Another Monday, another episode of Offsides with Pablo Torre! This week, Pablo and Jen discuss the pervasive culture of mediocrity haunting the NFL this season. Yes, it’s exciting to watch the games when both teams are just ‘meh’ and any outcome is possible, but there’s no underdog to root for either. Bill Belichick’s lackluster performance leading the North Carolina Tar Heels while earning a $10 million paycheck is the primary example of unimpressive figures earning well above their output.
Pablo also previews the next episode of his podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out, out on October 14th, with special guest Mark Cuban. The meeting we’ve all been waiting for is happening: Cuban has repeatedly, publicly critiqued Pablo’s reporting of the Clippers-Kawhi Leonard scandal and Pablo’s not backing down. Make sure to tune in on YouTube to watch the show.
Pablo Torre is an American sportswriter, podcaster, and television host. He contributes to various programs at ESPN, including Pardon The Interruption and Around The Horn. Keep up with Pablo on his Substack and podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out .
The transcript below has been edited slightly for clarity.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. If it’s Monday, it must be Pablo Torre. Pablo, welcome!
Pablo Torre
Jen, I fear that we might have, yet again, some good sports stories to discuss.
Jen Rubin
You think so? This is kind of the cornucopia of sports, with basketball starting, college football, pro football. I heard a stat, I’m not entirely positive, that there might be at least one football game every day between now and the end of November.
Pablo Torre
It’s the dream! It’s the American dream. The NFL, by the way, the way this has all happened is kind of fascinating, right? So, you’ve heard me say on your program a lot that football and sports, but especially football, is the lone monoculture left in American life. Part of the reason why that’s so is that from the commissioner of the NFL on down, the NFL has basically seen the planet and the calendar as a risk board, with territories to seize. And woe be to the, you know, other sports that dare compete during the fall and the winter, for now, that’s football season. I expect it’ll be also 365, also, perpetual. But in this case, yeah, there are football games literally all the time.
Jen Rubin
And college, likewise. It used to be that they thought, oh, the kids have to actually go to school during the week. Now you have Friday games, you’re gonna have games during the week in other areas. It really has become much more like pro football in the scheduling and the number of games. You can just go nonstop, at least on Saturday, and watch a zillion games.
Pablo Torre
Oh, and also, keep in mind, like, the NFL is setting the tone in terms of they want all of the calendar. College football, you know, fitting in around that as the de facto minor league system. Keep in mind, the conferences are no longer even pretend
geographic allegiances anymore. Like, the ACC, the Big Ten, these are literal coast to coast, so you have these road trips where you’re going from the East Coast to the West Coast and back again. I mean, none of this is what college football used to be. It is now, yet, again, a very popular product, the second most popular sport in America.
Jen Rubin
Now, Like college football, where you have some really top teams that are showing their strength throughout the season. You still have upsets, obviously, but Ohio State is still up there. Other teams are still up there, Alabama is rising to the occasion, Indiana is playing very strongly. In pro football. Who is… dominating?
Pablo Torre
Part of the comedy of the NFL’s popularity is that you don’t… so, ratings are up. Ratings are up, and it’s gangbusters at the box office, and that’s in spite of the fact that there is no great team, or even, I would say, like, really, really good team. So, mediocrity is the word that I use to describe what we’re watching on the football field right now at the professional level. The kinder euphemism for that is parody. In which anyone can beat anybody else. And that is true, by the way. You turn on an NFL game, you have no idea who’s gonna win that thing. And that is, on one level, an excitement. But on the other level, it speaks to how there’s just this big slog.
And when you look at… when you look at just the power rankings, so the number one team as of last week, entering this one, was the Detroit Lions. They had one loss. Monday Night Football, last night, we saw the Kansas City Chiefs beat them. And you’d say, well, the Chiefs, of course, they’re always a Super Bowl favorite, and that is true, they are. I have them as a stock you should never sell in the regular season, basically. But the Chiefs this season have been largely mediocre, you know? They already have two losses. They came into this week limping. And so, to me, I think there’s the - it’s almost like how you bet on the stock market, but you don’t necessarily pick a company in specific. That’s how I see the NFL. It’s a green arrow pointing up and to the right, and the Chiefs are probably going to be there at the end. But short of that, anything is possible, and people will watch anything.
I can put a football on this table right now, Jen. And I believe 10 million people will tune in to see a football sitting on a table. That’s how, you know, how addicted we are to the game.
Jen Rubin
Remember that for next week. And…just to magnify your point, tomorrow… Tonight, rather, the Bills are playing, and they lost for the first time. We’ll see if they come back, or if they stumble as well, because it’s really hard, and look at the Eagles, they’ve had a rather miserable season so far, so, it’s all up in the air. Now, in the WNBA, there is no doubt who is the dominant team once again. Three out of the last four years, Las Vegas Aces have won it, and they have a truly dominant player, and they were able to win the series 4-0. What do you think of them, the franchise, and what that means for the league as a whole, where we’ve had superstars on other teams, but those teams have not been good enough to really displace the Aces?
Pablo Torre
Yeah, we’re talking about A’ja Wilson, who is the best player of her generation. There are arguments to make that she will be the greatest of all time when she is done. She’s not close to done, she is the MVP, Finals MVP, Defensive Player of the Year. Pretty much every accolade you could give a player. Asia Wilson collected it this season, and seems like the default, the incumbent, to get all those trophies next season, too. And it’s interesting, right? So, in the big picture of the WNBA, from the outside, the number one name that everybody says, of course, is Caitlin Clark.
And if you fell asleep during this WNBA season, what happened was Caitlin Clark got hurt, the Indiana Fever, without her, actually made a really impressive run deep into the postseason. But the thing that tends to happen in this league is that there are, in fact, a very clear upper clas tier of teams, and it’s typically the Las Vegas Aces and the New York Liberty. The New York Liberty were knocked out early in the playoffs, that was a bit of an upset, but the Aces, yeah, they’re Goliath. I would say that the Aces are the closest thing they have in that sport to Goliath right now. And the thing, the question of, like, why do you… why do you guys care about great teams? Why do you want Goliath? To me, the reason why you want a Goliath in football, or in the WNBA, or in the NBA, or in any sport, is just because to upset Goliath is itself this incredibly fascinating storyline. So in the NBA, for instance, when the Warriors were winning, and they were a dynasty, the modern dynasty, that they were, setting regular season wins records with Kevin Durant and Steph Curry and all that. They set viewership records because the story was who could possibly beat this team. When there is sort of just this slog, it’s really hard to sell the most familiar recipe for sports narrative, which is the underdog. When everyone’s kind of, you know, like each other, it’s really hard to do that. In the WNBA, what we’re seeing is the building of an actual, legend of a Goliath in the Las Vegas Aces, led by A’ja Wilson, and it’s super impressive.
Jen Rubin
To your point, I always feel like, what’s the fun of rooting against the Cowboys if they’re rotten? You know, it’s only when they’re at that level that people either love them or hate them. If they’re kind of pathetic, who cares, one way or the other.
So, meanwhile, speaking of pathetic, we have Bill Belichick at North Carolina. They spent… I think the term is shitload of money for this guy, with all kinds of expectations. Maybe not even appreciating the enormous difference between coaching in the NFL and coaching in college, and he’s been kind of a dud. What do you think’s gonna happen? They stick with him? I mean, they’re paying him enough money. What’s gonna happen there?
Pablo Torre
Yeah, I don’t want to just say I told you so to everybody, but this was a…But I, you know, I’m tempted, Jen . I’m tempted more and more every day. The story of this coach and his second act, is one that I reported, and I reported through the lens of Jordan Hudson, his very young girlfriend, who has this position of great influence in his life, and I dare say that as messy and horrible as I thought this team was going to be.
They are worse. They are worse to the tune of the worst team in Carolina football history, which is already a sad history. They are worse to the extent of this might be the worst team in the Power Five, when it comes to what the outlay is for salaries and the hype versus the return on that investment. The outlay has been controversial just on that level. So, $10 million a year to Bill Belichick for 3 years, guaranteed, makes him the highest paid employee, public employee in the state of North Carolina. His general manager, Michael Lombardi, who also has a 7-figure salary, is the highest paid general manager in college football, period.
This is a team that came in boasting about being the 33rd NFL team. And the joke that I was hearing from people around the NFL in the last couple weeks has been, yeah, they’re the 33rd team, as in, like, they are worse, certainly, than the winless Jets in the NFL. They are truly an embarrassment, and the reason why I was setting the line preseason at one season, and probably take the under, is because it’s a recipe, not just of horrible…..I wanna, I wanna put a diplomatic spin on this. People who don’t understand what they don’t know about college football, people who can be geniuses when it comes to in Belichick’s case, football strategy, but I’ve never done this job at an era in which, by the way, Nick Saban, no less than Nick Saban, was like, this is too complicated and messy, I’m gonna retire. Belichick swoops in at that moment in college football’s history. And so with him and Mike Lombardi, let alone Jordan Hudson, there is just an epic mismanagement of a ton of money, and the setting up, according to every report that’s been published, and there have been a lot of them over the last week, reports that indicate that not only is the Board of Trustees of Carolina, their mood changing about this, but the mood of recruits that they, of course, need to persuade to show up at this mess, that has been changing. Questions of who are we gonna fire? Because in sports, as you know, when things go bad, you need to sacrifice something.
And so the parlor game now is, who is the first to be fired from this very expensive staff? It’s just everything going wrong at the same time, and lots of people now, in the pool reporting on it, because finally the water seems very warm.
Jen Rubin
And this is where the professionalization of college sports and the overall mission of college comes in conflict. It’s one thing if you spend $10 million, and… okay, the excuse is, you generate money for the other programs, you generate money for scholarships. But if that becomes a suck, then you’ve just brought down the entire enterprise, not only in sports, but educationally. And, oh, by the way, you had an obligation on the education side, that you’re totally neglecting at this point.
Pablo Torre
It’s a useful reminder. I have a bit of sports brain on this, and I’m reminded, as I talk to people at Carolina who are not aligned with the sports side of things, that this is a proud institution of public education, one of the crown jewels, you could argue, of the American public education system. And if the professors who’ve had to cut their budgets are all saying that I could do the job that Bill Belichick is doing, and I teach English. Then it’s a really hard sales pitch when that guy… the pie chart of available earmarked funds… that the chancellor of the university directed to Bill Belichick. I mean, all in, we’re talking about a sum of money that is clearly unparalleled at the university, and I would argue, in college football, if you’re to add up all of the fees associated to devote to this experiment. So, look, you’re so right that the cynical bet has always been the cost-benefit analysis nets out positive, because we’re gonna fund everything else thanks to football. And in this case, it is football taking and not giving. And that’s gonna be where rubber meets the road on this, I think.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Well, we have saved the best for almost last, says this Dodger fan.
Pablo Torre
Oh, boy.
Jen Rubin
Because tonight, of course, the Brewers and the Dodgers, begin the ale,
conference game began yesterday. How do you see both conferences playing out, and what are you seeing these teams… there’s the regular season team, and then there’s the playoff team, and those can be very different things.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, I want to inhabit the brain of a Mariners fan, a Seattle Mariners fan, because that team has never won the World Series, and they just beat the Blue Jays, who I just watched as foreshadowed in our last episode together, I just watched that Blue Jays team demolish my Yankees, and now I see the Mariners hold them to one run in Game 1, and the Mariners have this folk hero.
Cal Raleigh, who is their catcher, aka Big Dumper, which is one of the great nicknames I’ve ever heard. And Big Dumper just keeps on crushing home runs. Like, it’s a really impressive job that Big Dumper has been doing. And so the Mariners have this fun mix of, as we’ve long put it, underdog. In the long sweep of baseball history, they’re clearly an underdog. The Blue Jays are not exactly, whatever, Goliath, but they’ve at least won World Series before. The Mariners have never done it, and so we’re seeing them on this run. And meanwhile, in the NL, you’re seeing your Dodgers, clearly Goliath, by the way, clearly the favorite, every advantage in the world, the country of Japan being your personal farm system, Jen.
Jen Rubin
Yes!
Pablo Torre
How that’s working out these days for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Going up against the Brewers, who are also this sort of, like, college-team-feeling enterprise, where they play small ball, they got, like, one guy, Christian Yelich, that you kind of know as a sports fan. They’re running around, they have this manager, Pat Murphy, who gives these fun motivational pep talks. You have there, again, a bit of a David versus Goliath scenario. So, look, the baseball postseason, as you said, is always a roulette wheel, that the Dodgers, impressively, have wrangled control of, which is the thing I used to say about, of course, the Yankees. In this case, though, what I’m rooting for is going to be, for every reason I’ve said in this episode with you today, I’m rooting for the Dodgers and the Mariners. I want Goliath, and I want David, and I want that World Series.
Jen Rubin
There you go. Something tells me you’re going to be rooting for a different team than I will if that happens in the world.
Pablo Torre
I fear that a lot of the big dumpering has only just begun, yes.
Jen Rubin
Yes, exactly. Now, your beloved Yankees, of course, not only lost, but they really got their behinds kicked. What do you think’s gonna be the fallout from that? Who’s gonna pay the penalty for that?
Pablo Torre
I fired Aaron Boone in my brain 8 times now. This is the 8th. Look, the thing about him is that he, reportedly is protected by an ownership group that is not quite the same as the patriarch, the late George Steinbrenner, who would not settle for this. But the son in charge, Hal Steinbrenner, he just doesn’t have that instinct. It seems like Hal Steinbrenner and the GM, Brian Cashman, the president of the team, and then, Aaron Boone, they’re all aligned on, like, this seems good enough.
And I hate to sound like the spoiled kid at a birthday party, but it is not enough. It is not good enough. And so, my hope is that Aaron Boone gets replaced. My expectation is that he won’t. And so, the recipe, I use that word a lot with you today, the recipe for mediocrity is sort of established. You have an organization that doesn’t feel the urgency that it used to, with a manager who does not have the confidence of the fan base, and you have a team spending a ton of money every year to basically do what we used to make fun of other teams for doing, which is getting knocked out in the first or second round of the playoffs. So, misery. I predict misery, I predict pain, to quote Rocky, yeah.
Jen Rubin
In my head, I have this image of the fans and the New York Press screaming so loudly, and the management of the Yankees are trying to block it out, because if they hear the roar, they’ll be forced to act, and maybe they don’t care. They got all the money in the world, and they don’t have to if they don’t want them.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, yeah, that’s my concern. My concern is that the… my concern is that the Fourth Estate, as always, Jen, will fall upon deaf ears here in New York City.
Jen Rubin
Exactly.
Pablo Torre
I wish they would listen. I wish they would listen.
Jen Rubin
If we only ran the world, Pablo, but in one important way, you are running something, and that is, I think, the fate of The Clippers, this phenomenal story, and you’re gonna have a guest on tomorrow, I understand, who doesn’t see eye to eye with you on this entire scandal.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, the blessing and the curse of my reporting on the Clippers is that it never ends, and that I am publicly, very often, it turns out, feuding with one Mark Cuban, who will be in studio with me, in the episode we published tomorrow. And I salute him for doing that, by the way. Something I really do want to be sincere about is when you spend, as I did, 7 months on episode 1 of this ongoing investigative series into Steve Ballmer and the Clippers and Kawhi Leonard, and Aspiration, he now-bankrupt company that I’ve reported Ballmer was using to funnel money to Kawhi Leonard in violation of a salary cap.
When you spend that much time on something, you’re now… we’re now into episode 6 of our ongoing series, this will be the sixth episode tomorrow. All you want to do is make sure that you get it right. And that people are paying attention to the work. And if that means defending my work against the most outspoken, unapologetic critics that are out there in a debate, almost like pseudo-Frost-Nixon-style format. I am more than happy to do that. I realize that as much as I enjoy publishing episodes straight ahead to my audience, I have appreciated what it means to be able to have a dialogue with someone who actively, vehemently, unrelentingly disagrees with my reporting, with my work. It’s important for journalists to defend their work.
It’s important to pick people who are sufficiently credible, Mark Cuban, an owner, minority owner now of the Mavericks, a guy with a point of view on this whole story, a character in some parts of it, who’s come up against the Clippers and Steve Ballmer in the past. So for that reason, things get kind of tense. They get argumentative, they get loud, but I am very glad that, that he came in to visit.
Jen Rubin
Well, isn’t sports, once again, a model for politics?
Pablo Torre
Yes!
Jen Rubin
You should be able to debate with your opponents, you should be able to sit in the same room instead of hurling invectives, through social media. So, when we come back next week, we will be all ears to hear all about that. Best of luck, and in the meantime, I, hope the Dodgers will not be introducing me to a puddle this week. But we will see.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, Jen, Monday, next Monday, we’ll do a bit of post-game on the baseball and also, the Clippers, I think.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Have a great week, and good luck with Cuban tomorrow. Great seeing you, Pablo.
Pablo Torre
Thanks, Jen.
