Hour 1: Grand Symphony of Ego and Narcissism (feat. Mark Kriegel)
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This is the Dan Levitar Show with the Stugatz Podcast. Dominique, our next guest here, Mark Kriegel, is one of the best. He's the foremost boxing writer in America, but for a long time he has been one of the best sports writers in America. He's currently a boxing analyst for ESPN, and like the best sports writers, he gravitates toward the boxers because they're weird and fascinating and often vulnerable, publicly courageous.

And his latest book, Baddest Man, the making of Mike Tyson is available now. And this writer with this project, I'm fascinated by Tyson because I just think he's the most interesting athlete of my time for a lot of different reasons. Just interesting. And it's at least in part because he'd reveal himself to you and is somebody that was more comfortable in prison than outside of it.

didn't want to leave prison when he got to prison because prison had more order. And I'm just sure that Kregel has found a thousand things about this man's life because he's one of the best reporters too that there's been. So Mark, thank you for joining us. And just start us here on like you tackled this project because I imagine you too find him more interesting than anyone else you've covered. I tackled this project because I owe the publisher money and he broached the idea of Tyson and

And my first thought was, what body part would I rather impale than revisit all the crap I wrote in the 90s and the schmuck I was back then and, you know, in large measure who he was back then. And I started to think about it.

And, you know, no writer wants to give back money. But the more I thought about it, I love you. I mean, you know that the more I the more I thought about it, the more I came to consider him not by.

who he had knocked out or all the stuff he had talked, but by what he had survived. And by that measure, I got to love the guy I'm writing about if I'm going to live with him for a biography. And by that measure, what he had survived to me was monumental and a sign of virtue. I mean, booze, coke, the death of a mother, the absence of a father.

A neighborhood in Brownsville that, like calling it a ghetto, to me seems entirely insufficient. It was a full-on dystopia. Molestation, incarceration as a juvenile, and this is largely, you talk about wanting to remain locked up.

This is largely a tale of incarceration, especially juvenile incarceration. He was locked up as an adult, obviously, as a kid. He survived boxing. And one of the reasons we are drawn, those of us who love melodrama, to boxing is because the third act is inevitably the tragedy. And it's the noir and it's the reveal and it's the curse.

The odd thing about Tyson is he turned the third act around. The third act has become like the most unlikely triumph I've ever seen. The book opens with him watching his daughter play tennis.

I should say also that he survived the death of a child, which I don't know how the hell you do that. And I'm thinking about watching his kid play tennis, and what he's actually done is he's outpaced our capacity to imagine him. Like, who the hell could have imagined Mike Tyson watching his kid play tennis and Dana Point? I couldn't.

Can you help me for, can you take me through a little bit about what it is that you would say to others is most interesting about Mike Tyson? If you can only select a thing or two. Damn, I'm not BSing, but 2019, you did an interview with him that begins with the DMT and the Toad. And it seems like it's going to be a goof, this hallucinogen, and he talks about

the death of the ego. And he was, fighters need that ego, especially to play the role he did, heavyweight champion of the world, and a particular kind of champion. But this is a story set into motion largely by the trainer's ego in Kusamata. And I think that there's something in that interview with him that you nail that goes right to the core of his being. He loves Kus for rescuing him.

But he created this ego monster.

And I think in large measure, it was about Cus's ego. And Mike pushes back on this. But this is but he was asking a kid 13 years old. He pulls out a lockup to make him custom model live forever. So you're fascinated by the psychology of how people are made. You're saying that he by environment sort of perfectly built to both be a menace and ordeal.

also be conquered by an assortment of temptations. Yeah. I mean, Cuss wanted him to be Alexander the Great. And in fact, in fact, he was. But in Tyson, he had like the perfect mound of clay. And, you know, when I when I mentioned this to Tyson, we had we had two conversations basically to establish ground rules no more. But when I said, hey, you know, Cuss is asking you to live forever. He pushes back. He goes, well, what do you think would become of me otherwise? And

He says, well, didn't I? And in fact, in fact, he did. As long as people know Tyson's name, they will know the name of Custom Model. My question is, at what price? How did you approach the most disturbing aspects of his life? Addiction, abuse, incarceration, rape, loss? I mean, by accident, this book ends, this book ends in 88 at the Sphinx Fairgrounds.

which was the term of art in boxing, fight of the century. And it's there with Trump. It's center stage. And it's the high point of Tyson's professional career, but everything's in place for his life to fall apart. So it ends right there. And, you know, boxing is like a grand symphony of ego and narcissism. And you could see it's like the...

the caboose or whatever it is gets all the way up to the top of the roller coaster and it's about to fall. So it ends in '88, but I don't deal with the '92 trial or anything beyond that. But it's the same way you excavate like the interior of anyone's life. I think, you know, from my perspective, the great wound

the hole that he's only recently been able to fill is his mom. You know, he has this theory about like all great conquerors, including Alexander the Great, were mama's boys. But to me, the most brutal fact of his life is that he never gets a chance to earn his mother's love or to get his mother's love. She's broken. She was broken when her man ran out and something fractured inside of her and the drinking picks up. And, you know, Mike is...

there's a great basketball player by the name of lloyd daniels you may remember he actually grew up next door and was essentially a shelter for for single single women he says man you know i had it i had it i had it easy i had like my alcoholic uncles and whatever else and my grandma but mike's family mike's family was the street and i think that's that's really the the original the original wound with mike you know and and in some senses

fighters became his family. He loves fighters, but they're dead or alive, but real to him. Put it on the poll, please. Was Alexander the great a mama's boy? And what he just described was our show when he called it a grand symphony of ego and narcissism. That he called...

Boxing is what he called that. And that is also that would be on the tombstone of our show, a grand symphony of ego and narcissism. Thank you for the vine. Mark, I have a question that might appear like we're getting sidetracked here, but you're a member of the prestigious Boxing Writers Association. Oh, no. Oh, no. In 2021, you were honored with the Nat Fleischer Award.

What was the criteria to enter your Writers Association? Can you just enter your Writers Association without having written anything? I think you just need a cell phone. I think you just need a cell phone at this point. It used to be the great literary sport. All you need is this piece of...

You know what? Well, that backfired. Well, no, no, no. Hold on. That's it. Here. I'm a boxing writer. Here. Hold on. But you need a cell phone. Talk about this. Right. You need a cell phone to write. Yeah. So, but, so my question is, can you enter a writer's association without actually having anything? Writing is optional? You don't actually have to get anything published to be a member of the Boxing Writers Association? In this? No, no. I'm being facetious. Oh, thank you. At this point, like...

Yes, okay. At this point, they're just letting anybody in, right? At this point, they're just letting non-riders in, right? This needs to stop right now. Oh, I'm sorry. Was I just right? You need to...

Yes, I was. You're not right about him not writing. He did write, and the accusation is a faulty one. Mark, you're a writer. You got into this Writers Association by doing it the right way. Can we explain this to Mark? We have someone in this show. No, no, no. Let me explain. You guys have done enough. And now that I'm right, you want to pile on. We have someone in this show that is a member of the Hockey Writers Association.

My question is, oh, I didn't know that you wrote. What did you write? I wrote an article, an op-ed for the Hockey News. All right, that makes you a writer. However, he wrote that after he was granted access into this Writers Association. He was a member of the Writers Association without having written anything. And everyone looked at me like I was crazy because I asked that question. Now, Mark, you're accomplished.

And I know I don't sound crazy right now. Would you have been granted access into your illustrious Boxing Writers Association of America without having written anything yet? I've seen it done. Yes! Another victory for Roy! He's seen it done! He's seen of it! He's seen of it done!

What do you mean for the hockey news? What is that? Because times have changed? It can't be the hockey news. What is that? That's offensive. You can't say... Hold up, hold up. If you write like a...

- Go ahead. - If you write something like a pre-season roundup, like in the hockey news or something in boxing, like the state of boxing writing is such that I think that you might be elevated to like Proust status. - There we go. - Proust. - All right, this is more of a state of the industry thing that I don't want to get bogged down in. Like you got access by writing.

Yeah. And I'm please, I'm sorry for my tone. I'm just, yeah, I'm just, my back is up against the wall here. I'm being framed. I walked into something. I don't know. Yeah, that's okay. And, and Chris has been yelling the entire time. Explain it to him. I'm taking this as a dub guys. You weren't prepared for that question. All right. Thank you, Mark. Sorry that we confused you. He's very interested in being easily confused. Uh, but last question though, you also wrote a very well, uh,

long time ago, one of the best to ever write well about Pat Riley. And I'm curious on a couple of fronts. A, how do you look back on what you wrote about Tyson in the 90s? What does that say about who you were back then? And how much remorse do you have about how you wrote about him in the 90s? And what could you tell my snotty producer there, Mike Ryan, when he blasphemes

about Pat Riley saying that, you know, Pat Riley's time with the Miami Heat the last five years has been a bit of a failure. - I'm less enamored with Pat than I was 30 years ago for reasons I'll get in with you later. I do think he falls into the category of grand accomplished narcissists. I had an idea about Pat that I wanted to do

um prior to tyson which is really about his life is a symphony of ambition and what do you what do you do and i think this was true of his father as well what do you do when the game you love more than anything in the whole world doesn't quite love you back and your physical talent isn't commensurate with your ambition and your especially your desire so like i i saw pat and i still think um

I still think it was the greatest mistake the Knicks ever made. Now, you could do the faxing, the resignation, but not signing him, not locking him up was the biggest mistake in the history of the Knicks organization. I grew up like two blocks in the garden on 8th Avenue. If you look at the, you know, you want to talk about the last five years, that's great, but also consider the last 30. So Pat's career, especially in Miami, you know, he got what he wanted. It's a case of like empire building.

And it's also a case of enormous ego. What was the question about Tyson? Do I regret what you wrote about him in the nineties? Uh, when you look back at it, right? Cause we, we created a mythology around him as we were coming up in sports writing. You were a young man. I was a young man. We were enjoying writing about somebody who was crazy, deviant, uh,

scared, vulnerable, probably mentally ill, and we only knew the beginning of the story. And we wrote about him in a way that mythologized him as things happened around him that were, you know, anarchy. - How do I feel about it? Some things I was right on, some things I was overboard. I mean, like beware a guy in his late 20s, early 30s with ambition and thinks he's cool. Like, you know, a lot of it was schmucky, a lot of it was overboard, some of it was right on.

Most of it lacked nuance, which is, you know, you lack nuance at that age. I will say this, and this is peculiar to Tyson, unlike anyone I've ever seen. The guys who were like one in particular, Pete Hamill, was my rabbi in the business, great columnist and novelist in New York. He was one of the he wrote a beautiful obit.

for custom auto and he had known D'Amato and Jose Torres that whole scene since the 50s. So did another great writer, a seminal magazine writer, nonfiction writer, Gay Talese. But because Cuss was such a great character and he gave the writers what they wanted, there's he had seduced generations of writers.

Prior to Tyson coming on the scene, Tyson comes on the scene and now you have this ready made fable of cussing the kid, which also lacked nuance and it wasn't entirely the whole truth. So the peculiar thing with Tyson is that he had and this is unlike anyone else. He had literary cachet before he had street cred. It's it's it's only later that he becomes like an

an icon in what we now know as like the hip hop generation. But what came first and what seduced a whole assembly of TV executives was the literary cachet that, oh, you're writing about someone important and he's keeping the old trainer's dream alive, which might be the greatest trope in all of boxing. But Tyson was a very peculiar creature like that. From one writer to another, as well said. Oh, come on! LAUGHTER

Don Levitard. What is the worst part of the life? Stugatz. The worst part of the life of what? This is the Don Levitard Show with the Stugatz. Last thing before we let you go, the name of the book, Baddest Man, The Making of Mike Tyson, the Pat Riley observation you wanted to give us at the beginning, you can give it to us at the end.

But didn't I give it to you already? Well, no, you were just you were saying that that you have your you've rethought your position on how you wrote about him 30 years ago. And I didn't know what it is that you'd learned there. Very really good report. And I just would say, well, this started I was going to write a biography of Pat and I.

I kept sending him like genealogical material and books I had written and also go ahead and do it. I can't be in a position where I asked the subject's permission. And I tried to make this clear to him. I got a call from a guy on his staff. We both know.

And he goes, will you please stop calling people? I said, I'm doing this book, man. And I love Coach. You know, I think the world of him. That's why I'm doing this book. He goes, oh, I didn't realize it. No, I said, I'm doing the book. And he says, well, next week I'll talk to him. And, you know, by this time next week, you'll hear from me or from him. We'll get back to you and tell you what we think. And again, this is a guy I adored.

And I did not hear from either of them. That's what pissed me off. Instead, like I get calls from like, I get texts and called one of them, like from Jason Williams saying like, Hey, I got this email. I think it was an email, not a call. Like saying you might be getting a call from so-and-so don't talk to him. Like, I guess he sent, like they contacted everyone who ever played for him, coach with him or whatever it was. And that's okay. That's cool. I understand that. But at least it's,

Tell me first in my face. That's the answer. Coward. Scared of him. Coward? It sounds like it. Scared of him. It sounds like it. I mean, it sounds like Pat Riley is a little concerned. Scared of who? No, no, no. I know you're not scared. Bone crusher. He ain't scared of me. I just, I just, I think, no, I think, I think there's something different. I think with Pat, it's an issue of control. I think that Pat has this idea and he may well be doing it already of this

of writing his own epic biography. And he, above all, looking back, you know, Pat doesn't want to relinquish control. One word answer. Ego Rankin's top three or top five, Pat Riley? Five to ten. Maybe five. Five to ten. Yeah, but I mean, hey, I don't mean that as a goof on the guy. Right. No.

No, man. Look, you are an exceptional writer and an exceptional reporter. And you're not wrong that he's an ego beast and that he likes control. And I'm guessing he knows what kind of reporter you are. And if you get close to skeletons of truth somewhere in his past, he's going to want control over that. And you know that. He knows that. And that's where your relationship ended on that book. It sounds like Dan's angling to write the biography. It sounds like Dan knows that.

How awkward is this for you, pal? See you later. You could write a hell of a Pat bio. Yeah. You could be a hell of a mouthpiece. Puppies. That's right. Duck and Mark. Narcissist. I want to hear the unauthorized version. That ego monster. That's right. No, see, but Mark writes about people, flaws and all. And so that can be scary. It's too intimate. It's too close. The Miami Heat wanting to control the message wall?

Can I add one thing? Like for all the excess and muddiness with him, he changed the game in the most fundamental way. I remember like Woj telling me, you know, this guy practically invented

free agency. And the guy who could achieve no power, no agency as a player who's hanging on to stay on a roster empowers the greatest players in the world in a way that no one could have imagined.

imagined decades ago that that change that changes the game in the most in the most fundamental way uh and i think it's and he changed the game in a way he could no longer control uh thank you mark for the time and the book i would recommend anything he writes to everyone because he is exhaustive baddest man the making of mike tyson good seeing you again sir appreciate the time take care dan take care fellas thank you all right uh mike ryan making faces back there

What is the problem? What do you think the problem is? I think that got a little awk for you. You did? Yeah. Why? Yeah, because if I can deduce anything from that interview, I kind of want to hear Mark's book. Yeah. I want to read it with my ears. About Pat? It seems like Pat's ducking Mark. Pat is trying to find a friendly. And Dan, you might be that friendly. Oh! No, no.

Wait, am I a writer? Did I just deliver the news? Dan, I might have just delivered the news to you. I have been wondering why Pat Riley would not tell an epic story like that or have someone have it told for him when he's got five screenplays that he's written.

in his house, I would assume that he would want to tell his own story. He doesn't seem to want to do that from every angle that I have seen. I would say that that would be, you know what, having, now being in the documentary business, I would say that one of the gets that would go

Get done no matter what. Not like Jerry Jones getting a 10-part series on Netflix. Pat Riley can write his number right now if he tells people, I will tell my story. Is he waiting for a better ending? I mean, I don't think he thinks he's ever going to die.

I think he's going to just crawl and try to beat everyone until the very end and then stick a hand out of the grave and say, with a middle finger, toward the Celtics. That has a championship ring on it. Does he realize that Terry Rozier is getting $27 million next year?

Part of this whole equation. Riley has told his story on the Art of Conversation. So has Tyson, by the way, in an interview mentioned by Mark Crago, which is the only reason we had him on right there, is for that little bit of flattery. Yes, yes, tell me about that episode of Art of Conversation that enlightened you. Five screenplays? Five or six, yeah. There's a creative buried somewhere in there that never got to be creative. And a guy that was around Tinseltown for quite a while.

focus on roster construction. That is the height of entertainment. Tinseltown created Showtime, learned, yeah, created fashion in Hollywood. Armani made Armani famous. Ridiculous legacy. Does he still have that deal or was that like an urban legend where he can walk into any Armani store and get a suit? He denies it and A-Rod denies it, but I had reported that the two of them did have that deal, both of them, had the deal with Armani. If they both denied it, it seems like a... Do you think that's good journalism then by then? Yeah.

Good job. From one writer to another. You dicks. Did Kriegel take out the hockey news? I wish he played with me a little bit better because what he was doing was like his own opinion on the current state of writers because they just let anybody in, which I'm like, that's the point I'm trying to make here. He ultimately did agree with Mike. He did. You saw that? You weren't prepared.

Shame on you for booking a member of a writer's association today. You put my back up against the wall if claws come out. He didn't really agree with Mike, though. Ah, yeah, whatever. He did. He was sarcastically saying that nowadays they'll let anyone with a phone in. Which is the point I was trying to make. Hey, huge race this weekend in Mexico.

city. Wait a minute. What kind of transition is that? I saw the gearhead. You've had a lot of influence over today's show, including a first hour in which you've insulted Roy. Jessica reprimanded you. It seemed fair to me. You ignored it. You barreled on. You're saying you're right about everything. You're annoying people. Charlie hasn't talked in a month. Yep. Sorry about that. But Charlie, you're not on the cast, so back off.

Dan, did you really want more of me? As fake Dan? Yes, I wanted to go to you until it fell apart and then I would be victorious. But I'm saving that for the end of the show. The NASCAR Cup Series. Get me. Gear me. I mean, you know, it's more awkward than that interview was. We'll edit it out. It was long. I fell apart there, man. I'm leaving it all in. I fell apart there. Oh, yeah, we're live. Three of you shouted it at me. I heard it. I developed a third ear to hear it.

Always good to hear on live. We'll clean that up. Yep.

NASCAR Cup Series goes to Mexico City. This is the first time the Cup Series is going to be there. Man, it's three shows in 24 hours. It's a lot. How about us? We don't do that. We don't do that. Those haulers went from Michigan Motor Speedway and drove all the way down to Mexico. Interesting time in history to do that, especially for NASCAR. Daniel Suarez, a homecoming in Mexico City. This is a road course, people. They're heading over to the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. Yeah.

I did that from the top of my head. Nailed it. Did that from the top of my head. There was some Zagaki in there, though, because you sounded a little scared. Yeah, well, because I'm like, this is... Which one is it? Oh, the Hermanos Rodriguez Autodromo. Of course. That translates loosely into the Autodrome Brothers Rodriguez. Yeah! Or Rodriguez Brothers. Anywho. Big.

Daniel Suarez, everyone's going to be rooting for him. He's a hometown favorite, but this is a road course and there are plenty of road specialists in the NASCAR Cup Series. Chase Elliott, although he is on bad form lately, got to be wondering if he's at the end of his time at Hendrick Motorsports. You got Kyle Larson, who's proven that he can win in a road course. Tyler Reddick, a bunch of specialists. And

The 11 car of Denny Hamlin seems to be in proper form. This is going to be an excellent race. It's going to be on Amazon Prime, and I love Amazon Prime's coverage. Their whole approach to sports fits in perfectly with NASCAR's presentation. GearHead is presented by NASCAR. For all the latest insights and storylines,

And to find out when and where to watch, visit NASCAR.com. This should be a great race. And for this race, they're doing something totally foreign to NASCAR. They're going to have a podium. The top three finishers are going to get celebrated. In NASCAR, they usually generally celebrate if you ain't first, you're last.

But this time... The gearhead seems to be falling apart and missing pieces. But this time they're acclimating to a more global tradition, not being so myopic. The top three finishers make the podium. I thought all races were on roads.

Guessing ice not gonna be at this one there. Yes, but there are ovals You know your super speedways and road courses and the occasional roval how much time you have let's have a coffee Yes at another time we will have a coffee Dominique I wanted to ask you based on the conversation we were having with Jessica earlier because it is wild to see happen, you know greed capitalism private equity

College sports being such an untapped market for, oh, if we stream softball and people watch, yes, of course, a softball player will be worth a million dollars if she can dominate a game. As market inefficiencies are exploited in the business of sports and as kids and young people get devoured by it, when you see an eighth grader being paid to play football, like at what...

At what point are any one of the people listening willing to put a line on that's too far like that? That's too much childhood stolen in the name of business, paying an eighth grader to play football.

Yeah, I mean, we talked about private equity firms coming into college sports, which is outrageous how professionalized that's all or is becoming. But this point in the article in The New York Times, it starts off by saying that the mother of this D.C. kid who is now in eighth grade headed to the ninth grade at DeMatha, which is a sports powerhouse in that area, that she remembered when he was 10 years old that coaches of like

The rec football teams were given her thousand dollar handshakes in order to get a 10 year old to go play football on his team. And I assume that some of the reason of that is ego, but also some of the reason for that is money. And it's I think the part of it is not that I'm arguing that these players are not that valuable or don't have value. They do have value. But the scary part is that they become commodities.

and they become stepping stones, which happens so often. And we're more accustomed to it with basketball players, which doesn't make it any better or worse. But they see a kid with some level of talent, and it's not necessarily like, let me help cultivate this kid's talent to get him to where he deserves. It's where can I springboard onto after I take some credit for making this kid something? Because you'll get attention. You have the dominant kid on your 10-year-old screen

football team, you're then using that to springboard your way into being a trainer for other kids who will never make it, but you're going to say, I'll make you just like that kid because I made that kid. Or into being a coach for one of these powers, into being a college coach. That's the part that offends me

I understand child actors, child musicians, children with unique talents deserve to be compensated for it. The scary part is the same thing that happens in those industries starting to happen in one of the purer places or the places that we feel are pretty pure.

It's like youth sports. It's getting grosser and grosser, and I hate it. I hear your perspective, and it's a very American one, but over in the UK, if you're 15 years old and you're a hot soccer talent, you can sign at the age of 15 for about $175,000 in wages. So this is not without precedent, and they don't have these concerns across the pond. Right. If you don't like it, Mike, you can leave.

You want to go live in Europe? Beat it. Show me your papers. Did you just love it or live it for me? In the face of a good point, is that your default? This exists and there aren't like...

The concern for the humanity of the children and the bleeding heart stuff that you're doing, which is it's very shocking to the American system. But these are if so, if we're looking at these programs as actual pro programs, which they've been for a long time, then they are well within their rights to take an investment in a younger person. And that younger person is well within his rights to maximize his values.

No, I certainly appreciate the pushback. And I'm not going to pretend as if I'm an expert on international football rules. I mean, you were born in the UK. I was born in the UK. Military base, baby. But...

My guess is that professionalizing at a young age has its drawbacks. Oh, yeah. Some of these people are pretty dumb. And I also think that they have a system that's designed to operate that way. We don't. We have a system that's very different. And so without the rules, that's the more concerning part. Again, I'm not an expert on that, but my guess is that there are some rules, but there are also very ugly things. Even though I don't know everything about it, I know that they raid countries that are

that don't have the infrastructure and go pick out the athletes and then take them and exploit them. So like, I'm not, I'm not looking. I work for one of these clubs. Chelsea had a very well run, robust Academy and they had a scouting network that would go into other countries, countries that did not have this infrastructure and they would really boost their Academy to the point of being one in the tops of the world. So I appreciate, and on my show, Charlie does this a lot where I,

I fall into this easy, defensible stance as I'm the bleeding heart. I feel sorry for everybody. And I think it's fair to push back on that. I'm not in this position trying to say I'm a bleeding heart and feel sorry for everybody. But I'm saying that we cannot also close our eyes to the position that we're putting these players in. And so...

Okay, I get it. I want him. His mom said that her goal is for him to make a million dollars by the time he's a ninth grader. I'm fine with that. That's a fine goal to have. And maybe it'll all work out for him. But what tends to happen in these situations is while there's a top few that we point to,

and we celebrate and we talk about how successful they were and how unique they are, there's a whole nother group that have to go through the grinding the machine, get injured or don't have the talent and then end up on the other side without the resource that we had. And then we put them into these adult systems without having put the protections. Oftentimes those protections come after someone has failed, after someone's taken advantage of.

Again, I don't want to pretend like I am only pointing out the issues with it. Like, I agree. I want these kids who have talent and have value to get paid. I don't want to go to a world where he's not getting compensated for the value that he's creating. But I also don't want to turn a blind eye to the human cost. But when you make it this commercial, this greedy, this, I'm going to say distinctly American, Mike, even though you're saying, and correctly, okay, this is how they do it overseas or across the

pond for some reason is the way that you decided to say it. And they do that with 14 and 15 year olds. But the place that I would stop you, and I'm not saying that soccer doesn't also have its physical perils. Bo Nix played with a broken vertebrae.

Like, it's a whole, this is a whole different machine. Combat sport, not a contact sport. So now that it's visible, you think that it exists? Or have you not watched high school basketball in this country? Oh, no. Okay, but football, come on. Football's been happening, dude. It happens at, like, private schools in low, low. Yeah.

low-ranked districts across America. Like, this happens all the time. The fact that it's actually transparent is not a bad thing. It is actually a better thing, I think. No, and I'm not arguing against that at all. I'm just saying that as we go through this process, we have to acknowledge that these other things are happening. Saying that it happens in other sports or this is not new does not remove the fact that there are still perils in the situation. So, like, that's my point. I sincerely appreciate your pushback, but it's not an actual pushback. It's saying, like...

Oh, it's happening. So I know it's happening. That doesn't mean that everything about it is completely on the up and up. And,

I think having an academy system is probably more structured and probably protects the players more than now where it's a kid in a middle school in D.C. where you parachute in and promise him a bunch of things in hopes that you can use it to springboard yourself into some other strategy. Do you think, I mean, we just mentioned with Customato the idea of the hell you can wreak on a great young athlete by just putting on him all of your adult ego stuff.

But when we're talking about it, I don't know where I'd have to put the age for just us to get a consensus. Yes, I believe it is wrong to pay a eight year old. And that's the thing. That's the hard part about a conversation. I don't ever believe it's wrong to pay somebody if they're valuable. OK, to play football. OK, concuss yourself. Nine year old.