Clay Talks With Will Cain

your career in general. How excited are you to be going back to the future, I guess a little bit and going back into the political realm a little bit more than the sports realm. We'll get to both, but tell everybody what your newest gig is going to be. I am only a little more excited to be joining Fox News than I am to be talking to you

Clay Travis today. You and I have known each other, talked offline, met in person, want and I have certainly read your stuff, watched your material, listen to your radio show over the years. I think you do an awesome job. You're one of the few rational people in media, and I'm excited, I think, for the first time, for you and I to ever be talking on the air. But just a little bit more excited than that I am

joining Fox News. I will be the new weekend co host of Fox and Friends on Saturday and Sunday mornings six at ten am Eastern Time. So that is awesome. Um, And obviously for people out there who know, that's been a prominent launching ground. Right, So you've got a great gig now, and I'm sure you're gonna do an incredible job, and I think you're gonna be very good at it. But when you're part of that family, there are other

opportunities that could arise. So I'm sure you'll be used and utilized in a wide variety of ways across all of Fox News at different times. Right. That may be, but I will say claim my priority walking through that door is to continue to make Fox and Friends one of the best shows in cable news. I know you saw this because it's a fascinating stat a resounding win.

But Fox News primetime opinion shows eight to eleven are not just beating their quote unquote competitors at CNN and MSNBC, not just the most watched television shows in cable news, but now they are beating network prime time shows on the ABC in CBS. It shouldn't happen, Clay, It's beyond well. It simply should not be happening because you and I both know network television is distributed to more homes than

cable television. My goal is to make that same thing happen for Fox and Friends on the weekend, may get the most watch program in all of television. That's an amazing goal, and it's one that a lot of people would have said was crazy when Fox News was founded so many years ago. We'll get to your current gig and how you got there, but on wins and losses, I like to talk with people about where they started and how they ended up where they are. So let's go back in time two years and years ago. You

were born in the state of Texas. What was your growing up experience like there and how important was sports to your overall development into what you became. I grew up in a small town outside of Dallas, Sherman, Texas. It's a town of about thirty five thousand people. It's not a suburb of Dallas. It is a standalone rural community about sixties sixty five miles north of Dallas. I loved the way I grew up. It was one town with one high school, with one middle school, and everybody

was integrated. When I grew up Clay that basically meant black and white. We all went to school together. My dad was an attorney. He was a plaintiffs lawyer. He essentially then worked on contingency fiezas entire life. I told your colleague Bobby Burak, this, that means if you win, you make money, and if you leave, you make nothing more. So that built me. That framed me when I made my career choices. I knew that I wanted to hit home runs. Everything I thought about when it came to

my career was if there is a ceiling. I'm not that interested. Now We'll tell you as I've gotten older and I've learned from others successes, and the truth is, I think it's a big part of your success story. Singles and doubles stacked up over time are the real secret to success. Yes, people hit it over the fence. Yes, people create Internet startups that they flip for billions of dollars overnight or in six months. But most of the time success is built the way Tom Brady built it.

It's built the way where Warren Buffett built it, and I've come to appreciate that that's how my career will be as well, because this has been a long time in the making. It has been working for free on numerous occasions. It's been working for less than my market rate for most of my career. And those sacrifices are essentially the singles I'm stacking up at some point for what I hope adds up to a big run on the scoreboard. Yeah, you know what, it's It's an interesting

part and I want to unpack that a little bit. Um. One of the things I love about these conversations and wins and losses is there's a lot of young people who listen, right because a lot of people look at the final destination and say, oh, I want to go there, but they don't necessarily look at all of the steps along the way to the final destination. And uh. And I always like to ask people where they got their start. What was the first media job you had? And do

you remember what you got paid to do it? So you used two words, and I'm gonna have to answer the question two ways because of the use of those two words. You said media and job. I didn't have a job for quite some time, but I was in media for quite some time. So the first thing I did out of law school, Clay is I wanted to get involved in media, but at that time it meant write a book. So the first thing I did after my formal education is I set out to write the

Great American novel. Yeah, I can spare you it was crap. It wasn't Great American. So that was fascinating. So where did you What was your day to day like? So when you graduate, let me go back for a minute, because I want to circle bling around to the American novel. So you went to if I'm correct, you went to Pepperdine. So you talked about growing up in in this kind of not a big city in Texas. That's a big trip. What was your experience like, because I'll tell you mine.

I grew up in Nashville, which is, you know, a decent sized city, but I went away to college at George Washington, d C. It was a total culture shock. I can't even imagine for you what going from Texas to Pepperdine for people who don't know out in Malibu must have been like for a Texas kid to find himself in l a it was total culture shock. You know, I later in life and we'll get there if we need to move to New York City with my wife. And it wasn't half the culture shock of an eighteen

year old movement from Sherman, Texas to southern California. And here's why it was such a shock. Um College for me was about athletics and it was about friendship. Eventually, all my buddies went to Baylor in Texas and Texas A and M, and they were doing the fraternity and college football thing, and I felt like I was missing out incredibly. On top of that, I was playing water polo at Pepperdine and it was an absolute exercise over four years in humility. Bottom line, man, I just wasn't

very good. I walked on and I'm proud of myself for sticking through it and never quitting. But every day it practiced. It was ego crushing humility, which is an awesome life lesson. But in the beginning it was really hard for me. After a year of being with my teammates and making friends and relationships and putting in the application to transfer to the University of Texas or s m U, I decided I'm gonna stick this out. I have the relationships I want to be on the team.

So I stayed at Pepperdine and I do think it was personally a growth moment. But I would encourage anybody out there, whatever your final education destination is, be it medical school, law school, college, high school, make that be in the place that you want to live. You should finish your education where you want to start your career. That's fascinating. So it's interesting you said that about your sort of cultural disconnect and how tough it was. I

felt the same way. I put in applications after my first year at George Washington. I was like, man, I don't like this. Uh it's very East Coast um. People are kind of assholes. It's very different than what I was used to in the South. And I think in retrospect also, I was soft, right, I mean I was.

I think like a lot of eighteen year old kids, you think you're tough, you think you're smart, but then you kind of get punched in the face a little bit with the reality of life, and not that the reality of life necessarily is reflected on a college campus where you're still in a little bit of a cocoon, but I was I'll be straightforward, I think I was kind of a pussy at eighteen and nineteen years old and being in a city setting and having to grow up a little bit at least, and living in a

in a decent sized East Coast city. I came to love Washington, d C. But I almost came back South after my freshman year because I was like, this just isn't a traditional college experience. And I've always been glad that I was tough enough to stick it out and

that I didn't bail and transfer somewhere else. Not to say that everybody out there who thinks about transferring it's the wrong decision, but it sounds like for you and for me, there was a there was a positive in sticking it out and being tough enough, even if it wasn't necessarily the same perfect experience that maybe we saw others seem to be having. I love one thing you said. You indicted yourself you were soft, and I felt the same way, and that's guided me through a lot of

decisions I've made later in life. I just believe in challenging yourself. I believe in being challenged intellectually in debate, physically moving around, being around people are different than you. That's why I went to California the first place. It's why I moved to New York. It's why I send my sons to school in Harlem. I think life should be fairly hard. I think you should be put in uncomfortable positions. I think you should be challenged, and I

think you should learn to grow through that. This is probably why you and I agree on so many things happening in this country. Where everybody protects themselves not just from uncomfortable, unchallenging concepts, but from disagreement. We're creating generations, and I use plural, generations of soft people unprepared for the real world. Yeah, and look, and it's not necessarily those people's fault either. Because you mentioned the parenting decision,

and we'll get into stead. There's all sorts of fascinating

decisions there for how you raise your kids. But I think so much of our culture is about safety, is m and bubble wrapping kids, and certainly the coronavirus is this story in many ways writ large, what is like I jotted down, uh, yesterday I was talking about in my radio show, and I kind of keep notes you know, one of the most essential questions that seems to come up over and over again with the coronavirus is what is acceptable risk and who gets to determine what that

acceptable risk is because you and I may feel, hey, we're willing to take risk. I said this, Uh, you know earlier today I took my kindergartener and walked him to school. Physically in school. I think it's important for my kids to be physically president school. I think it's important for college football to be happening. But more important than that, I think kids in college need to be in school. They need to learn how to handle risk and assess it and not constantly like be told that

it's brave to quit right like. That troubles me when I hear people say, oh, it's so brave of the Big Ten and the Pact twelve to quit and not play sports this fall. Well, when did we start definding bravery as the absence of something as opposed to the action of something? Right? Um, So that that troubles me. I'm gonna let you kind of get into this too, But I think that's where we have very many agreements on. Now, you went to law school, you came back to Texas.

I came back home and went to UH, went to Vanderbilt, so we're somewhat similar in that respect. How did the law school help you? How did it challenge you? How did it help you to grow in UH? In your career? Would you advise kids who are probably a lot of them listening to us out there? Like I get this ask question all the time. I bet you two as well. Would you go to law school? I say yes because

of how much I learned? What about you? So this conversation is awesome because we're bouncing all over the place and following our curiosity. I'm afraid I'm leaving questions unanswered. I never want to do that. You asked about my career path, I'm always happy to return to it, but this one is something I'm also very interested in your response. So I have become very pessimistic on the future of higher education. Clay, I am all talk right now because

my oldest son is twelve. I still have six years to figure out if I'm going to commit to paying for college, but right now I have serious, grave doubts about paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year or seeing my son's going to debt at the levels of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to go to an institution that brainwashes them into ideas that I do not believe. And I don't care, as I've stated, if

they're exposed to ideas that I disagree with. What I care about is whether or not they're getting to be exposed to any form of disagreement, because that's out college is turned into a place of one sidedness and safe spaces and protection from any form of disagreement. So I'm generally pessimistic about higher education in the United States. But that being said, Man law school was invaluable. It helps

me and everything I do. I know it does the same for you because I listened to you, and I hear how you think through things and how you frame conversations. Law school simply organized my thoughts. I had a lot of different thoughts going in different directions when I came out of college. I kind of thought I knew what I thought about certain issues, but I never had them nailed down, and I never understood how they connected to each other, if I was being inconsistent or hypocritical, or

if I was contradicting myself. Law school helped me build a framework, both an obvious one when I learned constitutional law and the founding principles and documents of this country, but also just philosophically what makes sense, like what values connect with each other and which ones undercut the others. Law school, to me, absolutely informs everything I do on television, everything I do behind the scenes, and how I've organized

my career when I've been entrepreneurial. Yeah. Look, I mean, I think you just nailed it on so many different levels. What I would say about law school is I think, and I bet you kind of in many ways to do as well. A good judge knows that he has to decide the case in front of him, but he also has to think about the precedent that he's setting.

I think a lot of people in our industry of sports media, and I know you're you can also broaden it, and you're in the audience of media as well, but a lot of people solve the case in front of them right now, and they don't think about the precedent

that they are setting going forward. So what I always think about is if you listen to my radio show, or you read out kick, or you listen to my opinions or any of those things, there is a line of consistency that runs through them, much like occurs with a good judge, whether you're a liberal leaning judge, conservative leaning judge, more down the middle, whatever it is, you understand that if you're gonna make this argument about this athlete on Monday, that on a year from now, the

logic still needs to be the same and the way I picked up on it in my career. And I'm curious if there was an AHA moment for you when I started doing sports talk radio, I realized that most people are such homers for their team that they can't take it outside of what their team is doing and be logical. And I'll give you an example. I started doing sports talk radio in Nashville, Heartbeat of the SEC.

Here everybody has favorite teams and there's always an n C double a infraction, or always a player getting in trouble or a coach of foul of some form or fashion. And I'd go on the radio and I'd be like, Okay, here's what I think. And you know, Tennessee fans will be upset, or Florida fans or Alabama fans, And I said, hey, why can't you guys just pretend that this act, instead of being done by the team that you root for, was done by the team that you hate the most.

If your response to what should happen to them from a consequence show basis is different whether it's a Tennessee guy or an Alabama guy. That's the very definition of bias, and to me, it's such an instructive lesson to apply everywhere else. If I'm thinking differently about someone or something or some situation, then I would be if somebody was on quote unquote my team. That's a bias, and I try to avoid it like the plague and sports isn't

interesting to me metaphor to use that. If you hate a rival and arrival did something bad and you're like, oh, you gotta throw that guy can never play in this league again, and you wouldn't say the same thing about your team, that's bias in its essence. That I had that kind of crystal ball moment at eight years old doing television, and that's been one of the guiding ethos is behind basically every opinion I have is I have to be consistent like a judge. I can't show bias.

So you're touching on one of my favorite things about being a sports fan. Certainly with big issues, issues that involve criminality, or issues that involved deep societal issues, you want to accomplish that consistency regardless of your fandom. But I love narrow minded tribalism and blind fandom in sports. Yes it is. Here's the thing. Human beings are inherently tribal. We are, and it's an ugly side of our nature most of the time. It is something that you have

to overcome, and you do it. I believe through the principles you and I are alluding to, you overcome racial tribalism, gender tribalism, religious tribalism, and geographic tribalism by being a man of principle. But sports man that's exempt from all of it. I can think that Dallas Cowboys can do no wrong, and I can see you all day long. The Texas Longhorns should be and it's a travity. They

aren't a top tier program in the United States. Over and overtime blue in the face because the truth is, it's a harmless area of our culture and our society where we can just be blind fans just have base allegiances. I love that about sports. I think it's fun. I don't think it's ugly. I love busting balls with somebody over their team versus my team. It's really one of my favorite things about sports. Be sure to catch live editions about Kicked the Coverage with Clay Travis week days

at six am Eastern three am Pacific. We're talking to Will Kaine. This is the Wins and Losses Podcast. I'm Clay Travis. One of the great things about sports, I think probably the greatest thing is what you just hit on. It unites us. Right, we all have different tribes. But what I always like to say is, whether you're a janitor or a neurosurgeon, if you're at the hospital break room, you can sit down and talk about what happened with the local team, and you're on an equal footing with

each other. Right, are we giving that up by this is a big question, but by allowing politics basically two in many ways infect our fandom. Depends on who you mean by we. I don't think the average American and the average fan is giving that up by looking at their fellow fans and saying, I wonder what his politics are.

But I think most in sports media are doing that, they're totally incapable of extricating from each other whatever political disagreements they might have, and enjoying this unifying section of our culture that is sports. It's a truly massive miscalculation by the sports media industry, and it's sad because culturally, sports is a massive part of our society. That's what's so sad about college football being canceled. Clay or at least the Big Ten in Pact twelve. We have no

idea yet what we've lost. And I don't just mean economically, because those that might disagree with you or me would say your habit is sacrificed to others for your dollars. I mean in terms of mental health. I mean in terms of the future prospects in these athletes careers. I mean in terms of our ability to have these space where we can be unified and come together and have fun. I don't think we fully know the cost of canceling college football. It's going to be huge. I don't disagree

at all. We both went to law school, and I think one thing that that you learn in law school is certainly how to make an argument. What I love about being in sports media is unlike when I was a practicing attorney, which I didn't like very much. And I don't know if you practiced at all. Uh, And I'm curious on that. But you have to argue whatever

side is paying you. And sometimes you're on the wrong side of an argument, and you're like, about halfway through you know the case, or halfway through the argument, you're like, man, I'd a lot rather be on the other guy's side. I can pick which sides of arguments I want to be on. Did you practice and how much do you think in terms of arguing about sports, your legal training has been invaluable. You know, it's funny you bring that up, because I am the same as you. I don't ever

have to compromise what I believe for my argument. Nobody is paying me to say anything in nor what you take I don't belief. But you know, if I had gone on to be a lawyer and I didn't practice either very much either. Um, my father died when I was twenty five, and I went to wind up his practice and I clerked in law school for a criminal defense firm, I would have wanted to be a trial lawyer. And you and I aren't that far apart in age. The day in the age of the civil trial lawyer

is almost gone. So that would have meant be a criminal lawyer, which would have meant being a prosecutor or. If you want to make some money in life, go be a criminal defense attorney, in which case I really would have had to take money and defend people when I really would have rather not. Now I have buddies who do this, and I think it is truly noble. You have to fall back on the principle that the United States is a country where there is a burden

of proof. The Constitution affords everyone representation, and you are truly doing a service by giving them the best representation that you can. The federal government or the state government or their county government has a ton of resources at its disposal, and they should be able to prove their case if it's coming to trial. I would have probably told myself all that. I gotta tell you, Clay, I'm a little happy I never had to make that that decision.

So you I want to circle back around now, and I know I try to move in a linear fashion, but time sometimes like things stand out. You said you started to write a novel, So what happened with the novel writing? How long did you commit to it and when did you think, Man, I'm not very good at this, and where did that lead you next? So when I graduated law school, I decided I was going to write this novel, and if I was going to do so, I was going to move somewhere, live somewhere that it

always wanted to be. It basically came down to two different places for me, Hawaii or Montana. I chose to go to Montana. I drove with my dog up north with no real destination. I got to western Montana. I didn't know a guy in the area. He put me up for a couple of days and I started looking in the paper for a cabin to rent. I rented this cabin and the I think then seventy five year old lady said do you know horses? Do you need a job? And I said, I know a little bit,

and I do need a job. So she put me in touch with her son who had a ranch in the area. He was a hunting outfitter in Montana. He took tourists or hunters on big elk and ram and moose hunts up in the mountains of Montana. I worked for him for a year and spent my off time writing this horrendous novels. I did finish it, not unlike what we were talking about earlier. I committed myself to

the project. And then, as I mentioned, after my dad died and I moved back on the oldest of four my youngest brothers, ten years younger than me, I wanted to be around as he was graduating from high school. I went ahead and finished that novel. But in that process, Clay not only that I realized my novel was crap, but I also realized this is a really terrible way to make a living. But I had also started to

develop this entrepreneurial bug. So I wanted to marry writing and media and business together, and that meant for me. In the beginning newspapers. I didn't come from the kind of money will you go say, I'm going to buy a radio station, But I was capable of learning the business and scrapping together enough money to buy small town weekly newspapers in Texas. And I started to do that and built a little business of three, four five community

newspapers that I eventually sold to a conglomerate. All Right, I want to get back to that. But I'm fascinated by the Montana experience because this is like yellow Stone writ large. I've never been to Montana. I've never been to what I would call the real West uh and, and I mean, you know, outside of California, Washington, Vegas, you know that area, even Colorado. I really want to get up there. What what time of year did you go to Montana? What was it like? You lived in

a cabin by yourself, writing writing a novel? Like did you know anybody? Did you make any friends? Like? What kind of social interactions did you have there? So I took the bar, which, as you know, was probably in about July. I went home and hung out my buddies for the month of August, or at least part of that month, and I moved to Montana in August early September, and I lived there for a year. My friend was the rancher that I worked for, a year old cowboy.

I had another buddy who was his nephew, and I hung out with his son some. But the truth is, I'm pretty comfortable spending time on my own. You know. I look back sometimes Clay at my twenties and I go, Wow, what if you'd been in New York City? Then what if you had been in Los Angeles at that time? Might have had some fun. And so I do look back hunting go well. I made some choices to be alone and work on a ranch, but I honestly I wouldn't trade it for that that that momentary. What did

you do on the ranch? Like? Were you riding a horse around like a cowboy? Like? What was your day to day when you were living in Montana? Build fences, um, throw bales of hay, stack him in the barn. And then we were shoe horses, and then we were a hunting outfitter. So in Montana and supposed to growing up in Texas the way deer hunting was, and I don't know what it's like in Tennessee, probably the same as Texas.

It's pretty small land. It's often a feeder. You sit in a box of blinds and wait for the deer to come. In Montana, you ride back into government land. I believe the land in Montana is government land. You ride, in our case, thirteen miles back into a camp. We had you stay back in there a week and my job was to pack the mules, take everything on and off.

Learn how to saddle everybody's horse, put it together. Learn how to pack a mule, bring him into camp, stay for four or five days, take him out of camp. I wasn't a hunting guid. I didn't know the area well enough to be that. But I was essentially like the low man on the totem pole. Hey, get the horses, saddle the horses, pack the mules. Do you ever have any grizzly bear experiences? Man, I have never seen a

grizzly bear. And I just did this trip fifteen states, seven thousand miles, hit every state in the West, including Yellowstone, and I've never seen a grizzly So I mean, was that a fear when you guys were taking people into the into the camping area where you cognizant of the danger of grizzly bears? Was that talked about at all? It was definitely talked about. I don't know that it was a fear. I remember when I moved to Montana. I was talking this old guy and I have a

three seven. I have a lot of guns, not in New York, but I had at seven and I carried up there to kind of have his my side arm. Should we go out into the mountains. And this whole guy said to me, you know what you can do with this gun? Will I was like, what, you need to file the sights off so that you can get a bear. It's useful with a bear because it file the sights off. Why would I do that? He said, So when that grizzly takes it to you and takes it from me and shoves up your butt, it won't

hurt of that. That's pretty fantastic, all right. So I'm fascinated by the entire like the Montana experience, because I graduated from law school and moved to the Caribbean, which is obviously a different experience. But you said you talked about Hawaii potentially. I got married, took the bar, we moved to the Caribbean. I spent a couple of years down there in the US Verse in Islands as an attorney. I'm still licensed down there. And that was a crazy

unique life experience that my wife and I had. We didn't have kids yet, all those things. So you come back and how successful is this business to start to buy small newspapers because this is before the internet was taken off. But did you start to look around and say, hey, maybe the print paper business is not necessarily the wave of the future. Yeah. So I picked two niches that I thought insulated me from circulation to claim. So the first was I wanted to buy community newspapers in the

growth path of Dallas. Dallas is an absolutely booming metropolis to this day and has been for about twenty years. I mean, fortune companies situating their headquarters in suburbs north of Dallas, Homes going up everywhere. I mean, by default, Clay, my circulation should go up because thousands of people are moving in on a monthly basis. So I picked suburban growth path cities to buy newspapers to insulate myself from

circulation decline. And in the other niche I was interested in was the Latino market because it was also a demographic that was absolutely booming. So, knowing that print was declining, I wanted to find some demographics and markets that were growing to offset that. How many business how many employees did you have? How would you assess the overall success of the business. Because you're a young guy to be doing this, Yeah, I mean I had I think, uh,

probably at most somewhere around ten a dozen employees. It was definitely a small business, but it was an absolute success. I mean I didn't get generationally wealthy or set myself up for life, but you know, I quadrupled my money and quadrupled my investment on the in and out over a three year period. It was it was a good idea. Okay, so you finded your quadruple your money, You've done a

small business, you've graduated from law school. What then? So I had made some money and I was entrepreneurly inclined. So then that brings me to the Latino market. The other market I wanted to be involved in was the Hispanic market. Actually switched terms there for a reason. So the word Hispanic is a government since this created term, it doesn't mean a lot. It actually masks over the differences of people from Chile to Puerto Rico, Mexico to

Argentina and pretend that they're all the same. What more, it treats everybody who is a first generation immigrant to a third generation immigrant exactly as they are the same. So I had to find something what is truly applicable appealing to everybody in the quote unquote Hispanic market, and sports doesn't even actually qualify because Caribbean nations are more into baseball where Latin American nations are more into soccer. So what could I find? It truly appealed to everyone.

My wife is from West Texas. In West Texas there's much bigger Latino population there is where I grew up, at least at that time. Now most of Texas has a very large Latino population. So one of the few things that everybody from Mexico to Puerto Rico, or actually Puerto Rico's to one outlier, but Mexico to Cuba to South America do is when a young girl turns fifteen, she has the Kington era. It's a big coming of age party. It's like a bot mitzvah if you're Jewish,

or a debutante ball if you're from the South. It looks like a wedding. It's a huge consumer event. It's massively important. And at that time, or just prior to that, I had gotten married. My wife brought home The Knot. Do you remember the Not? The magazine and website that helps you play it's a great business. And I used to see that she brought home that magazine. I was like,

look at this thing. It's at the editorial content is the advertisements they're getting paid to fill out their home pages. So I modeled the business on the knot and started this magazine, website and event company to help young Latina girls plan their Kensan era. How about that? That is amazing? So how successful were you as a Keen signior And was this around the time that wasn't there a MTV show like the Keenson Era like concept? Was this before

that or around the same time? I think I was a little before that, and then you were like a kes era. Uh so, how I mean? It sounds like it's a crazy idea, but also one that was likely to work. Did it work? So here's this business story. I raised outside financing from this from a hedge fund, some guys that I truly respect. The business got off to a great start. We got it off the ground, quickly acquired a place in the market with the consumer

and the advertisers. I made plenty of my own entrepreneurial mistakes, and I believe any entrepreneur has to own their own failures. Two thousand nine happens a recession, and when you were playing in a tight niche, you don't have a lot of room for a market downturn. So at that time advertising drives up, the business gets tougher, and I have to make a decision do you go back to the

well and raise more money? And then, as anybody who starts a business like this, ask yourself, what's the exit potential? Is it worth it on the back end for the money I'd have to raise two hopefully cash in on the exit. And we decided it was not. It was a failure. I failed. Yeah, I always supportant about that, Clay go ahead. I'm sorry, No, No, I was gonna say, what did you learn? Because that's that's I think the

biggest question that comes. I mean, this is wins and losses, and everybody wants to win, but I think oftentimes you can learn more losing way more than anything I ever learned from winning way more so. The biggest thing I learned is this, I know how to make money. I know how to succeed. What I need to be cognizant of is I need to be passionate every day about the actual content that I am putting out, about the

actual business that I'm engaged in. And for better or worse, King Sanerra's and the passions of fifteen year old Latino girls were not my passion and I made which, by the way, would be a lot creepier if it was if you were like, yeah, you know, if I were, if you're like, you know what I'm really passionate about as a you know, thirty five year old grown man fifteen year old girl parties, you'd be like, I don't know about that, dude. You might get rich, but you

might also go to jail. Um. That's exactly the lesson I learned. And then I said to myself, Okay, whatever you do next, just really care. And from growing up at the dinner table debating with my dad to law school in the Socratic method, in the topics that I cared about, I always cared about debate, ideas, conversation, and I just decided at that time, whatever I do next, I'm going to care about it. And this is kind of what I care about. I care about debating the

most important ideas in society. So from there you go, what's the next step. So this is around two thousand and ten eleven. What's the year and what's the next step? So the next step is I start Because I don't ever been an entrepreneur and never had a job. As I mentioned earlier, I started with a television pilot. I produced a TV pilot. I decided everything on TV was not worthy of the national moment. It was Obama McCain, or maybe it was Obama Romney, I can't remember the moment,

but it was important, and I created television pilot. It really didn't go anywhere because, as you know at that time, networks like Fox or CNN or ESPN for that matter, don't really buy outside programming. They do it themselves. But what it did do is it led a relationship. Led to a relationship for me with National Review, which is a conservative political magazine. And I am conservative with a libertarian bent in my political ideology. So I started doing

stuff for National Review for free. This gets to the first question you asked me. I was always doing stuff for free, always doing stuff below market, whether or not it was going to work for small town newspapers in Central Texas when I had a law degree and my buddies were making a d twenty thousand dollars a year out of law school and I would make nineteen dollars writing articles on the school board in Atlanto, Texas or

working for free at National Review. I told them I'll do this, but in exchange, I want you to introduce me to everybody you know in television. And the first relationship that really sent me to was Fox News and so I started doing stuff for Fox News for free again. And then one night, after I built up enough television appearances, I guessed at the email address of the president of

CNN that time. His name was John Klein, and I guessed it was first name dot last name at Turner dot com or something, and I sent him an email and said, you really need somebody like me at CNN. Here's a clip, and he responded within fifteen minutes. You're right, come on in, let's talk. That's amazing. And so what did you do at CNN? So, by the way, what was the first time you were on air ever? Do

you remember what you were talking about? I don't remember when exactly it was, but it would have probably been on Fox News dot com. They used to have a show called the Strategy Room, And I have no idea what I was talking about, but that our first time on bombitcare? Now that did you go back and watch?

The reason why I ask is did you go back and watch yourself on television because one of the things that I think is fascinating is, um, you're coming from the writing side, and uh, you know, I started writing that I did a radio, that I did TV. I liked you the first time I ever did television. You

have to learn how to do television right. You could be there as some people who are better at it like anything else, Like right, there's some people who step on a basketball court and the first time they shoot a basketball, they look natural doing it. But there are other people who have to work at it a little bit. And the example I like to use is you have to stare right at the television camera or it looks weird, right. And that's something that people have never been on television

don't understand. But if you have a normal conversation with somebody and you stare at them the whole time, that looks super weird. So automatically, just by being on tell vision, you have to do something that is counter to whatever you would do in a normal relationship. And the reason why I bring it up is the first time I ever went on television, I went back and watched and somebody kept saying, Man, what were you seeing out of

the corner of your eye. It was because I was averting my gaze right Like I wasn't staring at the camera because I was treating the camera like it was someone else's eyes. But on television, if somebody's not looking directly at you, you're like, oh, that person is shifting. You can't trust them, And it would be the exact opposite and an in person relationship. So that's why I asked, like, the first time that you go on, did you go back and like sort of scout yourself and be like, Oh,

I did well there. I moved too much there, Like how did you self assess? Because you're good at television, how did you self scout to get better? Was there any sort of epiphany you had as you were doing television? So I have a couple of things to say on that. When you first started asking me the question, I almost dismissed it internally because I was like, just be yourself, be second nature, be smart. And I do think that's where you get Eventually, a guy like you, Clay, who

is smart, You're gonna go in. You're gonna have unique thoughts, You're gonna be brave enough to share them. Television dynamics be damned. All of that is small fries compared to actually giving people good, intelligent, unique content. That being said, as you were talking about the question, I did remember that my first real big boy television appearance was on

Fox and Friends, and it was in the studio. And not only is it unnatural to stare into a black box, as you said, but there's all these other external input. Two or three people usher you to a chair very quickly. They put this thing in your ear that you've never had before, and all of a sudden you hear things

that are distracting you from what you're thinking about. They clip a mic on and out the corner of your eye you see the other people in the studio, which normal circumstances you would be talking directly to talking to another black box. And then these lights flashed down in your face, and everything is distracting you from exactly what it is you want to say and be natural and

be smart, but you get conditioned to it. I mean, if somebody gives you the opportunity, and that's key, if they give you the opportunity to actually take some balls, take some strikes, take some cuts to plate, then you will get used to all of that. I'll tell you this, man, I don't go back and watch myself now, and I don't know. I might be a mistake. I really probably should, but I can barely stand to watch myself, much like I don't watch. I don't watch now. I thought early on,

because it's a new discipline. I wanted to know what what I looked like to other people. Um And now I never go back and watch, and I don't go back and listen very much to radio anymore. But early on in radio, I noticed that I had ticks right.

I would say, there would be words that are unnecessary that I would use, and I tried to knock it out, like, for instance, I remember the first time I went on starting to go on as a guest, I said, you know all the time, and and somebody like somebody reached out and they said, did you realize that during the course of that fifteen minute interview you said, you know

seventy eight times? So I no way. And you go back and you listen, and you realize we all have speech patterns, and maybe you're a little bit more nervous, and so you tend to feel like you need to fill that silence and so you learn how to do it better. But I think you can overtrain right and uh, but I think early on there are important lessons that you can pick up because doing television well require some

unnatural reactions in order to look natural, if that makes sense. Well, talking about those verbal ticks, there's a contagion at places like MSNBC. It's not just that you have to wear eyeglasses, but that you say the word right at the end of every sentence, so that that's forced the listener to agree with every point you're making. Right. And so I have another really intelligent point that I'm gonna need to put these glasses on four and you're gonna like it right.

And I can't stand that verbal tick that is seemingly contagious at MSNBC. Um, you don't win. There's something you and I agree on, and that is the best mechanism for developing your thoughts. And the best medium out there is absolutely radio. You talked about honing your craft and how you talk. Radio teaches you, I think the right way to do it, because you first of all have a big runway, you have elbow room. You can actually explain your thoughts. You can connect with the listener in

a way then no other platform really can connect. But you shouldn't take that for granted. And I think most people who in radio do take it for granted. They think, turn the blue light on, start talking, and I will be interesting enough, And it's not true. So what you learn to hone is the order of your thoughts. Tell the audience what you're talking about, tell them what your point of view is, give them almost your conclusion to start, and then back it up after so they know what

the hell we're talking about. You do continue throughout your career to learn how to hone your message in a way that makes people want to listen. And I think radio is absolutely the best mechanism learning that. How did you go from CNN to ESPN? So that in my career, art to me is the least interesting part of my

career because at that point it becomes more traditional. So at some point at CNN and then there was a little stretch Clay where I had some appearances on the view and there was the potential for me to become one of the first male hosts. Yeah yeah. In fact, I got to know Whoopi Goldberg during that time, went out to her house asked her for career advice. But throughout that process, I decided that the career wasn't going

where I wanted to go. So I switched agents. I switched to C A A, which I know you're there. I'm no longer at A, but I switched to C A A. I switched to Nick con and Nick has deep relationships in sports. Um he knew that I had deep interest in sports, and he started to guide me towards the ESPN. I developed relationships with some people. There's some very good people there, like Rob Savanelli invested in me, who understands what it is to think outside the box.

And it actually took a couple of years for those relationships to coalesce into hiring me at ESPN. But it really, honestly is a more traditional hiring process than sending a dude an email in the middle of the night. So let's talk about ESPN and some of the ways that sports media covers sports in general. You obviously had a lot of success at ESPN. You mentioned your radio show. You mentioned you didn't mention it, but you were on

first take. Did you feel comfortable sharing what you actually thought initially at ESPN and why do you think it is in sports media. We talked a lot about political bias that exists in the media at large, but I would argue that there is more of a self selecting bias almost in sports than in the political arena at all. Why do you think that is. There's a couple of broad questions, but I'm just kind of curious what your

experience was there. When I first joined the ESPN, I first got a little more invested in the sports media world, and I should say in the sports media world, because you asked me earlier, was I always invested in sports? My first real memory is NFC Championship game. It's versus the Cowboys and Joe Montana throwing up a prayer that Dwight Clark brings down and catch him on his fingers and make six year old Will cry. I have loved sports since I was a kid, deeply and paid attention

at every step. But when I really joined the espiis when I started paying attention to sports media. And I came across you, and one of the things you said at that time was sports media is even more insular and more monolithic in terms of point of view than political media. And you were absolutely right. It is further left and more monolithically left than any other news media, and that is saying something because the rest of news is also incredibly biased and leaning left. Um, why does

that happen? So there's a self selection mechanism, like you talked about, of people who choose to go into media. I think, just like most people in the oil industry tend to be conservative, the people that choose to go into media tend to be on the left. But that doesn't mean it's exclusive. There are people who share my points of view, and this now brings in the other self selection mechanism. What you bring up is whether or not you want to share those out loud. It wasn't

hard for me at all. Man. I had come from politics that was much more rough and tumble, and I was maybe even naive that my point of view would be so out of the ordinary in sports. So I never thought twice. I never thought about the cost, not that I would have changed anyway, because I don't really think I have that capability, but it's only increased. And you know that everyone listening knows that. I mean, if you share a point of view that the guardians of

sports media, whether or not. Those are the critics, the loggers, the on air talentcy executives, whoever it may be, don't like you are absolutely at risk of being branded a racist. You're at risk of being branded someone on the wrong side of history and that moral and you really should, in their estimation, have your platform taken away? Has that gotten worse every year as you were at ESPN And do you attribute that to social media? Do you attributed

to Donald Trump? I think everything you said is true. Why did it continue to grow? It seems like to me because you talked about earlier in our conversation the fact that you got a twelve year old and you're not sure if college is the right idea for him, because college used to be, in a traditional sense, a place where people went to challenge their mind. You may not be a communist, but you learn about communism. You may not be a hard core capitalist, but you learn

about capitalism. Right. You challenge your mind so that you're more comfortable and aware of the world. You expand your universe of comprehension. It seems to me now that so much of what goes on is sideloed and you're only allowed to have one idea I've seen it just grow at an exponential rate. Since all the Corona bros out there are worried about exponential growth, what I have seen to actually grow exponentially is in my career. So I

started out kicking two thousand eleven. Um. You know, we were a zany kind of fun, college football centered sports site for several years, and then along the way, I was like, wait a minute, Suddenly there's only one opinion that you can have, and it seems like it's just accelerated to such an extent where here as we set having this conversation in it feels almost like the McCarthy era. Obviously we're super young, but we study history where there's

only one right answer for things. How did you see that evolve inside of ESPN and also just in the larger sports media. She's had a couple of things there I want to respond to. Let's start with college and then we'll get to sports media and ESPN. I've been having this conversation with myself as drove around the country. You talked about the role of college in the traditional

success path of the American dream. It's absolutely true. You can see the stats were at large if a child goes to college, the likelihood he makes X dollars is multiplied exponentially. The likelihood he's going to be a success goes remarkably up. And we should therefore obviously focus on education higher education. But I've been thinking about that more and more. What does that require? What does that mean?

And what it means is you're going to go to an institution where they are going to require you to

fall into lockstep with their point of view. And even if you were okay with that in exchange for being a success in life, I would ask you what is success in It's going into corporate America and then falling into other institutions which are shown to be some of the most spineless leaders in American history, who will say if you don't fall inline, not only were not going to promote you, if you don't submit to the majority point of view, or rather, i'm sorry, the minority ex

dreamly loud point of view, then we're going to potentially fire you. I started thinking about who I want my sons to be. I'm like, is being rich that important? Is being quote unquote successful so important that you have to sell out your principles, your values, your manhood, that you have to just fall in line, that you have to agree or be fired, that you tuck your tail between your legs and you went for your way to your golden handcuffs. I don't want that for my kids.

Don't want them to be men and if college and that traditional success path to find that's the kind of person they're gonna be. I have real doubts and concerns about it. I'd rather them go be a man in Montana and learn how to make a living on his own and live by his own principles. That's what I am right now. But again, I'm all talked. I got

six years to figure this out. That's fantastic. And then the other part of that, because that was such an interesting answer, like the evolution at your time at ESPN, did you see a sort of what I would say is shrinking of the the universe of acceptable opinion? To kind of sum it up, like it seems as if with social media and sports media in particular, that the number of opinions that someone is allowed to have the space for those opinions has increasingly shrunk. Would you agree

with that and did you notice it? And how would you attribute that to occurring? Why did it occur? So let's talk about ESPN and the sports media and why occurred. So I will say this, no one in five years at ESPN ever told me what to say or what I could not say. No one at ESPN made me feel unwanted. The executives there, I truly believe wanted most of the time me on the network. There might have been times when they thought I'm not right for a

certain show or a certain audience. They might have had their doubts about me personally. I'll never know because they didn't share it. But I felt fairly comfortable at ESPN in terms of support. But I was an outlier. Everybody knows that. You know that my opinion was in the minority there. In two thousand sixteen, you really saw this stuff take off, right Colin Kaepernick Niels and we begin to have these conversations around race. They weren't exclusively around race.

There was trans issues, There was issues about sexual assault charges. We talked about principles earlier. Clay, I'm a big believer in reasonable doubt, in burden of proof. Almost every accusation against an athlete, be they black, white, man, or woman. I just want you to make your case before you brand and and totally condemned them as guilty. So all of these issues are sensitive, and it starts to really peak more than two thousand sixteen, and I do think

it goes away in sevent nine. And then the answer your question, I don't think this is unique to ESPN. I think it's in sports media writ large, and I think it's in media at large. Over the last six months, this idea that you can only have one a point of view has absolutely had rocket boosters on it. Again, it did never manifest in we don't want will on air. ESPN supported me, they wanted me, they wanted me to stay at ESPN. My contract was up and we were negotiating.

But I think the role of social media, the role of blogs and critics, the role of like mindedness and media has really forced everything to become monolithically one point of view. How does it change fracturization. Honestly, it changes with probably institutions like OutKick. It changes because media will continue to be made up of smaller, more independent, more

independently minded organizations. From you and Jason and Bobby and Ryan and all the guys over there to OutKick and what you're doing to Portnoy and Big Cat and what those guys are doing at barstool, guys like Ben Shapiro. I think kata fracture up and that's where independence will be earned. How much does creative freedom matter to you? Being able to say exactly what you think and not have to war worry about it costing you your job? Incredibly? I loved the Will Kaine Show. I mean, Clay, you

do radio. I think you can probably identify with this. I love the idea that there was three hours of blank space every day and I pretty much could talk about whatever I want. However I wanted to shape those three hours meant the world to me. I just indicted mainstream media and big media companies writ large. I will say this to you, and I'm not saying it because I'm being a good soldier. It was one of the

decisions that led me to joining them. But Fox News is an institution that has shown backbone and leadership and willingness to stand up against online mobs and cancel culture and embrace I truly believe this embrace differing viewpoints on their airwaves. I would there is no mainstream media, big media company that I would rather work for. Than Fox News. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in

the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio app. Search f s R to listen live. We're talking to Will Kaine Wins and Losses. I'm Clay Travis. Um. Why do you think? So? Let me take a step back. Did you feel as if you were disliked internally at ESPN by other people on air because of your opinions or did you have really good relationships with people behind the scenes, even if publicly sometimes they disagreed with you.

How would you assess your overall experience with co workers at ESPN given the fact that you were outspoken and frankly sometimes uh not supported by a lot of other people, at least publicly in what you were saying, The vast majority relationships were really good. I mean that really good. I hope they were all authentic. Um. I really think that they did appreciate me, did like me, did take the time to invest and understand who I am, why I think what I think. I'm sure there are some

who didn't like me. The truth is about those that didn't like me, we probably didn't interact a whole lot. They probably didn't give me a shot, didn't really invest in understanding who I was. But for the vast majority of relationships whennot they were Stephen A. Smith or Marcus Spears or Damie al Woody or Dan Orlovsky or Tim Hasselbeck, there were good relationships that I sincerely hope to maintain.

How often would people come up to you at ESPN and say, I don't want people to know it, but I agree with a huge percentage of what you say, keep doing it. It happened. It definitely happened. And you know, Clay, I heard you talk about that because I remember you talk about people that would send you messages behind I I have a just so you know, and I'm this is not going to shock you. There are I have

a lot of really good friends at ESPN. People are like, oh, you know, I don't look I I have a lot of really people that I considered to be good friends and also good professional friends. And many of those people reach out to me regularly and they say, man, I love out kick, I love what you're doing. Keep doing it. H You're right in a lot of the criticisms that you levy about sports media and ESPN is obviously the biggest mirror to reflect sports media. I don't think it's

an ESPN exclusive issue. I think they just are bigger, so they magnify sometimes more. Uh So, I know there is a deep well of people at ESPN with a strong belief system in uh in things that might seem counterintuitive.

And Jason Whitlock, I thought recently said uh that that he thinks that it goes on in sports media too, where there's a lot of guys making seventy five thousand dollars a year out there and they got to take care of their family, and they're like, man, I can say what I actually think on social media, but if I do, I might lose my job, and then it's not easy for me to go get another seventy five or a hundred thousand dollar job. I'm fifty six years old.

I'm just trying to play out the thread on my career. I think there's a huge number of people out there like that. But I'm curious whether they come up to you internally and whether you had some of those conversations as well. I did, And I would say three things in response to that. I think the number of people who agree with what I have to say is actually growing. I think as the points of view have gotten more extreme.

I'm not just talking about ESPN. I'm talking about in the nation as a whole, but particularly in the media as a whole, and the need even more particularly in sports media, has gotten more extreme. I think more people are um gravitating to my positions once they see grounded in reason and rationality, and they're starting to see the cost of some of these extreme points of view. Trust me, I live in New York City. I can tell you firsthand. I have seen the cost of these kind of ideas implemented.

Number two, Um, I can't help it, and I would tell my friends this. I am a little disappointed sometimes that they feel this way privately but don't say it publicly. I mean sometimes it can be even as as an oxuous is saying I think wil Kaine is good or Wilkaine is right, or you know, one of those statements that somehow ends up being controversial. I do wish a little bit people were more forthcoming with their points of view.

But then my third point is I understand, just like you said with Whitlock, I understand it's a very rational choice to make to be quiet. Your job will probably be threatened, your reputation will most definitely be threatened, And so I understand why people would make those very rational self preservationist um choices. How often have you written a tweet and deleted it before you sent it? Um? This is a real weakness in my game. I don't love Twitter.

I don't love social media. You're really good at it, you truly are. I don't tweet a ton. You probably know that, and it's good for your career. You as in the proverbial you everyone because you have to be heard. I just think it's a really crap platform, Clay. I just don't think it lends itself to any sort of really interesting thoughts. It doesn't lend itself to back and force.

It's extremely negative, and I actually think, like your colleague Jason has said inny Times, I actually think it's a really big contributors to the negativity going on in society. So I don't really tweet delete, tweet delete, I just honestly don't tweet that much. I need to, I need to tweet more. I know it's good for my career, and I get all myself about it. I just don't

like the platform. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I I totally understand that that perspective, and I feel like Twitter has been great for me personally and awful for the country as a whole. And that dichotomy that I feel is, I do think it. It has helped to elevate what we do at out kick, It's helped to distribute our ideas to a larger audience. But I also think that the overall tone of Twitter is so negative. I'll tell you what I've done, and and this has been really

in the last couple of years. I rarely read mentions, right, other than the people that I follow, Like I'll go and see what they're tweeting about and stuff like that. I enjoy it, and certainly I enjoy it for news, but it's it's interesting, Like as a writer, I learned years and years ago never read the mentions to what people write but below your article, and I would never

do it. But there's something seductive, and certainly our industry creates a lot of narcissists, right, I mean, it's not a surprise that if you decide you want to be on television or you want people to pay attention to you, that you may well have narcissistic tendencies. And what Twitter creates, I believe, is the idea that everybody cares about everything that you think because there's one or two people constantly

in your mentioned saying it. And I think the mentions are actually more troubling and problematic than the actual megaphone of Twitter. And so what I've found is it's like every YouTube comment threat eventually ends in a fight. If you're a sports fan and you go on any sports message board, people start off talking about whether the backup quarterbacks should be starting or not, and eventually it ends up in an attack between two different people over something

that has nothing to do with it. Most of what people say on Twitter, even the mentions underneath what I have said or what you have said, I have found is about them, not about you. And it's not that efficient or effective of a use of time. It's a megaphone, not a conversational device. And once I kind of got that idea around it and stopped caring about what people say in response, I think that has been a more effective tool for me to use to go out. Well

a couple of things. I think that's really disciplined. That shows a lot of disciplines, and I look at your mentions. It's the right choice. But it's also actually a pretty difficult thing to do because everyone's instinct is what are people saying about what I just said said, which is why, which is why, which is why the app works. Right. It goes right into our primal instinct to see what other people think about us, whether they like it, whether they retweet it, whether they hate us like it's a

It goes to the primal instincts. I understand why it works, and yes, it is fascinating. Yeah, you brought up narcissism, and you're absolutely right about the people that choose to go into media are largely narcissistic in some way. Now, what is narcissism. It is not confidence, but it's insecurity. It's a need for an ego feed and it's the opposite of how I like to engage. I just sung the praises of the platform of radio to you just a moment ago, but I treated radio as an open forum.

If you disagreed with me, I wanted you to call in. I know you've done the same thing because all the time, yes, I want to hear you, I want you to challenge my ideas. Where Twitter is full of that insecurity. See, that's how a man handles his business. In my mind, that is confidence, that is quote unquote face to face right where Twitter, I feel, is full of even more insecurity and more little backstabby, back and forth fight. I'm gonna give you an example that this isn't about you, Okay.

I haven't agreed with everything you had to say on coronavirus. Honestly, I think you're probably right on coronavirus. But that's higher percentage that my wife believes, by the way, so I'll take it. Well. I think you were, especially in the beginning. I think you were a little too dismissive of coronavirus. I think you're having totally totally wrong. I got the I believe the China numbers, which was a failure. I

trusted the WHO. Yeah, like it's right. I mean, you know, I try to get my facts right, and when I base an opinion on a failed fact factual model, I mean that's what actually makes me feel sick to my stomach. Not being wrong about who's gonna win a game? Right, like whatever you can, but when your facts are wrong, it leads you to the wrong destination, and that's one of the big problems with Twitter. There's a lot of factual and accuracies in general. But yes, sorry to cut

you off. Yes that is I'll take that's higher than my wife. Um. By the way, I do that with everybody, and it's a sign of respect. I think to sell someone where I think they were wrong, I don't like the oh you're always right stuff. Yeah, Um, I think you were also wrong on Greg Siano. For what it's worth, I don't think what you did at University of Tennessee was a good thing. I thought you didn't give him the benefit of the doubt, as we talked about burden

of proof earlier. But all I'm doing by that, it's not rehashing those debates with you. I'm telling you like I'm willing to tell everyone where I think they're wrong. And I don't see it as a sign of disrespect. I see it as the opposite, a sign kind of respect. And now to take this back to full circle, by the way, you're right on almost everything. Otherwise, I mean, you're right we should play college football. You're right on

on on a lot of these things. But I saw that back and forth with Revel and I'm just like, you know, I can have a conversation with Clay about coronavirus for a while. It may not be that interesting because we might mostly agree. But whatever is going on with Rebel and Clay right now, it's probably entertaining for a lot of people, But like you know, it's not productive. You know, it's not working to help solve the issue.

It's it's just you guys going back and forth at each other and really extending no goodwill to each other. By the way, Clay, I don't think you're wrong on that side of the debate. I think Darren is wrong. I think Darren is like all these guys you call Corona Bros. And caving into I guess the new normal, which has not been the curve but zero percent transmission rate and peddling in fear. I think Darren is doing all of those things. But I just don't feel personally

compelled to go to Twitter and have that fight with him. Yeah, it's an interesting boy. I like Darren. You know, I consider Darren to be a friend. He may be that with me now, and this kind of goes to, uh, the way I live life in general. It's really hard to offend me and what And I'm curious if you've found this. I mean, I think you may well be similar in that respect. If somebody disagrees with me, I take my opinion seriously, but I don't take myself very seriously.

And so if somebody's like, hey, you're an idiot for that opinion, I'm wide open to the idea that I might be wrong, right, it doesn't bother me. And maybe that's the lawyer as well, where you're used to having to make opinions and sometimes the judge comes down or the court comes down, or whoever. The deciding factor is if you're in law school, mood court, mock trial, whatever it is, somebody comes down and says, hey, this side with a better argument. And so that's kind of how

the law works. One side wins, one side loses. It's adversarial and system kind of like sports. And so I don't get upset, and I have short memories even for people who attack me. And I don't know if that's a character benefit or a character flaw. Is what my wife says is you're the guy if if people say ten negatives and one person says a positive, you remember the positive and and and it is true, like that

helps you on Twitter. That's that's true. So I I have a psychology where I don't get that worked up by people being disagreeing with me. Does that makes sense? Like it? It doesn't really kind of, And I don't know what that is about my psychology. I think I know what it is. Would ane it? Well? I think you're confident in who you are. It's it's you know. Somebody asked me for radio advice this morning, and I told him exactly what you just said. Take what you

say very seriously. Do not take yourself seriously. But the corollary to that is if you're confident enough about who you are, not just being told you're wrong. But in the case of my radio show, I allowed people in the air to say you are a racist to me on air. I required them to back it up, and I sometimes got mad, but I usually got over it pretty quickly. I do have a hot temper, but I get over it pretty quickly, and I will let that

person come back on my radio show. But the end underlying factor is I know who I am and they get to define it. I define who I am. I imagine you feel somewhat the same way. So I don't hold really big grudges, but I don't get that mad when somebody tells me I'm wrong. Yeah, I'm very confident in what I believe and if I were. What I always say is the people you have to watch out for are the people that are trying too hard to

tell you what they are. And what I mean by that is I've just seen it happen in social media so many times. Like, the guys who are the biggest creeps are not the people who are out there, uh, They're the people that are out there going way over the top with stuff, right Like, time after time after time, they're trying to cover up for something. I'll give you an easy example, the people who are fundamentally like opposed to gay people. It's amazing how often those people are

actually gay. What they're actually combating is their internal interest in the same sex, and so they are tacking it way over the top aggressive right. For me, I always even back at seventeen or eighteen years old, I grew up in Nashville. I didn't know any gay people really very much growing up, but we went away to college there was a lot of gw My first thought as

an eighteen year old was I love gay dudes. That's a lot less competition for girls, Like I still don't understand why, guys, that isn't the number one reaction when you're an eighteen year old college kid and the campus is swarming with girls like GW had a huge gay population, and I was like, man, this is awesome for me. There's a lot better options that I'm gonna have because those good looking dudes are gay and they're not interested

in girls at all. Right, Like, maybe that it's self interested, but I don't care very much about what other people think or do. And I heard you say your libertarian bent earlier, like I want for like I believe in capitalism and I believe in free speech. And I obviously got in trouble on CNN c ann perspective for saying I believe in the First Amendment, Boobs. I'm a heterosexual guy who likes most things that heterosexual guys like. But that does it mean that everybody has to be a

heterosexual guy. But I also don't think we should apologize for our masculinity, which is a big part of I think several of your different stories, like we have feminized so many things that seems to be in this country that men are shrinking from the responsibilities of manhood. And you know, like having a disagreement is not a bad thing, right uh and and having a face taking along of it. Losing is not like losing is not a bad thing. That's that's how you grow as an individual. In fact,

I think I totally agree. There's lots of un fact with what you just said. Let me just see if I can remember a couple of them. First. I totally agree that the people that seeing the loudest about their own virtues and cast the most accusations usually are hiding something big, bad, and ugly. I think most of the people that yell racist at everybody else online make I would suspect because I have seen it in my private life some of the most racist Amen. Amen, yes, um.

And it applies across the spectrum um every issue. I feel like the ones that preached the loudest and cast the biggest accusations are really talking about themselves in some way. Um, what else did you talk about? I said I was going to remember, but I'm masculinity. I think you probably agree in many ways with Like I have three boys, do you have four? To us by the way, I wish i'd had one more. I would keep going, I

would have a fourth. My wife is tap has has said that you can't, we can't have any more kids. But I've got three boys. I try to think about the world in which I want to raise them. And it's okay to be in touch with your emotions. I'm fine with that, but when your emotions tip over into fear, I don't want to raise children who are afraid of the world. And I used that earlier as example. I said this today, I took my kindergartener to school. All my kids are gonna be going to in person school.

I think it's important. I've talked to my kids about the coronavirus the same way eight percent of the times correct, as you said, But I've tried to talk to them as adults to understand that you can't allow fear to dictate all the choices that you make. And it seems to me that as a society, we are treating fear as if it is something to be avoided, as opposed to something that is to be accepted and understood as a part of adulthood, and that troubles me in many ways.

And so I think about that from the parenting perspective. What am I trying to instill in my kids? We talked about when you and I both went away to college, maybe we were a little bit uh soft, right, um? And I think the world creates a lot of soft people, and when hard times come, I'm not sure that soft people can cope. Does that make sense? Man? You are singing my song, Fear is winning the day in the world. I've been saying this on some of this media tour

that I've been going through. I think corporate leadership is absolutely beholden to fear. Right now, you can go read my interview with Bobby Burrack at OutKick dot com see what I had to say about that. But I want to say something different about what you just said about raising boys and racing fear. I have sat at the top of a cliff with my youngest son, who was a little more less of a daredevil than my oldest son, and said, we're going to jump. We're going to jump

into this ocean. We're gonna take this jump. And he's afraid, and I said to him, fear is rational, Fear is fine. Don't be embarrassed about fear. Fear is absolutely part of life. The only question is what do you do with fear? Do you let it win? Do you let it dictate your next action. You should feel fear. It's rational. It's telling you by the way that bear is big, I want to run. But if it's a black bear, you

should not run. You should stand tall, you should act big, you should be loud, you should back down the bear. The fear is okay, but what you do with the fear is what's important. I don't care much about skateboarding Clay, but I got both of my boys into skateboarding when they were young, and I got him into it for that reason. I wanted him to learn to drop in, to crash on concrete, to over um their fear. I never wanted them to be protected from fear. I just

wanted to learn how to overcome fear. It's it's so well said, and I think that's honestly. What's so important about sports is because sports teaches you how to put everything you have into trying to win, regardless of how good you are, and sometimes you're still gonna fail, and understanding how to deal, which is why this podcast is called Wins and Losses understanding how to learn from your losses that ultimately you've gotta keep getting back up right,

and everybody is going to get knocked down. And my concern is so many people now today are afraid of getting knocked down. They're not even getting knocked down will They're afraid of getting knocked down, and so they never actually take any risk or actually experience any significant success because they're so worried about the possibility of getting knocked

down that they don't do what they really should. And you've talked about challenges earlier and everything else, like we interviewed, I got to interview that the president a couple of days ago. I want to feel, yeah, I want to fill that that nervousness in the pit of my stomach a lot of times every year to find some new challenge to embrace, because if you're not doing that, you're not growing in any way. I totally agree, man, and raising boys is one of the most clarifying factors on this.

I wanted them to not make the travel team from time to time. I wanted them to not get off the bench and realize that that stinks. Okay, what are we gonna do to to fix that issue? I'm not going to go to the coach and telling you should be playing. What are you gonna do to fix that situation. You've got to deal with failures, You've gotta deal with loss. You could give your kids if you could adopt one

trait for yourself in life, it would be resilience. My only pessimistic thought in response to that is, you know, I said it to you earlier in the show. I said, we're raising generations of people who are unprepared for the real world. All these safe spaces is protection from fair They're unprepared for the real world right now. And this is a pessimistic point of view. They are shaping the

real world. The real world is not shaping them. They've imported the safe spaces from college into the corporate chain of America. They have turned the entire country into a place where we will not withstand this agreement. We will not let you fail. We will not let anything negative happen to you in your life. I don't think it's sustainable. I think they will ultimately fail, but make no mistake. In the short term. Right now, I think they're winning

the culture war well, and that's my biggest concern. Um and Frankly, I've said this before. I want to make you know, certainly, OutKick. The thing that I like is we have a voice in a big way I think without Kick, and you certainly have a big voice with Fox News. But imagine if Fox News didn't exist, Imagine if out Kick didn't exist. In sports media, what's scary to me is we don't really have a marketplace of ideas now. I love seeing Fox News rewarded for the

marketplace that they share. And maybe you can argue if Fox News didn't exist, somebody else would come along and fill that vacuum. But I think the number of people who are like the Murdocks, that are willing to be involved in the marketplace of ideas and and and be willing to accept the side I right, like the society people who are gonna say like, oh, you know, that's uh that those are those uh, those rebel murdocks and stuff.

I think that that is a rare thing, certainly in the media, and so I wonder I think, you know, in sports media there's almost no marketplace of ideas. That's what scares me, right, is that the marketplace of ideas is going to continue to constrict. I love what you said about all the different people who are, you know, kind of creating their own lane, so to speak. But that still is scary. And I'm glad that we're involved

in the fight. But if I wasn't involved in the fight, I'd be sitting on the sidelines as a sports fan and as a as an as an American and somebody who's proud uh to to be a to be living in America, and feel like our entire lifestyle is under assault. But here's the thing. The culture war is not being lost to a massive ship in the majority opinion of the country. The decisions of corporate leaders are not being

made because their consumer base has changed. The decisions by advertisers are not because their consumers are telling them place your ads here or do not place your ads here. What is happening is a small, loud, extreme minority is scaring the hell out of everybody, and they don't have I guess, the spying to stand up to even protect their own bottom line, to protect their own shareholders, to protect their own ratings. I'm telling you, it is a

suicidal agreement that they're making. These companies that make this bargain to give into the fear they will fail. It may take some time because glaciers melt slowly, but they will fail. And in the meantime, there is a massive market opening. And I think this applies to everything. Media choices like out Kicking, Fox News Present and both of whom success show there is a massive market for this. But also beyond that, there will have to be some

edic factional choices. There will have to be some career path choices. Like I talked about earlier, with my kids, It's not gonna be that people are can continue to send their children off to these factories of indoctrinated thought. They're not going to say, go make a hundred fifty dollars working for this corporation that has told you you are born inherently evil and racist. They're not going to continue to do this. Media, sports, media, that's just the start.

People are gonna have to make choices, and I do believe for the entrepreneurs and the business owners and the media personalities that choose to do so, they're walking into a massive market a majority opinion. Be sure to catch live editions about Kicked the coverage with Clay Travis weekdays at six am Eastern three am Pacific Man, this has been a fascinating conversation. Tell people again, I'm Clay Travis Wins and Losses with Will Caine. You can follow Will.

I think it's just simple at Will Kine. But where can people watch you and starting win? I start this Saturday on Box and Friends Weekend with my friends Pete Hexeth and Jedediah Beela. You'll be six to ten Eastern every Saturday morning and Sunday morning on Fox News, and then as time allows. I am not walking away from sports. I'm gonna stay involved in the sports world. I love sports. You couldn't keep me out of it if I want.

I consider this a new opening door from my career, not closing any So I'd love it, man, I'd love it if your listeners, your readers, your fans, all um, come join us over and I hope you and I keep talking. Man, there's been a long time into making and um, and I appreciate what you guys are doing. No, look, I love to get you on the radio show regularly. Um. We need to talk about that offline at some point, but I think our listeners would love hearing from you

on a regular basis. I think we'd have a lot of fascinating conversations, and I don't want you to leave completely the world of sports either. This has been awesome, man. I appreciate the time. I know how busy you are getting ready for that new show to launch. Encourage everybody to go watch it. Fox and Friends on the Weekend with Will Caine. Go follow him on Twitter telling me enjoyed the conversation and if you enjoyed this and go check out some of our other long form conversations. Thanks

my man, I'm rooting for you. It's great to get to spend as much time talking as we just did. Thanks, Clay, keep up the good work, man, appreciate it. That's Will Kaine. I'm Clay Travis. This is Wins and Losses. Go subscribe thirty whatever the number is. Long form conversations, hardly any commercials. You're gonna love it. Look forward to it. Thanks again to Will Kine, and thanks to you guys.