Are the Cowboys Still America’s Team?

0:05Congratulations. You made the varsity, the podcast. My name is John Aranda and I am Pucks' sports correspondent and the host of this pod. And happy Labor Day weekend, everybody. I hope everyone spends this long weekend getting recharged for the fall. And today's podcast should help in that regard. We're just four days from the start of the NFL season, so I rang up Mike Tirico to provide an NFL preview. We're going to touch on a bunch of topics, but it's not all about the NFL. We're going to touch on a bunch of topics in addition to the NFL today. There's the NBA. There's a market for on-air talent.

0:41There's Tirico's former booth mate, Lee Corso. I've known Mike for a while, and our conversations are always lively. This is going to be a fun one. But before we get to Mike Tirico, today is Sunday, August 31st, and here's what I'm watching. It's actually the blockbuster trade that sent Micah Parsons from the Cowboys to the Green Bay Packers for a couple of draft picks and defensive tackle Kenny Clark. Tirico is going to discuss more of that later. But I'm interested by what this kind of trade says about Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Now, ESPN's Don Vanada is a frequent guest on this pod. He's writing a book on Jerry Jones that's going to be ready next year called The Star.

1:22DVN knows Jerry Jones about as well as anybody I know. So the backstory is that Jerry Jones had tried to extend Parsons' contract. And at one point, he told reporters, he thought that he had a handshake deal with the player. From Jerry Jones' side of the story, Micah Parsons reneged on that deal. So Jerry Jones traded him. And the thing is, handshake deals matter to Jerry Jones in a way that they don't really matter. that much to others. And Don Vannata provided some perspective on that on Friday morning when he posted on Exit Jerry Jones bought the Cowboys by shaking hands with Bum Bright. Micah Parsons committed to a contract extension with Jerry on a handshake, and when Parsons reneged, Jerry decided that Parsons would never again wear the star on his helmet.

2:13DVN followed up on that post with another saying, quote, if Jerry can't trust you, you're done. I've had conversations with Jerry about that handshake deal with Bum Bright, the sanctity of it. It took weeks to drop the paperwork for the team sale and two months before owners approved Jerry as the new owner. Bright trusted Jerry and Jerry trusted Bright. It was an article of faith. He's old school still. You break that with Jerry and that's it. You're over. That was DVN. Now there's so many angles to this Micah Parsons trade, But it's that one, Jerry Jones' feeling that he was wronged, that I find to be the most interesting.

2:54To me, that offers a window into how Jerry Jones does business. That's powerful imagery. Now, this isn't necessarily unique to Jerry Jones. I remember talking to legendary NBC executive Dick Ebersole about doing business with Vince McMahon for Saturday night's main event decades ago. The two never had a signed contract between them. They trusted each other. Ebersole always seemed to be particularly proud of that deal. It's kind of like your word is your bond. It's a much more powerful type of deal, at least emotionally, than one that goes through teams of lawyers. And to me, that explains why Jerry Jones was so emotionally affected by the mere idea that Micah Parsons would back out of a handshake deal.

3:40Okay, now let's get to Mike Tirico. Mike Tirico, I was doing a little bit of research before this pod, and I came across a stat that you have been with NBC for 10 years, which shocked me because usually I would think it seems like 10 months, but I'm telling you, it feels like you've been at NBC since the 1980s. You had such a long career at ESPN, but you've done so much at NBC. How does it feel for you? 10 hours or 10 years?

4:13Mike Tirico:I'm pretty conscious of those things. And in the 10th year, this starts my 10th football season at NBC. And this snuck up on me a bit. 25 years to the day at ESPN, it was a great chapter for me. When I made the move, I was just getting ready to turn 50 and then 10 years of Monday Night Football, 25 years at ESPN. And it felt like a perfect time for a chapter two, if there was going to be a chapter two. Now, doing Monday nights and doing the number two NBA game, doing a college hoop package as well in the golf, I've been staying at ESPN forever and been super professionally happy. This opportunity, though, just really gave me the chance to do some things I never thought I would.

4:58Mike Tirico:And that's been the case. I've loved every second of it. And the NBC team has been everything that Mark Lazarus promised when he started to help hire me away about a decade ago. I do remember when you were going over, I'm not sure if we actually had this conversation, but I thought at the time I probably wrote it too. You're going to do less. It's the NFL. Al Michaels was still around. Bob Casas was still around. So you had to sort of bide your time. But look now, everything that you mentioned that you did at ESPN, NFL, NBA, you can add in the Olympics, which you didn't do at ESPN. And you also have college basketball that you could do, I would assume, if you wanted.

5:38Mike Tirico:Sure. The Olympics are the big thing, right? I mean, the Olympics are the Olympics. You can be in a small village halfway around the world and you show the five rings or see somebody with the five rings tattooed or mention the Olympics or say someone's a gold medalist and around the world, they know what that is. And there's no sporting event like that. And to be a part of it for the last six, it'll be six Olympics for me when we do 2022, 2026 winter games in Milan. What a treat that's been. And with LA 28 on the horizon, I know we have the world cup coming next summer, but knowing the Olympics are going to be back in the U S for the first time in over a quarter century, that's going to be just an event we think about almost all the time.

6:25All right. So we are a sports business pod. I have you on, we're taping this on Friday. It's posting on Sunday and it is less than 24 hours after Micah Parsons got traded. You of course are going to be calling the Cowboys at the Eagles and just, and just four days. Give me your thoughts on that trade. Well,

6:49Mike Tirico:I was sitting at my desk here in my house in Michigan saw, saw it on, I guess it was NFL network. I had up and I, first thing I did was, wow, let me go check that this is legit. And it's not something, that's a Twitter April Fool's. And as soon as I saw that, I went right into my file and deleted Micah Parsons and moved him over to Packers and started to go, wow, where's the pass rush coming for Dallas? Look, Dallas has always been the dominant headline team in the NFL under Jerry's ownership. The Netflix doc shows that. John, it was interesting. My first, this is my 32nd or third season in the NFL, whether it's covering in the studio or calling games.

7:32Mike Tirico:And the first thing I did would host a show called NFL Prime Monday, which was the four-barren of Monday Night Countdown, which still airs on ESPN. But that show was on ESPN. My teammates up on the desk were Joe Theismann and Phil Simms. Our roundtable of reporters was Mitch Albom and Michael Wilbon and Skip Bayless. Downtown Julie Brown was our feature reporter. And the first year, the first episode was before a Cowboys game, and it was the Emmitt Smith holdout year. So we've been living this for a while, and I just assumed the Micah thing would be resolved the same way that Emmitt was. He'll hold out maybe for a game or so.

8:14Mike Tirico:Dallas will pay him. They'll live happily ever after. And I thought that, John, because you don't let generational potential pass rushers out of the building. And Dallas did. And I don't know when they're going to get somebody who can come back in the game or come back in the building and affect the game the way Micah did. Consider this. Think of the Super Bowl. What did Philadelphia do to Kansas City that totally neutralized Kansas City? They got to the quarterback with a four-man rush. You have to have fourth-quarter pass rush to win in pro football. Micah Parsons gave you that. There are obviously 100 reasons around it.

8:53Mike Tirico:But from a football decision, it's hard to look at that and say the Cowboys are better this morning than they were when we went to sleep the day before. What to you, I mean, because you've, like you said, you were doing the Emmitt Smith holdout year. That was, I believe, 94. Is that right? 93. Yeah. So you've been covering this for a long time. What does this trade say about Jerry Jones and the way that he currently is running the Cowboys? John, you can say that the Cowboys have not been as pinpoint ahead of the game as the other successful franchises in managing the cap when it comes to big ticket items.

9:39Mike Tirico:Now, if you think about this longer term, which you have to when you sit in that chair, whatever Jerry's chair is, the GM chair, the owner chair, the president chair, all of the above. You have to think of future. And this trade does have some future thoughts in mind because they were heading down a road where Dak Prescott, number one paid player in average annual value at$60 million a year. cd lamp third amongst wide receivers only behind jamar chase and justin jefferson and then michael would have been at the top of the market for defensive players so you can't field another 50 when your three are gaining 40 42 46 maybe even 50 of a cap now you're always doing the gymnastics of kicking the can down the road but the new orleans saints kick the can down the road with the salary cap every year and they are struggling to rebuild right now uh so i don't know if dallas has been the most effective team in the last several years of managing the capology out down the line going forward uh look dallas love stars they are successful because of that but i don't know if this is handled as well as it could have been i'm just thinking from a pure draft standpoint, if I've got those two birds in hand in March or April, and I know I can't afford Micah, then I may be able to turn those extra two first round picks, maybe get a bigger package, but I can turn those two first round picks into more five, six, seven picks down the line.

11:18Mike Tirico:And when you look at the teams that have built successfully, that's how they've built with maybe not just a top pick, but 20, 34, 56. They've got four of the first 60 kind of picks. So I think the chess game may have been played better with an asset like Micah Parsons if you thought this wasn't going to happen. It clearly became personal at some point. And that's Jerry. And to his credit, you can criticize Jerry and he'll say, okay, I understand, but here's what I think and this is what I'm doing. and I'm committed to making the Cowboys better. And he wakes up every day and his kids do the same trying to do that.

11:58Mike Tirico:And for that, you have to be admired. And knowing the business sense that you talked about, John, the return on investment has been ridiculous, right? So yes, and here we are. And here we are talking about them all the time. I don't know if Get Up or First Take or First Things First, I don't even know if those shows exist. Like if you ban the Cowboys from those shows, what the hell would they do? Like, what would they do? I want to ask the folks like, hey, guys, I admire you. I love you. Don't you get sick of talking about the Cowboys? Can you think about the last time the Minnesota Vikings, a 14-win team, was mentioned for more than 30 seconds on any of those shows?

12:37Mike Tirico:And it's not being critical. They're in business. And the Cowboys are great business because people run to their TV to hear about them. So I get it. And I admire it. I don't think this may have been their best moment. I feel like starting this pod, talking about the Cowboys, this is going to be the most downloaded varsity podcast. There you go. You should just call it the Cowboy Podcast. And just say you named it after your favorite cowboy and just dive right into the Moffat Nathanson, all the nerdy stuff that you talk about on a regular basis with the business. So you are, you know, the number one NFL play by play, of course, for for NBC.

13:17So you go, I mean, we've seen the Cowboys that you described, you know, haven't been, haven't won a Superbowl since the nineties, 96, I think it was, you know, have been good at good seasons and had big stars, have always been the most watched team that you've probably have been in Jerry's world more than any other stadium calling Sunday night football. uh now they're behind the chiefs certainly like uh where do they stack in terms of in your mind

13:51Mike Tirico:it's interesting you know and as a matter of fact we did the lions chargers pre-season game and the lions have an exceptional pr department eamon reynolds is their head of pr and eamon eamon gave me this note that lions games nationally outrated the cowboys games last year with the 425 window and the primetime window. So it's kind of interesting that a couple of teams are capturing America's attention. I do not discount for a second, obviously, the success, but also the star factor with Taylor Swift and Travis have taken the Chiefs from a high level to that level where they could usurp the Cowboys' spot at the top of that list.

14:33Mike Tirico:They're still right there, right? Remember, even though last year was a bad year, Dak Prescott injured seven wins. They have three consecutive 12 win seasons before that. Dak's runner up in the MVP voting. They're in playoff games, have a playoff win in there over Tampa. So it's not like Dallas has been bad and they're getting this attention. They've been good. And I think because Jerry is out there more than any executive in sports, period, end of statement, I think it just heightens everything around that franchise and that team. And through that, John, they've built an incredible national following.

15:11Mike Tirico:I'll give you a for instance. My cousin is married to a Cowboys fan. They've raised two boys who are both in college. They are diehard Cowboys fans. They were my first Texan. They live in Suffolk County in about an hour, 10, 15 minute drive from New York City without traffic, which is never. but they have no attachment geographically to the Cowboys. But the Cowboys were great when their dad grew up and Emmett and Michael and Troy and all that. And that has carried over to their generation of fandom. And if you're a Cowboy fan, it's the star, it's Jerry World, it's Dak, it's CeeDee Lamb, it was Zeke, it's Micah Parsons.

15:53Mike Tirico:You watch them play on the road and the Cowboys have this great following. So there's been that magnetic quality to this team that I think starts with Jerry making everything bigger and has just passed on to generations. So that's why they stay there. But to get to the direct answer for the foreseeable future, they're going to be up there with one or two or three. But it's nice about the NFL that there's room in the inn for Kansas City, smaller market, Detroit franchise that was terrible for generations. These teams can come up and become must-see TV. That's the power of the league. So I think Dallas will always be in that group as long as this mindset is the approach they take.

16:34And, you know, with the Michael Parsons fan, I think, you know, I'm a baseball fan. I mean, could you imagine the, you know, smallest market in baseball signing the most expensive defensive player and taking him from the model franchise? That totally speaks to what you were just talking about.

16:54Mike Tirico:That's the line two of the story. Line one is, oh, my God, what happened? What's the compensation? What's Jerry doing with all that? The line, too, is when you step back, here is the most powerful owner in all of sports. Right. For so many years. And Jerry, because of his presence, doing a press conference or an interview with the media, I should say, outside the locker room before they talk to the players, the coaches who invariably have to answer questions to Jerry's answers, which is the only situation like that in sports. I mean, other media members are lucky if they get their owner once or twice a year on camera, right?

17:28Mike Tirico:And the Cowboys media get Jerry every week. You balance that with the Packers who don't have an owner, right? There's the team president and all the stuff that goes with the beauty of the Packers. And the fact that those two teams can be on that footing is what makes the NFL the NFL. This thing is such a massive entertainment vehicle. And I think you see it, John. I saw this week, like Breitling, the watch company, right? Did a deal with the NFL. Abercrombie did a deal with the NFL. The NFL has more brand association than I've ever seen. And it just speaks to how the NFL reaches everywhere right now.

18:10Mike Tirico:And I don't mean just the international. I mean, every pocket of fandom. You have the old census, every box on the census form that covers race and gender and age and where you live, they all, all have a connection with the NFL. And that's the power of this league that nobody else has right now. One quick Kansas City Chiefs question at you. You referenced the trade and you took your Micah Parsons file and you took it and put it. And this is a serious question. Do you have a Taylor Swift file? I don't. I did. I did take for the Cowboy game, the Cowboy Chiefs games that have done just the number of Grammys that she won, right?

18:51Mike Tirico:Or like if the Ears tour was going on, if it happened to be in the city of the team they were playing or those couple of notes like that, but not a lot of stuff. Look, the Taylor thing - When she comes on camera, you're not being flippant. Like you kind of know what you're talking about. The way the cascade ran was she showed up at a Fox game first, right? And they got shots of her. And then I think there was a CBS game next. And my longtime, my dearest friend, Ian Eagle, who we were in school together, Ian interned for me when I was a local TV anchor in Syracuse and he was finishing up his college days.

19:33Mike Tirico:I encrushed it with a bunch of Taylor Swift song titles at the at the next game and then we had them on Sunday night in New York against the Jets and we just that was all the buzz that way it came out of nowhere and on the open open two shot I said hi Mike Tirico Chris Collinsworth thanks for having us in Swifties welcome it's good to have you with us we'll be here all night right because you just knew more people were coming to the table. But we didn't overdo it that night. We tried to, you didn't miss one second of anything significant in football because of that. And I think that's the level it rises to.

20:11Mike Tirico:But you can't deny that more people have come to the NFL who are not watching football because of Taylor Swift's far great reach. I mean, there are tons of anecdotal stories of dads who say their daughters watch football because Taylor was at a game and they've now had football conversations and created football fans. So it's real and it works and you're silly and negligent not to acknowledge it. But no, I do not have an in-depth file with lyrics that I can pull out for, hey, wait a minute, what lyric does this pull on, right? You go to Spotify, you download her music. Hey, let me take a quick break.

20:50I want to come back. I want to talk about some of your responsibilities at NBC.

21:05Mike, it's so great having you on here because I could talk about the NFL, talk about the Olympics, but I am most interested in your new duties calling the NBA games. When you knew that NBC was going to get the NBA, when you just knew it, take me through what your feelings were like. You must have been overjoyed, I would think, because I know that you really enjoyed doing that at ESPN.

21:34Mike Tirico:I did, John. And it's two separate sets of emotions. One is the, not really a kid, but the young adult who was starting in the business grew up on the NBA on NBC. Marv, Mike Fratello, Ahmad on the sideline, Bob in the studio, the music, Tom Hammond doing games with Bill Walton and Snapper Jones. That was a lot of the NBA that I grew up really in fandom in the early part of my career. So there's that nostalgia of the NBA on NBC. And then the personal part is when the NBA package left NBC and came to ESPN and ABC after the 2002 season. So really, the start of that happened in 03. I was lucky enough to be a part of it.

22:20Mike Tirico:I was doing the ABC studio, the hosting for the finals and doing that. and at the same time doing Friday night games with Tom Tolbert, mostly, out on the West Coast. And that evolved into a 15-year relationship with the league that led to a decade of working with Hubie Brown, who's just one of my favorite people on planet Earth, and walking into buildings and calling the NBA finals on ESPN radio with Hubie Brown and Jack Ramsey. You want to talk about being bookended by two encyclopedias. That's some knowledge right there. Yeah. I mean, if you think if you are of an age, you remember the Encyclopedia Britannica, right?

22:58Mike Tirico:The way they had all these encyclopedias lined up alphabetically. Like Hubie is A through, I don't know, A through like J, right? Jack is L through Z. And I'm like just K in the middle of my knowledge with those two brilliant people on each side. What a treat to be with that. So the NBA brings back so many good feelings and good memories. And you start to interact with folks, and there's still a lot of folks in the league office. Adam Silver was obviously somebody we were involved with during that time of the NBA. And to reconnect with so many of those folks in the different markets and cities and players you covered are now head coaches and guys who played are GMs and team presidents.

23:43Mike Tirico:It's really exciting. And to be a part of that chapter of sports television coming back with the NBA on NBC, all of it is a perfect fit. And I'm really excited for our start in October. So what specifically with the current NBA, because there are some players that are still around, of course, the old guard, but the current NBA is a lot different than when you called it a decade ago. What specifically are you looking forward to? The pace of the game, you'd get a Dallas or a Phoenix back in the day that I was really calling a ton of games. I remember I had a Dallas-Phoenix Western Finals that I did on ESPN Radio, and it was just up and down on the floor.

24:24Mike Tirico:It was just a treat to call those games. And I think that pace has become much more at the core of the NBA. I think that style, the three-pointers, the pace of play, analytics impact has really changed the game in so many ways. And I think you almost get desensitized to the quality of the athlete. So I went to a Pistons-Knicks game three opening round Eastern Conference playoff game at Little Seas of the Arena in downtown Detroit this year. And I sat in the second row and I was reminded of the combination of physicality, physical ability that you get when you call the games, John, because when you're network calling the game, you sit courtside.

25:11Mike Tirico:And in that first row, you are reminded at the speed and size of these athletes, plus their incredible ability to maneuver. I think TV sometimes doesn't do it justice. I think I forgot how incredible it is. And I'm really excited to be back around those athletes and the guys, especially in positionless basketball, where the big step out and do so much. And the guards can take it to the basket and show their skill around the rim. So those are the things that I'm excited to do. In addition to working with a really great team, a shout out to my boss, Sam Flood and Rick Cordella, like the team that team that we put together with our studio guys, with Carmelo Anthony, pride of the orange brought Syracuse, our championship.

25:58Mike Tirico:Thanks, Melo. Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter, Maria Taylor with those guys, but then our games with Reggie Miller and Jamal Crawford and Grant Hill. And the other, the other guys, you know, like Austin Rivers and Robbie Hummel, who you're going to hear, and Brian Scalabrini doing games, that group. I know I forgot somebody in there, but I'm just so excited that we've got a group of people together calling these games. For me, Noah Eagle, Michael Grady, and Terry Gannon, it's going to be so much fun to work with. So I'm excited. It's a great chapter for us as a company and a great chapter, I think, for the NBA to reconnect with NBC.

26:34I want to take this a little bit different route now. Talk about your career. You're well-established right now. And one of the stories that I've been writing about is just the market for on-air talent. You have sort of the Stephen A. Smiths on one side, the stars, and then you have sort of the middle class and the lower end. Actually, there's no middle class. It's usually the lower end or the bigger stars. How much are you in tune with what the market is and how much do you care about it versus being, you're the voice of the Olympics, man. You're the voice of Sunday night football. How do you balance those two?