i'd hit him up just see what's going on.
And uh, he's got a lot of takes and opinions, some stronger than others. And if you couldn't tell, I like laughing at his jokes. Here's a Norman Chad syndicated sports columnist.
You know a guy Jason likes to think he knows everything when it comes to sports. I know what sports fans want, but for everything he doesn't. He knows a guy who does.
Let's just say I know a guy who knows a guy who knows another guy.
All right, let's welcome into straight fire.
One of my all time favorite columnists voices Uh sports comedians, if you will. I've been reading this guy forever and I've to talk to him on a couple of podcasts before. Norman Chad just a big time legend in sports media.
Norman, how are you on this glorious Monday.
I've been better, I've been worse. It's good to see you're all growing up and working, and you know, working good for a real you know, a real company.
Yeah.
Norman loves to fire bars, just left and right. That's how he operates. Let's start with the with life at large. You know you've covered the media forever. You had a column in the Washington Post. The Washington Post. Is that still kicking a lot? I don't know if it's still around. Jeff Bezos may have dumped it. Trump might have made him do it. I don't know. But how do you make sense of the media landscape currently. I'm assuming you're big on TikTok.
You know, I just I just was forced onto TikTok. Had never watched TikTok till about six weeks ago. And I started doing our gambling podcast last year called Gambling Mad, and the people who are branding it and marketing it decided to put us out on TikTok.
And once I looked Attok, Jason, it's.
One of those things where you wish you were like ten years ago, ten years old again, and you weren't looking at TikTok. It just didn't do much for me. The media lampscape right now obviously is wide open. It's wonderful, it's ragged, it's scary, and I'm most worried about the so called legacy media, which of course Elon Musk and others are dumping on endlessly at this point.
Yeah, it is kind of strange, like the conference championship games happen, right and now we're in the Everybody has a Voice era, and everybody's shouting anonymously not anonymously, and they're largely saying the same thing, and I just, yeah, I don't know if it's bots or what have you, but it just feels it just feels different, Like has any one person stood out with a take that you've seen on Chiefs Bills or Eagles Washington. It's just so crowded. You have to get out landish to cut through.
And that's the problem, the fact that it is so crowded. Whoever is more outlandish or louder is going to get noticed more. And that's part of the problem what we've seen over the past ten or twenty years out on the media landscape. You have to be louder and more outlandish to hold your spot, and so more reasonable, measured thinking really gets buried. In fact, if you ever I know when I used to do sports radio a lot and people you know five in the segments, if they ever answered asked you a question your answer was I don't know, you wouldn't be asked back yet. So sometimes the answer is I don't know. But you're not allowed to say I don't know anymore. You're supposed to form an opinion immediately and get it out immediately. And as I've said for many, many years, there is some there's something right about stepping back and thinking for a moment before you formulate an opinion. And put it out to the masses.
Yeah, you're basically expected to have a serious, scorching hot take instantly off of every game, every kernel of news, and it almost I just wonder if it's starting to chase reasonable minds away. We saw Adrian Wojennarowski kind of step back and now he's a GM at Saint Bonaventure. You hear rumors that, hey, Adam Schefter is kind of feeling the same burnout. And I don't know, it's like a twenty four to seventh thing. You got to be on social media. You gotta have takes. There is no there's no room for reason, right.
No, my favorite committee Donald talking about the burnout of being on twenty four to seven. He on his twitter feed he used to live tweat golf tournaments.
You can have tweaked anything.
Obviously, I've live tweeted a lot of NFL games and NBA games. But if you can go back and you can look at his Twitter feed right now and you'd see an entire afternoon of his tweets are four quick foot here could be tough. I can't believe you missed that one. Here comes Macelroy. I mean, it's just like five word tweets going out every ten seconds, and I think he's heavily medicated. Why are you doing this? Why do you have to be out there at all times? But you got to keep the brand alive, and so it does make more reasonable thought. You know, Adam Schefter is famous for having two or three cell phones. I guess at all times, whether he's awake, whether he's asleep, whether he's in the shower.
That's one or two cell phones too many.
And it's just, you know, some things that Adam do I really disagree with, because that's a whole other thing about how he operates in terms of sources and how he operates in his field, in terms of journalism and exchanging information with news subjects. That's a whole other topic. But they're just out there, and ESPN wants you out there every moment the day. They want you to be at twenty four to seven force, and it makes it really really difficult if you have to feed that beast.
Yeah, back in the day when you were doing your columns, you had days right to think and ponder and craft. There's no I mean, you've got like what five minutes to craft a tweet? Now about what Jerry Jones hired in Dallas the Schottenheimer disaster, and you've got to make it count and you gotta be hotter than the next guy. I just I don't know where this ends.
It doesn't this genie you don't put back into the bottle or difficult.
I don't know where it ends.
Where we're polarized with You know, we've got this tribe watching this cable network, that tribe watching that cable. We even now have an outbreak from Twitter from X Blue Sky, which is a lot of people from X who got tired of the toxic X. They went over to the Blue Sky. Well, X is Fox News and Blue Sky is MSNBC. So it's always that doesn't end either. What kills me, though, Jason, is when I used to write a sports media column and the obviously now anybody can just sign on and be a sports media columnist. You know, you don't need a background. I remember executive producer of NFL Sports at CBS, guy named Ted Shaker, real smart guy.
Uh.
He told me once this is what he doesn't understand about the sports media, and this is pre internet, he says. You know, if you've got a popular TV show, let's you know, let's say you've got Friends or SIGNLD or.
Emergency whatever they reviewed at the beginning of the year.
They might watch the first couple of episodes, and then you have a series of twenty episodes that go on and nobody ever talks about it.
Again.
What he didn't understand then, and this is because of the USA today business of having a sports media column every other day, is that when we do a sports television broadcast, every single one is dissected by these people sitting at home.
These are just a bunch of media columns that weren't on many. He says. You know, how come the networks in prime time they get one blasted way. Oh, the Cosme Show is back. Looks like it's be pretty good.
And we if we put up a bad graphic on the third quarter of a Buccaneer Saints game, it's law the week. And he was right, it made no sense. Well, now what he was talking about, it's that times one hundred. Yeah, there are just not a million websites out there covering this.
On every move is Tom Brady good? Is Tom Brady bad?
But as you know, just on on social media alone, during the game, they're blasting away That's why I could believe Joe Buck, who's a smart guy, was dumb enough when he first started interacting with Twitter, be live with Twitter during games, checking what they were saying.
Are you nuts? Just you know, take a baseball back to your head? And he learned quickly you can't do that. I mean, that's that's the most toxic room in the world.
How are you going to broadcast normally while they're calling you every name in the book. So Joe got smarter about that, and he's got smart about a lot of things. But yeah, they just everybody smothers you. Now when you're talking about anything on the air, you get smothered by both websites and by people just sit at home.
Do you have anybody asking you, hey, man, I want to go into sports media. I want to major in something in college so I can be into journalism.
I'm assuming you're doing what I'm doing and telling people, dude, I would not go into this industry. Is it's doa right now, it's cratering, it's only getting worse. Is that the kind of advice you're giving or are you urging and encouraging people to get into journalism?
It's both so on the first half. I agree with you completely.
In fact, i'd go in once or twice a year for a sports writer friend of mine who was a visiting professor at USC teaching a sports journalism class, and he had me come in, you know, up to about ten years ago, and this is just ten years ago.
He cut me off.
He had me come in and talked to the class in the fall, in the spring, and my message got too dark for him.
He stopped inviting me because I told him run for the hills.
I said, there's more opportunity than ever now, but it is a crater screwed up landscape out there. It's going to be tough for you. You have to have a passion for it. So I told him to go another direction. However, I told him, if you do have a passion for it, we need it worse than ever. And one of the areas I've been wrong, Jason, you mentioned the Washington Post at the beginning, which I worked most of my career for. I thought, with all this incredible avalanche of information that was just stupid. It came from anywhere. You could type it up. I could type it up. You can have a website out of your basement. You could be anybody that we would circle back to the credible, vetted, veteran sources of information, CBS News, the Washington Post. Sooner or later we had to circle back to stuff that was legitimate. But not only is I wrong on that, we're not circling back to that, the new media sources saying those people they're screwed up. We're screwed up because of CBS News, the Washington We're never going back. And now they've been telling you lies for years, which is not true. They've done things wrong here and there, but the whole mass of their work is irreplaceable.
So it's really gotten bad out there.
So I've told these people, if you have a passion for it, please follow it, because we still need boots on the ground. We need real journalists. Yeah, about the citizen journalism.
Are you telling people, hey, go start a sub stack, Go go fire one of those up.
It's tough, as you know, a substack is a hard way to go. In fact, most people going substack or ones who've already had their career. Yeah, so then they can afford to do that. No, I'm timed to fight the good fight and try to you know, to try to keep traditional media alive, whether it's the Washington Post, whether it's a Newsweek, whether it's CBS News, whether it's CNN, because without them, people keep thinking the mediaized, the mediaized. All they're talking about is what the media is talking about about. Let's say the election. That's all they see. They don't see, you feel at the New York Times. I hate to defend the New York Times. If you see the output of information they put on a daily basis from around the world on topics near and far, it's mind modeling.
Oh yeah, there's no replacement for that.
There's also no replacement then at a local level, which is also getting crushed by this.
Don't fake news. Don't trust the media anymore.
With somebody in a small town like those papers are dying, but some small town covering you know, a zoning commission meeting or what's happening with the cops in the small Wallis County in Montana. You need somebody doing that. Citizen journalism. That's just people walking around with walkie talkies. Hey I see you know, hey's got a hoodie on.
It might be not safe here on main street. You need real journalists.
Yeah, that's why I gave a mixed message, run through the hills, but if you're gonna stay, please.
Yeah, put your heart into it.
Yeah, no, no, I don't totally disagree with that. I just and again I'm starting to sound like an old guy here. But like when I was growing up, I would wake up my parents. We subscribe to the Washington Post. They would pull it, pull it in every morning six am. I would instantly dive for the sports section, read you Cornheiser, Wilbon, and I would That's how I would get my information. We didn't have like what it was, Sports Center twenty four to seven or all these social media We didn't have any of that stuff. I can't remember the last time, Norman I actually opened a physical newspaper, and my kids sure as hell have not open one in years, if ever. But I just don't know. Like you said, the gd's out of the bottle. We can't go back to that because there's so much in FO But do we need to or have we just advanced past that phase as a society.
Well, we're not going back to print.
And as much as I love print, it was a dinosaur and it's actually bad for the environment.
You got to keep that right freeze.
It's a bad distribution system when you think of what it used to be to write an article and have a printing press printed up, and then the print presses go like this, and then they go to the trucks, and the trucks deliver them to seven eleven. And that's absurd when right now you or I could type something in right now and.
Go worldwide to eight billion people. We're not gonna have eight billion people.
But okay, that's a better distribution system, so much cheaper. The newspapers screwed that up and making that transition because they are important, so they screwed that up. They also got hurt by the fact that on the Internet you can find anything for free. So what's the person to know the difference between you know, Joey putting out something out of a bar in Lansing, Michigan, and the New York Times.
They just see two things, and one thing is that you know Hitler was Jewish.
Maybe Hitler was Jewish, And the other thing says, no, Hitler was part of the whole across well, I might be drinking to who does.
So you can't tell the two.
So you got to find a way again to direct people to a more credible area where they can have stuff that's believable.
I don't know how you do that at this point. Yeah, you know, I don't do that stuff.
I'm not the biggest Joe Rogan fan, although I do, you know, have some I listen to some of his stuff, But he had a good context. He's like, oh, I love to go on Twitter and I'll just say something totally inflammatory, pull the pin on the grenade, post it, and then shut it down and not check it for two or three days. And that's I don't know if you've done that, it's actually really fun. Now you have to have the discipline to not want to go back and engage with these jabbroni's online, but like the idea of doing that, just like you know, hey, Michael Jordan was overrated, you know, blah blah blah blah blah, boom post it and then you just shut it down. You come back and you went viral. All these people are shitting on you. But you know what, who cares. Nobody cares. In a week, nobody will remember you said this, Absolutely no one, because guess what, They're on to the next brush fire. So we're at this stage it feels like Norman. We're pretty much anything goes, and I just don't know off long term that's really good for us as a society.
No, it isn't it.
You just mentioned it's a series of brush fires, and they come and go every twenty four hours, and you can put one out, you have another one the next day.
Yeah.
Any Twitter storm or X storm is over within forty eight hours. It's not good for the society. It's not good for our our our future as civilizations. You know, that's why you need you know. I remember the American President, the movie with Michael Douglas. Michael Douglas, Yeah, where he told Richard Dreyfus, the guy who's actually you know, as a good precursor. I guess that was an Aaron Sorkin film. So it's a good precursor to the current times that Richard Dreyfus is trying to storm up, you know, anti immigrant stuff and blah blah, and Michael Douglas fire said, listen, you know, you you're fifteen minutes are off. You know, you're not a serious person.
Whatever. I'm blah blah blah.
I'm President of the United States and we're doing this it's hard to get back to that. And because we're in trouble, as I said, we're in trouble with the tribes. We've had polarization my whole life. People think it's the worst polarization ever. It's not some a little something called the civil war. I think we're having a civil war without guns right now, and I don't know how we get back to the normal conversations.
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Norman, Where do you if you don't mind, Like, what state are you living in right now?
I'm in the state you are. I'm in Los Angeles, California.
Oh, okay, nice. So it's weird being out here. I do feel like people, I don't want to, you know, characterize everyone as not being well read, but it feels like you can. If you're talking to people in LA they seem like they're up on a lot of stuff, not just the Kardashians, but if you look nationwide, this narrative is, oh, California, you must be some liberal. How's the what is it? Avocado? Toast like there's that narrative. And then if you I'm out here and actually talk to people and walk around, I don't sense that liberalism left. I just don't see that, do you. You've been out here much longer than I have, obviously.
Well, again, California is a big state, as we know, It's forty million people, largest in the US. People think again, people think of California if they don't come out here, they think of the la or Beaches or San Francisco. All right, those are bluer areas. California is a state. It's about sixty forty. You know, Democrats are Republican sixty forty. I mean, so yeah, two out every five people, especially again in central California and northern and north of the Bay Area, you're going to find a lot more red than blue.
Yeah.
I find diversity here all the time. I mean, there's more diversity in Los Angeles than there is in almost any part of the country in terms of ethnic diversity. People from different parts of the world. People have different viewpoints we get again because of them, because of Hollywood. We hear disproportionately from Hollywood people, which makes no sense. You know, I just don't want to hear from Billy Baldwin or Justine Bateman.
Uh, get some work, YouTube, both YouTube, get some work.
All right, I guess I don't care if it's theater, I don't care it's dinner theater in Rockville, Maryland. Work on your craft and stop telling me how to live my life. But yeah, it's very diverse. It's easy to dump on California. You live here, I live here. We could come up with a list of ten horrendous things about la better than somebody who's living in the Midwest.
We know the city.
We also can come ten great things about the area as well, But we tend to stereotype things. So people have never been to New York think it's the most New York City. I think it's unbelievably dangerous.
Most dirty, selly.
New York City is one of the moost vibrant urban communities in the history of the world. Amazing, it's amazing, okay for for most people. So you get these stereotypes. It's hard to rip through the stereotype. And it's the thing, perception is reality. So if that's the perception of it, and and the current president played a lot on this about you know, incredible violence in.
The streets, and it's never been worse.
Than it is today in this place when crime is going down in big cities and stuff like that, but the perception holds forth.
It's goofy. What about sports takes specifically, what's your appetite for Chiefs Eagles part duh?
You know, first of all these it's kind of hard not to want to watch those two teams.
I would have been happy with any of the final four making making the Super Bowl, but the Chiefs and Eagles are just I have no problem with being a replay of two years ago. I just saw Klay Travis say this morning that he has you know, personally, I have no interest in seeing Chiefs Eagles against. You know, if if Alabama played Georgia in the in the National Title Game thirty three straight years, he would he would be running butt naked down the middle of every street in America.
So he has no appetite for Chiefs Eagles. Who are we kidding?
It's a great storyline, just like Chiefs Bills was a great storyline.
I have no appetite anymore.
For the Chiefs are getting the breaks and the Chiefs it's rigged against. It's rigged for the Chiefs, which is a bs. They might be getting breaks these happen and cycles. As far as it being rigged, I want to I want to see the chain of command on that.
I want to know on how that works. To start with you down and.
You know, is there any has anybody ever come out and said, you can't believe what the NFL told me today. They told me the referee with one thirty five left in the game and a close game is going to call this incredible penalty to allow them to win.
All that is complete bonkers nonsense. So I don't think anybody thinks it's rigged. It is fun to talk about the penalties and the Josh Allen sneak and one referee look like it said a first down and the other said no. It's a fun talking point.
But yet I don't think anybody reasonable thinks it's actually rigged.
I think some people do.
I mean, we've got enough people that obviously think our elections have been rigged, so why wouldn't they think a sporting contest is rigged. You know, I've heard about the NBA for years and again, is their favoritism towards the big stars?
There might be it just just just w I don't even think about it an unconscious thing. But it's not. It's it's never been rigged for the big stars in the NBA.
And it's, by the way, something of the NFL is trying to get the Kansas City Chiefs and the ninety seventh biggest market in the country to make the Super Bowl every year.
So I do think some people think it's rigged. I get too much mail time, you know it's rigged.
Jeez. I would try to break that down by age, but I'll pass on that. Let me ask you more unlikable dynasty chiefs A Patriots with Brady and Belichick.
It's not even close. For me, and I'm biased on this, the Patriots are much more likable. First of all, the Patriots had Belichick is not exactly you know, Andy Reid versus Belichick is Santa Claus versus Bill Belichie. I mean, if you have video Gate and you have deflate Gate, and you have incredible accusations about they head sets on the other sideline going down for a key times, the Patriots history of that stuff is incredible. Plus, the Boston the New England fan base is a little harder to take than virtually any fan base in the country.
They'd be top five for Oh, get them out of me, get them away from me, Jets.
You know some of New York people Eagles fans, Raiders fans, Patriots fans, Chiefs fans, you know, if they should.
Stop doing.
Besides that, they're you know, like Buffalo fans. They are out there, it's a big deal. It's the biggest thing in town. They want to win.
So I think the Chiefs are much more likable. Yeah.
So, like you're a sports guy, You've been around sports forever, writing about it, making people laugh. When some random guy comes up to you and it's like, hey, who's a better quarterback?
Mahomes or Brady?
Do you is that the kind of thing you just like, I hate these goat topics, Jordan Lebron or do you care about them to get engaged and crack one liners.
I don't get engaged. I understand it's the nature of sports. So it's benign.
If you want to send the bar and go mj or mj or Lebron, go right ahead and do it. But you know, I'm going to move three stools down and maybe discuss.
Rembrandt versus da Vinci.
I am the way, you know, one way or the other, so it's kind of endless. I always talk about just appreciate how good these people are in their day and age, and you know, it's hard to argue with how good Lebron's been for twenty years, how good Kope was for twenty years, how good MJ was for twenty years. So the argument square me out. But it's the nature of sports. I have no big problem with it. I just don't want to be around it all the time because it's just it's never ending, and there's no answer.
That's the kind of hot take that will not go viral. Right there, there's no answer. Let me ask you. JJ Reddick takes over the Lakers job and he had an amazing phrase that I had never heard, but man, I love it. Engagement farming, where essentially you know what people are going to click on and get people riled up, and you just put that out on social media. And I gotta admit to JJ, I've been stealing that.
A little bit.
I'm just curious. Do you ever do any engagement farming online?
No?
In fact, sometimes I get accused of all people, don't you know, I don't have hot takes. I'm not online to get clicks, and you know I'll get what I'm especially when I'm trying to I'm being tough on Klay Travis or Dave portnoy or or or Chris Russo people, you know, Elon, Oh, you're just looking for clicks.
You know, your your engagement farming. You're doing this. They only use that term. That is a great term.
Uh No, I've never written when I wrote columns, I always wrote for myself.
Yeah, you know, I wasn't trying.
To say, okay, what what exactly is going to get me the biggest audience this week?
And I was.
I had the I had the luxury of doing that before clicks were online.
Where now they do they do look at clicks. Oh yeah, don't you ever write.
A bowling column again? We got eight hundred clicks instead of three thousand. Yeah, bowling is a great thing to write about once a year anyway. So no, no engagement farming ever, I understand it exists. And now on X you can make money by by the engagement farming, you know they offer. Yeah on next premium, you make more money with the more you tweet and the more that they you get clicks on it, and you can make a good amount of money.
You know, there's only one I was unaware of this.
Yeah, it started with Elon started that when he took over. And there's a woman I can't think of her name. She's she's U in the South, and she's I think she's a spiritual person except every single one of her uh takes has words I wouldn't even say if we weren't on the air.
And she is a monster.
You know she made me makes six figures no oh yeah, just by uh yeah, you can make six figures a year if you get enough engagement, no question about now, the way.
He set it up.
But she does this purposefully. I mean I didn't realize this one of the first time I engaged her. I just I DMed her and said, listen, there's.
No you know, if you want to make the point, you know, we need to have a.
More civil dialogue out there. The profanity doesn't help it. It's wrong me to go about and to her credit, I'm not.
Going to call it up. She responded to me with about five words, and four of the words were not very good.
She said, backed me in a DM like but don't don't mess around with my income.
And she just she does it on everybody. She did it on Kamala.
She's particularly hard on women in politics on AOC Kamala.
But it's it's for real. You can make a lot of money again for not good stuff.
Yeah, here's the weird thing. Like you and I have been making money doing this sports stuff. We're not bagging on the same people over and over. What kind of life is that? This woman's just on social media every day crushing women in politics like that's her thing. And it sounds like she's only going after Democrats as opposed to Republicans.
Huh oh yeah, yeah, she's a good supporter of the president.
She's all on one side.
Mentally, though, Norman like, what do you think that's?
Like?
I can't even envision every day waking up all right, I got some I got some attacks. I'm going to go after this for I just can't fathom that. And you have to feed that beast every day to make that money.
Right, Two people used to be in our business, one more and the other Clay Travis and Jason Whitlock. That's their that's their whole m out.
Well, I don't want to touch one of them because I know him. The other one's out of the business because he's a fraud. You know, he got exposed big time and he's not in sports anymore. Unless you guys are friends.
Sorry, but I've got fired everywhere he's men or had to leave. But again, what they're doing, it's a pretty out in the open broad daylight grift.
It's similar to what you just mentioned about.
You just pick targets that you know are going to stir the base, and you do it every day, and you and again the base for some reason. For instance, talk radio always was better. Talk radio on the right has always been better than talk raight on the left. You know Rush Limbaugh, for instance, Let's say Waal versus Al Frank and Al frankn tried it. He tried a network. I think I felt this call.
Yeah flopped badly, Yeah block badly.
Rush Limbaugh is it? Even when I disagree with them, I disagree with them eighty five percent of the time. One of the most brilliant radio entertainers I've ever heard of my life. He knew how to run a talk radio program, he knew how to engage, he knew how to craft an argument.
Your boss right now, Colin callher. You want to disagree with him.
Collin knows how to take an argument, no matter how ridiculous it is, and he knows.
It pulls out social things. Ah, he's fatherless.
Let me talk about follow his kids here for the next fifteen minutes. They can't do anything, but anyway, he knows how to craft an argument from start to finish. I give Colin all the credit in the world because he gets he thinks before he talks, so he actually preps the right way, and he knows how to do a program like that. Rush was the greatest I ever saw doing a program like that. These other ones are again they're like, you know, imitation Rushes, so that they're trying to figure they know where the audience is, and they've identified the audience. In fact, one of them replaced Rush on iHeartRadio in that time slot with his partner, and so they know where to go. And for some reason, again on the right, they've always been much more effective in.
Farming that audience more than the left. I don't know why where.
Are you on that? You mentioned Chris Russo earlier. That's not a name I'd heard a lot, and for some reason, he's been. Now I see him in my timeline. I can't tell if people are laughing at him or with him. I don't know. It sounds like you're aware. I haven't heard any of his takes. I just see, you know, and I keep scrolling. But what's the story with Are you guys friendly or no?
No, No, I've never met the guy, And yeah, well he's me. I'm not never I'm a big fan. I understand what he's doing. Like I remember when he I first was made aware of him when he was on one of the first sports radio shows in the country, Mike and the Mad Dog Yes on the Fan in New York, and I didn't particularly like that particular act. And then he went solo and I'd never listened to him on serious radio. And the only reason I'm aware of him now is because I see YouTube clips of him, you know, just just shouting and shouting that, you know, you know, just shouting stuff.
And they do it when he just comes up to.
The camera and he's going through the camera and he's shouting stuff and Steve and as standing back there laughing at him, or it's reversed. So I think it's as you said, some people are laughing with him. Some people are laughing at him, but they're.
Laughing so that I think it works to some degree. I could never watch it like I can never listen. I used to work with Jim Rome when he was first on the radio. Yeah, and I have a lot, you know.
I actually went out to lunch with Rome a couple of times to try to establish relationship, and I have I don't remember one thing we said to each other. It was like it was It felt like I was dining with a department store a mannequin. There was no there there. If I scratched them on the skin, I don't think I get the blood. But anyway, I have a lot of respect for Jim has he identified again a young, angry sports male audience at an early age, and he does that thing every day. I couldn't listen to it for more. In ten or fifteen minutes at a time, it's again, it's much more. It'd be much more reasonable to listen to Colin or even though you know God forbid listen to you, it's much easier to listen to you all. But Jim knows what he's doing with that. I can't listen to it for more in ten or fifteen minutes.
It's funny when I had never heard of Chris Russeau. And then I moved to New York after college, and I would, you know, driving around covering high school sports in Northern Jersey and you hear these guys on the radio, him and Francesa, and they would be talking about the Yankees middle relief. And here I am a young guy, and I would be like, are you really talking about the bullpen middle relief? Six seventh d eighth inning? And I would instantly change a channel. And there weren't many options that I was like, how do people deal with this? I don't see what the interest is, but I guess you're right. They identified some kind of niche audience that just eats breeds in sleeps baseball.
Hearing.
Hearing a New York show talking this is years ago, talking about the Islanders second line. It's gonna fall hockey that much, I said, I mean, this is this where it's at again.
There must be an audience there for it.
But I would I'm much more fond of the approach, which is a little more lighthearted and and not so intense.
You're talking middle relievers, middle relievers.
Not the closer. I'm talking about like the second or third guy out of the pen.
Yeah and baday, this is what before it became now, you know how Now it's just it's scripted. Where the starter goes five, then you have the sixth and guy, the seventh to the eight guy in the closure.
This is before all that where they're talking about the key between this middle reliever and you go, what, you know, we.
Only live seventy or eighty years. We've got to spend it a little more, you know, quality wise.
We got to look at some other stuff.
Yeah, seventy years that I'm spending time talking about Jeff Nels versus versus the lefty of him coming out of the Yankees bullpen in two thousand and six, or what I'm just making up names.
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Where do you see the NBA going with Curry, Durant and Lebron kind of at the end, we know they're going to get a heavy push down the football as one game left, but I'm just curious where you see the NBA going, Are you as dire as some of these NBA is dead people out there? And the Charles Barkley types who just shipped on the league all the time.
No, well, charge, I mean Barklay. I love to him.
He can shoot on the league all I wants. You know, he's he's easy to watch. That's a great that's a great studio show. As far as NBA is dead, who are you kidding?
You know the the you know the NBA.
Okay, they just signed a media deal for crazillions of dollars. Okay, Unlike the NBA and the NFL and MLB, their worldwide presence and their world war popularity or hockey is much greater than we know. Second of all, third of all, there have been lulls. And by the way, as far as the game is being ruined right now, and let's say it has become too much of a three point fest, and this and that, Okay, each sport has made adjustments over the years, rules wise correctly. So like you know, the baseball move the mound down, you know, whatever's three feet or six inches whatever in this. You know, when they had eras at one point five, oh, Baseball's incredible adjustments.
The NFL.
Remember used to cover a guy by simply holding on to them all the way down on the field. You know, Lester Hayes would have stick his gloves and he'd be you know. So they've changed the rules to make it better offensively or defensively. The NBA will make the adjustment. As far as replacing the next generation, the next generation always gets replaced. I understand people go, oh, even the stars today, do you really want to watch at the Edwards Do you really want to I want to watch Jokic. I love watching the Joker. I love watching Giannis. I know they don't seem to have you know, they don't have the the the MJ. Kobe bronze staph thing, but somebody will when by Yama is gonna, you know East. I can watch them all day long. Yeah, you know, an eight foot nine inch guy who makes three footers is thirty footers and blacks thirty shots. Again, So the NBA is not nearly in dire shape as people think. The the stadium, the in stadium numbers in the Arenia numbers are as strong as ever. The ratings are down some because there's a lull, and but the ratings are going down with virtually everything in every regard. Only the NFL holds steady of the NFL.
Actually, NFL was down divisional weekend. Their numbers were down a little bit.
The NFL is a different animal, as we know, like ninety of the top one hundred TV programs in the US or the NFL, the NFL. The NFL is so powerful that progressive insurance. The NFL, they have backup quarterbacks doing progressive ads. I mean, most people don't know backup porducsple, most don't know Cult McCoy, backup backup guys are getting national TV contracts. Not so much of the whole the NFL has on us. But I'm not worried about the NBA. In the long run, it is.
Not dying off.
It's weird if Anthony Edwards goes to Asia, it is like as if the Beatles descended upon Asia. Right.
Meanwhile, if any if ninety nine point eight percent of NFL players go there, nobody knows who they are.
You know, they know Mahomes and but they I'm pretty safe to assume Josh Allen could walk around Japan and nobody would know who he is. Maybe his tall white guy standing out all is, but they just don't have the familiarity.
Hey, if Josh.
Allen was my waiter at Most Hollywood or West Hollywood or Bevery Hills restaurants.
I wouldn't think he's Josh Allen's is another guy trying to get into the business. You know, he's got to wait tables for a while. I wouldn't recognize Josh Allen. It's justly if he just cuts on his facial airt off. I have no idea who he was.
No idea. That's a good point. We'll wrap up with Caitlin Clark. I am just curious she took the league by storm. WNBA's back, everybody's all excited. I am just curious where you are with the WNBA or Caitlin Clark impact. I went to a game with my family last year.
We loved it.
I watched WNBA games featuring Clark. I don't really care much for too much else. I did go watch a Sparks game, but I don't know. W NBA does that do anything for you at all?
It should I have? I hate you know, It's it's not sexist, it's just stupid. There's certain sports where I've had no interest in watching women perform, and you know, you know, I watched the men in the NBA.
The women.
I don't have as much interest, even golf, which I don't like that much. I'll watch men's golf, I'll watch the four Majors. I won't watch any of the women's majors. So Kate, I'm glad for Kate Olenkart and she's seemingly can rescue a league which has not had a big imprint the American sports landscape. So I'm rooting for her, and I'm rooting for the w NBA. But where they go I probably won't be going with. I just made me think of something I went for the first time by accident to the immersive theater next to so.
Far Oh Cosm COSM. Yeah, yeah, but I.
Watch a soccer game, Okay, I usually don't care about soccer.
In the World Cup, I was like this the whole game. The experience, Yeah, was mind blowing.
And they know they have contracts with the NBA, and our waiter told us that if you watch something on a smaller court size than soccer and fewer players, he goes, it's it's even five times better. The stadium experience was unbelievable. I've never done a drug in my life, and this was like being high. Myness, we're in the stadium.
It's it was. It was mind blowing. Jason.
I didn't know you had never done a drug in your life. Real quick, I forgot about bowling. So question you. You have reference bowling many many years in your columns. Uh do you A? Do you bowl? And b who is that the guy who yells all this stuff? He has like an introduction when he comes out, there's a he's like a famous bowler.
Uh, you might be thinking, okay, from years ago, you might be thinking of Pete Webber.
Weber that's it.
Yeah, yeah, it was actually the John McEnroe of bowling pretty much. Uh. And yeah, he's he did the cry. He had a crotch grab forever. I you know, wasn't terribly fond of.
But he does have You can go to YouTube and find his famous when he won a big tournament, a major ten or fifteen years ago, and he shouted out something that made no sense, but he explained it later.
H who do you think you are? Okay, who do you think you are? So?
And he tried to explain what it was later, but he's and he's still around, but he's in his senior years now. But yeah, I've always you know, I was always appreciated bowling on TV. I'm a joke about it, but I do bowl.
I don't bowl well. I love bowling. If I can bowl once a month.
I'm happy to bowl on the What do you get in one fifty?
Yeah, no, in the one forties that's pretty good.
So I'm not a particularly good bowler, but I always you know, I always liked bowling back in the old days because the telecasts were you know, football, you know, baseball game can go on forever, particularly before they shorten it. The whole bowling telecast was you know, it's gonna be ninety minutes and before matches, each one usually comes down to the last frame or so, and then you have a champion in the in the TV finals. Also, like the the bowlers were everyday people like you and me. Not to wear everyday people. But they don't earn it. You know, if you earn six figures in bowling, that's huge. They it's such a tough life. They travel, which they have roommates when on the road. Two bowlers will share a hotel room or they'll run an RV to go from city to city. It's at glamorous travel. It's not a glamorous way to make a living. You've got a bowl about thirty five or forty games a week. Think about that on your body of bowling five or six games a day for five or six days.
You know, really, Yeah, it's an incredible pursuit.
And then I always claim that bowlers their wives are people you and I could date.
I mean, it's it's a super model thing. It's they're regular people.
So I've always appreciated the bowling world, and I wish it had a bigger you know, I know it's not gonna have a bigger imprint in an American sports landscape. It used to pre cable and back in the old days. But yeah, I love bowling. And I've also regret that most old school bowling alleys have turned into bowleros or lucky So it's like it's like rock and bowl. Now you go in there, it's a discothech and I can't even see the pins anymore.
And I'm listening to, you know, disco music from the nineteen seventies. What the heck, it's taking ten pins off of my dame.
All right, normand Chad. You know, if you if you give out your handles for social and the audience starts yelling at you, do you care or not?
Really?
Do you embrace that? Or you got enough going on in your life now that you don't need that.
No, I'm at Norman Chad on X and you know we started we have Gambling Mad with Norman Chad, which is a weekly podcast. We're talking about gambling and sports and politics and culture and food.
Yeah.
Are you betting on the Super Bowl? Any money on the Super Bowl yet? Or no?
I do not?
You know, ironic podcast obviously called Gambling Mad. I have not made a sports bet since I had a bad week in nineteen eighty four, that's true. I have not made a sports bet now since I was twenty five years old.
Wow, so no drugs and no gambling. What are your vices? Man?
Huh oh, I got a lot of.
Yeah. One question that shut down, Norman Chad. I got a lot of vices yet, right, Norman Chad, He's a legend man, Honestly, one of my heroes growing up. I love him. Corneiser Wilbon were for me, the Big Three. They were the fab five if you will, The Fab three. I just love reading your stuff, always found you hilarious. Thanks a lot for taking the time, Norman, all right, jam Mac, have a good one.
