# Howard Bryant on How 9/11 Changed Sports Forever | 09.11

An episode of [The Right Time with Bomani Jones](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/982639043), 11 Sep 2026, 55 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/370fc844-36bd-4f61-8b8f-b4bb010de39a/52476062-4bf5-4e62-8062-b4c200de21aa/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=919a7cbe-003c-4146-b592-b4bb010de3a5

Bomani Jones is joined by Howard Bryant to discuss 9/11’s impact on the sports world nearly 25 years after one of the most impactful days in American history. First, they discuss the aftermath of 9/11 in baseball and the real reason they still play “God Bless America” in stadiums. Later, they discuss how the NFL figured out how to market patriotism to its fans & how that directly led to the blackballing of Colin Kaepernick. Finally, they discuss the uniting moment after George W. Bush’s first pitch at Yankee Stadium and how modern sports doesn’t make us feel the same way. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:05] Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time. My name
[0:09] Speaker 1: is Beaumont Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast.
[0:11] Speaker 1: Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us,
[0:14] Speaker 1: review us, give us five stars. You only give us
[0:17] Speaker 1: four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater.
[0:20] Speaker 1: I will introduce this with a little more somber tones.
[0:22] Speaker 1: I don't try to come in like real big on it,
[0:24] Speaker 1: but we're talking about 25 years since 9-11, so I
[0:26] Speaker 1: don't exactly feel like it's time to be like it.
[0:28] Speaker 2: Coming up next!
[0:30] Speaker 1: So coming up next, we have our good friend joining
[0:33] Speaker 1: us here live and direct from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
[0:36] Speaker 1: Howard Bryant. What's going on?
[0:39] Speaker 2: Oh, man, how are you doing?
[0:40] Speaker 1: Hey, man.
[0:40] Speaker 2: I think it's a smart move, by the way, Bo,
[0:42] Speaker 2: to not be all enthusiastic about it. I mean, do
[0:45] Speaker 2: you even want to call it an anniversary? Just mark
[0:47] Speaker 2: the time, right?
[0:48] Speaker 1: Yo, it's exactly it.
[0:49] Speaker 2: Yay, anniversary. Like, woo!
[0:51] Speaker 1: It's kind of like I talk about the internet has
[0:52] Speaker 1: made it a thing. Like, people don't remember Biggie's birthday,
[0:55] Speaker 1: but they remember the day he died. So it's a
[0:58] Speaker 1: party every year on the day he died. I'm like, nah,
[1:00] Speaker 1: let's learn his birthday, baby. Like these are not, this
[1:03] Speaker 1: is not a celebratory time. I guarantee you this, his
[1:06] Speaker 1: mama wouldn't throw in no party on the ninth. That
[1:10] Speaker 1: was like.
[1:11] Speaker 2: When we were doing, when we would do NPR, you'd
[1:14] Speaker 2: have these horrible stories about death and, you know, famine
[1:19] Speaker 2: and the rest of it. And then, And now it's
[1:21] Speaker 2: time for sports. I'm like, can we transition this a
[1:23] Speaker 2: little differently? Yes. Yes.
[1:25] Speaker 1: But I wanted to have you on to talk about
[1:27] Speaker 1: like 25 years since 9-11, particularly in sports in part.
[1:32] Speaker 1: And this will be something we get to a little later.
[1:34] Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure how the rest of our industry
[1:37] Speaker 1: will have handled this. I know how they would have
[1:39] Speaker 1: handled this 25 years ago when we had a little
[1:42] Speaker 1: bit more of a. concerned for kind of looking back
[1:44] Speaker 1: at these historical moments and putting them in context. Boomers
[1:47] Speaker 1: love that. And by the way, makes great content. People
[1:50] Speaker 1: generally enjoy it. We don't really do it anymore. But
[1:53] Speaker 1: this is a topic that you honestly, for these 25 years,
[1:57] Speaker 1: have written a lot about that people can check on
[1:59] Speaker 1: in your books, which is kind of how things changed
[2:02] Speaker 1: in and around sports with 9-11. And you were covering
[2:06] Speaker 1: the Yankees that year. It was, which is interesting for
[2:09] Speaker 1: me because I always say that 911 hits me a
[2:12] Speaker 1: little differently because I was in California. And so this
[2:16] Speaker 1: didn't happen at 912 in the morning or whatever it
[2:18] Speaker 1: happened at 612 and I had nowhere near a television
[2:20] Speaker 1: I was in a place with no telecommunications whatsoever. And
[2:24] Speaker 1: somebody came in and told me what happened. And I
[2:26] Speaker 1: honestly thought he was lying because it sounded like science fiction,
[2:29] Speaker 1: like War of the Worlds. And I went on about
[2:31] Speaker 1: my day. And then it was like, oh, wow, this
[2:33] Speaker 1: is a really big thing that's been going on all
[2:36] Speaker 1: day long that I've been too wrapped up in my
[2:38] Speaker 1: own shit to get to. You, on the other hand,
[2:41] Speaker 1: are around New York City.
[2:43] Speaker 2: Oh, I was in New York City. I was living
[2:45] Speaker 2: on 49th and 10th. And I remember at 8.45 in
[2:49] Speaker 2: the morning when the first tower got hit Um, I
[2:53] Speaker 2: was just waking up. It was a Tuesday morning. And
[2:56] Speaker 2: I remember what was kind of wild about that was
[3:00] Speaker 2: the speed of the calamity.
[3:03] Speaker 1: Right.
[3:03] Speaker 2: I mean, within a half an hour, no cell phones
[3:08] Speaker 2: are working. Like it was hard to get through to anybody. And,
[3:14] Speaker 2: you know, you saw like disaster. I mean, it was
[3:17] Speaker 2: really incredible, um, for all kinds of different reasons. Like
[3:23] Speaker 2: you just saw, you just saw life in real time,
[3:27] Speaker 2: just act out in, you know, on a block by
[3:29] Speaker 2: block basis, you know, like all of a sudden the
[3:31] Speaker 2: cab drivers were like, Oh, you want to go over
[3:33] Speaker 2: the bridge? $ 300. Like that was that element of it.
[3:36] Speaker 2: And then on the other hand of it, you had
[3:38] Speaker 2: all the first responders, just, just everybody just racing down downtown.
[3:43] Speaker 2: It was chaos. It was. And then of course here
[3:46] Speaker 2: I am covering baseball feeling completely insignificant. Who cares about
[3:51] Speaker 2: baseball at that moment? Back then, they actually had pay phones.
[3:54] Speaker 2: Pay phone wasn't going to work. Pay phones always work.
[3:57] Speaker 2: Couldn't get through to anybody.
[3:59] Speaker 1: Yeah, and I feel like with major moments, they're the
[4:02] Speaker 1: kinds that are the where were you when dot dot
[4:05] Speaker 1: dot moments, but then there is the whole next level
[4:09] Speaker 1: of it, and you just don't get that many of those,
[4:10] Speaker 1: which is everything changed at this moment.
[4:13] Speaker 2: Well, this one's both.
[4:14] Speaker 1: Yes.
[4:15] Speaker 2: Yeah, this one is 100% both, and The thing about
[4:19] Speaker 2: 9-11 and sports, there's probably, I mean, off the top
[4:24] Speaker 2: of my head, I'd have to really sort of parse
[4:25] Speaker 2: it down, but off the top of my head, there
[4:28] Speaker 2: are three moments that change the trajectory of sports in
[4:31] Speaker 2: the 20th century into the 21st century. One is integration.
[4:36] Speaker 2: Two is television. And three is 9-11. And obviously, if
[4:42] Speaker 2: you want to extend that out, you could probably go
[4:44] Speaker 2: into the pandemic. But up to that point, This is
[4:50] Speaker 2: the moment. Whenever I think about 9-11, I always think
[4:53] Speaker 2: about it from the standpoint of each generation has its
[4:57] Speaker 2: seismic moment that shifts the whole culture, that changes everything.
[5:01] Speaker 2: With my parents' generation, it was World War II. With
[5:07] Speaker 2: my generation, it was a Cold War. And with this generation,
[5:10] Speaker 2: it's 9-11. It looks, feel, sold, everything was different from
[5:15] Speaker 2: that day forward.
[5:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, and It's interesting where you say the sports feel
[5:20] Speaker 1: so insignificant in that moment. And of course, that was
[5:23] Speaker 1: a message that we spilled. And then give it a week, right?
[5:28] Speaker 1: Or however long it was before sports got back on
[5:30] Speaker 1: the road. And then it was the complete opposite, right?
[5:32] Speaker 1: It was the most important thing. Right. Not just is
[5:35] Speaker 1: it important. To me, people immediately tapped into... The entirety
[5:41] Speaker 1: of the reason that sports are allowed to exist on
[5:44] Speaker 1: the plane that they do with the support they do
[5:46] Speaker 1: with the attention they do with the funding they do
[5:48] Speaker 1: everything else, which is sports have always served the interest
[5:54] Speaker 1: of whatever the dominant regime is of the time, whether
[5:58] Speaker 1: it be government on whatever level. Right. Like it's part
[6:00] Speaker 1: of the appeal of college sports in this country. is
[6:03] Speaker 1: the affirmation of pride and region or whatever that institution
[6:06] Speaker 1: happens to be. But the whole point and the reason
[6:09] Speaker 1: of it becomes a celebration of certain parts of our society.
[6:14] Speaker 1: And it feels like when 9-11 hit across the board
[6:18] Speaker 1: and also specifically as it relates to New York City,
[6:21] Speaker 1: sports now became a celebration of the nation itself, of
[6:27] Speaker 1: the symbols of the nation itself.
[6:31] Speaker 2: Yeah, sports, it was tribal before, and then it was tribal,
[6:35] Speaker 2: and then it became completely tribal, where you could feel,
[6:39] Speaker 2: I was afraid, to be honest. I remember, we were
[6:43] Speaker 2: out a week. 9-11 hit on a Tuesday, and the Yankees,
[6:48] Speaker 2: we ended up driving. That was the other thing, too.
[6:50] Speaker 2: What was kind of funny was how easy you recognized
[6:55] Speaker 2: the things you take for granted were not to be
[6:58] Speaker 2: taken for granted, which was, okay, season's going to open
[7:01] Speaker 2: up in, it's going to reopen in Chicago a week
[7:04] Speaker 2: from today. I'm not getting on a plane. How are
[7:08] Speaker 2: we getting to Chicago? And so all of that infrastructure
[7:11] Speaker 2: suddenly came into question because no one wanted to get
[7:13] Speaker 2: on an airplane. And what was fascinating to me about
[7:17] Speaker 2: that whole, that whole period that, I mean, and it
[7:20] Speaker 2: was a period, it was, it was at least a
[7:22] Speaker 2: month or two, because the second piece of this was
[7:26] Speaker 2: now we got to find Osama bin Laden, right? So
[7:30] Speaker 2: everybody was on high alert that there was the next
[7:33] Speaker 2: shoe going. And let's not also forget, during that same
[7:35] Speaker 2: time period, you had the anthrax scare happening too. So
[7:38] Speaker 2: there was this real feeling that the entire country was
[7:42] Speaker 2: under attack, because it was. But the piece of it
[7:46] Speaker 2: to me that was really, that changed it all, was
[7:50] Speaker 2: the injection of politics into sports permanently. And I don't
[7:54] Speaker 2: think anybody knew that was going to happen at the time.
[7:56] Speaker 2: World War II athletes wore patches to... recognized the fact
[8:01] Speaker 2: that the country was at war. Vietnam, same thing, but
[8:03] Speaker 2: to a lesser extent. But there was recognition that American
[8:07] Speaker 2: soldiers were fighting around the world. 9-11 was all of
[8:12] Speaker 2: that times a thousand. That the entire approach of sports,
[8:18] Speaker 2: which was to avoid politics because everybody was under the
[8:21] Speaker 2: same umbrella. We're all Yankee fans and we're all Cowboys
[8:24] Speaker 2: fans or Patriots fans or whatever. That all went away
[8:29] Speaker 2: And it was replaced by a real angry, dangerous sort
[8:36] Speaker 2: of sense that now we're going to go back to
[8:39] Speaker 2: sports and we're going to put 40,000 people in one
[8:45] Speaker 2: place who are enraged right now that there's an enemy
[8:50] Speaker 2: out there that we can't see. And where is that
[8:56] Speaker 2: fervor going to release? It's going to release at ballparks.
[9:00] Speaker 2: And the sports industry itself recognized, even as you were
[9:04] Speaker 2: talking about moment versus change, from that day to 25
[9:09] Speaker 2: years later, the entire business of sports, how sports was
[9:13] Speaker 2: sold to you, was changed cosmetically. And it's never gone back.
[9:17] Speaker 2: After the Gulf War, we saw Whitney Houston out there singing,
[9:20] Speaker 2: and then the Duke and And whoever they were in Vegas,
[9:25] Speaker 2: you know, in UNLV, they had their U.S. patches on
[9:27] Speaker 2: during the Gulf War. But once that war ended, those
[9:30] Speaker 2: patches disappeared. Those American flags after 9-11 showed up and
[9:36] Speaker 2: they haven't gone away. Yeah.
[9:37] Speaker 1: And it's funny because there is a book called Brand
[9:40] Speaker 1: NFL by Michael Loriart that I recommend that people check out.
[9:45] Speaker 1: It really talks about how the NFL has been promoted
[9:48] Speaker 1: and marketed throughout its time. And one point, that it
[9:51] Speaker 1: makes is that what the NFL really caught on to
[9:53] Speaker 1: in the way the other leagues did not is that
[9:55] Speaker 1: it wedded its product to symbols like the American flag
[9:59] Speaker 1: in a different way. way. And once they made it
[10:01] Speaker 1: a red, white, and blue league, that always popped, right?
[10:03] Speaker 1: Like for that league that always worked as a mechanism
[10:07] Speaker 1: of sale. For baseball, like you would see the red, white,
[10:11] Speaker 1: and blue like bunting around the field for like game
[10:14] Speaker 1: one of the World Series.
[10:16] Speaker 2: During the postseason.
[10:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, for the All-Star game. Yeah, but it was never
[10:19] Speaker 1: in all the time thing, they started breaking out God
[10:23] Speaker 1: Bless America. It's never gone away. I still don't know
[10:28] Speaker 1: the words to God Bless America. Like God Bless America
[10:30] Speaker 1: was not a, at least to me, that wasn't like
[10:32] Speaker 1: a song everybody knows, right?
[10:35] Speaker 2: And why did they do that, Bo?
[10:37] Speaker 1: Why did they do that?
[10:38] Speaker 2: They did that because after the towers went down, Bobby
[10:43] Speaker 2: Valentine was the manager of the Mets. John Franco, you know,
[10:48] Speaker 2: New York dude. was closer on the Mets. And the
[10:51] Speaker 2: Mets went to Shea Stadium and they opened up a
[10:54] Speaker 2: relief center in the parking lot. And in very, very
[10:59] Speaker 2: fast time, the Mets were being associated as New York's team.
[11:04] Speaker 2: The Yankees were like, no, let's let the authorities handle everything.
[11:08] Speaker 2: And we're the Yankees and we're going to take a
[11:10] Speaker 2: step back. And by the way, let's not forget, both
[11:12] Speaker 2: Roger Clemens and Andy Pettit hightailed it out of there
[11:14] Speaker 2: in their private planes the minute those towers hit. They're like,
[11:16] Speaker 2: we're getting out of here. And they bolted. But the
[11:19] Speaker 2: New York guys, the Mets, they stayed. And the idea
[11:28] Speaker 2: that the Mets were more patriotic than the Yankees, that
[11:31] Speaker 2: they were more New York than the Yankees, enraged George Steinbrenner.
[11:36] Speaker 2: And he was like, well, we got to do something.
[11:39] Speaker 2: So they went out and got one of the great
[11:41] Speaker 2: Irish tenors, Ronan Tynan, to sing God Bless America in
[11:44] Speaker 2: the seventh inning. And then the Yankees went to the armory.
[11:48] Speaker 2: Then they went to the firehouses. And suddenly, nobody likes
[11:50] Speaker 2: to admit this. And of course, Joe Torre, New Yorker,
[11:54] Speaker 2: Brooklyn guy, his sister is a nun. All of a sudden,
[11:58] Speaker 2: you know, the Yankees and the Mets were sort of
[12:00] Speaker 2: battling for the hearts and minds of grieving New Yorkers.
[12:04] Speaker 2: And George was like, this is going to be, like,
[12:08] Speaker 2: this is our staple. So suddenly you've got Ronan Tynan
[12:11] Speaker 2: out there singing God Bless America during the seventh inning
[12:15] Speaker 2: of all the games. And then, of course, because baseball
[12:19] Speaker 2: also saw football out there with all the mini American
[12:22] Speaker 2: flags out there and Joe Andrews running out with two
[12:24] Speaker 2: flags with the Patriots against the Jets and the whole thing.
[12:28] Speaker 2: Then baseball made God bless America mandatory for all the teams. Mandatory.
[12:33] Speaker 2: So now you're starting to see all of the sports
[12:37] Speaker 2: trying to tap into the red, white and blueness of
[12:42] Speaker 2: the business of the game. And now each sport is
[12:45] Speaker 2: trying to, in baseball especially, in addition, let's not forget,
[12:50] Speaker 2: you had 1,800 firefighters killed in whatever that number is.
[12:59] Speaker 2: It's not that number, but over 1,000. And then the
[13:02] Speaker 2: police as well. So now you also, in addition to
[13:05] Speaker 2: the red, white, and blue of America fighting Osama bin
[13:08] Speaker 2: Laden and al-Qaeda, now you also have the police and
[13:14] Speaker 2: first responders, but especially police as heroes and military as heroes.
[13:19] Speaker 2: So now this sport, where sport was unimportant to your point,
[13:24] Speaker 2: now this is the staging ground for America's emotions. And
[13:30] Speaker 2: this was the place where everybody was like, we can't
[13:31] Speaker 2: have sports. We can't have politics involved here. And so
[13:35] Speaker 2: now you've got the cops singing the national anthem. You've
[13:39] Speaker 2: got the flags and the flyovers, and each sport is
[13:42] Speaker 2: now using this place. And by the way, when I
[13:45] Speaker 2: was speaking to some of the military guys, when I
[13:47] Speaker 2: was working on my book, The Heritage, they were saying like, hey,
[13:50] Speaker 2: they recognized opportunity. Where else are we going to get
[13:53] Speaker 2: this kind of recruitment opportunity? We're at war right now.
[13:57] Speaker 2: And if this is a moment where people come together,
[14:01] Speaker 2: there are going to be people watching these games that
[14:04] Speaker 2: are going to want to serve their country too. So this,
[14:07] Speaker 2: so suddenly sports became the land grab for patriotism. You know, both,
[14:13] Speaker 2: both commercially, emotionally, and then, of course, militarily.
[14:17] Speaker 1: All right, I want to start with the God bless
[14:19] Speaker 1: America part because I did not know that story about
[14:22] Speaker 1: the back and forth between the teams. This was the
[14:24] Speaker 1: result of economic competition in the market of patriotism.
[14:28] Speaker 2: That's right.
[14:29] Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody else ever feels this way,
[14:31] Speaker 1: but I was at a Yankees game a couple weeks
[14:33] Speaker 1: ago and God bless America, and I was like, are
[14:36] Speaker 1: you supposed to stand for this? Because it's a song.
[14:40] Speaker 1: It is not the national anthem. It is not a
[14:44] Speaker 1: prescribed hymn.
[14:46] Speaker 2: It's a song.
[14:47] Speaker 1: And I was like, wait, I got to stand up
[14:48] Speaker 1: for this too? Because I ain't standing up for Lee Greenwood.
[14:51] Speaker 1: You understand what I'm saying? I would not do that
[14:55] Speaker 1: under those circumstances. And I was like, oh man, this
[14:57] Speaker 1: is all just.
[14:57] Speaker 2: Kind of- Not only did the Yankees make it mandatory,
[14:59] Speaker 2: but the Yankees threw fans out who didn't stand. Get
[15:04] Speaker 2: ejected from the ballpark if you didn't stand. Some usher
[15:07] Speaker 2: could come by and toss you out of the ballpark.
[15:10] Speaker 1: It is a- Wow, that is crazy. It is amazing
[15:12] Speaker 1: how instant this all was too, right? Like, I don't
[15:15] Speaker 1: know if you could have convinced me in the year
[15:18] Speaker 1: 2000 that this almost like Orwellian response would have been
[15:24] Speaker 1: the result just a year later.
[15:26] Speaker 2: It wasn't even a year. It didn't even take a year.
[15:29] Speaker 1: Right.
[15:29] Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's really important to remember the
[15:33] Speaker 2: timetable and everybody is talking about, this is a really
[15:35] Speaker 2: important conversation, Beau, from a lot of, you know, when
[15:37] Speaker 2: you're thinking about where we are today and the amnesia
[15:40] Speaker 2: of Americans. Because they're all talking about Donald Trump and
[15:43] Speaker 2: we're using the words like authoritarianism and fascism and this
[15:46] Speaker 2: and that. This surveillance state started back then. I mean,
[15:49] Speaker 2: you weren't in New York. I was in New York.
[15:52] Speaker 2: And that's where if you see something, say something. Here
[15:55] Speaker 2: we go. All in the name of patriotism. And Rudy
[15:58] Speaker 2: Giuliani was the mayor and America's mayor. And every single
[16:06] Speaker 2: basic civil liberty was now a threat. What, do you
[16:11] Speaker 2: want the terrorists to win? Of course we have to
[16:12] Speaker 2: search your bag. But you have a reason to search
[16:14] Speaker 2: my bag. We have to search your bag. And going
[16:17] Speaker 2: through the airports. Remember, you could go through the airports.
[16:19] Speaker 2: You'd be able to hang out at the airport. You'd
[16:21] Speaker 2: be able to go hang out at the gate. You
[16:22] Speaker 2: couldn't do that anymore. You couldn't, you know, this is where,
[16:26] Speaker 2: at first, you had to take a sip of water
[16:29] Speaker 2: if you brought water to the gate. I'm sorry, when
[16:31] Speaker 2: you're going through security. If you had liquids with you,
[16:34] Speaker 2: you had to drink some of it so everyone knew
[16:37] Speaker 2: that it wasn't like nitroglycerin or something, right? Then they
[16:41] Speaker 2: just got rid of all that. Now, no liquids at all.
[16:43] Speaker 2: Then they had to start coming back because people were like, well,
[16:45] Speaker 2: what about my saline? You had to pack all of
[16:48] Speaker 2: that stuff. And now you've got the travel sizes where
[16:52] Speaker 2: you have to, you know, it's got to be a
[16:53] Speaker 2: certain amount. You know, all the lotions of mine that
[16:58] Speaker 2: have been confiscated. I lament that, right? I mean, all
[17:01] Speaker 2: of that stuff. And so the speed of the sports
[17:05] Speaker 2: really did help that too. Because you're at this place,
[17:09] Speaker 2: and anybody who's ever been around a mob, whether your
[17:13] Speaker 2: team won the championship and y'all are flipping cars over,
[17:16] Speaker 2: or whether you want to beat somebody up, like the
[17:18] Speaker 2: power of the mob and 40,000 people chanting USA. I mean,
[17:24] Speaker 2: that stuff gets scary. And it was a release, and
[17:29] Speaker 2: a lot of people called it something else. They used
[17:32] Speaker 2: to call it healing stuff. But on the other side
[17:35] Speaker 2: of healing, there was revenge. You know, that's when you
[17:38] Speaker 2: started seeing a lot of American flags and a lot
[17:40] Speaker 2: of ethnic restaurants up on 8th Avenue and 9th Avenue. Like, hey, hey, hey.
[17:44] Speaker 2: It was like, do the right thing, right? You know,
[17:47] Speaker 2: we black too, right? I mean, it was definitely that.
[17:50] Speaker 2: And all of the things that we talk about today
[17:56] Speaker 2: in terms of fascism and the rest of these things,
[17:58] Speaker 2: I mean, certainly there's an extra legal sense of what's
[18:01] Speaker 2: happening in the White House now. But this idea... that
[18:05] Speaker 2: your civil liberties had to be sacrificed in the name
[18:08] Speaker 2: of patriotism, in the name of your country and the
[18:10] Speaker 2: things that we stood. A lot of that comes out
[18:12] Speaker 2: of 9-11 and that hasn't gone away. It's only intensified
[18:17] Speaker 2: no matter who the president was. Yeah.
[18:20] Speaker 1: Now, the other thing that you mentioned there that I
[18:21] Speaker 1: think was important and something that you've written about extensively
[18:24] Speaker 1: also is the police became the military. after 9-11, in
[18:30] Speaker 1: terms of the- So it became the same thing. Yeah, right,
[18:33] Speaker 1: in terms of the level of reverence that's expected. And
[18:35] Speaker 1: to a degree, it's understandable because taking what happened in D.C.
[18:41] Speaker 1: out of it and just looking strictly at the New
[18:43] Speaker 1: York part, those were normally the heroes of war is
[18:49] Speaker 1: the military. And that wasn't the case in this one.
[18:52] Speaker 1: This was a, and it was an attack on an
[18:55] Speaker 1: urban area, right? On a municipality. The heroes became police.
[19:00] Speaker 1: They became fire department and the likes. And so they
[19:03] Speaker 1: became elevated in a very, very important way. Now, like
[19:07] Speaker 1: the elevation of the fire department, you know, nobody's really
[19:11] Speaker 1: got a problem with that.
[19:12] Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, nobody did.
[19:14] Speaker 1: Like, fire departments probably have the highest Q ratings of
[19:18] Speaker 1: just about any of these things, right? They run into
[19:20] Speaker 1: burning buildings and stuff. Okay, and they'll be beating people up.
[19:23] Speaker 1: They don't run in and set your shit on fire
[19:25] Speaker 1: because they mad at you. No, they go in and
[19:27] Speaker 1: they put out fires.
[19:28] Speaker 2: And they try to save your life.
[19:30] Speaker 1: Yes, the police occasionally do those things. And also, occasionally,
[19:36] Speaker 1: tune you up, give you that wood shampoo, everything else.
[19:39] Speaker 1: But they became... capital T, capital P, the police. Not
[19:45] Speaker 1: the band, but they became something that everybody, at least
[19:49] Speaker 1: for a short time, term, you treated them like they
[19:52] Speaker 1: were the flag, basically. It became a gigantic change, I think,
[19:59] Speaker 1: in terms of the way the... I mean, there'd always
[20:02] Speaker 1: been an expectation of how to deal with the police
[20:04] Speaker 1: or what the police represented, but not quite like 9-11.
[20:07] Speaker 1: And sports and arenas never treated them.
[20:10] Speaker 2: No. And also, you have to make this link. And
[20:14] Speaker 2: by the way, before we continue on, my number was
[20:17] Speaker 2: way up. 343 firefighters were killed. And then so it's
[20:21] Speaker 2: about 400 first responders total. The 1,800 number I was
[20:26] Speaker 2: thinking about was the number of unclaimed, that went missing,
[20:30] Speaker 2: that bodies were never discovered after the 3,300 people were
[20:36] Speaker 2: killed in the towers. But yes, I mean, that was...
[20:42] Speaker 2: The idea now that we are going to conflate police
[20:46] Speaker 2: and military puts us a lot of where we are
[20:50] Speaker 2: today and also with some of our previous conversations. I
[20:54] Speaker 2: think the arc of Colin Kaepernick is totally different without
[21:00] Speaker 2: 9-11 because Colin Kaepernick is essentially the heir to the
[21:09] Speaker 2: protest for Rodney King that never really happened in sports.
[21:14] Speaker 2: But now you're doing it 15 years after 9-11 where
[21:18] Speaker 2: the police are heroes. I mean, they are undisputed heroes
[21:23] Speaker 2: that you are now, you've incorporated them into the selling
[21:26] Speaker 2: of your sport. Without 9-11, perhaps he's treated very differently
[21:34] Speaker 2: because sports doesn't now have that layer of the hero
[21:38] Speaker 2: worship of police, military, et cetera, where the two are
[21:41] Speaker 2: the same, where criticizing the police, a domestic institution, questioned
[21:50] Speaker 2: your patriotism. The link between patriotism and police was virtually
[21:56] Speaker 2: nonexistent pre-911. I mean, this changed, it changed everything.
[22:02] Speaker 1: Well, I think that raises a question. Would he have
[22:04] Speaker 1: positioned his protest in the way that he did prior
[22:09] Speaker 1: to 9-11, right?
[22:10] Speaker 2: Also a great question.
[22:11] Speaker 1: Part of it is the response. I was going to say,
[22:13] Speaker 1: how is it that one could so seamlessly make the
[22:17] Speaker 1: transition from a protest against the police to being a
[22:20] Speaker 1: protest against the military? And the answer is, he chose
[22:23] Speaker 1: to protest the police because as an affront to the
[22:26] Speaker 1: national anthem, as an extension.
[22:28] Speaker 2: Of the flag, all of these things. Because they're on
[22:30] Speaker 2: the field because of 9-11.
[22:32] Speaker 1: Right, right. So like, how connected do all those things become?
[22:37] Speaker 1: Because that also leads to the other part, which is,
[22:40] Speaker 1: and I wondered this prior to 9-11, did the flag
[22:43] Speaker 1: belong to the military? before 9-11 and all of its
[22:47] Speaker 1: adjacent wars. Because that's another, obviously the big social thing
[22:49] Speaker 1: about 9-11 is this country was at war for 20-something years.
[22:52] Speaker 1: Just with people. Some of the warring, you know, like
[22:56] Speaker 1: what we do during war just stuck around and became
[23:00] Speaker 1: permanent fixtures in part because if you felt like we
[23:02] Speaker 1: need to do God Bless America because we had war,
[23:04] Speaker 1: we were at war for 20 years straight after that.
[23:06] Speaker 2: Well, that's right. And on top of that, the question
[23:08] Speaker 2: we used to ask George, you know, we used to
[23:10] Speaker 2: ask Steinbrenner, when are you going to stop playing this song?
[23:15] Speaker 2: And the question had been, well, when the wars are over. Well,
[23:18] Speaker 2: the wars are over now. We're not fighting, you know,
[23:20] Speaker 2: we're fighting in Iran now. But back then it was
[23:24] Speaker 2: Iraq and Afghanistan. And those wars are over, but God
[23:26] Speaker 2: bless America is still there. It has now become, it's
[23:29] Speaker 2: embedded now. Now there's no reason to do it except
[23:32] Speaker 2: that that's what we do. And, you know, you're 100% right.
[23:36] Speaker 2: When you're thinking about how the cosmetics of the sport shifted.
[23:43] Speaker 2: I mean, 9-11 is 100% the epicenter of all of this.
[23:48] Speaker 2: And what I found fascinating about it, you know, when
[23:51] Speaker 2: you're starting to look at this perfect storm, is that
[23:53] Speaker 2: you did have a perfect storm, literally a perfect storm.
[23:56] Speaker 2: You had, you know, you had a terrorist attack, which
[24:00] Speaker 2: created and aroused the nationalism of Americans. While at the
[24:05] Speaker 2: same time, you were... you know, getting more and more
[24:10] Speaker 2: and more of a, you had a new generation of
[24:12] Speaker 2: athletes who was paying attention and a new generation of
[24:15] Speaker 2: citizen who was paying attention because of the virality of
[24:18] Speaker 2: social media. So now people are seeing things all, and
[24:23] Speaker 2: it's all happening at the same time. And now the,
[24:28] Speaker 2: the moment you've got the flags and the flyovers and
[24:31] Speaker 2: the cops and the singing of the national anthem and the,
[24:33] Speaker 2: you know, the, the surprise homecomings at halftime and the,
[24:37] Speaker 2: The American flag, the size of the entire football field pregame,
[24:42] Speaker 2: is happening at the exact same time that the athlete
[24:46] Speaker 2: is becoming a little bit more politically aware. And all
[24:51] Speaker 2: of this falls under the umbrella of 9-11. To answer
[24:53] Speaker 2: your question, yes, the flag has always belonged to the military.
[24:59] Speaker 2: And the NFL and the military have been essentially partners
[25:02] Speaker 2: since the 1960s. But The way that they ramped this up,
[25:09] Speaker 2: the way that they connected it, and normally you would
[25:12] Speaker 2: get the Super Bowl, like you were talking about the
[25:14] Speaker 2: bunting at the All-Star Game in the World Series in baseball. Well,
[25:17] Speaker 2: you would get the remote shot of our naval stations
[25:24] Speaker 2: or our military bases around the world. You'd only get
[25:26] Speaker 2: that on the Super Bowl, just for the NFL to
[25:29] Speaker 2: show the globalness of the sport, to say, see, everybody's
[25:32] Speaker 2: watching this. Now it was weekly. every week there was
[25:38] Speaker 2: some shot of a military base in Iraq or Afghanistan
[25:43] Speaker 2: or somewhere. And so the embedding of this is happening
[25:47] Speaker 2: at the exact same time you have fans saying, we
[25:51] Speaker 2: don't want politics in our sports. And what they're really
[25:53] Speaker 2: saying is we don't want black politics in our sports.
[25:56] Speaker 2: We don't want... So at the exact same time that
[26:01] Speaker 2: you're ramping up the politics as a sign of patriotism,
[26:04] Speaker 2: you're also tamping down the voice of the guys who
[26:09] Speaker 2: were playing these games. And these two things obviously blew
[26:13] Speaker 2: up in the teens with obviously Trayvon Martin and Ferguson
[26:18] Speaker 2: and then later Kaepernick.
[26:19] Speaker 1: I was thinking about the fact that God Bless America
[26:21] Speaker 1: stuck around because I was thinking about post 2020. Yeah,
[26:27] Speaker 1: I guess it's around there. Remember when them boys had
[26:30] Speaker 1: Roger Goodell Hill hostage in his own basement? Remember that?
[26:33] Speaker 1: He sat down, he made that video, he talked about
[26:35] Speaker 1: systemic racism and everything else, looking like he ain't slept
[26:38] Speaker 1: in three days. But what they did after that was
[26:42] Speaker 1: they put a lot of stuff on the field. It
[26:45] Speaker 1: takes all of us, the end racism, you know, all
[26:47] Speaker 1: those symbols on the field. And then I think it
[26:49] Speaker 1: was last season was the first one where they decided
[26:52] Speaker 1: to take end racism off of the field. And of
[26:55] Speaker 1: course that raised a bit of a social media stink,
[26:58] Speaker 1: but as I've been thought about it, it was like, nah, A,
[27:01] Speaker 1: I'm surprised they kept it out there as long as
[27:03] Speaker 1: they did.
[27:03] Speaker 2: I think it.
[27:04] Speaker 1: Probably served the purpose for a period of time. But
[27:07] Speaker 1: then I said to myself, I don't think anybody even
[27:10] Speaker 1: sees it anymore, right? Like after a while, it just
[27:13] Speaker 1: kind of blends into the background. Like I noticed that
[27:15] Speaker 1: when they had all the symbols during the bubble in
[27:18] Speaker 1: the NBA in 2020, and they had Black Lives Matter
[27:21] Speaker 1: on the floor and all of that. And then after
[27:23] Speaker 1: a while, it was like, oh, this is a decision
[27:25] Speaker 1: that was made to get through this week. But like,
[27:27] Speaker 1: that's gone now. Like I get it, right? Obviously, we
[27:32] Speaker 1: have gotten the point about God bless America and all
[27:34] Speaker 1: of those things. They never stopped. But I wonder, like
[27:39] Speaker 1: when you're at a stadium and they play God Bless
[27:41] Speaker 1: America or even the National Anthem, it's not like it
[27:44] Speaker 1: swells up the whole stadium and everybody's like, hell yeah, America.
[27:49] Speaker 2: Well, people are numb to it now. It's just something
[27:50] Speaker 2: we do. Yeah, I mean, it's, everyone's numb to it. Well,
[27:56] Speaker 2: and I think that's sort of the interesting part of
[27:57] Speaker 2: this conversation is that by the time you get to
[28:01] Speaker 2: 25 years, it's a generational thing now. No one knows
[28:05] Speaker 2: any different. If you're the core demographic of who the
[28:09] Speaker 2: NFL is trying to sell this sport to, they don't
[28:11] Speaker 2: know any different. They probably don't even know why they're
[28:15] Speaker 2: singing it. They don't know why it's there because there's
[28:20] Speaker 2: no before to the before and after where there is
[28:22] Speaker 2: for us. We remember it not being there. So it
[28:25] Speaker 2: is jarring to us and normal for them. And I
[28:30] Speaker 2: think that when you look at it from the standpoint
[28:34] Speaker 2: of the messaging, sooner or later, the messaging doesn't even
[28:40] Speaker 2: need a message. It's just there. I mean, like, for example,
[28:44] Speaker 2: one thing that we were talking about, we were talking
[28:45] Speaker 2: about the American flag. 9-11 was also the beginning of
[28:52] Speaker 2: the flag lapel, the little mini lapel, you know, the
[28:57] Speaker 2: lapel flag. And if you notice, there's not a politician
[28:59] Speaker 2: that walks around without one of those now. It just
[29:02] Speaker 2: becomes embedded. These are the things that are part of
[29:06] Speaker 2: the selling of a politician. And if you don't have
[29:09] Speaker 2: one of them on, it's a news cycle. You're un-American.
[29:14] Speaker 2: You're not patriotic. I mean, it's become part of the uniform.
[29:19] Speaker 2: And you're right. I mean, the speed of all of this,
[29:22] Speaker 2: and it'll be very, very interesting to see how history
[29:25] Speaker 2: treats these things. Because, yes, 9-11 is the, it's the
[29:31] Speaker 2: watershed event. But, 2020 is not just pandemic, but it's
[29:37] Speaker 2: also George Floyd. It's all of these things happening all
[29:39] Speaker 2: at the same time. time. And now you are looking
[29:42] Speaker 2: at how are we selling the sport? Roger Goodell is
[29:46] Speaker 2: scrambling in 2020, running for his life in 2020. And
[29:51] Speaker 2: it wasn't because, oh, well, people are just desensitized to 9-11.
[29:55] Speaker 2: It was because of the George Floyd stuff and because
[29:57] Speaker 2: of all this stuff. that had been percolating at the
[30:00] Speaker 2: exact same time. So now what you've got in terms
[30:05] Speaker 2: of your signaling and your messaging, I used to laugh
[30:07] Speaker 2: at it. You and I used to talk about this, right?
[30:09] Speaker 2: I mean, it takes all of us in the end
[30:11] Speaker 2: zone to do what? I mean, so everyone is sort
[30:16] Speaker 2: of tiptoeing around all of this symbolizing. And I think
[30:20] Speaker 2: what makes it really interesting as a conversation is that
[30:24] Speaker 2: if you were born In 2004, you're 22, 23 years old, right? 2000, whatever,
[30:31] Speaker 2: how old you are. You're 2002, a year after 9-11.
[30:34] Speaker 2: You're 24 now. It doesn't have the same punch. It
[30:37] Speaker 2: doesn't have the same value. It doesn't mean the same
[30:39] Speaker 2: thing in terms of symbolizing because the symbol doesn't need
[30:45] Speaker 2: any value anymore because it's all you know.
[30:48] Speaker 1: Yeah. Imagine trying to explain Freedom Fries to those people. Right.
[30:54] Speaker 1: Like I was actually thinking about this when not too
[30:58] Speaker 1: long ago, the whole woke one thing was going around.
[31:01] Speaker 1: AOC saying that woke one was crazy. And, you know,
[31:06] Speaker 1: sometimes it was, but they were crazy.
[31:07] Speaker 2: Sometimes it was.
[31:09] Speaker 1: But if you thought woke one was crazy, baby, if
[31:12] Speaker 1: you had been here in 2001. Well, and once again,
[31:16] Speaker 1: 11 response. And for those of you who might be
[31:20] Speaker 1: too young to know Freedom Fries, we got mad at France.
[31:23] Speaker 1: I forget what France did that made people mad. And
[31:25] Speaker 1: in the cafeteria at Congress, they stopped calling them French
[31:28] Speaker 1: fries and started calling them Freedom Fries.
[31:31] Speaker 2: Freedom Fries.
[31:32] Speaker 1: That really happened.
[31:33] Speaker 2: That really happened. And while you're at it, just go
[31:36] Speaker 2: Google the Dixie Chicks and Phil Donahue and Ashley Banfield
[31:40] Speaker 2: and anybody who questioned anything that went against whatever the
[31:47] Speaker 2: United States government company line was at the time. I mean,
[31:50] Speaker 2: I was having this conversation with a friend of mine,
[31:52] Speaker 2: not to get too far off topic, the other day about,
[31:55] Speaker 2: you know, the great Colin Powell and where this was
[31:58] Speaker 2: going in terms of foreign policy and how this man
[32:01] Speaker 2: disgraced himself. He's a hero, he's a legend. And that
[32:04] Speaker 2: time period changed how we view everything. And the things
[32:11] Speaker 2: that just became embedded, that have never gone away. That's
[32:14] Speaker 2: the piece of this that I find most interesting, is
[32:17] Speaker 2: that the pressure that was placed on anybody who said,
[32:23] Speaker 2: wait a minute, this doesn't seem right. Or maybe it's
[32:27] Speaker 2: all gone a little too far. Maybe we can pull
[32:29] Speaker 2: this back. I remember listening to people in baseball, and
[32:32] Speaker 2: they were saying the same thing you were saying. Why
[32:34] Speaker 2: do we still play God Bless America?
[32:36] Speaker 1: Why?
[32:36] Speaker 2: It's been 15 years, right? It's been a while. And
[32:39] Speaker 2: the reason is because nobody wanted to be the one
[32:42] Speaker 2: to stop doing it.
[32:43] Speaker 1: No, ain't nobody going to be the person to get
[32:45] Speaker 1: in there and make the suggestion.
[32:47] Speaker 2: I ain't going to be no news cycle. They didn't want,
[32:50] Speaker 2: they didn't need that, right? And so what you're really
[32:53] Speaker 2: talking about, you're not talking about patriotism, you're talking about fear.
[32:58] Speaker 2: You know, like really, let's start, instead of giving it
[33:01] Speaker 2: these labels, let's actually parse what we're really talking about.
[33:03] Speaker 2: Are we talking about patriotism? No, we're talking about conformity.
[33:07] Speaker 2: We're talking about fear. We're talking about stepping out of line.
[33:10] Speaker 2: We're talking about the price of stepping out of line.
[33:13] Speaker 2: None of this has anything to do with patriotism. In fact,
[33:15] Speaker 2: it's the antithesis of patriotism. Yeah.
[33:18] Speaker 1: Like imagine being the person in the meeting where they're like,
[33:20] Speaker 1: hey man, so we need to do something to like
[33:23] Speaker 1: shorten up the time of the games. What do you
[33:25] Speaker 1: think we should do? And somebody raised their hand. I
[33:28] Speaker 1: think we should stop singing God Bless America.
[33:30] Speaker 2: All right, cool.
[33:31] Speaker 1: So what do you think we should do? You're immediately
[33:35] Speaker 1: moving off that idea.
[33:35] Speaker 2: And they looked at that dude and they said... Pack
[33:38] Speaker 2: your shit. Yeah. Yeah. Like, huh?
[33:41] Speaker 1: Huh? Huh?
[33:44] Speaker 2: Oh, so now we know who you are. Yeah. Yep.
[33:47] Speaker 2: That's all it is. Enemy camp stuff. I mean, and, and,
[33:50] Speaker 2: and it's true. All of those things, when you think
[33:54] Speaker 2: about where the culture went and what became standard, it
[34:00] Speaker 2: wasn't just the sipping of the water going in through
[34:03] Speaker 2: security and or the fact that active military can go,
[34:06] Speaker 2: you know, go cut the line first. And all of
[34:09] Speaker 2: these things sort of shifted our viewpoint to the point
[34:17] Speaker 2: now where when you think about what sports looks like,
[34:22] Speaker 2: it broke down so quickly across, you know, the racial
[34:26] Speaker 2: lines because you had the labor protesting and And you
[34:32] Speaker 2: had management trying to profit, but you also had business
[34:37] Speaker 2: underneath it, which was the fans were being manipulated by
[34:42] Speaker 2: all of these symbols because the military was charging the
[34:47] Speaker 2: sports teams. And it wasn't even partisan. It was two Republicans,
[34:52] Speaker 2: the late John McCain and Jeff Flake, who were like,
[34:55] Speaker 2: wait a minute. You guys are making money off of this?
[34:59] Speaker 2: The Milwaukee Brewers, you guys are charging? The National Guard,
[35:04] Speaker 2: $ 80, 000 to sing the national anthem at a Brewers game?
[35:09] Speaker 2: And yet, the power of those symbols was so great
[35:14] Speaker 2: that even when it had been exposed as a fraud,
[35:18] Speaker 2: that all this flag, flyover, patriotism, go USA stuff was
[35:23] Speaker 2: a fraud, even then the public didn't care. Because to
[35:27] Speaker 2: your point, it was comforting. And that the symbol mattered
[35:31] Speaker 2: more than the meeting behind the symbol. Symbol didn't have
[35:34] Speaker 2: to have any meaning anymore.
[35:36] Speaker 1: And the government barely thinks it's a fraud because they
[35:38] Speaker 1: firmly believe that the next great American warrior is watching
[35:43] Speaker 1: these games and watching these symbols and will then sign up.
[35:49] Speaker 1: That's why you get all this advertisement for enlisting in
[35:52] Speaker 1: the military during these games. Now, I have to be
[35:55] Speaker 1: honest with you. It ain't been very many times in
[35:58] Speaker 1: my life that I've been watching football with somebody and
[36:00] Speaker 1: thought to myself, yo, man, this motherfucker might be Rambo.
[36:04] Speaker 1: It's not, you know, like, that's just not.
[36:06] Speaker 2: I don't... Don't forget Pat Tillman, right?
[36:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, and see, Tillman to me is a fascinating case
[36:12] Speaker 1: because while I may disagree with where Tillman was coming from,
[36:20] Speaker 1: it's hard not to respect it, right? Fine, then I'll
[36:24] Speaker 1: just go over there myself. How about that? Dies. We
[36:29] Speaker 1: find out that he was killed by friendly fire. His
[36:33] Speaker 1: family and everybody else was lied to about this. And
[36:36] Speaker 1: they stand anywhere they can to get somebody to hear
[36:39] Speaker 1: how things didn't go like it was presented to the
[36:43] Speaker 1: world that they went. And we still don't care.
[36:46] Speaker 2: And still don't care.
[36:47] Speaker 1: And he is, look, they retired his number in Arizona.
[36:49] Speaker 1: I went to the Hoover Dam. My last trip in Vegas.
[36:52] Speaker 1: And I think it's the Pat Tillman Bridge, right? Like
[36:55] Speaker 1: he's the one guy. There's a statue out there.
[36:57] Speaker 2: Right. He's got a statue.
[36:59] Speaker 1: It's really hard to say anything bad about him because
[37:02] Speaker 1: strictly on principle and the willingness to lay it out there,
[37:05] Speaker 1: you can make no argument against it. And he was
[37:08] Speaker 1: used and he was manipulated. And that still didn't make
[37:12] Speaker 1: people mad. No. 100%.
[37:15] Speaker 2: And that's why when you go back and look at
[37:18] Speaker 2: that time period, and it's going to be very interesting
[37:20] Speaker 2: to see how it survives, how it gets, you know,
[37:25] Speaker 2: the further away you get from history, the less accurate
[37:27] Speaker 2: it gets, right? So it will be very interesting to
[37:32] Speaker 2: see how that time period is reflected upon and how
[37:38] Speaker 2: it's interpreted and reinterpreted and reinterpreted again for future generations.
[37:43] Speaker 2: But if you were there, If you were there, as
[37:47] Speaker 2: I was absolutely there, as a professional, as a grown-up,
[37:53] Speaker 2: you felt the sea change. A lot of the stuff
[37:55] Speaker 2: that we're talking about now was foundational then. And the
[38:03] Speaker 2: speed in which you could see how quickly people would
[38:06] Speaker 2: get in line. I mean, the fact that Pat Tillman
[38:11] Speaker 2: went from American hero to American hero but this time
[38:19] Speaker 2: American hero because he was a dissident because his family
[38:22] Speaker 2: were dissidents and he was the dissident going things over
[38:26] Speaker 2: here are messed up like the stuff that he was
[38:29] Speaker 2: saying about what was happening over there I mean that
[38:31] Speaker 2: is that is its own story and and I just
[38:35] Speaker 2: like I said I remember anybody who spoke up I
[38:39] Speaker 2: mean you were in major trouble if you spoke your
[38:43] Speaker 2: mind in this country during that time period. And let's
[38:47] Speaker 2: not forget, I was going to say, and let's not forget,
[38:49] Speaker 2: that didn't go away because then you had other things happen.
[38:54] Speaker 2: In 2013, you had the Boston Marathon bombing and everyone
[38:56] Speaker 2: just doubled back down on it. It was like, back,
[38:58] Speaker 2: here we go again. And all of these things are
[39:04] Speaker 2: very much significant and contributors to where we are now.
[39:10] Speaker 2: I think 9-11 once again, and you brought up that
[39:13] Speaker 2: next moment. I've always felt that COVID is probably that
[39:17] Speaker 2: next moment for that next generation of their defining moment.
[39:21] Speaker 2: But I'm still, when I think about it, I'm not
[39:25] Speaker 2: even sure if COVID measures to what 9-11 was, but
[39:31] Speaker 2: it probably does in terms of that seismic. What was
[39:35] Speaker 2: the next seismic thing that changed the way your entire
[39:39] Speaker 2: world operated? COVID is absolutely sort of right after 9-11.
[39:44] Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the million people dying.
[39:46] Speaker 2: Right? And the denial of the science and the politicizing,
[39:52] Speaker 2: it just continued to spiral. And 9-11 had a lot
[39:57] Speaker 2: to do with that because of the inability for anyone
[40:02] Speaker 2: to question it. Right.
[40:05] Speaker 1: And the fact that 9-11 was immediately spun into the
[40:09] Speaker 1: Iraq justification.
[40:10] Speaker 2: Well, that's 100% right.
[40:12] Speaker 1: As soon as this happened, people were like, hey! So
[40:15] Speaker 1: you think we can go to Iraq now?
[40:18] Speaker 2: What? Now we can go to war. And I think
[40:20] Speaker 2: the other piece of it to be on topic with
[40:22] Speaker 2: sports is the real shift here is the industry of
[40:29] Speaker 2: sports recognizing and the people who are watching the industry
[40:34] Speaker 2: of sports recognizing the power of it. It's like there
[40:38] Speaker 2: are raw numbers here that we can exploit. I mean,
[40:42] Speaker 2: I remember talking to the great three-star general, Russell Honore,
[40:44] Speaker 2: who was legend in, you know, during the Katrina disaster,
[40:50] Speaker 2: you know, when he was like, look, we have recruitment problems.
[40:55] Speaker 2: We can't get this type of audience in any other advertising.
[41:00] Speaker 2: You know, I remember when we were kids, oh, the U.S. Army,
[41:02] Speaker 2: it does more before 9 a.m. than most people do
[41:05] Speaker 2: all day. That was a hundred times, hundredfold in the
[41:09] Speaker 2: 9-11 years because People weren't signing up. So you needed
[41:14] Speaker 2: sports to be political. You needed sports to be a factor.
[41:19] Speaker 2: You didn't have any soldiers.
[41:20] Speaker 1: They weren't trying to be all they could be. Ain't
[41:21] Speaker 1: nobody trying to be all you could be.
[41:25] Speaker 2: You know, I mean, seriously. And they didn't hide that.
[41:29] Speaker 2: This was a real major recruiting tool. And sports played
[41:35] Speaker 2: into it. And I think it's instructive to recognize that
[41:39] Speaker 2: sports is playing this role At the same time, sports
[41:42] Speaker 2: people are like, we don't want politics in our sports. Yes,
[41:45] Speaker 2: you do. Right.
[41:46] Speaker 1: Well, it led to the question of what people define
[41:50] Speaker 1: as being politics. Like somehow the symbolism is not seen
[41:55] Speaker 1: as politics because based on the very political assertion that
[42:00] Speaker 1: we all, this is at once, this is all ours, right?
[42:04] Speaker 2: That's right.
[42:05] Speaker 1: I would also, I think many people would also argue
[42:07] Speaker 1: one of the things that happened as a result of
[42:09] Speaker 1: 9-11 and exacerbation of something that was present, which is
[42:12] Speaker 1: the idea that the American flag belongs to white people, right?
[42:15] Speaker 2: That's right.
[42:15] Speaker 1: People would wave the American flag while they said bigoted
[42:20] Speaker 1: things the way people once waved the Confederate flag when
[42:23] Speaker 1: they would say those things. The Confederate flag, we got that.
[42:26] Speaker 2: That's all y'all, baby.
[42:27] Speaker 1: Y'all can have that. You do that to the American flag,
[42:30] Speaker 1: we over here are like, well, shit, what we got?
[42:32] Speaker 2: Exactly. Where's our flag, right? I remember during those years,
[42:36] Speaker 2: whenever I would go speak at universities, I'd talk to
[42:38] Speaker 2: these kids and I'd be in these lecture halls, you know,
[42:41] Speaker 2: 200 students and I would ask them, is the American
[42:46] Speaker 2: flag a political symbol? How many of you believe that?
[42:52] Speaker 2: Nobody's hand would go up. And I would say, well,
[42:57] Speaker 2: what is it a symbol of? And then the hands
[42:59] Speaker 2: would go up. Patriotism. And I'm like, what's the difference?
[43:04] Speaker 2: What's the difference when you're at war? And you could
[43:09] Speaker 2: see the gears kind of turning, but They didn't know
[43:12] Speaker 2: where they were turning to. It was like, all right,
[43:15] Speaker 2: this is interesting. And then you just shut it down.
[43:18] Speaker 2: It's like, okay, I don't know if I want to
[43:20] Speaker 2: think about this. Because to them, politics is Democrat-Republican. It's
[43:23] Speaker 2: not foreign policy. It's very, very narrow. And just as
[43:30] Speaker 2: protest is identified with something that is considered anti-American, Whereas
[43:40] Speaker 2: we know that there have been plenty of protests coming
[43:44] Speaker 2: from our government right now. They're protesting all the time.
[43:48] Speaker 2: So what I found really interesting was 9-11 made people
[43:55] Speaker 2: think about what all of this meant. And then they
[44:00] Speaker 2: sort of concluded, I don't really want to think about
[44:03] Speaker 2: this after all.
[44:04] Speaker 1: Yeah, that is the one. When you get to it
[44:06] Speaker 1: and you're like, ugh, how about we talk about something else?
[44:08] Speaker 2: How about we talk about something else? And what's really,
[44:13] Speaker 2: really key about all of that is that it's happening
[44:18] Speaker 2: in sports where we're not supposed to be talking about
[44:22] Speaker 2: any of it. And it's a reminder that the people
[44:25] Speaker 2: who do understand this understand just how valuable this property
[44:31] Speaker 2: is for non-sports subjects. Because once again, where can you
[44:36] Speaker 2: get this type of audience, especially in a post-cable streaming
[44:42] Speaker 2: world where nobody's watching the same thing anymore, except sports? Like,
[44:48] Speaker 2: where are those big audiences? Where can we go? Everyone's
[44:51] Speaker 2: not watching all in the family at the same time anymore.
[44:55] Speaker 2: It's all sports when you want to try to get
[44:57] Speaker 2: that critical mass audience.
[44:59] Speaker 1: And that's the thing. Everybody's coming together for largely the
[45:03] Speaker 1: same reason. Right? Like, it's a vibe. Like the idea,
[45:08] Speaker 1: we're going to the game.
[45:10] Speaker 2: That's right. And you can see it when something, you know,
[45:13] Speaker 2: that's the power of sports. Suddenly, everybody's a Knicks fan
[45:18] Speaker 2: because now it's hot. Like, it's the, you know, when
[45:21] Speaker 2: it becomes the thing to do, that happens in sports
[45:25] Speaker 2: faster than virtually anything else. You know, it becomes that
[45:29] Speaker 2: vibe because it, you know, when there's success, it sort
[45:32] Speaker 2: of sweeps up the momentum. And it's, entertaining and it's
[45:37] Speaker 2: lucrative and there's an opportunity there and believe me um
[45:42] Speaker 2: the conversations i had had with commissioners and executives and
[45:45] Speaker 2: union members during these years they all knew they just
[45:50] Speaker 2: couldn't buck the tide they were like look i don't
[45:53] Speaker 2: really think it should be in here either but who's
[45:56] Speaker 2: gonna be the one to say no who's gonna rip
[45:58] Speaker 2: the band-aid off the band-aid still hasn't been ripped off.
[46:01] Speaker 1: Last question i'll ask on this no matter your politics,
[46:05] Speaker 1: your views on the world or anything else, it is
[46:08] Speaker 1: kind of undeniable that when the sports did come back,
[46:12] Speaker 1: there was a certain feeling of unity and a bit
[46:15] Speaker 1: of a euphoria that you saw go over those crowds.
[46:17] Speaker 1: Like when you see George Bush throw out that first pitch,
[46:20] Speaker 1: I think it was at Shea Stadium. I was there. Yeah,
[46:21] Speaker 1: it comes out and does it. It's a thing, right?
[46:24] Speaker 1: Like it was a moment. It was a movie, as
[46:26] Speaker 1: somebody would say.
[46:27] Speaker 2: Well, I think it's important to remember, Bo, people were scared.
[46:31] Speaker 2: Like they were scared. You know, Americans, you know, I've
[46:36] Speaker 2: spent a lot of time watching a lot of the
[46:40] Speaker 2: Italian new wave cinema. And one of the beauties of
[46:43] Speaker 2: those films, whether it's Rossellini or Fellini or Visconti or
[46:47] Speaker 2: any of those directors, they're actually filming in post-war Europe.
[46:51] Speaker 2: That place is bombed to shit, right? I mean, those
[46:54] Speaker 2: aren't movie sets, right? That's actually what it looked like.
[46:59] Speaker 2: And when people go to Ground Zero, not anymore, but
[47:02] Speaker 2: when they were going to Ground Zero, this is what
[47:04] Speaker 2: it looked like. When you go look at the Capitol,
[47:06] Speaker 2: this is what it looked like. Not the Capitol when
[47:08] Speaker 2: you look at the Pentagon. It's what it looked like.
[47:11] Speaker 2: And when we walked into Yankee Stadium, they told us
[47:17] Speaker 2: that there were snipers on the roof, that there were
[47:19] Speaker 2: snipers in the lights, there were snipers in the buildings
[47:23] Speaker 2: across the street, and that George Bush was going to
[47:27] Speaker 2: walk across there. you felt it because you were scared
[47:33] Speaker 2: and you were rightfully scared because nobody knew what was
[47:37] Speaker 2: going to happen next. I remember when we were walking into, um,
[47:42] Speaker 2: into the bodega, the, you know, two hours after the
[47:44] Speaker 2: towers collapsed, I was surrounded by a whole bunch of
[47:46] Speaker 2: first responders all caked up and debris and everything. And
[47:49] Speaker 2: they were all, you know, doing their shifts. And they
[47:52] Speaker 2: were talking about how there was a, there was a
[47:55] Speaker 2: fear that the gas mains were going to go up
[47:57] Speaker 2: and that now is a, that the city was vulnerable
[48:00] Speaker 2: enough right now that there could be secondary attacks. People
[48:03] Speaker 2: didn't know. And you found out what mattered to you
[48:08] Speaker 2: during that time. I was at all those games. And
[48:12] Speaker 2: believe me, when Ronan Tynan came out and started singing
[48:14] Speaker 2: the long version to God Bless America, absolutely you felt it.
[48:20] Speaker 2: You discovered that this really mattered. Like that who you
[48:25] Speaker 2: were actually mattered. And I don't think there are very
[48:27] Speaker 2: many moments in anybody's life where you have to question
[48:33] Speaker 2: who you are and what you stand for. And I
[48:37] Speaker 2: remember we drove to Chicago for that first series. And
[48:42] Speaker 2: I'm sitting there because nobody wanted to get on an airplane.
[48:46] Speaker 2: And we're at a truck stop in Indiana. Going to
[48:48] Speaker 2: use the bathroom, sitting there in the urinal. Dude, redneck
[48:51] Speaker 2: dude is standing next to me. In Indiana. And he
[48:56] Speaker 2: looks at me and he goes, you doing okay? That
[49:00] Speaker 2: man would have never said a word to me. Today, before,
[49:04] Speaker 2: there's one moment in the history of my life where
[49:07] Speaker 2: that would have happened and he actually meant it. We're
[49:11] Speaker 2: on the same side today. This was six days after
[49:16] Speaker 2: the towers. You know?
[49:20] Speaker 1: Now, do you think there's anything that could happen now
[49:22] Speaker 1: that could do that again? Where we are so partitioned now,
[49:25] Speaker 1: I think in large part as a result of the
[49:27] Speaker 1: effect that all this internet has had on us. Could
[49:30] Speaker 1: it happen again?
[49:31] Speaker 2: I don't know.
[49:33] Speaker 1: Like, could sports be even viewed as that unifying force again?
[49:37] Speaker 1: Is it possible?
[49:38] Speaker 2: Well, it's possible. because we don't know what's coming. I mean,
[49:43] Speaker 2: if somebody blows up the White House tomorrow from some
[49:49] Speaker 2: missile site in Europe or the Middle East or wherever, yeah,
[49:54] Speaker 2: we'll see how people respond. But the discourse, the way
[49:59] Speaker 2: that we treat each other right now makes it very,
[50:01] Speaker 2: very unlikely because of the exploitation of it. Not only
[50:07] Speaker 2: it doesn't feel like there's commonality, it feels like It's
[50:11] Speaker 2: just that everything that happened is another step in the manipulation.
[50:15] Speaker 2: That's all. And the reason why I say that is
[50:18] Speaker 2: because we had a global pandemic where people were dying daily.
[50:21] Speaker 2: Everybody knows someone who died from COVID and still couldn't
[50:24] Speaker 2: come together on that. Like where you knew people. I mean,
[50:29] Speaker 2: I know a couple of people who died in the towers.
[50:33] Speaker 2: Everybody knows somebody who died of COVID. You know, and
[50:37] Speaker 2: that didn't bring people together. Sports didn't bring COVID together.
[50:41] Speaker 2: You know, COVID didn't bring, you know, sports didn't bring
[50:44] Speaker 2: people together during COVID.
[50:46] Speaker 1: You know, and I've always wondered if there was a
[50:48] Speaker 1: way when people came back or sports came back, but
[50:53] Speaker 1: it was with no crowd, right? So there's no associated visual.
[50:56] Speaker 1: There was nothing that allowed for like a sharing of energy, right?
[50:59] Speaker 1: Or anything that like made.
[51:01] Speaker 2: You mean empty stadiums with cardboard cutouts?
[51:04] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[51:04] Speaker 2: Oh, wow, man.
[51:05] Speaker 1: I forgot about the cardboard cutouts. Or like in Japan-
[51:09] Speaker 1: where they ordered all the sex dolls, or it was Korea,
[51:11] Speaker 1: I can't remember which, but they ordered all the sex dolls,
[51:14] Speaker 1: and I'm surprised there was any of those left. I
[51:16] Speaker 1: thought them things would have been flew off the shelves.
[51:18] Speaker 1: There's somebody mad than a motherfucker. You was wasting all
[51:20] Speaker 1: that good freak on the goddamn stadium that ain't nobody in.
[51:27] Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think it's also important to remember that
[51:29] Speaker 2: there was a moment at Yankee Stadium when President Bush
[51:33] Speaker 2: threw out that first pitch because people were scared. They
[51:36] Speaker 2: were literally scared for their lives. Let's not forget that
[51:40] Speaker 2: in addition to 9-11, in addition to 9-11, you had
[51:46] Speaker 2: the anthrax scare where anthrax was going through the mail.
[51:49] Speaker 2: People open up their mail, shaking their mail at arm's length.
[51:53] Speaker 2: And then you had the DC sniper happening at the
[51:55] Speaker 2: same time, randomly killing people. And no one knew if
[51:59] Speaker 2: those things were connected or not. People were afraid to
[52:04] Speaker 2: go get gas, thinking you're going to be randomly assassinated
[52:10] Speaker 2: at the same time you saw the towers fall. America
[52:12] Speaker 2: hadn't dealt with anything like that. This was a Pearl
[52:19] Speaker 2: Harbor level event where for the first time, Americans were like,
[52:25] Speaker 2: wait a minute, I'm in danger in my own home,
[52:28] Speaker 2: in my own community? We never saw anything like that.
[52:32] Speaker 1: Hey, man, DC's not the wildest shit in all time.
[52:35] Speaker 1: Wildest thing that ever happened and biggest surprise of my lifetime, boy.
[52:41] Speaker 1: I was like, hey, man, white folks can't blame this
[52:45] Speaker 1: shit on us. They can't blame this on us. No, sir.
[52:49] Speaker 1: No way.
[52:50] Speaker 2: There was somebody with a military grade weapon shooting people
[52:56] Speaker 2: out the trunk of his car.
[52:58] Speaker 1: But we ain't even know it was the trunk of
[52:59] Speaker 1: the car at the time.
[53:00] Speaker 2: Didn't even, exactly, didn't even know how.
[53:02] Speaker 1: They didn't know where it was coming from. This dude
[53:04] Speaker 1: was just smoking people, pumping gas, and every day they
[53:09] Speaker 1: sent that same black man out there, Moose, they sent
[53:12] Speaker 1: Moose out there every day to tell us that he
[53:14] Speaker 1: ain't know nothing that we didn't know. Every day. And
[53:17] Speaker 1: he had to send him out there every day because
[53:20] Speaker 1: people was shook, man.
[53:22] Speaker 2: Shook. Yeah. Yeah. It was real. And the point is,
[53:27] Speaker 2: is that nobody knew if this stuff was related or not.
[53:31] Speaker 1: Right.
[53:31] Speaker 2: So that's why you got, you know, so George Bush
[53:34] Speaker 2: walking out there trying to do the presidential thing of saying,
[53:38] Speaker 2: I'm not afraid. Of course, then he went and told
[53:40] Speaker 2: everyone to go shopping. But at that moment, at that moment,
[53:44] Speaker 2: everybody felt that because everyone needed. That's what leadership was
[53:49] Speaker 2: all about. Everybody, even though it was completely symbolic or whatever.
[53:52] Speaker 2: But at that moment, in that moment, it was like, OK.
[53:56] Speaker 2: Could somebody tell us we're going to be all right?
[53:59] Speaker 2: And sports did that.
[54:00] Speaker 1: Howard Bryant, check him out. Check out Kings and Pawns,
[54:03] Speaker 1: which does not exactly talk about these themes, but you
[54:06] Speaker 1: can get Full Dissident, which I'm sure is available. We'll
[54:09] Speaker 1: find books that sold that will talk about a lot
[54:11] Speaker 1: of things that we have talked about here in this show.
[54:13] Speaker 1: But Kings and Pawns is also a beast. But man,
[54:15] Speaker 1: I appreciate you.
[54:17] Speaker 2: No, thank you.
[54:18] Speaker 1: All right, man. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for
[54:19] Speaker 1: joining us here on The Right Time.
[54:21] Speaker 2: We do this four days a week.
[54:23] Speaker 1: Brian Brumley handled things behind the scenes. Thank you, sir.
[54:25] Speaker 1: Hit the voicemail line 323-596-7767. Remember, follow the right time. Subscribe, like,
[54:31] Speaker 1: rate us, review us. Give us five stars. You only
[54:33] Speaker 1: give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are
[54:35] Speaker 1: a hater. We'll talk to you guys in a couple
[54:37] Speaker 1: of days.
[54:38] Speaker 2: Take it easy.

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