The UFC Cashes In, Plus a Truly Riveting 1990s Cowboys Documentary With Ariel Helwani, Cousin Sal, and Bryan Curtis

22:08Bill Simmons:It's a good point. And could this lead, everybody's always wondered, could there be an MMA, UFC union or any of that stuff? And everyone says, no way. This is the time. If there was ever a time, this is it. They're literally sitting here watching everyone from the executives go on all these great shows, waving their pom-poms that they have just scored the biggest deal ever over a million, a billion a year, 7.7. Like this rivals, this is more than what, you know, uh, the Olympics gets and NHL gets and PGA gets like they are now in the mainstream, right? Tiffany network, all that stuff. And you're sitting there as a fighter being like, wait a second, if I just kind of like band together with my brothers here, and maybe we threatened not to show, I'm not suggesting they do that, but like, that's how this starts, what do we get out of this?

22:51Look at the mat. Look at all the ads. What do we get from that? Like, it's crazy. But by the way, my prediction is this will not happen. They've had other opportunities. They've never shown any interest in doing it. They're not going to show interest now.

23:02Bill Simmons:The problem is the careers are too short. And if you're going to risk out a year, like in basketball, you can lose a year if you don't want to, but you can lose a year. You're still going to have a long career. Football is the one where, even though football has a union, but football couldn't, the average career in football is like three, four years, something like that. So if you lose a year, you're losing 25 % of your earning. I would, I would assume that would be the same thing for this. The easiest way to do it is there's like five to six max influential managers in this sport who, you know, work with the top stars.

23:37If those guys came together and said, yeah, we're going to convince all our guys to do it. I think it could actually happen relatively quickly. The problem is those guys for the most part are way more concerned with being friends with the UFC brass than doing what's best for their clients. So there's no chance in hell that they would ever do it.

23:52Bill Simmons:Yeah. And then, well, and then from a Paramount standpoint, so, so this would be, this would be the zag against what you're saying about what, how do you incentivize the fighters? If there's, if they actually elevate some of the Paramount stuff and make it a bigger deal on there and there's advertising and there's a chance to be seen by more people, then you would think there's some sponsorship possibilities for the specific fighters and there's outside the octagon stuff that maybe they could get. I'm a little nervous about it, even though I think it's great because I do think people are picking and choosing the pay-per-views.

24:30Bill Simmons:I'm a little nervous about how this plays out with the sameness of week to week. Kind of not as a, like I'm a way more casual fan than you, kind of not knowing when to come in and out. And now it's like, you know, cause I've not like some of the ESPN stuff, I just skip unless somebody tells me I got to watch. There's somebody on this card and I'm like, all right, I'll watch it. Um, but I don't, I don't know the 52 week cycle, you know, at least in basketball, there's a start, a middle and a finish, you know, football goes September and we end in January WWE. It's like, all right, we have these signature things.

25:05Bill Simmons:And then there's raw. If you really want it week to week, how UFC figures out how to stagger all their content in a way that makes sense for my brain, I think it's going to be really hard. And that's the part that I don't know if they put a ton of thought in yet. You know, I think that they cater to different people. There's like the super casual who are going to watch maybe one or two. And then there's different levels all the way to the hardcore who are watching every single one and who are saying those shows at the apex on Saturday, like this past Saturday, is a can't miss because X, Y, and Z guys on there.

25:35But one thing that I don't think that has been talked about enough in all this, and I can't wait to see what it turns into, And again, you're the perfect person to talk to this about is like, you know, that when ESPN is out of business with a sports entity, they, they essentially stopped covering that entity, right? It's the NHL corollary. Yeah. They're the perfect example. They left, they stopped covering them. They're back. They've got ancillary shows. They've got analysts. They've got the coverage on SportsCenter. I'm fascinated to see how ESPN treats UFC. If history is any indication, it will be the same way.

26:07and what they lose out from that. Because I really do think it's very valuable to have the Daniel Cormier Friday at the weigh-in spot on first take before a pay-per-view where he's breaking things down with Stephen A, having all the stuff on their Instagram, having all their stuff on their TikTok. Like those numbers are insane compared to what CBS slash Paramount can do for them. And to me, that's not being talked about enough because at this point, unless ESPN decides to re-up their deal with PFL, so they have a deal with PFL, who's the distant number two. They've got one year left on that deal that ends in 2026.

26:41Unless they decide to re-up with them, they're going to be out of the MMA business. And I think part of the reason why the UFC is getting a billion dollars from Paramount, billion plus, is because of ESPN. ESPN elevated them. Think about where they were when they left Fox and think about where they are now in terms of like what kids are talking about, watching how they know the UFC stars. That's a huge, huge deal. And by the way, kudos to the UFC. They have always had the great benefit of timing. When they left Spike and went to Fox, Fox needed them to prop up FS1, right? When they left Fox and went to ESPN, ESPN needed them to prop up ESPN+.

27:15They leave ESPN to go to Paramount. Ellison needs them to prop up the new Paramount+. They have been able to really benefit from great timing. And that's not a knock on them, but they've just been able to be used as this thing to prop up. And history has shown that they are able to prop those things up. FS1 dies on the vine, in my opinion, without UFC. And Plus doesn't really get off the ground without UFC. So I think that they'll have a similar success, but now it's totally different, right? Because there's no more pay-per-view. And so that whole breakdown has completely changed.

27:43Bill Simmons:I think that's a really good point, especially about TKO the last couple of years, because Netflix and the Raw deal, they are hating Netflix right as Netflix is like, we really want to see what Live can do for us. We need something. Oh, here's Raw. Let's grab this. They get the Paramount. paramount is getting bought by ellison and redbird and they're like we got to get into sports we got to boost subscribers oh here's this this will be the last sports thing available we'll grab this uh same thing for espn plus and then and then this wwe deal that they just did which honestly makes more sense for whatever this flagship thing is going to be where you want basically these little signature events tentpole events that you can kind of get behind so the thing you just said about ESPN, it's interesting because I think 20 years ago was probably a bigger deal from a TV standpoint because ESPN was just more in people's lives than it is now.

28:41Bill Simmons:I don't think SportsCenter matters, you know, even 10 % like it did. I think first take matters a little, but the social stuff and their foothold in all these different social platforms and how big their app is and TikTok and Instagram. And if ESPN is just like, we're just out, we're not going to we're not going to talk about this stuff the same way. That is like a massive footprint that they just lose. I actually, I actually have some of these numbers for my show today. Thank you to my producers for this. Take a look at this bill. All right. This is kind of crazy. As far as tick, excuse me, as far as Twitter is concerned, ESPN has 58.8 million, 45 million on their sports center account and 1.6 million on their ESPN MMA account.

29:24As far as CBS, Paramount Plus and CBS sports, 1.1 million, 416 ,000, 1.4 million on CBS Sports. Like just that alone. Just listen to Instagram. 28.2 billion for ESPN. CBS has 965 ,000. SportsCenter has 38.8 million followers. Paramount Plus has 1.5 million. ESPN MMA has 4.6 million followers. ESPN, excuse me, CBS Sports has 1.9. In total, if you take TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, ESPN has 308, 300.8 million followers slash subs. CBS Paramount and CBS Sports has 32 million followers slash subs. That's a huge, huge difference. Now, Paramount Plus definitely has more subs, 77.7 subscribers, million subscribers.

30:21ESPN Plus has 24.9 subscribers at the end of Q1 this year. But again, I think the vast majority of those, we don't know the breakdown, but I would venture to guess that right now a lot of those subs on ESPN Plus were built off of UFC fans. I would venture to guess a lot of those 70 plus million subs on Paramount Plus aren't UFC fans. It's going to be very interesting to see in two, three, four years how many of those go from Plus, ESPN Plus, to Paramount Plus. And that's the thing.

30:50Bill Simmons:We don't know whether that's 475 ,000 people or 3 million people. We have no idea what the number is. For Paramount, all right, so everything we're laying out, it's like, wow, why would they do this? It seems like they overpaid. I was trying to think about when you have a streamer and you're not Netflix or you're not YouTube or you're not ESPN, what's your identity, right? So you and I are buying Paramount. We're like, what the fuck? What the fuck are we buying? We're getting South Park. we have the CBS we have some NFL we got Taylor Sheridan we have all of his shows now you get the Daily Show you get Showtime you get like the carcass of MTV you get some Comedy Central but really like you're thinking like a year from now who are my faces right so now you have UFC and you have Dana White and the broadcast crew is like now a face of Paramount Taylor Sheridan is a face of Paramount footballs of face of Paramount, the South Park guys, they're, you know, they're, they're like the ultimate disruptors in the comedy content space.

31:57Bill Simmons:And you, and you kind of see you're moving toward, this is like a male kind of like, those are things that there's like a Venn diagram where there's a lot of stuff colliding in that Venn diagram. And I think that's maybe what Paramount might be trying to look at here is we can have sports and then this content and just kind of go after dudes and then you get from cbs you get people like my dad who's couldn't be more excited about boston blue with donnie walberg filming right now getting ready for a september launch but you get like older men with cbs and then you get the younger men with some of this other stuff and it's like all right at least now we have something unlike where like i look at peacock now and i'm like what the hell is peacock right it's nbc stuff and that's it yeah premier league soccer you get that uh so i'll be keeping my peacock and probably my espn plus as well but But that's, yeah, that's pretty much it.

32:47And by the way, how about the fact they have done, TKO that is, has done an incredible job of splitting this pie up in as many ways possible. Like, look at how they did WWE here in America. Raw on Netflix, SmackDown on USA, NXT on CW, the PLEs to ESPN. That's four different entities right there. And there's even still some talk about their library because the library didn't go to, you know, vault, if you will, didn't go to ESPN. So could they sell that off to someone else? Well, as far as UFC is concerned, okay, now we know that all of this is going to Paramount. Paramount doesn't own it globally.

33:24They have these rights in different countries around the world. For example, in the UK and Ireland, they're on TNT sports, but they did carve out something that now Paramount will get a 30-day exclusivity period when the deals are up around the world to be able to negotiate exclusively with the TKO brass in order to try to gobble these up all over the world. But we go one step further. They still have something called contender series, which actually kicks off tonight on ESPN plus, which is basically the UFC signs these regional guys, these up and coming guys, the likes of Sean O'Malley started there.

33:59And then if they win, Dana White sits there like on his throne, old school Roman Coliseum days and says, all right, we're giving you a contract. We're not giving you a contract. They haven't, that wasn't a part of this deal. So they could sell that off to someone else. The ultimate fighter is still kicking. That wasn't a part of this deal. They could sell that off to someone else as well. And so they also have Zufa boxing, which is about to launch on September 13th with Canelo Crawford on Netflix. That's a one-off. And Dana White said yesterday that that deal is done as well. They just haven't announced the broadcast partner.

34:27So the amount of broadcast entities that this group is, uh, is, is in bed with in business with, with, you know, Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro, Nick Khan, Dana White, like some of the most powerful people in all of sports, media, and entertainment. It's really staggering to watch how they've essentially like owned all this real estate in a very short amount of time.

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35:43Bill Simmons:purchases includes random items yeah so i think where it heads is the big boxing pay-per-views that they're going to do go to Netflix for the most part. The big WWE pay-per-views go to ESPN. All the big UFC stuff goes to Paramount and then the biggest stuff goes to CBS. So now I'm in four platforms. I guess the question for me, we don't know the exact numbers. Let's say Netflix wanted 400 million a year for the 13 numbered pay-per-views. and let's say ESPN was ready to offer 200 a year for everything else. I have no idea if those are the right numbers, but let's say that's about 600 a year. So we'll round it up.

36:26Bill Simmons:I'll say they could get 650 a year from Netflix and then you have your pay-per-views with 300 million subscribers and they buy it out and then the rest is on ESPN. Or you go to Paramount, I get an extra 400 million a year over seven years. I'm getting an extra$2 billion, but way less certainty about my audience. What would you have done if you were the UFC conciliary? I would have taken this deal. This is a tremendous number. See, I would have too. Yeah, you're taking the money in a year. It's too much money. You're taking it. And by the way, so much less pressure. Now all the pressure is on Paramount and CBS to sell these shows.

37:07Like we'll just put together the cards and Paramount and CBS are banking on the three letters. and there was once a time where all the pressure was on the UFC where they're like, yo man, we need Brock Lesnar at UFC 200 because we need to sell over a million pay-per-views. We need to figure out how to get Conor to come back to fight so-and-so, Khabib Nurmagomedov, let's say, because we need that two million pay-per-view. They don't need nothing anymore. And so when they're at an impasse with some superstar between, eventually they'll be at an impasse with say Ilya Teporia and Ilya's like, I ain't fighting unless you give me 20 million.

37:40They'll say, cool, enjoy, It doesn't change our lives. It does not change our lives in one way, shape or form if you fight or not, because all of it is bought and paid for. You know what I mean? And so it's not even, by the way, it's not even bought and paid for to where like, hey, our partner needs these pay-per-view buys anymore. No, our partner is not even putting these numbered shows behind a pay-per-view wall anymore. And so for CBS and for David Ellison and for Paramount and for Skydance and for Redbird and all these people, they're like, all right, we just want those three letters. We want it on our streaming platform.

38:12and we're going to hope and pray that those three letters mean a lot to a lot of people and that they're going to deliver for us. But if I'm the UFC brass, if I'm TKO, this is the greatest deal in the world. It's over a billion. You're now playing with the big dogs and there's zero pressure on you. Of course, they would listen to this and be like, what are you talking about? Of course, there's pressure. We want to put on the best product. I get that. But it's not the same type of pressure as 2010 when you're out there freaking trying to cut deals with everyone because you are benefiting from the pay-per-view.

38:37Bill Simmons:Yeah, it's, I get it from everybody's side, but it does feel like something is going to be completely different now. And I can't put my finger on what I think what you said about the pressure about, oh shit, we have this thing in Vegas on June and our top guy just fell out. We have to make sure we have like, are they going to care in the same way is the question? No. I mean, you'll care from a Gates standpoint, but the pay-per-view is completely different. and that's a huge number. I think right here now, and this could change between now and let's say next year, I think the ones who this affects the most are the kids in good ways and bad ways.

39:16And when I say kids, I mean like your son's age because I think, great, they won't have to pirate. And by the way, a lot of these kids, as you know, aren't even paying for the$12.99. They will still pirate because they're just lazy and they expect to get everything for free, but it won't hit the pockets as much.

39:31Bill Simmons:Stealing it for the pirating is part of the art. They love that. that they save. You're a pirate. Yeah. Yeah. They like it. Um, but it's that I I'm telling you, it's that digital footprint, man. I do not, do not discount social media. CBS Paramount basically has no presence on social media. CBS Sports HQ compared to ESPN or whatever is nothing. And, and I really think like I would, I would get it all the time from my nephews. They would send me stuff. They would send me clips like that's not going to exist anymore. And so I'm really curious to see how that affects the just sort of general popularity.

40:05Because as you know, five years ago during the pandemic, no one benefited more than the UFC because they came back so soon and they were the only game in town. Yes, I was on the, I was in the A block of SportsCenter, 6 p.m. SportsCenter in the middle of spring when it would be like NBA playoff time, talking about like random fights that no one cared about because there was literally nothing else to talk about. And obviously that was an extreme, but all that is going away. And so I'm really curious what that translates into. And my prediction is that it will, that demographic will kind of find something else to tune into.

40:39It's going to be fascinating.

40:41Bill Simmons:One other thing about Paramount that I wish I'd mentioned earlier was the whole concept of buying a subscriber base and how these big companies think about, like you buy this UFC audience and even though they overpaid for it, they're still getting this audience and maybe they didn't overpay. But now they have, I think I said before, it was like 7.1 million subscribers. Maybe that gets to eight now. Maybe that gets to eight and a half. But it's people that aren't canceling Paramount once they get it because they love UFC, right? Once they're in, they're just in at that point. And you can just count on them and there's no churn rate for it.

41:15Bill Simmons:And what all of these people care about the most is churn rate. Like Spotify, one of the reasons the stock is 700 plus dollars is because once you get Spotify, you kind of don't cancel it. You don't get rid of it, right? You have all your playlists on there. You're used to it. And it's just the price. And nobody really gets rid of Spotify once they have it. I think UFC fans, whoever has the UFC content, once they're in on it, and once you know there's enough content week to week, month to month, you're probably just doing the automatic recharge. HBO would have that issue where they would have White Lotus is coming and people get at HBO and then cancel it right after White Lotus ends.

41:59Bill Simmons:I don't think the UFC, I think that'd be way harder to do if you can sprinkle the content correctly. You know what I mean? Yes, I would say the number one most loyal are the WWE fans. Like they are the most, they will follow you wherever and WWE does a great job with all the other stuff, the documentaries, the behind the scenes. UFC hasn't really done that as well. Like WWE turned WrestleMania nine, one of the least liked WrestleManias of all time into this great behind the scenes documentary that they put out back in April. And I was gobbling it up. I loved everything about it. Look at this WWE Unreal that everyone was talking about on Netflix.

42:34So like WWE fans will eat it all up. And I would say the next tier are the UFC fans who are a little bit more fickle and who will come and go, sort of like boxing fans, but I would say a little bit more loyal to the brand than boxing fans are loyal to a specific brand. And they will follow, they will do their thing. It's just a brand new world and you can never go back to pay-per-view now. You can, after you tell them pay-per-views, it's a wrap. DAZN did this. Do you remember when DAZN came out with the pay-per-view is dead thing? And now they went, and then they went back to pay-per-view and now they're telling you again that pay-per-view is dead.

43:06Like you can't do that to the public. Once you tell them once that, hey, you're paying too much. We wanted to help you because you're paying a thousand dollars a year. In seven years, you can never go back to that. And so what does this sport look like in 10, 15 years as a result of the decision announced yesterday? Can't wait to see.

43:23Bill Simmons:Well, and then the last piece that we didn't talk about. so they had the unicorn of connor they had the unicorn of rousey for two years and then going back in the 2000s or a couple other people but they really haven't had the unicorn somebody who can pull everybody in for a while they've had some people that seem like maybe the pot and it just really hasn't happened in the 2020s what happens if they get their version of caitlin clark or the or the 2000, late 20s version of Connor or whoever and get somebody who then becomes a mainstream megastar for like two, three years. And now that has to be on Paramount and CBS.

44:01Bill Simmons:We don't have that. And by the way, we don't know if that's gonna, that might not happen. Like it hasn't happened in golf since Tiger. Tiger hasn't had anybody like that for basically 15 years. So maybe it doesn't happen, but if it does happen, it's happening on Paramount. That person will come. That is my one prediction that I know for sure. I don't know who. It could be Ilya. It could be Tom. It could be someone we've never heard of. It could be someone who's in the seventh grade right now. But those people will always be there. It could be Brock Lesnar's daughter, for all we know. Those people will always be there.

44:32Bill Simmons:I saw the shot putter. Yes, yes. Who knows? They will always be there. They will always come. There will always be superstars. And I don't think the UFC is struck. Who saw Drikus Duplessis becoming this champ that people love? um Hamza could win on Saturday and and turn into like a tour de force that doesn't lose for the next 10 years who the hell knows I'm not worried about that fight by the way uh you know what the I think the like if we would have talked six seven months ago everyone would be like oh yeah Hamza like he's just he's unstoppable right he's a locomotive I think the cool pick now is Drikas I think like the the the smart mark pick is Drikas because everyone says if Drikas takes him into the the championship round, so to speak, three, four, five.

45:16He's got this in the bag. In other words, if you looked into a crystal ball and that crystal ball told you this fight ends in one or two, oh yeah, Hamzat won. If you look into a crystal ball and it says it went to the championship rounds or the distance, it's Drikas. I'm leaning towards Drikas. I just think the guy is impossible to figure out. But also like he could lose in 60 seconds and everyone would be like, of course he's going to lose because Hamzat is so crazy. I think the smart market is - I guess 260, which I thought was higher than I thought. I actually would have been surprised if you would have said like 325 or something like that.

45:49What's Drick is?

45:52Bill Simmons:Plus 196 on Fandle? That feels... I like that one. That feels like the pick, in my opinion. That's the flyer. It'd be a good one. All right, this is all great. How are you feeling about the bills? I put Josh Allen at the top of my QB pyramid. I don't know if he had any thoughts. I appreciate that. I don't know if you're trying to do like some sort of like reverse. I wasn't. I don't do that stuff. I thought he was the best guy last year. I mean, he won the MVP. It wasn't like it was a hot take. And I just didn't think my homes had a great year, but the chiefs. There were some people who said Lamar deserved it.

46:25I don't agree with those people, but this, I feel something in the air. I have to say I'm reluctantly watching hard knocks. I wasn't a fan when I heard it because I just, I don't want the distraction. I don't want to play up to the cameras, but it's fun seeing my team shown in this light. because that's an institution. I'm a little worried about the James Cook stuff, although just today, Sean McDermott, Coach McDermott said he's going to be practicing. I pray to God they figure that out. And if they do, who's stopping us? Who's stopping us? Certainly no one in the AFC East. You would agree with that, right?

46:57Bill Simmons:My team's going to be a little friskier this year. I'm just telling you. We've got defense. What's frisky? What are we talking about? We've got defense. Our team's pretty good. We're well coached. What are we talking about? Six and 11? How about 10 and seven? Man. People discounted the Washington Commanders last year. Sure, it was a nice little story. New coach, new QB. This is it. This is our year. It has to be our year. If not now, when? I'm seeing him on all these commercials, Snickers, Pepsi. He's the face of the NFL, for goodness sakes. Everyone has Chiefs fatigue. There's no way they're going to repeat in terms of making it back to the Super Bowl again.

47:27It feels like our year. I'm worried. By the way, here's my prediction. I'm worried about week one. I think the Ravens will come in with like freaking revenge on their minds. And then I think we might run the table after week one. Like I could see an Owen one sky is falling, press the panic button on the lower thing on first take. And then I see them winning 16 in a row. I wouldn't be surprised. Honestly, I would be recovered from the next yet. I feel fantastic about the next. I have my Gershon Yabuselli Jersey already. I love that. That was a great signing. Yeah, that was great. That signing. I'm obsessed with that guy was obsessed with him when he killed Canada in the Olympics.

48:03And then what he did to USA love the Jordan Clarkson signing as well. love that we didn't tinker too much with everything else um cautiously optimistic about Mikael Bridges I almost feel like they had to do that deal because they gave up so much for him I think he will thrive under Brown I'm all in on Brown I feel horrible for Tibbs I've said this already but again just like I was talking about the east as far as the AFC is concerned like who's gonna stop us in the eastern conference Cleveland right that's the one that everyone thinks other than Cleveland who are we worried about Atlanta that's the cool sexy pick come on What are we talking about?

48:36Philly, no chance. Boston sucks. I'm sorry.

48:38Bill Simmons:Milwaukee would be the one that's kind of, just because they have the best part in the conference, I think you have to mention them. Best player. They added Turner. They lost Lillard. I'm not too worried about them. They don't really show up. Cleveland had a fantastic regular season, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're one and were two. We meet them in the Easter Conference Final. We punch our ticket. Revenge against I Heart and the Thunder, and around like June 17th or so, Canyon of Heroes, Parade. It's going to be a great 2026. On Saturday, though, NBA TV was showing game one of the Indy Knicks series.

49:10Bill Simmons:No. I don't mean to do this to you. But it was the fourth quarter, and there were six minutes left. And I was like, I haven't watched this since it happened. I got to watch this. I will never get over that. It's unbelievable. Forget about the last six minutes. It was three times more unbelievable than I remembered. Like, Nisman just starts making these crazy shots. And then I just can't believe the Pacers came back in that game. you look at the score with like I think 246 or something like that you had the game for 46 minutes you're up 8 with like 40 seconds left but it was I had forgotten that that was probably the craziest loss I mean it really was you don't want to say a fluke because Indy made every shot but if I'm a Knicks fan I'm looking at that I'm like we probably should have made the finals last year why not why can't we just get back 100 % absolutely and I think we beat the Thunder if I'm sort of being honest with you but man And I can't wait.

50:04I keep seeing all this NBA and NBC stuff, like the promos and all that. I think next year's NBA is going to be great. It sucks that these stars are out. I don't wish that upon anyone. But the nostalgia. And you know what I'm so excited about? Like the new voices, the mellows of the world. Like I'm just, I'm excited for the new coverage. Positive media coverage. I'm just, yes. Elevation. Some new voices. And I'm fascinated to see what happens with the inside the NBA guys as well with ESPN. Because I think that might be a fascinating marriage to watch from afar too. But yes, I feel good about the Knicks.

50:33I think Brown will be a new voice. I think there'll be change. I think everyone had their little fun this summer about all the - Optimistic, Ariel. I can't believe this. Always. By the way, not since, dare I say, 1994 have my two teams had a better chance to win a championship. Not since the Bills were going to their fourth straight and the Knicks were playing the Rockets in the NBA Finals. And I have to mention, since this is on a very, very special date, August 12th, 1994, I probably peaked as a sports fan because you'll recall that date lives in infamy. That was the day that the players went on strike and the first place Montreal Expos.

51:13Six games ahead of the Atlanta Braves. I will never forget August 12th. And so every time I see that today's August 12th, I remember this. So like I peaked as a sports fan in 94. I'm hoping that I just get one before I die.

51:25Bill Simmons:Well, I'm about to talk to cousin Sal and Brian Curtis about the Cowboys mega documentary that's coming out on Netflix. I would advise you to skip it. No chance. I'm just not watching. I would honestly, as your friend, I would skip. I wasn't planning on it, by the way, if I'm being 100 % honest, but I'm happy. There's a specific episode. Just don't watch it. All about that? Just stay away. The helmet and all that? No, just stay away. It's going to bring up some dark demons. Is Leon Led and Don Beebe in there? They are not, but there's some other stuff in there. that I'd, you know, this stuff was all 30 years ago.

52:03Bill Simmons:There was stuff I forgot about. Anyway, Ariel, great to see you. You can listen to him and watch him on the Uncrowned podcast, which is a fan. You get like four fighters a day, by the way. Yeah, we're working hard here. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much. This episode is brought to you by ChatGBT. Imagine you're running a professional sports team. Nice. Imagine the player contract report is due today. Not so nice. You've got performance notes from the coaching staff. You got a salary spreadsheet from your analyst, three rounds of back and forth emails with the agent, and all of it is scattered absolutely everywhere.

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53:18Bill Simmons:This episode is brought to you by Mazda. There's driving and then there's driving with peace of mind. Knowing you're behind the wheel of Consumer Reports safest new car brand, Mazda. The Mazda CX-50 hybrid comes standard with a suite of proactive safety features. So confidence isn't an upgrade, it's a given. Mazda, move and be moved. Visit MazdaUSA.com. Discover how confidence comes standard. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. Visit MazdaUSA.com to learn more. All right, recording this on a Tuesday morning as well. Brian Curtis is here from The Ringer. Cousin Sal, even though Dee from What's Happening died today, had decided to power through it.

54:02Bill Simmons:And funniest female of the 70s for you? Or was there somebody else?

54:06Cousin Sal:I think so. I put Bonnie Franklin from One Day at a Time up there. No, no, of course it was Dee. She was terrific. She'd cut anybody down. All right.

54:16Bill Simmons:Well, thanks for gutting through today and talking Cowboys. So Netflix has this giant Cowboys documentary coming out that when we saw the news, I don't know how many years ago, and it was Netflix paying like 50 million bucks, Jerry Jones, the way some of these team documentaries work, how the Patriots thing played out with Bob Kraft, just putting himself over all of it, and you're just like, wow, this Cowboys thing is going to be a train wreck. Jerry Jones is going to be all over this thing. It's not going to be editorially responsible at all. This is just going to suck. And then I got an advanced copy of the first seven episodes and it was like last dance level, riveting.

54:56Bill Simmons:So many things I forgot. So I implored you guys to watch advanced copies. Who wants to start? Because there's so much to go here. Sal, I told you, like, clear your schedule. You have to watch this. Did it exceed your expectations?

55:14Cousin Sal:Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, this is no great feat, but I think in 18 hours, I knocked the whole seven hours out, whatever. So, and - You couldn't stay away. I had my oldest son watching with me and he went out one night. I was like, no, no, no, stay home. I'll pay you to stay home. We need to finish these. But to me, this was like, I fucking loved every minute. It was like a vial of crack with a, like a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese and smothered with Michelle Pfeiffer from Greece too, all rolled up. And I felt like you were at the White House.

55:43Bill Simmons:I think that was at the White House.

55:44Cousin Sal:I was at the White House. White House, by the way, not very impressive. It was basically like a suite at the quality in behind the training facility. I thought it was going to be like this big mansion. But anyway, I'm sure we'll get to that. But yeah, I freaking loved it. And I got to, I mean, we'll let Curtis join in here, but I took a different perspective of how I looked at some of these guys.

56:04Bill Simmons:Curtis, did, I mean, you've read every book. You're a lifelong Cowboys fan. You thought you knew everything and then you hear this is coming out. What was your reaction watching it versus what you thought was going to happen? Well, I did read every word. I mean, every word that Ed Werder wrote, you know, that was me. because these events take place between my first year of middle school and my last year of high school. So I was at like my maximum sports fandom. And Bill, I don't know if you've ever mentioned the 86 Celtics on this podcast. I think I heard it once or twice. The 92 Cowboys are my 86 Celtics.

56:36I'm very protective of them. I feel like for the rest of my life, I have to tell people how great they were. And then when they bring me stories, I'm like, I knew that. I read that. Dude, I enjoyed there's so much reliving every moment of this. I mean, I was ready, as you say, for the Jones family, I mean, Biden family, I mean, Jones family rehabilitation project. Yeah. And this was a riveting, fun, it was like a Western directed by Baz Luhrmann. I mean, it was just a really, really fun series.

57:07Bill Simmons:And it's not coming out for a few days, but this seemed like the perfect time just to talk about that whole era. I think what struck me, because it's been... you know, 30, 35 years for a lot of this stuff is just how much I forgot. I watched all of these games. And as the years, Pat, when it's not a Boston team where I can remember the beats of a Boston team, but when it's other teams and when it's 90s NFL, the stuff sort of blends together. So like, as you guys know, I am the king of the outside Dallas. I would rather have Emmitt Smith than Barry Sanders. That's been, I've been on that hill forever.

57:42Bill Simmons:And one of my big cases was the separated shoulder game. and over the years I thought that that happened in the NFC title game or whatever and I forgot the context of the giant so it was like it was a lot of like just jogging my memory from what actually happened but then reinforcing things you know that I felt and the reality is football just felt like it mattered more in the early 90s and I don't really know why I know we were younger I know it's easier to say stuff like that but there was it wasn't the 24-7 like we have now where everybody has social media everybody's got a podcast there's coverage for there's video everywhere back then it was just like you you watch the sunday game we had madden and summer all and you had these big epic teams that felt like these superpowers with the giants and the cowboys and the niners um who am i leaving out giants cowboys niners i mean the redskins yeah from Yeah, from the NFC.

58:38Bill Simmons:And it was just three of them were always good. They would always battle. We'd get to December, January. It felt like the games were the most important things ever. And Dallas was just great. Great to the point that we always used to say it felt almost unfair. That it was like, well, we got to fix this. They got to do something with the salary cap. You shouldn't be able to have this many good players. So that was, it made me really nostalgic. And I don't know, Sal, are we just old?

59:05Cousin Sal:I think what's going on now is unfair, how we haven't won in 30 years and don't even really come close. I think that part is unfair. But I think you're right. And it's hard to explain to people to say that, oh, football was bigger back then because it can't possibly be bigger than it is right now for all the reasons you laid out. Right. The 24-7 coverage, the Twitter and everything, the all different streams. But like you said, like Aikman, Young, Favre, Kelly, Sims, Montana, every year, Montana, like trading off. Like it just felt huge by every metric. I don't know how to explain it, but yeah, that was, that was the time to be around.

59:40Cousin Sal:I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You missed it. Cowboys fans. I really, I'm sorry. Hopefully this helps.

59:44Bill Simmons:I mean, you would think, cause I'm a Pats fan and we won six Superbowls in the two thousands and the 2010s. I'd be like, that was the best era. And it just wasn't, it felt like the nineties, the sport was also way more violent, which I think that's one of the great things about this doc. She's like, oh my God. Like, I just can't believe they had this Aikman concussion montage at one point. And he has, what is it? Eight concussions or six concussions in 14 months or something or nine.

1:00:14Cousin Sal:Yeah, it was like five and 12 months and nine undocumented.

1:00:16Bill Simmons:Just kidding. And the guys in the early 90s. But, you know, this is why, Curtis, this is, I think, when football went up a notch. I was there for, Sal and I were there for the 70s, 80s, 90s. but it felt like 90s was when everything got cemented. Even when you look back in the old, like the retro news Twitter account will have like the ratings for 1977. And Monday Night Football was like 20th. You know, and you think like, wow, Monday Night Football was only 20th. But by the time we got to the mid 90s, it felt like football was the biggest thing, right? Yeah. The media B-roll from this doc, if you lived in the 90s, I mean, how many Leslie Visser sideline reports are in this thing?

1:00:57Young Pam Oliver, all of it. Yeah. Madden and Summerall, you know, and again, that's what made it feel so special. I think that's what you're talking about a little bit too. That's all mixed in here. Because that Giants game you're talking about where Emmett has a separated shoulder. John Madden, in my memory, came down from the booth and went to the Cowboys locker room and said, that's the bravest thing I've ever seen. And that was like this laying on hands moment. It's like, oh my God, John Madden said that to Emmett Smith after a game. I mean, who in the world would have the ability to say something like that now?

1:01:27and it would be meaningful.

1:01:28Bill Simmons:Right. Well, and then there was these other beats in there that because we hadn't followed sports for long enough. And Emmitt's contract holdout, which I totally forgot, it felt like one of the biggest stories of all time as it was happening. Like, wow, he's going to sit out the season? They're not going to pay him? And then that new guy comes in and he's terrible. But it's tough now. Like in 2025, guys hold out and you're like, all right, we know how this is going to go. It's like what you're doing with Michael Parsons right now. It's like, all right, we're going to do this little dance. And then we're going to get to August 29th and Michael Parsons will be a cowboy.

1:02:04Bill Simmons:When Emmitt Smith was holding out, I was like, is he ever going to play again? What's going to happen here? They're going to throw this away?

1:02:10Cousin Sal:Exactly. I wonder if Jerry reliving this reinforces what he's doing with Micah Parsons, right? So Emmitt missed two games that year, and they won the Super Bowl, and he won the rushing title, which is crazy. So this is why he doesn't freak out about holdouts, because he knows he's going to release the funds, like you said, in late August or early September. Maybe he does even miss two games, Parsons. By the way, we'll lose the Eagles anyway, so that's one game that didn't matter. but he gets to play a villain for the whole month, right? I mean, it must've killed him to know that Nico Harrison was the most hated Dallas executive for a minute.

1:02:41Cousin Sal:I mean, he's got to get his title back, but he loves it. Even at the red carpet thing last night, he said, this controversy like this is good for the team. Like what? Nobody thinks that, but okay, good.

1:02:52Bill Simmons:I guess you have a plan here. Well, one of the things, Curtis, with this doc, with just the storytelling, it's just perfect IP. I think the two best IP for sports documentaries were The Last Dance and this. Because you have Jones and Johnson and that falling apart. You have the Aikman, Emmett, Irvin, like that, Trioka, and all of them have different kind of faults, right? Aikman, she's getting the shit kicked out of him. Emmett's like the constant overachiever who's underpaid. And then Irvin's just a maniac. You have that piece, But then you have Jerry and Jimmy falling apart in a way that now I feel like we'd have more day to day.

1:03:37Bill Simmons:We would have known more about it. There would have been like little kernels coming out all the time. Just the national media didn't work that way back then. When Jimmy left, it was like he's not going to coach the Cowboys. It was like the most stunning thing ever. I don't feel like people would ever be stunned by that in the same way, right? I agree to a point. Well, you were a Dallas fan, so you were sniffing it out in Dallas. What's funny is the doc reminded me that a lot of this stuff was kind of out on the table. You know, before that second Super Bowl, Bob Costas did an interview with Jerry and Jimmy together.

1:04:10And can you imagine the Kraft-Belichick version of that interview? Right. And the interview's point was basically like, do you guys like each other? And if you listen to the answers Jimmy gave in the press conferences before the Super Bowl about his relationship with Jerry, I'm like, I can't believe this was happening like days before a game.

1:04:28Bill Simmons:That was wild. I guess we had no mechanism back then to really talk about something that happened. Because the MJ gambling stuff was all happening at the same time too. And when you look back at some of that stuff now, it seems bonkers. Like they're asking him on the NBC pregame show, do you have a gambling problem? But we had no internet back then. We had no way to be like, hey, did you see that? What'd you think? Wow, I thought that was crazy too. And the Jimmy Jerry, it felt like something was wrong, but you always just felt like stuff was going to work out in sports. Like, oh, they'll get back together.

1:05:01Bill Simmons:The only time I can remember that not being was the Billy Martin, George Steinbrenner stuff. Right. In the 70s and 80s, where it's like, well, these guys, oh, he fired them. You know, but it's just like, how is Jimmy going to walk away from that job, Sal? He had built like the super team of all time.

1:05:15Cousin Sal:I know. And they dangled the Jaguars in front of him. I remember that being like, what the fuck? The freaking Jaguars? The thing's that bad that he wants to go to the Jaguars? They've never snapped the ball yet. But to the point of we weren't finding things out, Jerry puts it all out there. So you don't really have to dig. They're caught at a Mexican restaurant before he's even hired Jimmy Johnson. He knew he was going to get busted there. At the press conference, when he buys a team, he looks at Tech Schramm and says, I'm gunning for your job. And Tech Schramm looks like the saddest man on earth because he knows he's not fucking around.

1:05:48Cousin Sal:So Jerry puts, and he's still to this day, does interviews three times a week. So you didn't really even need Twitter back then for a lot of this stuff. You knew what was going on.

1:05:57Bill Simmons:Well, the Landry thing. So if we followed sports in the 1980s like we do now, the Landry thing for somebody like me living on the East Coast where he was like Tom Landry, he'll never get fired. The guy's one of the great coaches of all time. But meanwhile, he'd really been declining for years and years and the team had been declining and he just got old. But it still seemed inconceivable he was going to get fired. And when Jones comes in, he buys the team and he fires Tom Landry. What do you remember from that, Curtis, when it happened? I was 11 years old and I remember that I freaking loved it.

1:06:31You know, I was just at that age where you're starting to think anything that happened in my parents' generation sucks. That's the past. And here comes Jerry Jones and he's like, I'm going to take your parents' Dallas Cowboys coach and your grandparents' Dallas Cowboys coach and I'm going to fire him. And we're going to start fresh. And I was like, hell yes, here we go. I mean, it was like this, he was doing this like, you know, child versus parent thing on my behalf. And the doc reminds us he fires Tom Landry. And then the city of Dallas has a huge parade for Tom Landry. Imagine Bill Belichick, like a week later, they're just marching him down the streets of Boston.

1:07:09Like, we just want to thank you, Bill, for everything you've done for this organization. Yeah, people were horrified.

1:07:14Cousin Sal:Yeah. Well, do you know how old, I mean, it's weird watching the doc. I forgot Landry was only 38 years old when they fired him. No, but he was 65. I would have thought he was like 92. You know, 65 is nothing. He's younger than Andy Reid right now. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it was weird. But I will say, like, I had the same feeling as Curtis. I was a little older. But I was like, all right, maybe this moves things around. This moves the needle with Landry. But then when they traded Herschel Walker, I did not think that was a good idea. Then I was like, oh, we might be dealing with a madman here. Fires Landry and trades Herschel Walker.

1:07:48Cousin Sal:Where are our chances here? So I'm glad Sal said the words Nico Harrison already in this podcast because that was the Nico Harrison trade in the moment in October 1989. It really was.

1:08:00Bill Simmons:And they covered in the doc was the way it was reported versus what the trade actually was was so confusing. Where you get all these players, but then there's these weird secret conditions where if you wave each one, you get this pick. And it was really about the picks, but nobody, we were like, what? They fucking traded Herschel Walker for those five guys? What is this? Right. And at that point, you think Jerry Jones is just a complete lunatic. And it turns out it was a pretty brilliant trade. When you, the Jerry Jimmy thing we've been talking about for 30 years. When you watch this with the knowledge of what happened in the last 30 years with Dallas, the Jerry Jimmy thing almost makes more sense in retrospect, where Jerry just the whole time is like, I'm the GM.

1:08:46Bill Simmons:I'm in charge of this shit. And now we've had 30 years of the Cowboys being terrible. Did you have a sliding doors thing, either of you, with what happens if Jimmy just is the coach the whole time? How does this play out? What if Jerry is just a little bit like, I'm just here to put the right people in charge and help them work? What happens to the Cowboys? So my take on that is it's all Jerry's fault, number one. He screwed everything up. but that if Jimmy had stayed, it would have been a fast burn. Jimmy was Bill Parcells. He was, I'm coming in for five years. I'm going to yell at everybody.

1:09:24And then I'm going to go get bored and go do my next thing. Yeah. Because if you look, he actually spent fewer years in Miami where he was head coach and GM than he did in Dallas where he was having to share power with Jerry. Right. I mean, think about that. Like Jimmy was just a fast burn guy. The other thing that Doc kind of touches on is 1993 is the beginning of NFL free agency. So all of a sudden, the most talented team in the league has this problem that no NFL team has ever had before, which is like we got to actually keep all these players who suddenly have this power. Ken Norton can go to the 49ers and, you know, kill us in the NFC championship game.

1:09:59And that that I think I think Jimmy would have lasted one, maybe two more years and then he would have been gone, even if he'd had everything he wanted.

1:10:06Bill Simmons:Yeah, it's a little like the second apron NBA right now. where all of a sudden it shifted and it just became way harder if you did a really good job building a team to actually keep all the components. And Cowboys had, you know, these assets, but at some point you got to gather behind some of the assets. What do you remember about that whole Jimmy era, Sal?

1:10:25Cousin Sal:I mean, I just, what was most fascinating with that, Curtis, how much would you pay for that sign that Jerry Jones claimed he had on his desk that said, if you're willing to give others the credit, you'll conquer the world. Like how much would that fetch on eBay? and thousands of dollars for me personally. Incredibly ironic. It's amazing. And then he comes out with the announcement that 500 coaches could win a Super Bowl with this team. And at that point, you didn't really know. It was like Kobe Shaq, right? Like, oh man, who do I trust? If we have to lose one of them, I'm not going to lose Jerry really, right?

1:10:54Cousin Sal:But who do we trust? Jerry or Jimmy here. And then they bring in Switzer, who had been gone, removed from anything for like five years, which is like Coach K coaching the Knicks. this year. You know, it was very weird, but you're like, alright, you gotta think he knows what he's doing. And the fact that you knew Jimmy Johnson was rooting against that team the whole year and gets boots on the ground. Like, he's actually announcing and he's a commentator during halftime and everything. He gets to see that. To me, that was my favorite part of the thing. Those little nuggets that year.

1:11:26Bill Simmons:Yeah, some of the stuff when them on the field and just Fox felt, they'd finally figured out how to modernize a pregame show. And, you know, early Terry, early Howie with Jimmy, James Brown. And it just felt like, and then eventually our cousin Jimmy started. When did he start doing the bits? Like 97? 99. Yeah. By that time it had been established as whatever. But that was a really fun era too, Curtis, of when coaches would come on TV because Pat Riley started it. He never gets enough credit. Pat Riley went on NBC for I think one year and was awesome. and then that led to this whole run and Johnson was good, but then it led to this run of guys who weren't awesome, like George Seifert, who was one of the worst people ever on TV.

1:12:16Bill Simmons:But it just, everything felt like just like the biggest thing in the world that I don't know, maybe we're just more used to the grind of football now and like, all right, week one, Thursday night and there's more football and there's Thursday and there's Sunday and there's Monday, there's going to be Friday, there's Christmas. And back then it was like, man, Dallas is playing San Francisco. This is the biggest game of my life. And I'm not even a fan of either team. I think we were perfectly saturated back then.

1:12:46Cousin Sal:You know what I mean? Now it's oversaturated. And now it's like, in addition to everything you just said, we have to wait to see what Stephen A. and McAfee say on Monday morning before we can form our own opinion. It's kind of ridiculous, right? Somebody's zagging.

1:12:58Bill Simmons:Somebody's got to throw somebody. Yeah. The other thing, and it's weird because this, I'm sure, was not an intent of the doc, but it was just a natural outcome, was how important Madden and Summerall were in it. I know we've talked about Madden a million times, but 90s Madden and Summerall, I think, is the most important announcing team of all time. They really elevated. And when Madden said something like when he's praising Emmett Smith during the game or when he was mad that Switzer went for it on that fourth and one. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. You would just kind of feed off whatever his reaction was and it would just become your reaction.

1:13:36Bill Simmons:I don't know if there's another, is there another announcer like that, Curtis? I don't think so because nobody says stuff like he did, you know, like Matt was not Stephen A. Smith. Let us be clear about that. But when he criticized you, like he did with Switzer, that moment against the Eagles, fourth and one where they go for it twice because the first play didn't count. They still run the same way again. And he would just blast you. That was huge. so what was your single favorite part of this doc so can i just say i felt with madden summerall i

1:14:05Cousin Sal:felt the weather when they were announcing oh i felt that it was cold i don't know if it was a spacing between their words or between you know whatever else and and yeah they were important i want you watch the old madden thing the special right would you do that for anything else like now so um my favorite part uh the skip bayless testimonials really hit home with no no i hated that. The skip stuff, I'm sorry, people. It's like the Dr. Melfi scenes with Tony. You're just going to wish you could fast forward through them and get to the more tire irons. But he had to be in there, though. He was the biggest chronicle of that team.

1:14:40Cousin Sal:They couldn't avoid having him. My biggest takeaway, or my favorite thing, is that I have a new appreciation for Jerry Jones because I looked at it through the lens of him being a gambler. He talks about, and it's all in the first seven minutes of the thing, right? He's like, talks about, I had this one well, I invested$800 million or whatever into this well. And if this didn't gush, I was in trouble and it gushed. And it's like, he, he like a flowery description of how it did and whatever. And then he struck it. And that was, and we knew like Jerry, like he took chances. I think he like owned like shaky's pizza.

1:15:16Cousin Sal:He like tried to borrow money from his father to own shaky's pizza. But that to me, it's like, Oh yeah, For real?

1:15:22Bill Simmons:He's Shakey's Pizza?

1:15:23Cousin Sal:I swear to God, look it up. Come on. He owns Shakey's Pizza. Look it up. It's right there, yeah. Now we can own Shakey's Pizza. I know. Now we got it. So that, to me, was the big, oh, I understand Jerry Moore. Doesn't mean I hate what he's doing less, but I do understand him.

1:15:38Bill Simmons:Well, you understand Jerry Moore, and then you understand how the last 30 years happened. Right. Because the same irrational confidence to be like, I'm throwing everything into this last well, and I'm going to fire Tom Landry and hire Jimmy Johnson is the same piece that leads to the last 30 years. But I mean, Curtis, the thing I was the most worried with this, especially after the craft experience, and I had the opposite experience when we did the Celtic stock, like the owners just trusted us and let us do our thing. Jerry sold this to Netflix and Skydance and the worst case scenario of just being a Jerry Hagiography, it really wasn't.

1:16:15Bill Simmons:I actually thought they were like, it was like a warts and all Jerry. I mean, obviously they could have gone further with how dysfunctional I think some of the family stuff is and having his son, you know, basically the two of them and whatever is going on with the credit grabbing in that family. And who knows? But I thought for the most part, pretty fair, right? I didn't hear the words paternity suit anywhere in the documentary. And that might have been the price of admission to get in. Yeah. And when it starts, all the main characters, Jerry, Troy, Emmett, they're sitting in front of these like Western movie sets.

1:16:48And it felt like when a billionaire invites all his friends to his birthday party and they have to come and they're sitting in front of some very elaborate kind of thing. And everybody's like, oh, what are we doing?

1:16:58Bill Simmons:By the way, I got worried with the first five minutes. I was like, oh, no. It was a little overproduced. Yeah. And then it just settles down and becomes awesome. By the way, the Way Brothers directed this, who I think are really great. Great job. It settles down in seven minutes and we're off. Two things save it to me. One is it's not really the Jerry story. That's kind of woven in there, but it's really the story of the 90s Cowboys, which is the story you want. Thing number two, and this is my MVP of the whole series, is Michael Irvin, ladies and gentlemen, the playmaker. I mean, you mentioned the Cowboys White House where the partying happened that was over by the practice field.

1:17:34All the players in the dock are like, you know, we don't talk about the White House. And Michael's like, actually, let's talk about the White House. Let me tell you all the stories of the things that happened. Let me tell you about the time I stabbed a teammate with scissors. Like he goes into all that stuff.

1:17:48Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:17:48Bill Simmons:Yeah. It's amazing. I was not expecting that at all. I was expecting kind of the sanitized Michael Irvin interview, but he's like, no, no, here's everything that happened. Let's go. And that's the other thing. Documentary is kind of ebb and flow with maybe the best eight interviews in the documentary. That's why like last dance had Michael, you have Phil Jackson, you have Steve Kerr, you have Scottie Pippen, you have people who are actually compelling to see interviewed. This one has Aikman, who's been, you know, I think he's the best broadcaster in the league out of all the ex-players at this point.

1:18:24I think it's lately that he grabbed the title,

1:18:27Bill Simmons:but I do think he's the best guy. You have Michael Orvin, who was on TV forever. You have Emmett, who's done some TV stuff, who's pretty competent. You have Jerry, who's a character. You have Jimmy Johnson, who's been on TV forever. and then you have Dion who has had multiple documentaries about him. So just you start with those six, it's like, yeah, of course this is going to be good. Not to mention all the other stuff, but I thought Urban was... Actually, I had forgotten how compelling of a 90s character he was and how many jokes we used to make about him. He was one of those guys that was just like, I don't know if this guy's going to be alive in a year.

1:19:02Bill Simmons:Somebody is still alive now.

1:19:03Cousin Sal:I mean, it was up for a murder for hire thing. Thank God he wasn't killed in that.

1:19:08Bill Simmons:Had you forgotten about that? That was another one

1:19:11Cousin Sal:I had just forgotten about. A Dallas police officer? What's the person who was allowed to have done it? I thought it was a rumor. Yeah, yeah. He was my favorite of the bunch. And by the way, you can't say enough about Aikman. Even if you don't think he's the best commentator, Joe Buck should be propping him up. The fact that he could speak coherently at this point, if it's graded on a concussion curve, he's the greatest analyst of all time. There's no question about it.

1:19:37Bill Simmons:There was some stuff I just forgot because I'm older and my brain, just the sports info sometimes just gets squeezed out. I totally forgot about the Steve Berline coming in and then Aikman being ready to play. And then they're like, no, we're riding with Berline. He's hot. That one, I was thinking like now in 2025, I think that would actually cause a riot. I think that would cause a sports talk riot. Nobody would know what to do on first take with that situation, right? Bill, Skip Bayless, 6-8, KLF in Dallas. That was every segment. That was the A block every night. Trust me. Can you imagine? I don't know if there's a better, what should they do?

1:20:14Bill Simmons:Because benching the hot quarterback is always dangerous. But then Aikman, and then he was pissed about it. So that piece was awesome. I forgot that Niners game where they're playing Steve Young with Montana on the bench, like the theater of that. it's hard to explain like how important that everything about that was because Montana was the best quarterback of all time this would have been like doing this to Brady and like with Garoppolo in 2015 it was just inconceivable they weren't going to play him and then Dallas is trying to beat them and all the history of those teams going back to the catch that was great and then the Bill stuff which has been in different documentaries but um I'd forgotten that But in that last Super Bowl, yeah, the Bills, maybe they're going to do it this time.

1:21:00Bill Simmons:And then it just went off the deep end again with them, like it always seemed to do. But what else did you just forget that you hadn't thought about in a while, Curtis? Jerry Jones was tied to Jimmy Hoffa early in his business career. That was a, whoa, I didn't remember that one. The Eggman part, I remembered him getting knocked out of the NFC Championship game, the second one against the 49ers. I forgot that the Super Bowl was a week later. And he goes out there and plays in the Super Bowl. This is a guy who has no memory to this day of the NFC Championship game. No memory. A week later, he's playing the Super Bowl.

1:21:34And I forgot how just kind of bad or mediocre he was in that game. Right. And of course, knowing what we know now, it's like, of course.

1:21:41Bill Simmons:Of course he was. That's another piece of this. Like the whole, the lack of knowledge about CT concussions, all that stuff. By the way, Sal has no memory of the game Romo when he dropped the PAT against the Seahawks. He's blocked out that entire three hours. Leave meeting here. Doesn't remember any piece of it. Sal, was there anything you completely forgot out of this

1:22:03Cousin Sal:when you were watching it? I didn't completely forget, but I forgot what a train wreck Charles Haley was before we even brought him in. Like, he pissed on the 49ers GM's desk, and it was widely known. And they still, the Cowboys, like, yeah, let's bring him in. And Jerry's like, imagine like Zach Lowe defecated on Jimmy Pataro's desk. And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. That would have been a better story. Maybe that'll come out. Let's spread that rumor. But yeah, that was great. I'm trying to think what else was good. I mean, Michael Irvin with the fur coat. I can never see that enough times. Walking in his first day of the court appearance.

1:22:35Cousin Sal:Like that was tremendous. Steven shoving Jerry after the Dion deal, which was the angriest Jerry ever was. Right. He even admitted he cried after that 20. But they go down 21-0. They lose to the 49ers. They come back. As you pointed out, you were sending a text of the box score. It was crazy how the Cowboys just dominated them that game. But, yeah, I like – this is another, like, pro-Jerry thing. And you have to – as an entrepreneur, you should appreciate this. Jerry's like, fuck the rest of the league. I got this Fox deal done. I'm going to sign Dion. His son is shoving him up against the wall, and he's, like, laughing.

1:23:13Cousin Sal:He's like, I'm going to sign this Nike deal and then I'm going to get sued by the league, but I'm going to counter sue for more and scare the shit out of them. And everyone's going to back off. Like he really did put this, this league at the position it is right now.

1:23:26Bill Simmons:Yeah. The Nike deal, I forgot how, uh, kind of crazy was that he was just like, yeah, I'm going to do my own thing. Fuck you guys. When you have a league where everybody is sharing revenue and it's supposed to be equal to some degree, it's like, nah, we're actually not equal. Dallas is bigger than all you guys. I thought the one thing I didn't feel like in the first part, I thought they could have spent five more minutes on how the Cowboys post JFK in the 70s just all of a sudden felt like they were the most important franchise. Like for me as a little kid, and a lot of it had to do with the cheerleaders and the TV show.

1:24:03Cousin Sal:I have that written down. Those two things, right?

1:24:05Bill Simmons:and so by the time we got to when they beat the Rams in the NFC title game it just felt like Dallas was the center of the universe based on stupid stuff like cheerleaders who shot JR plus that they are relevant so then when it kind of died in the 80s and it got replaced by the Bears and the Niners and the Redskins and the Giants and Dallas was kind of fading away I would have spent like a tiny bit more time on that. Like Jerry saw, no, actually this should be the biggest franchise and went all in on it. But other than that, I don't really have a lot of notes. I thought they, thought they nailed it.

1:24:45Bill Simmons:I wish they would have had a little more on the family. Yeah. Like what, what would you, what would you want it from the family side?

1:24:53Cousin Sal:Well, you bring it up, but the Dallas, the TV show kind of fueled, like got everyone prepared for this crazy rich family, right. Is fighting, drinking at the owner's meeting, everybody gets drunk and tells Edward, stick around. I'm going to fire this son of a bitch. It would have been like the season finale of every season of Dallas, which was great. The only other thing I thought, I don't know if, Curtis, did you miss the Steve Walsh stuff? It was Steve Walsh, right? It was Aikman Walsh. They were toe-to-toe for a while. It wasn't automatically Aikman starting for a second. Yeah, I think that's fair.

1:25:28Cousin Sal:Three minutes of that. People forget how crazy that thing that Jimmy Johnson did was. So he drafts Treykman 1-1 in 1989. And then he spends the first pick in the supplemental draft a couple months later on Steve Walsh. The Cowboys turned out to be the worst team in the league that year. So he gave up the number one pick in the draft the next year. Number one overall for Steve Walsh after drafting his franchise quarterback. But Jimmy was just firing so many bullets and that was part of his style, right? Like, I'm going to make 20 draft picks And I'm going to just bet that like five of them will work out and I'll trade the other ones away.

1:26:04But yeah, that was, that, that should have at least worn it 30 seconds.

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1:26:42Bill Simmons:Whether you're racing to build the biggest sandcastle, seeing who can throw the fastest pitch, or competing in a championship match, it's always better when there's a prize on the line. Like Michelob Ultra, smooth, refreshing, and so satisfying after all that hard work. superior is worth playing for. Michelob Ultra, superior light beer. Enter for a chance to win superior soccer, basketball, golf prizes at michelobultra.com slash superior access. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch, Michelob Ultra light beer, St. Louis, Missouri. The Switzer Aikman stuff, which I knew because I read a couple of the books, I was surprised they went as hard as they did into the racist stuff with Aikman, the allegations.

1:27:29Bill Simmons:And they covered all that. They did not cover some of the other stuff that's in the Bayless books that... I remember, Curtis, you wrote about this for The Ringer in 2016, that at one point, Switzer's camp was spreading all this stuff about Aikman, that he was gay, and it became like a story in Dallas. And the story was that these guys hate each other so much that Switzer's side is actually maybe spreading some of this stuff. The doc did not touch that, but it did touch the racist stuff. I was surprised that it didn't touch both. It was interesting. And I wonder about that decision on their part.

1:28:06But you got the key detail there, which it was Barry Switzer's camp was doing this while Barry Switzer was coaching the Cowboys about his all-world quarterback. Yeah. And you're just thinking like, that happened? And the doc reminded me that some of that stuff was kind of out there on Super Bowl week like people were talking about it in the media yeah they had to do a press conference about it yeah i know we're rehabbing everybody we're rehabbing jerry we're rehabbing everybody we don't need to rehab barry switzer's an nfl coach i mean i felt the dog got real close to trying to do that it's like okay the players liked him i wonder why i felt like that was coming spit that

1:28:42Bill Simmons:might have been jerry's one note like i don't care what you say about being this doc but can we make it seem like switzer was right somewhat confident my memory of this 30 years ago sal was they won despite Switzer. Yeah. Is that fair?

1:28:58Cousin Sal:Yeah, I think so. I mean, listen, I was at that Super Bowl and the last one we won, and I was in the end zone that O'Donnell was driving on before he threw the interception, so it was kind of scary. But yes, they definitely won despite it. Look, like I said, he went out of his way to get the best player in the league, a two-way player. They're paying Deion way more than they're paying Aikman and Irvin and all these guys, and they all embrace him. I don't know how they got that past those guys. Just like, all right, he's going to play two ways, so he deserves more money than you. I guess that was it.

1:29:28Cousin Sal:But yes, I think it was, yeah, he kind of just got in the way. And the fact that he had a freaking full-out brawl or just a conflict with his quarterback, we haven't seen that in a long time.

1:29:42Bill Simmons:Aikman still seemed mad about it 30 years later, Curtis. Did you notice that? He was not like, yeah, you know, time passes. He was still like, fuck that guy. That guy gets hit by a two by four. For good reason. I mean, again, it's like, what did I have to do to earn your respect? I mean, can you imagine a quarterback being treated like that now by his head coach? The power dynamics are just completely different. Well, that's, and that's going back to the nostalgia piece. You know, when we have like, like some of the Patriots stuff that was happening in the late 2010s that like ESPN and Seth Wickersham was writing about, It was like the Garoppolo, Brady, Belichick, Kraft.

1:30:23Bill Simmons:There's a lot of passive aggressive stuff going on. This was just aggressive back then. This is like a coach leaking shit about his quarterback and the quarterback just openly shitting on the coach. They had great NFL films footage of Aikman just complaining about the coach on the sideline, calling him buffoon. This made the Pat stuff look like a one out of 10 from a dysfunction standpoint. Sal, did this make you like Jerry more or less as your Cowboys owner? Because you haven't even made the Super Bowl, much less won one in 30 years. And yeah, this was such a great era and he was responsible for it.

1:31:04Bill Simmons:So how do you balance that?

1:31:05Cousin Sal:It's just like, I remember that we were once great and then I forget that we can be this great. And then it's like, oh shit, I watched this. Like, what the hell did he do? How does this happen? But as a fan of the Cowboys, I don't respect them more, but I feel like as a fan of football, you should respect them coming at it. He made this league as big as it is. So your fantasy teams, your everything, I don't know if it exists without Jerry Jones. Right, and then even going to the arena. What's your take on that, Curtis? It made me love old Jerry and remember how exciting it was to have him as the owner of my favorite team back then.

1:31:42it also reminded me that what jerry wants most in the world is a to just have a job like just talk to me in the draft room so i can pretend like i understand why we're drafting tyler booker that's one thing yeah the other thing is he wants to be a character in the prestige tv show that is the dallas cowboys and literally in this case is the prestige netflix doc of the cowboys yeah like that's what he wants and that's the micah thing right he just wants it to be after a long standoff with Jerry Jones, Micah Parsons signed the biggest deal for any defensive player in league history. He just wants to do that.

1:32:17You can see in his doc, he got addicted to that in the 90s. He got addicted to being a character, not just an owner, not just a winner.

1:32:26Bill Simmons:Yeah, I think you could genuinely make the case. I was thinking about this after I watched it. This is probably the most memorable NFL owner ever. Doesn't mean he's the best, But it's like the same way, like Sal and I, Steinbrenner just sticks out unlike anyone else. Like, and even like when we were little kids, like Charlie O. Finley was just crazy, but they went on that stuff with the A's. But these owners that also become characters and parts, just part of the history in a completely different way, which I think Kraft tried to belatedly make it seem and he just wasn't. Like he, it was Brady and Belichick that whole time.

1:33:02Bill Simmons:Jones was just, I remember meeting Jones and I think it was 2010 at the all-star weekend, whenever that was for NBA at a bar in the four seasons. And I was with some ESPN higher ups and we met Jones and he was at the bar and he had girl on each side, drink, drinking whiskey or whatever. And he was just exactly like I would have thought, you know, I was like, Hey Bill, how are you? And it was, it was just like, this guy's a fucking character. He's out of, he's had a, like, like a Taylor Sheridan show, which he literally was because he was in the Taylor Sheridan show.

1:33:37Cousin Sal:You forget about like the, you talk about the telecast and Madden and Summerall and how much it meant. Jerry put himself on the sideline. It's such a big thing that an owner is there on the sideline and that cutaway at the end of a game, God forbid the Cowboys lost. I don't even know how much it's worth to the network, but we could all see it in our heads, right? 30 years later, them losing whatever to the dolphins and the, and the Thanksgiving game, or you don't see it. now it's a Taylor Swift cutaway that you hope to get like five times, but so he might've invented that,

1:34:06Bill Simmons:but he definitely also invented the let's let the cameras into our draft room. So they can see us celebrating the picks. Cause Jimmy talks in the doc about what the fuck are cameras doing in here? We're trying to pick our roster. Um, I'm trying to think anything else. We, I think we hit everything. I would just want to say, I'll say is, I'm sorry. I got a curse. I was just going to say like, as, as you know, a child of the nineties, uh, and you guys lived through the nineties, The thing that made me a little sad is how old everybody is now. I mean, how many thick voices are in this documentary?

1:34:37Jerry's, Jimmy's, Barry's, you know, Rupert Murdoch is in this doc in his 90s. You know, Phil Knight's in this doc. George W. Bush's voice sounded awfully thick in this. And I'm like, man, everybody's getting older. All those times are getting away from us. Yeah. And then Aikman just looks as handsome as ever.

1:34:55Bill Simmons:Looks like he might be 32. What did you have, Sal?

1:34:58Cousin Sal:No, the Aikman thing I was going to bring up is like, I feel like his playing career, his attitude mimicked his broadcasting career. Remember he was, I don't want to say vanilla, it's the wrong word for his first few years of broadcasting, but then he got angry. He's now angry in the booth and he gives you like a raw, you know, it's unfiltered and you kind of see like he gets mad at the players and everything. And you saw that the last three, four years of his career on the Cowboys sideline. But by the way, that was one of the saddest things. He's gaining all those concussions. like I mean it's just like a screen pass to Daryl Johnston was the best he could do for like four yards those last three years it's like please get the morphine drip on him already this is so sad

1:35:37Bill Simmons:and there was a good what if that I had forgotten when the uh left tackle got in a car accident Eric Williams that uh yeah that probably swung a Super Bowl yeah so we've had injuries swing Super Bowls but not uh not the late night car accident when something bad's about to happen and that the Cowboys were at the scene, the other players. Right. I had forgotten that detail that they were running up and looking at the car after the exit. What? So most disappointing was that the White House wasn't a palatial mansion for me. Yeah. It just looked like a run-of-the-mill house in, you know, like Monrovia.

1:36:14Bill Simmons:Right.

1:36:15Cousin Sal:Right, yeah. There wasn't, there couldn't have been 50 girls in there, right? Women in there, like, jumping around, right? I think it seems like there was, like, two and three in and out every night.

1:36:25Bill Simmons:I did have more questions about that because they said it was four bedrooms and it just didn't seem like enough bedrooms. Right. Probably needed maybe some other stuff in there. All right, so how do you think this is going to hit, this documentary, Curtis? Because The Last Dance had the... The pandemic. The pandemic and no sports whatsoever and is the all-time best possible setup for a doc. this is before the NFL season starts and you can binge it all at once the binge element of it which Last Dance didn't have I mean you guys lived it I lived it too like it's impossible to stop watching like you just you alright and it's definitely the first one of those in a while we're like alright and now all of a sudden you're five hours in so I think it's going to hit pretty big I think so too because just think about this when was the last time Jerry Jones was complimented on an NFL podcast us.

1:37:24People won't know when they're going to turn this on and be like, wow, wow. He did the Fox deal. He did the Nike deal.

1:37:29Bill Simmons:If you're under 30, you probably don't know any of this stuff, right? My son wouldn't know one of these things. And to your 86 Celtics thing, I'm just like, you'll remember that Emmitt Smith was also awesome. I know we've decided as a society that Barry was better or whatever, but these guys were awesome. These guys kicked everybody's ass in the 90s.

1:37:48Cousin Sal:that Cowboys game against the Giants, that New Year's Day game. I was in Las Vegas with my friends, Harry and Darren and Joey, and we had lost all our money. So we had to watch that game at my Aunt Chippy's house on my cousin Mickey's 25-inch TV. I'm trying to think like that, things like that, as shitty as that was, that made it so much more important. There's not any scenario that I would have to watch it on a 25-inch TV. Thank God, knock wood at this point. But yeah, I mean, it was the greatest. And I think it's going to be good. normally I thought I was like oh man this might be released like a week too late because now it competes with hard knocks and everything it shouldn't it really shouldn't it's great and I think you'll knock it out

1:38:26Bill Simmons:in a couple days I actually think Emmitt's a big winner out of this he still holds the record by the way yeah right like and like pretty I was looking at the league leaders or the all-time career leaders only one who even has like a puncher's chance of thinking about it is Derrick Henry because these running back careers go so fast now. You know, Emmitt was just grinding out 1 ,500, 1 ,600 yards a year forever and was really durable. And even when he got hurt, could still play. You know, but I'll fight. Emmitt versus Barry, I'll fight to the death. I've talked about it on the pod. I just like, if the goal is to actually win Super Bowls and not just have cool Twitter clips and a fun Madden rating, like you want Emmitt Smith.

1:39:12God bless you, Bill.

1:39:13Bill Simmons:He was five yards of carry. He showed up for every game. He was tough as fucking shit. He blocked. He was just there. He's still, to me, in the Mount Rushmore for me. No doubt about it. I have no dog in this race.

1:39:27Cousin Sal:Good for you. I'm glad you said that. I don't know if you're kissing our ass or what. I don't know why you would have to, but that's the right take.

1:39:33Bill Simmons:And I think Irvin is one of the best playoff receivers we've had. I do think Aikman's overrated, but I don't think it's his fault because in the 90s, you could just kick the shit out of quarterback. So it's like playing nine years in that era is a fucking miracle.

1:39:49Cousin Sal:Yeah, it's tough because great offensive line. Great. What are his stats supposed to be? If you have the greatest running back of all time, the running back with the record, what is his stat? All he had to be was accurate and a great leader.

1:40:01Bill Simmons:The Berlin thing wasn't awesome for the Aikman arguments.

1:40:05Cousin Sal:Yeah, maybe not. Yeah.

1:40:06Bill Simmons:It was just one season, Bill. I know, but I'm getting to think of something. You know, he did have a loaded team. Anyway. All right. I'm glad you guys enjoyed this I had a great time Curtis would this have been the number one team you would have wanted to cover yes yes I would have never slept but I would have and I would have been drinking with Jerry at the owners meetings you know I would have been peering through the windows of the White House it would have been an interesting beat there are four bedrooms in the White House Curtis

1:40:35Cousin Sal:they would have given you one at least got a couch time show or something

1:40:39Bill Simmons:Sal Curtis great to see you as always thanks Bill good job by you All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Sal and Curtis. Thanks to Eduardo and Gahal as well. And I'm going to be back with one more podcast. I think we're going to have a Thursday podcast this week and not Sunday. So one more coming from me this week. I will see you then.

1:41:11Bill Simmons:Must be 21 plus in president select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in president DC. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-88-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelpline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-887-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPENY in New York. I didn't like what you said, Odin pauses, about the future. This is the love story of real hinge couple Odin and Edward, written and read by me, Curtis Garner. Listen to the free audiobook now.

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