I also enjoy such writing, despite having zero interest in sports myself. The craft shines through regardless of genre. Actually, sometimes Freddie makes me *want* to like the thing I learned to derisively call "sportsball" for approval by social circles. There's clearly something interesting and beautiful going on, and mocking such games from a position of condescending ignorance increasingly feels like the true loser take.
As a lifelong Bears fan, just wanted to echo how bad the QB position has been for the Bears and how I don't think people outside of Chicago truly understand. The Cincinnati Bengals (perpetually hapless and luckless) have had FOUR (4) quarterbacks as good or better statistically than the best Bears QB (Jay Cutler). This is not even including Joe Burrow, who will easily pass Cutler before he turns 30.
Yup. It's so, so awful. Modern NFL offense is like anathema to the Bears. I loved what Martellus Bennett said a few months ago. The problem is systemic in that organization.
To speak some reason to a fellow long suffering Bears fan, I think Josh Allen is a perfect example of Fields "finally looking like the real thing" not being true.
Overconfident in their declarations and sour grapes about being wrong - sure, but it is still a fact that Allen was a Jake Locker-ass "flamethrower and nothing else" prospect coming out of Wyoming. And he showed that as a rookie. But after three years of his career he had conquered and transcended those limitations and led the league in yards, completion percentage and touchdowns. He'd become a different player, his college weaknesses no longer applied.
With Fields on the other hand, we're indulging the idea that a team could WORK AROUND the limitations that Fields still has and always will have. Not the same thing.
I have a lot of affection for Fields just for pure entertainment value, not to mention the physical and mental toughness of helming the bum teams he spent his first two years on. If I had the slightest fear that he would become the kind of pocket surgeon a franchise NFL QB must be on another team I would be too scared to trade him. But I don't have that fear at all, that just is not in Fields' toolkit.
It would be irresponsible not to take the chance on getting what a Williams (or the very Allen-like Drake Maye) is capable of being.
For most of my life, I avoided sports talk shows. I enjoy watching sports, and I used to enjoy reading about sports when there were good sports reporters in the local newspapers. But, I never listened to sports talk.
Then a few years ago, I started watching clips of various sports talk shows on YouTube, and oh my god were they bad. And Nick Wright was the perfect example of how bad it was.
Also, I feel bad that you've had to spend so much time being the fan of a bad team. I've just started that journey over the last four years, and it is misery...
“Do you know what it’s like trying to get excited for Jay Cutler, who genuinely, deeply disliked playing professional football and demonstrated all the motivation of a kid being forced to go to Grandma’s?“
I almost spit out my coffee laughing.
As someone who drives a lot for work, I live off of NBA podcasts, and even though there’s starting to become an over saturation of current and former player podcasts, a few them I find to be extremely captivating. Raja Bell from the NBA ringer show really stands out to me as someone whose insight into the X’s and O’s of the game as well as what life as a pro athlete is like ultimately makes watching the game more interesting to me. Guys like him and Zach Lowe are to me at the opposite end of the spectrum as the sports shouting carnival barkers.
It cracked me up following the Josh Allen draft debate, where all the "smart" analysts said, "the numbers show that it's basically impossible for a QB with this statistical profile to succeed," and all the "dumb" analysts said, "this guy is big, strong, fast and throws the ball really far." And the "dumb" analysts were completely proven right.
First, I always enjoy Freddie's sports columns. The way that the NFL totally dominates the sports universe, combined with the weekly schedule, creates a never ending stream of awful sports media. There is just not enough material to fill a seven day media cycle. And because the NFL creates the form/tone of all sports journalism, the over-the-top media personality is now the norm across the landscape. When was the last bit of worthwhile sports radio ever broadcast? (Maybe whenever Bob Ryan and Jackie MacMullen were last interviewed in the late 90s?) It sucks that as technology and analytics have changed the way sports are viewed and understood, the typical sports media type has devolved into these caricatures.
I don't watch football anymore, but Wright permanently lost me with his Jokic bashing. If Jordan or Bird had done it I still wouldn't have agreed, but at lest they have the juice to excuse their being wrong. What the F has Nick Wright ever done?
I used to watch every week, and keep up with all the news. The concussions really took the joy out of the games for me. And the weird rule interpretations and officiating (this is coming from a Pats fan who benefited from the tuck rule). Plus, realizing how shallow fantasy football is as a competitive endeavor. The never-ending dumb commentary, which seeps in to the actual game broadcast, was just another nail.
1) I think the net effect of the Patriots dynasty has been negative for NFL media. Before Brady, even the greatest teams (80s Bears, 90s 49ers, etc.) could manage 1, maybe 2 SUper Bowls at most before time and parity caught up to them. The net effect of Brady has been that fanbases and journalists now believe that unless a team wins 3 Super Bowls in 4 years, they aren't "legit" (I think this contributes to the insecurity you describe from people like Bill Simmons).
2) This post is interesting in light of last week's news that Sports Illustrated is probably going away. The Skip Bayless model has won; if you want a serious career and following, you MUST beclown yourself. A guy like Aaron Schatz, who built DVOA, maybe the most predictive system I've ever seen for NFL football, had to go get a job for a sports betting place because Football Outsiders' owners didn't want to keep it. Whatever SI's flaws and missteps, it did represent one of the last genuine attempts at thoughtful sports journalism. The Athletic feels like it's going to go away sooner than later. It's going to be ESPN, FS1, and Twitter/Substack for the forseeable future.
There’s something to your point in that their most-clownish takes get clipped and do well on social media, I’m sure that drives some viewership back to their shows, and that feedback loop produces the type of characters presumably you, I and deBoer dislike. But also that type of character was always around. Jim Rome had a TV show before Twitter was a concern. Countless markets have carried some version of Honker & the Gooch’s Morning Sports Toilet on talk radio.
The Athletic might not be in as dire a situation as you suggest. It does quite well in the U.K. market with its soccer coverage, and now it’s bundled in with the New York Times slate of revenue generators (crossword, Wordle, cooking app, etc.). Plus, the NYT has additional incentive to keep it around after it got rid of its own sport-section-for-people-who-don’t-like-sports. They get to pull in Athletic pieces onto the NYT site and print editions whenever something in sports catches their interest.
I also miss the good old days. But as Ben Dreyfuss said, “Sports Illustrated has had one foot in the grave ever since they stopped paying Rick Reilly $10 million a year for weekly columns about how much he enjoyed playing catch with his dad during the Cuban Missile Crisis.” You waive off the missteps, but they could have been the Athletic and perhaps an even-better version of it, but they fumbled the ball out of the back of the end zone.
It was amazing to me how the tone of local Boston sports radio in the 90s (when the Red Sox won nothing of importance, the Patriots were at best a Super Bowl sacrificial lamb to the Packers, and the Celtics were a mess under Rick Pitino) and the 21st century were somehow uniformly miserable. It killed Nomar Garciaparra's love of playing baseball over time. Winning or losing, Boston sports radio talking heads were fundamentally miserable people, just in different ways winning or losing. It's like the entirety of American sports commentary got infected with this social virus.
I live in the absolute Mecca of “Sports Shouting”- Philadelphia. You haven’t witnessed how stupid this can get until you spent a day listening to Philly sports talk radio. Nick Wright would without question be among the classiest personalities on the air if he was a Philly sports talk host. The thing that’s infuriating is, imagine if Nick Wright had the level of hatred he had for Josh Allen for the team he was supposedly a fan of, and spent literally 0 time backing any of his takes up with facts or even watching the rest of the league for comparison.
It wouldn’t piss me off so much if it didn’t have a very real impact, but it actually does. I mean Nick Sirianni, who was last years coach of the year, took the team to the Super Bowl, has a career record of 36-20, and is coming off of an 11-6 year is in very real danger of getting fired if the team doesn’t make the NFC championship next year.
I stumbled upon a facebook group about Hoagies. It was a group of unhappy bros from the outskirts of Philly posting hundreds of times a day about how, except for their holy grail, every sandwich everywhere sucks and you suck for thinking it might not suck. And I realized that it is not just sports radio and comment sections in Philly, there is a whole segment of the population that defines itself by intentionally obnoxious, repetitive behavior. Just the worst.
Considering the absolute unprecedented collapse of the Eagles this year I don't think talking about Nick's job is out of bounds. I do agree that casting someone who disagrees with firing Nick as stupid is ridiculous and the arguing over "hot takes" is what propels ratings as opposed to having a civil conversation about it. There are decent commentators in the area if you're patient to wade through the chaff, like Glen Macnow and Ray Didinger. But the everyday guys exist just to get clicks and people fired up enough to call in.
I think this puts the lie to the assertion I so often hear that sports stories, sports narrative, sports opinions, are only interesting, nay only comprehendible, to people who follow the sport in question. I have no idea who any of the teams or people mentioned here actually are except Brady, Kelce, The Patriots, and Jokic, and Jokic isn't even a footballer so that's sort of cheating. Yet this was a great read and makes a bunch of interesting points I'll ponder. Sports, and games more generally, create really interesting environments for seeing how people are motivated and how they motivate others, and how they behave in extreme situations.
I think you can learn a lot about people, and about politics (which is nearly the same thing) from sports, sports fans, sports media. It lets you see more clearly a lot of things that would otherwise be hidden, because it turns the stakes up super-high without *actually* turning them up super-high, if you see what I mean. I think you see some of the same things you do in war or natural disasters, except without all the *actual* stakes crowding out the personal stuff. It's almost like doing lab experiments on people, in a strange sort of way. Idk it's not really that much like anything, not lab experiments or war or natural disasters, but those analogies feel like they're helping me gesture in the right direction.
Btw I also totally empathise with the love for a team or player coming from their being consistently underrated or unfairly disparaged. I don't see how one can *not* feel that way. Tennis is one of my preferred sports, and this effect has slowly transformed me into a reluctant Djokovic booster over the years, and I'm a near-lifelong Federer fan, so that's a big lift. I cried so much after the 2019 Wimbledon Final, but really, trying to be sober about it, their biggest ever match working out that Federer was the better player for 90% of the time but still lost is an entirely fair reflection of their rivalry. Federer is the better player in every way that feels like it counts. He's dramatic, emotional, flairy, electric, monstrously talented, so good it makes you well up just watching him play regular points in minor tournaments sometimes, but Djokovic is just some guy who plays mostly regular looking tennis except somehow always wins.
I think that's led to so many people who love tennis just *refusing* to admit as the evidence just mounts and mounts and mounts that Djokovic *just gets better results*. It feels so wrong. I fought it for so long. I hated that you could *hack* tennis like that, and be the best by such a *base* method. But over time that's mutated into a really nasty personal thing for too many Federer and Nadal fans, too many tennis fans in general. So many people are digging around for any possible scrap of a reason to deny him the GOAT accolade he now just so obviously has earned any possible way you slice it, so many people just want it to suddenly all be over so they can say "ah well looks like Federer/Nadal/BugsBunny" was *really* the greatest and this Djokovic thing was just a bit of a fluke. By this point people are just being embarrassingly silly about it and I want him to just keep pounding away racking up a lead nobody can imagine ever being matched in all the career stats, just to put the whole issue to bed so I can just love Federer as he really was, as the 2nd-best player in the greatest generation of tennis, the one you always wanted to be the best, but spent more of his career as a beautiful loser than the dominant force he was for 5 years or so before tennis recalibrated and rose to meet, then surpass him. I just want the people being mean and, by this point, often borderline racist about it (Serbia is *sort of* Russia if you strain yourself so a certain type of person suddenly hates him as of the other year) to have to shut up.
Except when he's playing Medvedev - now there's a player with some style. That's what tennis is all about.
As others have said - I really enjoy when Freddie writes about sports. At the risk of kissing your ass, sir, you're such a compelling writer that if you decided to write about sports more often, you'd immediately become one of the best sportswriters out there.
Anyway, yeah, Wright is an absolute clown, and his type of show is utterly unwatchable. Also, his hair is fucking ridiculous.
For a sports commentator who is both A) an asshole, but B) almost completely immune to Hot Takes, and this style of Skip Bayless-buffoonery, I'd recommend Ryen Russillo. He almost completely refuses to take part in the overly simplistic explanations and you can tell he ACTUALLY watches games.
Hahaha this has got to be the least self-aware post that Freddie has ever made
This post by Freddie is, legitimately, more hateful than anything I've ever seen from Nick.
Nick Wright is excellent at his job. He works in sports entertainment. The goal of sports entertainment is to be... entertaining. To get eyeballs and generate clicks. And he is very good at that!
Sure, he has some Skip Bayless in him. But Skip is totally insufferable, delusional, by most accounts a somewhat shitty coworker, and totally lacking in self-awareness.
Nick is... well, he's often insufferable. But he is completely aware of what he is doing, how he is perceived, and where his bread is buttered. I think it's admirable. He came up doing sports radio, got in with Colin Cowherd (another insufferable yet very smart guy), and then created First Things First, which is probably the greatest sports show in the business right now, alongside the TNT NBA crew with Chuck and the boys.
I'm just... baffled by Freddie's take, here? Why the fuck should Nick be kind to Bill's fans? What, exactly, is entertaining about kindness as a brand? Nick had a take. His take was that the Bills are the little brother who will not get over the KC hump. He has stuck to those guns, through thick and thin, for 3 seasons now. And he celebrates when he's right! That's normal, no?
Nick's entire brand is to make strong, borderline outrageous takes. And then he wins either way, because when he's right people tune in to watch him dance and clown on his cohosts. And when he's wrong, people tune in to shit on him and watch his cohosts clown on him. And it's all in good fun, and very often it's hilarious.
Nick is very aware that his highest rated shows are the ones where the Chiefs lose and people watch him get mocked on live television. And he deliberately shapes his takes to make it easy for him to be mocked. Do you think he predicted the Chiefs would go 20-0 this year and got a tattoo to that effect because he thought that was the smartest, most logical analysis?
What are we talking about here?
It's just... what does Freddie think he does for a living, anyways? Does he really think that the point of his Substack is to change the world, make social change, or whatever? He's a Substack blogger. Aka, a take artist. He literally has the same job as Nick. Be entertaining, so that people keep reading and subscribing.
What, exactly, was the point of all of these recent Freddie posts shitting on people for making a big deal about leaving Substack? Where was the kindness? The positive social change? Or was he just shitting on silly people doing silly things for silly reasons, because it's entertaining and people enjoy reading it? In other words, he found an angle - a take - and he's ridden that angle for a few weeks worth of content. That's the business, bub. That's literally what you do.
Sure, Freddie has a lot of serious posts and things that he is genuinely passionate about. So does Nick. He has a podcast, What's Wright, where they have a number of longform discussions that touch on political issues and other things in a much more serious and nuanced fashion. Nick has depth, he has integrity, he genuinely cares about things. But his TV show and Twitter feed are not for that purpose.
This is the very ugly side of Freddie that really bothers me to read. Whenever he talks about sports, it always makes me question his other opinions, because he's just flat out wrong about so many things, or missing the point.
In this post, he's calling Nick a malignant narcissist, hateful, etc... And the thing is, he genuinely means that, and genuinely thinks that Nick is a terrible person and representative of an genuinely malign problem. But I've watched Nick for years and years and years, and he's never been hateful. Not in any meaningful fashion - sure, he's danced on some graves, but it's literally all in good fun!
Watch him be a good sport when he loses - or, rather, deliberately being a bad sport because it's fun to watch. Watch how seriously and earnestly he acts when real life things - injuries, tragedies, etc... - intrude on the entertainment side of the business. Listen to how carefully he makes sure to give other people credit when he shares their takes, or how often he praises and gives credit to people who have helped him get to where he is at.
Watch First Things First. It is every bit as good as NBA on TNT, with exactly the same sort of vibe. It's three dudes having fun and taking the piss. Read the comments on their Youtube videos - there are tens of thousands of people who absolutely love this show, who think it is the antithesis of everything that's bad about sports media. And Nick Wright, along with Wildes, made that show what it is.
You are way off base, again, Freddie. And very hateful, again, for no reason.
"In this post, he's calling Nick a malignant narcissist"
But you also write this:
"Nick's entire brand is to make strong, borderline outrageous takes. And then he wins either way, because when he's right people tune in to watch him dance and clown on his cohosts. And when he's wrong, people tune in to shit on him and watch his cohosts clown on him."
Why is it hateful to suggest that a person who by your own admission is trying every day only to get as much attention as possible might be a narcissist?
I'm not sure I understand the point here. This is literally his profession, his job is to get views. Is every single television host a malignant narcissist? Or just the ones who are good at it and know how to get eyeballs?
And he just straight up isn't a narcissist. He has had his whole family on his personal podcast at various points, including his two adopted children. Watch those interactions and tell me that's a terrible human with a malignant personality disorder
It's also the job of a child pornographer to get views, and yet I judge them anyway. You could say this about literally anything - "yeah, he tortured someone to death on camera, but it got views!"
Does the idea of basic human standards really seem that alien to you? Do you see commercials for reality TV shows and think "this is morally ok because it gets views"?
Yes? I'll answer this seriously, because there are a lot of people in the comments who agree with you, and I genuinely don't understand your position.
Are you arguing that entertainment products should conform to the same standards as normal human interactions? I don't think that you are, I'm not trying to strawman you - it just sounds like that is what you are saying.
What is morally wrong with reality TV? Obviously, most of that type of behavior would be terrible in real life. But, hate to burst your bubble - reality TV is not real.
Are you saying that people shouldn't watch things that model bad behavior? Should I not watch Shameless or Jackass? Should I not play GTA or read/watch Game of Thrones? Should I not listen to basically the entire genre of rap?
What is the argument, here? That all art should conform to your personal moral standards, or the generally agreed upon behavioral norms of our society? Isn't that oppressive (and super boring)?
I know you aren't arguing that, but that is where your train of thought seems to lead. Particularly because you brought up reality TV. But let's say that you consider sports entertainment to be categorically different, because its narratives and entertainment value are based on real humans with real feelings.
Great - so, first point, every professional athlete knows what they are signing up for, and has the option to choose a different path at any time. Second, they get paid a crazy amount of money, largely because of the 24/7 media environment that absolutely prints money. Eliminate all of these First Take style shows, and you immediately take away a huge chunk of revenue. Show those athletes the dollar amount difference in their contracts if they get the sports discourse that they think they want, and I imagine a very large percentage of them would keep what we have.
So... again, I don't see your point? These are consensual interactions and relationships between grown adults.
To me, this is the same argument as the one about cancelling offensive comedians. If you don't like the comedy, don't watch it.
I don't think it's tenable to say that sports pundits are morally wrong for doing what they do. And I don't think anyone here is arguing that they shouldn't be allowed to do what they do.
So we're just bitching, then, about something we don't like. Which is totally fine! I bitch all the time. It's one of my many talents. But the people here keep talking about morality, and standards of decency, and calling these pundits names and seeming to believe that they are actually bad people. I think that's wild, because aimlessly bitching about things you don't like seems to be exactly the kind of behavior that is being criticized.
"Why the fuck should Nick be kind to Bills' fans?" Uh, because we're much better as a society when we reward kindness as opposed to rewarding viciousness? I think that's part of the whole point of what he wrote, or at least what I take out of it. Sports punditry is reflective of a larger issue of society at large. We can't just simply disagree and move on. We have to absolutely "own" those on the other side, we have to destroy them. When we completely lack empathy for others that don't share our views or opinions, and our desire to totally break them becomes all consuming, then reward that behavior on the public stage, something is broken. Of course there are limits, and I have no sympathy for Cowboys' fans 🤪 j/k.
I'm not sure that I agree with that. It's obviously a massive problem that our entire political discourse (and process) is eerily similar to reality TV. But I just don't think the stakes are that high in pro sports. You obviously get it, because fuck cowboys fans lolol
I think the argument that I was making - somewhat poorly, I'll admit - is that Freddie's post is every bit as vicious as the things he criticizes. Freddie is "owning" Nick Wright and other sports pundit "clowns". How is that type of language, or the tone of his piece, different or better from anything that Nick does? And Nick is simply having fun playing the game of sports media - Freddie is legitimately attacking him and others as people, and claiming that they are a malign influence in society.
I happen to really like Nick, so I pushed back on that premise, because I actually find him endearingly earnest and a person of high character. Now, granted, I was kind of a dick in my comment, but that's because Freddie was kind of a dick in his post. Regardless, instead of addressing my points, Freddie called me an asshole.
That's fair, because I am an asshole. And I like Freddie, obviously - I'm a paid subscriber. Freddie is very smart and often very insightful, and he's changed my mind on a few important issues. But I do think he has a tremendous blind spot when it comes to this sort of thing. He constantly attacks 'the conversation', but writes in a way that encourages the exact same things that he criticizes.
We love Freddie when he punches at targets that we want to see get hit. And then he punches somebody we like, and that elicits a different reaction. Probably a lesson in there, somewhere.
`because we're much better as a society when we reward kindness as opposed to rewarding viciousness?'
This is actually why I really enjoy a lot of the podcasts by The Ringer. They always tend to be upbeat and the actual love of the game comes out in almost every episode. Even when Bill Simmons does his rankings now, he seems more exasperated than anything about the worst teams (i.e., just wants them to get their stuff together because that makes the season more exciting for everyone).
One exception to this is `One Shinning Podcast' where the phoniness and hypocrisy of Mike Krzyzewski is (was) constantly discussed, and any loss was recounted with glee. All completely warranted, though.
So much of our current cultural climate is downstream of professional wrestling and sports talk/debate shows might be the best example. Every wrestler has to be a character (babyface, heel) & play that character to the greatest possible degree. You do not want a single bit of nuance in the character. A wrestling persona shouldn't grow or mature or demonstrate empathy. And within this set up, fans either root for you to win or to see you be humiliated. Nick Wright has chosen to be the heel and he has chosen Josh Allen & Nikola Jokic as his shining objects of hatred, just as Skip Bayless chose LeBron James. On one level, this is all in good fun -- sports debate has been used to kill time and have fun for as long as sports have existed. But the problem is that it is very hard to take off that heel mask when you wear it every single day. Ric Flair's entire persona was built on being the guy who was handsome, rich and famous -- the one who could steal your girlfriend and you couldn't do a thing about it. It was a superb wrestling character and he played it to perfection. But he didn't go back to being Richard Fliehr when he stepped out of the ring. He was Ric Flair in the hotel bedroom and at the hotel bar and in the airplane going to his next event. It made him rich and famous and left him unable to be a good husband or father. To see him now is to see a man who is a prisoner to being Ric Flair. Nick Wright is chained to being a shameless rodeo clown; to be anything else would be to set aside the mask and forfeit the ability to be a Dollar Tree Skip Bayless.
In a different world, I probably could have been a good sports shouter -- I am knowledgeable, glib and funny. But I know it would rob me of my soul. You can't play a broken person for four hours every morning and not end up as a broken person for the remaining 20 hours.
Totally disagree. Nick absolutely loves what he does. He is the #1 fan of his hometown team that he rooted for all of his life. He's a fanboy at heart, and unashamedly so.
He has a wonderful time on First Things First, you can literally see the joy and camaraderie bursting off of the screen. It's a rare thing they've created, i've only ever seen a similar level of chemistry with the NBA on TNT crew.
Nick loves what he does and is very successful at it. He also appears to be a very good guy. Watch his long-form podcast that he does with his adopted son.
Everybody throwing shade at Nick in this post is doing the exact thing that they accuse him of doing - they see a couple clips or read a single substack post about him, then think they know exactly who he is as a person. It's bizarre and totally lacking in self-awarenesss
Why would you attack literal children fans for getting excited that the quarterback of their team is on the cover of Madden? Because "it's all entertainment"? If you're going to say that about everything, then you're just exempting him from any expectations of good behavior, at all. Why not let one of the three most beleaguered fanbases in the NFL celebrate such a little thing? Because he's an asshole, and so are you.
Always love Freddie On Sports. and Go Lions 🦁
LIONS!!
I also enjoy such writing, despite having zero interest in sports myself. The craft shines through regardless of genre. Actually, sometimes Freddie makes me *want* to like the thing I learned to derisively call "sportsball" for approval by social circles. There's clearly something interesting and beautiful going on, and mocking such games from a position of condescending ignorance increasingly feels like the true loser take.
As a lifelong Bears fan, just wanted to echo how bad the QB position has been for the Bears and how I don't think people outside of Chicago truly understand. The Cincinnati Bengals (perpetually hapless and luckless) have had FOUR (4) quarterbacks as good or better statistically than the best Bears QB (Jay Cutler). This is not even including Joe Burrow, who will easily pass Cutler before he turns 30.
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/cin/career-passing.htm
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/chi/career-passing.htm
Yup. It's so, so awful. Modern NFL offense is like anathema to the Bears. I loved what Martellus Bennett said a few months ago. The problem is systemic in that organization.
https://twitter.com/MartysaurusRex/status/1726371378977202605
To speak some reason to a fellow long suffering Bears fan, I think Josh Allen is a perfect example of Fields "finally looking like the real thing" not being true.
Overconfident in their declarations and sour grapes about being wrong - sure, but it is still a fact that Allen was a Jake Locker-ass "flamethrower and nothing else" prospect coming out of Wyoming. And he showed that as a rookie. But after three years of his career he had conquered and transcended those limitations and led the league in yards, completion percentage and touchdowns. He'd become a different player, his college weaknesses no longer applied.
With Fields on the other hand, we're indulging the idea that a team could WORK AROUND the limitations that Fields still has and always will have. Not the same thing.
I have a lot of affection for Fields just for pure entertainment value, not to mention the physical and mental toughness of helming the bum teams he spent his first two years on. If I had the slightest fear that he would become the kind of pocket surgeon a franchise NFL QB must be on another team I would be too scared to trade him. But I don't have that fear at all, that just is not in Fields' toolkit.
It would be irresponsible not to take the chance on getting what a Williams (or the very Allen-like Drake Maye) is capable of being.
Thanks for writing this. I’ve always hated Ethan Strauss praise of these bad faith swill merchants. Their primary skill is shamelessness.
Appreciate this! Gives me the final push to unsubscribe from Strauss! So little sports writing worth reading anymore.
And the Chiefs are even more insufferable this year thanks to the breathless coverage of She Who Shall Not Be Named.
Only the Ravens stand in the way. If they can't pull it off, get ready for the most nauseatingly hyped Super Bowl ever.
I hate the Ravens, but Go Ravens!!!!
For most of my life, I avoided sports talk shows. I enjoy watching sports, and I used to enjoy reading about sports when there were good sports reporters in the local newspapers. But, I never listened to sports talk.
Then a few years ago, I started watching clips of various sports talk shows on YouTube, and oh my god were they bad. And Nick Wright was the perfect example of how bad it was.
Also, I feel bad that you've had to spend so much time being the fan of a bad team. I've just started that journey over the last four years, and it is misery...
“Do you know what it’s like trying to get excited for Jay Cutler, who genuinely, deeply disliked playing professional football and demonstrated all the motivation of a kid being forced to go to Grandma’s?“
I almost spit out my coffee laughing.
As someone who drives a lot for work, I live off of NBA podcasts, and even though there’s starting to become an over saturation of current and former player podcasts, a few them I find to be extremely captivating. Raja Bell from the NBA ringer show really stands out to me as someone whose insight into the X’s and O’s of the game as well as what life as a pro athlete is like ultimately makes watching the game more interesting to me. Guys like him and Zach Lowe are to me at the opposite end of the spectrum as the sports shouting carnival barkers.
It cracked me up following the Josh Allen draft debate, where all the "smart" analysts said, "the numbers show that it's basically impossible for a QB with this statistical profile to succeed," and all the "dumb" analysts said, "this guy is big, strong, fast and throws the ball really far." And the "dumb" analysts were completely proven right.
First, I always enjoy Freddie's sports columns. The way that the NFL totally dominates the sports universe, combined with the weekly schedule, creates a never ending stream of awful sports media. There is just not enough material to fill a seven day media cycle. And because the NFL creates the form/tone of all sports journalism, the over-the-top media personality is now the norm across the landscape. When was the last bit of worthwhile sports radio ever broadcast? (Maybe whenever Bob Ryan and Jackie MacMullen were last interviewed in the late 90s?) It sucks that as technology and analytics have changed the way sports are viewed and understood, the typical sports media type has devolved into these caricatures.
I don't watch football anymore, but Wright permanently lost me with his Jokic bashing. If Jordan or Bird had done it I still wouldn't have agreed, but at lest they have the juice to excuse their being wrong. What the F has Nick Wright ever done?
It has been pointed out elsewhere that an unspoken racial subtext tends to be a pretty prominent feature of the First Take category of shows.
It's just anything to engage a fleeting morsel of audience attention, truth or propriety be damned.
I used to watch every week, and keep up with all the news. The concussions really took the joy out of the games for me. And the weird rule interpretations and officiating (this is coming from a Pats fan who benefited from the tuck rule). Plus, realizing how shallow fantasy football is as a competitive endeavor. The never-ending dumb commentary, which seeps in to the actual game broadcast, was just another nail.
I hope more NFL themed posts are in our future.
A few brief thoughts:
1) I think the net effect of the Patriots dynasty has been negative for NFL media. Before Brady, even the greatest teams (80s Bears, 90s 49ers, etc.) could manage 1, maybe 2 SUper Bowls at most before time and parity caught up to them. The net effect of Brady has been that fanbases and journalists now believe that unless a team wins 3 Super Bowls in 4 years, they aren't "legit" (I think this contributes to the insecurity you describe from people like Bill Simmons).
2) This post is interesting in light of last week's news that Sports Illustrated is probably going away. The Skip Bayless model has won; if you want a serious career and following, you MUST beclown yourself. A guy like Aaron Schatz, who built DVOA, maybe the most predictive system I've ever seen for NFL football, had to go get a job for a sports betting place because Football Outsiders' owners didn't want to keep it. Whatever SI's flaws and missteps, it did represent one of the last genuine attempts at thoughtful sports journalism. The Athletic feels like it's going to go away sooner than later. It's going to be ESPN, FS1, and Twitter/Substack for the forseeable future.
There’s something to your point in that their most-clownish takes get clipped and do well on social media, I’m sure that drives some viewership back to their shows, and that feedback loop produces the type of characters presumably you, I and deBoer dislike. But also that type of character was always around. Jim Rome had a TV show before Twitter was a concern. Countless markets have carried some version of Honker & the Gooch’s Morning Sports Toilet on talk radio.
The Athletic might not be in as dire a situation as you suggest. It does quite well in the U.K. market with its soccer coverage, and now it’s bundled in with the New York Times slate of revenue generators (crossword, Wordle, cooking app, etc.). Plus, the NYT has additional incentive to keep it around after it got rid of its own sport-section-for-people-who-don’t-like-sports. They get to pull in Athletic pieces onto the NYT site and print editions whenever something in sports catches their interest.
I also miss the good old days. But as Ben Dreyfuss said, “Sports Illustrated has had one foot in the grave ever since they stopped paying Rick Reilly $10 million a year for weekly columns about how much he enjoyed playing catch with his dad during the Cuban Missile Crisis.” You waive off the missteps, but they could have been the Athletic and perhaps an even-better version of it, but they fumbled the ball out of the back of the end zone.
It was amazing to me how the tone of local Boston sports radio in the 90s (when the Red Sox won nothing of importance, the Patriots were at best a Super Bowl sacrificial lamb to the Packers, and the Celtics were a mess under Rick Pitino) and the 21st century were somehow uniformly miserable. It killed Nomar Garciaparra's love of playing baseball over time. Winning or losing, Boston sports radio talking heads were fundamentally miserable people, just in different ways winning or losing. It's like the entirety of American sports commentary got infected with this social virus.
I live in the absolute Mecca of “Sports Shouting”- Philadelphia. You haven’t witnessed how stupid this can get until you spent a day listening to Philly sports talk radio. Nick Wright would without question be among the classiest personalities on the air if he was a Philly sports talk host. The thing that’s infuriating is, imagine if Nick Wright had the level of hatred he had for Josh Allen for the team he was supposedly a fan of, and spent literally 0 time backing any of his takes up with facts or even watching the rest of the league for comparison.
It wouldn’t piss me off so much if it didn’t have a very real impact, but it actually does. I mean Nick Sirianni, who was last years coach of the year, took the team to the Super Bowl, has a career record of 36-20, and is coming off of an 11-6 year is in very real danger of getting fired if the team doesn’t make the NFC championship next year.
I stumbled upon a facebook group about Hoagies. It was a group of unhappy bros from the outskirts of Philly posting hundreds of times a day about how, except for their holy grail, every sandwich everywhere sucks and you suck for thinking it might not suck. And I realized that it is not just sports radio and comment sections in Philly, there is a whole segment of the population that defines itself by intentionally obnoxious, repetitive behavior. Just the worst.
Considering the absolute unprecedented collapse of the Eagles this year I don't think talking about Nick's job is out of bounds. I do agree that casting someone who disagrees with firing Nick as stupid is ridiculous and the arguing over "hot takes" is what propels ratings as opposed to having a civil conversation about it. There are decent commentators in the area if you're patient to wade through the chaff, like Glen Macnow and Ray Didinger. But the everyday guys exist just to get clicks and people fired up enough to call in.
I think this puts the lie to the assertion I so often hear that sports stories, sports narrative, sports opinions, are only interesting, nay only comprehendible, to people who follow the sport in question. I have no idea who any of the teams or people mentioned here actually are except Brady, Kelce, The Patriots, and Jokic, and Jokic isn't even a footballer so that's sort of cheating. Yet this was a great read and makes a bunch of interesting points I'll ponder. Sports, and games more generally, create really interesting environments for seeing how people are motivated and how they motivate others, and how they behave in extreme situations.
I think you can learn a lot about people, and about politics (which is nearly the same thing) from sports, sports fans, sports media. It lets you see more clearly a lot of things that would otherwise be hidden, because it turns the stakes up super-high without *actually* turning them up super-high, if you see what I mean. I think you see some of the same things you do in war or natural disasters, except without all the *actual* stakes crowding out the personal stuff. It's almost like doing lab experiments on people, in a strange sort of way. Idk it's not really that much like anything, not lab experiments or war or natural disasters, but those analogies feel like they're helping me gesture in the right direction.
Btw I also totally empathise with the love for a team or player coming from their being consistently underrated or unfairly disparaged. I don't see how one can *not* feel that way. Tennis is one of my preferred sports, and this effect has slowly transformed me into a reluctant Djokovic booster over the years, and I'm a near-lifelong Federer fan, so that's a big lift. I cried so much after the 2019 Wimbledon Final, but really, trying to be sober about it, their biggest ever match working out that Federer was the better player for 90% of the time but still lost is an entirely fair reflection of their rivalry. Federer is the better player in every way that feels like it counts. He's dramatic, emotional, flairy, electric, monstrously talented, so good it makes you well up just watching him play regular points in minor tournaments sometimes, but Djokovic is just some guy who plays mostly regular looking tennis except somehow always wins.
I think that's led to so many people who love tennis just *refusing* to admit as the evidence just mounts and mounts and mounts that Djokovic *just gets better results*. It feels so wrong. I fought it for so long. I hated that you could *hack* tennis like that, and be the best by such a *base* method. But over time that's mutated into a really nasty personal thing for too many Federer and Nadal fans, too many tennis fans in general. So many people are digging around for any possible scrap of a reason to deny him the GOAT accolade he now just so obviously has earned any possible way you slice it, so many people just want it to suddenly all be over so they can say "ah well looks like Federer/Nadal/BugsBunny" was *really* the greatest and this Djokovic thing was just a bit of a fluke. By this point people are just being embarrassingly silly about it and I want him to just keep pounding away racking up a lead nobody can imagine ever being matched in all the career stats, just to put the whole issue to bed so I can just love Federer as he really was, as the 2nd-best player in the greatest generation of tennis, the one you always wanted to be the best, but spent more of his career as a beautiful loser than the dominant force he was for 5 years or so before tennis recalibrated and rose to meet, then surpass him. I just want the people being mean and, by this point, often borderline racist about it (Serbia is *sort of* Russia if you strain yourself so a certain type of person suddenly hates him as of the other year) to have to shut up.
Except when he's playing Medvedev - now there's a player with some style. That's what tennis is all about.
As others have said - I really enjoy when Freddie writes about sports. At the risk of kissing your ass, sir, you're such a compelling writer that if you decided to write about sports more often, you'd immediately become one of the best sportswriters out there.
Anyway, yeah, Wright is an absolute clown, and his type of show is utterly unwatchable. Also, his hair is fucking ridiculous.
For a sports commentator who is both A) an asshole, but B) almost completely immune to Hot Takes, and this style of Skip Bayless-buffoonery, I'd recommend Ryen Russillo. He almost completely refuses to take part in the overly simplistic explanations and you can tell he ACTUALLY watches games.
Hahaha this has got to be the least self-aware post that Freddie has ever made
This post by Freddie is, legitimately, more hateful than anything I've ever seen from Nick.
Nick Wright is excellent at his job. He works in sports entertainment. The goal of sports entertainment is to be... entertaining. To get eyeballs and generate clicks. And he is very good at that!
Sure, he has some Skip Bayless in him. But Skip is totally insufferable, delusional, by most accounts a somewhat shitty coworker, and totally lacking in self-awareness.
Nick is... well, he's often insufferable. But he is completely aware of what he is doing, how he is perceived, and where his bread is buttered. I think it's admirable. He came up doing sports radio, got in with Colin Cowherd (another insufferable yet very smart guy), and then created First Things First, which is probably the greatest sports show in the business right now, alongside the TNT NBA crew with Chuck and the boys.
I'm just... baffled by Freddie's take, here? Why the fuck should Nick be kind to Bill's fans? What, exactly, is entertaining about kindness as a brand? Nick had a take. His take was that the Bills are the little brother who will not get over the KC hump. He has stuck to those guns, through thick and thin, for 3 seasons now. And he celebrates when he's right! That's normal, no?
Nick's entire brand is to make strong, borderline outrageous takes. And then he wins either way, because when he's right people tune in to watch him dance and clown on his cohosts. And when he's wrong, people tune in to shit on him and watch his cohosts clown on him. And it's all in good fun, and very often it's hilarious.
Nick is very aware that his highest rated shows are the ones where the Chiefs lose and people watch him get mocked on live television. And he deliberately shapes his takes to make it easy for him to be mocked. Do you think he predicted the Chiefs would go 20-0 this year and got a tattoo to that effect because he thought that was the smartest, most logical analysis?
What are we talking about here?
It's just... what does Freddie think he does for a living, anyways? Does he really think that the point of his Substack is to change the world, make social change, or whatever? He's a Substack blogger. Aka, a take artist. He literally has the same job as Nick. Be entertaining, so that people keep reading and subscribing.
What, exactly, was the point of all of these recent Freddie posts shitting on people for making a big deal about leaving Substack? Where was the kindness? The positive social change? Or was he just shitting on silly people doing silly things for silly reasons, because it's entertaining and people enjoy reading it? In other words, he found an angle - a take - and he's ridden that angle for a few weeks worth of content. That's the business, bub. That's literally what you do.
Sure, Freddie has a lot of serious posts and things that he is genuinely passionate about. So does Nick. He has a podcast, What's Wright, where they have a number of longform discussions that touch on political issues and other things in a much more serious and nuanced fashion. Nick has depth, he has integrity, he genuinely cares about things. But his TV show and Twitter feed are not for that purpose.
This is the very ugly side of Freddie that really bothers me to read. Whenever he talks about sports, it always makes me question his other opinions, because he's just flat out wrong about so many things, or missing the point.
In this post, he's calling Nick a malignant narcissist, hateful, etc... And the thing is, he genuinely means that, and genuinely thinks that Nick is a terrible person and representative of an genuinely malign problem. But I've watched Nick for years and years and years, and he's never been hateful. Not in any meaningful fashion - sure, he's danced on some graves, but it's literally all in good fun!
Watch him be a good sport when he loses - or, rather, deliberately being a bad sport because it's fun to watch. Watch how seriously and earnestly he acts when real life things - injuries, tragedies, etc... - intrude on the entertainment side of the business. Listen to how carefully he makes sure to give other people credit when he shares their takes, or how often he praises and gives credit to people who have helped him get to where he is at.
Watch First Things First. It is every bit as good as NBA on TNT, with exactly the same sort of vibe. It's three dudes having fun and taking the piss. Read the comments on their Youtube videos - there are tens of thousands of people who absolutely love this show, who think it is the antithesis of everything that's bad about sports media. And Nick Wright, along with Wildes, made that show what it is.
You are way off base, again, Freddie. And very hateful, again, for no reason.
He's not gonna fuck you, dude
You miss 100% of the shots you don't take
Nick responded, in case you missed it:
https://www.youtube.com/live/uT6gNe8nce0?si=yqaQNlTPV3WdusIP&t=82
"In this post, he's calling Nick a malignant narcissist"
But you also write this:
"Nick's entire brand is to make strong, borderline outrageous takes. And then he wins either way, because when he's right people tune in to watch him dance and clown on his cohosts. And when he's wrong, people tune in to shit on him and watch his cohosts clown on him."
Why is it hateful to suggest that a person who by your own admission is trying every day only to get as much attention as possible might be a narcissist?
yeah "I have contrived it so attention is always on me regardless of events" is textbook narcissism
I'm not sure I understand the point here. This is literally his profession, his job is to get views. Is every single television host a malignant narcissist? Or just the ones who are good at it and know how to get eyeballs?
And he just straight up isn't a narcissist. He has had his whole family on his personal podcast at various points, including his two adopted children. Watch those interactions and tell me that's a terrible human with a malignant personality disorder
It's also the job of a child pornographer to get views, and yet I judge them anyway. You could say this about literally anything - "yeah, he tortured someone to death on camera, but it got views!"
Are you equating Nick Wright with a child pornographer? Is that what you just did? You taking your meds man? Serious question.
Equate? Did you read what he said? What a condescending thing to say.
Does the idea of basic human standards really seem that alien to you? Do you see commercials for reality TV shows and think "this is morally ok because it gets views"?
Yes? I'll answer this seriously, because there are a lot of people in the comments who agree with you, and I genuinely don't understand your position.
Are you arguing that entertainment products should conform to the same standards as normal human interactions? I don't think that you are, I'm not trying to strawman you - it just sounds like that is what you are saying.
What is morally wrong with reality TV? Obviously, most of that type of behavior would be terrible in real life. But, hate to burst your bubble - reality TV is not real.
Are you saying that people shouldn't watch things that model bad behavior? Should I not watch Shameless or Jackass? Should I not play GTA or read/watch Game of Thrones? Should I not listen to basically the entire genre of rap?
What is the argument, here? That all art should conform to your personal moral standards, or the generally agreed upon behavioral norms of our society? Isn't that oppressive (and super boring)?
I know you aren't arguing that, but that is where your train of thought seems to lead. Particularly because you brought up reality TV. But let's say that you consider sports entertainment to be categorically different, because its narratives and entertainment value are based on real humans with real feelings.
Great - so, first point, every professional athlete knows what they are signing up for, and has the option to choose a different path at any time. Second, they get paid a crazy amount of money, largely because of the 24/7 media environment that absolutely prints money. Eliminate all of these First Take style shows, and you immediately take away a huge chunk of revenue. Show those athletes the dollar amount difference in their contracts if they get the sports discourse that they think they want, and I imagine a very large percentage of them would keep what we have.
So... again, I don't see your point? These are consensual interactions and relationships between grown adults.
To me, this is the same argument as the one about cancelling offensive comedians. If you don't like the comedy, don't watch it.
I don't think it's tenable to say that sports pundits are morally wrong for doing what they do. And I don't think anyone here is arguing that they shouldn't be allowed to do what they do.
So we're just bitching, then, about something we don't like. Which is totally fine! I bitch all the time. It's one of my many talents. But the people here keep talking about morality, and standards of decency, and calling these pundits names and seeming to believe that they are actually bad people. I think that's wild, because aimlessly bitching about things you don't like seems to be exactly the kind of behavior that is being criticized.
Just saw Nick's response to Freddie on his podcast, judge him for yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/live/uT6gNe8nce0?si=yqaQNlTPV3WdusIP&t=82
He seemed pretty reasonable... maybe he took Freddie's critique to heart?
Lol nah that’s how he is, that’s why I posted all the comments. Good dude and class act in real life, villain on tv
"Why the fuck should Nick be kind to Bills' fans?" Uh, because we're much better as a society when we reward kindness as opposed to rewarding viciousness? I think that's part of the whole point of what he wrote, or at least what I take out of it. Sports punditry is reflective of a larger issue of society at large. We can't just simply disagree and move on. We have to absolutely "own" those on the other side, we have to destroy them. When we completely lack empathy for others that don't share our views or opinions, and our desire to totally break them becomes all consuming, then reward that behavior on the public stage, something is broken. Of course there are limits, and I have no sympathy for Cowboys' fans 🤪 j/k.
I'm not sure that I agree with that. It's obviously a massive problem that our entire political discourse (and process) is eerily similar to reality TV. But I just don't think the stakes are that high in pro sports. You obviously get it, because fuck cowboys fans lolol
I think the argument that I was making - somewhat poorly, I'll admit - is that Freddie's post is every bit as vicious as the things he criticizes. Freddie is "owning" Nick Wright and other sports pundit "clowns". How is that type of language, or the tone of his piece, different or better from anything that Nick does? And Nick is simply having fun playing the game of sports media - Freddie is legitimately attacking him and others as people, and claiming that they are a malign influence in society.
I happen to really like Nick, so I pushed back on that premise, because I actually find him endearingly earnest and a person of high character. Now, granted, I was kind of a dick in my comment, but that's because Freddie was kind of a dick in his post. Regardless, instead of addressing my points, Freddie called me an asshole.
That's fair, because I am an asshole. And I like Freddie, obviously - I'm a paid subscriber. Freddie is very smart and often very insightful, and he's changed my mind on a few important issues. But I do think he has a tremendous blind spot when it comes to this sort of thing. He constantly attacks 'the conversation', but writes in a way that encourages the exact same things that he criticizes.
We love Freddie when he punches at targets that we want to see get hit. And then he punches somebody we like, and that elicits a different reaction. Probably a lesson in there, somewhere.
`because we're much better as a society when we reward kindness as opposed to rewarding viciousness?'
This is actually why I really enjoy a lot of the podcasts by The Ringer. They always tend to be upbeat and the actual love of the game comes out in almost every episode. Even when Bill Simmons does his rankings now, he seems more exasperated than anything about the worst teams (i.e., just wants them to get their stuff together because that makes the season more exciting for everyone).
One exception to this is `One Shinning Podcast' where the phoniness and hypocrisy of Mike Krzyzewski is (was) constantly discussed, and any loss was recounted with glee. All completely warranted, though.
The Ringer is excellent. They're my go-to for NBA coverage. Love Russillo, KOC and Verno, and Simmons. That and Zach Lowe from ESPN
Wildes used to work with Bill, he's the host of Nick Wright's show First Things First. Give that show a try, you might really really like it.
So much of our current cultural climate is downstream of professional wrestling and sports talk/debate shows might be the best example. Every wrestler has to be a character (babyface, heel) & play that character to the greatest possible degree. You do not want a single bit of nuance in the character. A wrestling persona shouldn't grow or mature or demonstrate empathy. And within this set up, fans either root for you to win or to see you be humiliated. Nick Wright has chosen to be the heel and he has chosen Josh Allen & Nikola Jokic as his shining objects of hatred, just as Skip Bayless chose LeBron James. On one level, this is all in good fun -- sports debate has been used to kill time and have fun for as long as sports have existed. But the problem is that it is very hard to take off that heel mask when you wear it every single day. Ric Flair's entire persona was built on being the guy who was handsome, rich and famous -- the one who could steal your girlfriend and you couldn't do a thing about it. It was a superb wrestling character and he played it to perfection. But he didn't go back to being Richard Fliehr when he stepped out of the ring. He was Ric Flair in the hotel bedroom and at the hotel bar and in the airplane going to his next event. It made him rich and famous and left him unable to be a good husband or father. To see him now is to see a man who is a prisoner to being Ric Flair. Nick Wright is chained to being a shameless rodeo clown; to be anything else would be to set aside the mask and forfeit the ability to be a Dollar Tree Skip Bayless.
In a different world, I probably could have been a good sports shouter -- I am knowledgeable, glib and funny. But I know it would rob me of my soul. You can't play a broken person for four hours every morning and not end up as a broken person for the remaining 20 hours.
Totally disagree. Nick absolutely loves what he does. He is the #1 fan of his hometown team that he rooted for all of his life. He's a fanboy at heart, and unashamedly so.
He has a wonderful time on First Things First, you can literally see the joy and camaraderie bursting off of the screen. It's a rare thing they've created, i've only ever seen a similar level of chemistry with the NBA on TNT crew.
Nick loves what he does and is very successful at it. He also appears to be a very good guy. Watch his long-form podcast that he does with his adopted son.
Everybody throwing shade at Nick in this post is doing the exact thing that they accuse him of doing - they see a couple clips or read a single substack post about him, then think they know exactly who he is as a person. It's bizarre and totally lacking in self-awarenesss
Why would you attack literal children fans for getting excited that the quarterback of their team is on the cover of Madden? Because "it's all entertainment"? If you're going to say that about everything, then you're just exempting him from any expectations of good behavior, at all. Why not let one of the three most beleaguered fanbases in the NFL celebrate such a little thing? Because he's an asshole, and so are you.
There was only one asshole in this interaction and it wasn’t Jack.
Nick responded to Freddie on his podcast, in case you're interested:
https://www.youtube.com/live/uT6gNe8nce0?si=yqaQNlTPV3WdusIP&t=82