Belichick’s H.O.F. Snub & Jerry Jones Succession Questions

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1:05Congratulations, you made the varsity of the podcast. My name is John Arand and I am Puck's sports correspondent and the host of this pod. It's Super Bowl week, the biggest trade show in sports business, which is why I asked Don Vannata to join me today for a Super Bowl preview, varsity style. That means talking about everything that's happening off the field. But before we get to Don, today is Sunday, February 1st, and here's what I'm watching. And yes, it has to do with the NFL. It is Super Bowl week, after all. My friend and colleague, Peter Hamby, often works with a research group called Echelon Insights so that he can better understand how the American public thinks about politics.

1:50Well, every now and then, Peter and Echelon throw in some sports questions, and I always find their results to be interesting. In one of their most recent polls, they included a question about the professional sports leagues that had the biggest fandom. And of course, no surprise, the NFL ended up on top. By far, almost 70 % of respondents described themselves as fans of the league. The usual suspects rounded out the list. Baseball, MLB was more popular than the NBA, at least in this poll, 47 % to 40%. The NHL was fourth at 26%. But here's where it gets interesting. The WNBA rounded out the top five.

2:3318 % of the respondents said that they were WNBA fans. Yes, there is a reason why the New York Liberty was valued at$450 million last spring after the team sold a minority stake. Women's sports, the WNBA, has a ton of growth potential, even amid all the labor unrest. If the WNBA were a stock, I certainly would be buying it. One other quick result from the poll that's worth noting, poll respondents registered a 40 % unfavorability rating toward the online sportsbook business. Only 24 % have a favorable view. Now, I'm not going to pretend to know what that means in the long term, but those numbers do suggest that sports headlong rush to sports betting is turning off a segment of their fan base.

3:25Okay, now let's get to Don Van Nade. Don Van Nade, thank you for returning to the pod. I've wanted to get you on to do a Super Bowl preview. And this week, as I was thinking about that, you broke the biggest story of the week about Bill Belichick not being a first ballot Hall of Famer. So I do want to get into that. I want to get into sort of the Robert Kraft, who is still potentially going to be in it as well. But I think the question that I have for you is, you know, the Baseball Hall of Fame, they're big on the morals clause there. It's the idea of people in the steroid areas, or they're having a really hard time getting into the hall.

4:10Is there anything similar? Have you ever seen anything like this with the NFL or with the Pro Football Hall of Fame? No, the Pro Football Hall of Fame doesn't have a morals clause. The voters, selectors are only supposed to consider somebody's performance. or in the case of Bill Belichick, his coaching record, in Robert Kraft's case, what he's done as an owner, as a contributor. There's nothing similar to that. And yet inside the deliberations involving Bill Belichick, he certainly came up and did deflate date. Now that is his performance as a coach. And our reporting showed that that was certainly part of the discussion when it came to Bill Belichick.

5:01And John, just more broadly, it's just stunning that Bill Belichick is not a first ballot Hall of Famer. Don Shula was, Vince Lombardi was, Chuck Knoll, Bill Walsh. Those are all people that arguably Bill Belichick is in that category or even a greater coach than the names I mentioned. And the fact that these selectors found a way to not put him in the first chance they had no matter what all the other reasons are, and a couple of people who voted against him have given some explanations that I think are pretty weak, the fact that he's not a first ballot Hall of Fame or whatever their reasons are is stunning and why it dropped, I think, like a bomb on the sports world this week, the news that we broke a few days ago.

5:51So I guess the question that people still have is why? Why? Is it is I think, too, there have been two voters. Is it right? Is that right? Is it two so far that have come out publicly? You said that not necessarily that they didn't vote against Belichick, but they they just didn't vote for him. They just wasn't on their ballots. And they made it seem from what I read that it's been it was a change in the voting process that made it more difficult to for. It wasn't a morals clause. It wasn't the fact that there was deflate gate and the spying on other teams that, you know, that happened to Belichick.

6:32Why did this happen, though? I mean, when that hit, I've rarely seen the sports community so united as to say what a bad decision that was that Belichick should be in. Yeah, John, we rarely see in American life these days nearly universal agreement on any issue. But on this one, we did. With just a very small minority believes that Belichick should have waited, particularly because of the Spygate cheating scandal, which he was punished for. Roger Goodell did punish the New England Patriots, a first-round draft pick. buying the team a half a million dollars and Belichick$250 ,000 for that Spygate operation that Belichick had for years in New England.

7:21But everybody agreed almost universally, despite that Spygate issue, that Belichick should have been the first ballot Hall of Famer. The two voters that have come forward and explained their reasons, and there's been a narrative that has grown here as well, that it's the process and not the selectors' choices. The selectors have one very simple mandate, and that is to vote for the person or the people they feel are the most qualified to have a bronze bust in Canton. And by that measure, the five candidates, and it's Bill Belichick, Robert Kraft, and three senior players, Roger Craig, Elsie Greenwood, and Kenny Anderson, measured against those four, Belichick you would think would be on all 50 ballots or 49.

8:11but 11 or more did not choose to vote for him. And again, the outrage is nearly universal over that. And the explanation by the two selectors who said they didn't put him on the ballot is more, well, they felt that these seniors, these senior players, it's their last chance and Belichick would get in anyway. Well, I would argue that's not your job to do that. Your job is to pick the people that are the most qualified, the most deserving. And no one among the five, in my view anyway, is more deserving than Bill Belichick. Well, it caught fire, that story, when you published it, not just because it was a shocking story that Belichick wasn't on the first ballot, but very rarely is the Hall of Fame scooped.

8:59I mean, very rarely do you hear before the official announcement about who's getting in or who's not getting in. And so I want to spin this forward a little bit, Don. Because of everything that happened this week, are there any changes to the voting process that you see being put in place for either next year or the year after? Oh, I absolutely think there'll be changes. I think the embarrassment and the disgrace that the Hall of Fame is feeling about this, the blowback is so intense. And among the selectors themselves, I've talked to a lot of them prior to our story on Tuesday, but certainly this past week, a lot of them are saying there absolutely has to be a change in the system.

9:53You're putting a contributor, like an owner, like Robert Kraft, a coach like Bill Belichick, and there's a queue of very deserving coaches behind Belichick that now get delayed. Mike Shanahan, Mike Holmgren, Tom Coughlin against three senior players. And so you have this situation where you have 50 voters that can pick three of the five. So there's 150 votes. the math gets complicated when you figure that you have to get at least 40 votes so already people are doing the math and trying to figure out whether robert craft got in if one of the senior players and and i think the favorite among the three is roger craig so if roger craig gets in then you start doing the math okay craig needed 40 uh there's 39 votes or less that belichick got so that's 79 and then there's only about 70 votes left that craft has to get 40 of and the math starts getting very, very complicated very quickly.

10:52And so I definitely think we'll see a change in the system because I don't think the Hall of Fame is going to want a situation that they have had to suffer through and endure this week happen again. So, Don, I want to start talking about Robert Kraft and his chances for making the Hall. You were just referencing them in the last answer. But you had a really good story that came out, I think about a year and a half ago about how he has been politicking and there's been a big PR campaign to get him to be part of the hall, to get him to be elected into the hall. Take us through what you found out in that.

11:33I know it's a year and a half old story, but it still resonates because the voting is going on right now. It does, John. Robert Kraft had been attempting to get in the Hall of Fame when I did that story for about a dozen years. No owner had tried to get in longer and wanted it more. And arguably, as I say in the story, there's probably no owner more deserving. Jerry Jones got in, Pat Boland got in, Eddie DiBartolo along the same timeline that Robert Kraft and people around him, particularly his PR man, Stacey James, were campaigning hard. And as part of that campaign, Kraft was a silent partner in a book that Jeff Benedict wrote called The Dynasty.

12:19Kraft owned the audiovisual rights to that book. Nobody knew that until I wrote that story. And so that book was really an argument for why Kraft deserved to be in the Hall of Fame. And then it was turned into a 10-part docuseries for Apple that Kraft also owned. And in that series, Belichick was really thrown under the bus repeatedly. And when it came out, and Patriots fans were quite upset that the way Belichick was portrayed in that docuseries, Kraft, and I saw it at an owner's meeting in Orlando, I was standing just a few feet from him, said, I'm really disappointed in the way this docuseries portrayed my great coach, my great former head coach, when in fact, Kraft had a lot to do with the documentary.

13:12Did you literally see the crocodile tears, Don? Right. And so that was really the beginning of sort of looking at this. And look, I think every owner, when they look in the mirror, they see a potential gold jacket that they're wearing in the reflection back at them. And Kraft certainly has felt that way. And he's 84 years old. This is the first year, remarkably, John, after 14 years that he's been in the mix for the Hall of Fame, that he's a finalist. And what are the odds that the first year Kraft's a finalist, he happens to be up against Bill Belichick. And then even more long odds are that Bill Belichick doesn't get in as a first ballot Hall of Famer.

14:01And so the conspiracy theories are already afoot that perhaps maybe Kraft had something to do with this, put his thumb on the scale or whatever. But if you go back and look at that story I wrote a year and a half ago, it really is prescient now to the Belichick versus Kraft sort of battle of the titans for immortality in camp.

14:25That politicking by Kraft, I'm taking it from your answer. that it still was kind of going on sort of a little bit more under the scenes this year. It's not like you wrote the story and people were appalled by it and it stopped. It still continued going on. Absolutely. I believe that Kraft this year, quietly, not as overt as a 10-part docuseries on Apple in trying to make an argument for the voters. The other thing I should point out, John, is that that book by Jeff Benedict, The Dynasty, Kraft sent it to every single season ticket holder for the Patriots. You know, it really was a sort of authorized biography, but nobody really knew that.

15:13And an argument, as I say, for Kraft getting in the Hall of Fame, as was the docuseries. But I believe absolutely this year that Kraft has quietly campaigned very, very hard, feels this is his year. And certainly now that he's a finalist, as I say, for the first time. And, you know, we don't know whether he's getting in or not. We're going to find out if I can't find out ahead of time. And I'm certainly trying to find out right now, as is my colleague, Seth Wickersham. But if we can't report it before next Thursday night at the NFL Honors, we'll find out whether Robert Kraft beat Bill Belichick into the Hall of Fame.

15:48And what a story that'll be if that's what has happened here. I know you're reporting this. Do you feel comfortable offering a prediction? Do you think, is it likely he's going to get in, unlikely? It's tough to predict, John. The math is not in Kraft's favor. I do believe one of the three senior players is getting in. And I think I might have said earlier, Roger Craig is the one I would bet on. So if that's the case and you break it down, there's only 150 votes that these 50 voters have, the maximum number. And already probably 75 or so are spoken for if you believe that one of the senior players did get in.

16:31And so then among the final three, one of them has to get 40. The math is not necessarily in the favor of Kraft, But a lot of people who have come out and talked about their votes, and I think there's about 20 of them, a lot of them did say they voted for Kraft. So that is a check on the other side. But it's hard to predict. But the math is not in his favor. But certainly what is in his favor is the fact that quite a few people have publicly said that they did vote for Kraft. And remarkably, a couple of them have said they voted for Kraft and not Bill Belichick. It is totally fascinating. The Belichick versus Kraft competition continuing through to the Hall of Fame is something it almost feels like fiction.

17:22It does. It does, John. And just and one other quick point, you know, there's really a lot of bad blood between them. I mean, we've really seen that. Remember, at North Carolina this fall, Belichick said that, you know, Patriot scouts are not welcome. You know, we did a story, myself, Jeremy Fowler and Seth Rickersham broke a story that when Belichick had his interview with Arthur Blank for the Falcons head coaching job last year, that a couple of calls were made by Kraft to Arthur Blank, the owner of the Falcons, saying you can't necessarily trust Bill Belichick at his word when he said he was going to cede some of the power to some of the other people in the front office of the Falcons.

18:06And so there is a lot of bad blood there. And I know from people around Belichick that he did not like the way he was portrayed in that Apple documentary. So that's the backdrop, too, for all of this, is you have bad blood between these two co-architects of the great dynasty in New England, literally going toe to toe for immortality in Canton, who gets there first. And right now, Belichick is the odd man out. And no one would have predicted that before this week. Totally. And when is Brady up? I believe it's not next year, but the following year. I think it's in 2028 that Brady's up. And right.

18:45And that raises the question, will the voters and the selectors talk about Spygate and Deflategate in particular about Brady? The selectors told on themselves a little bit last fall, John, because Kraft was up for that contributor finalist position. They didn't pick Kraft. They picked Ralph Hay. I don't know if your listeners know who Ralph Hay is. He was one of the co-founders of the National Football League way back in 1920 and that car dealership. Ralph Hay was a finalist over Robert Kraft. So clearly there was concerns about Kraft, maybe with Spygate and some other things where he didn't even make the finalist in that category, in the contributor category last year.

19:30And so, yeah, the intrigue, around this is fascinating. And look, the voters are a little, look, they take very seriously their obligation to do what's right. But already we've seen in some of the comments that have come out that the mandate to pick the person that is the most qualified was not followed here by at least some. And that has really angered fans and the public because that's the bare minimum you're supposed to do. And if you're sort of wondering, well, this is my last chance maybe to vote for Ken Anderson. I mean, Kenny Anderson, the Bengals quarterback over Bill Belichick, which one of the selectors has admitted of doing, just that alone has created a lot of fury and a lot of fans who feel Belichick should have been a first ballot Hall of Famer.

20:20I mean, I wouldn't pick Kenny Anderson over Boomer Esiason, but that's a different podcast right there.

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22:04Don, the real reason before you broke that story that I wanted you to come on is that you're a perfect person to bring on for kind of just a Super Bowl preview. And of course, this is a varsity. We're about the business of sports. So we don't we don't much care about what happens on the field. I just want to give you an open-ended question. What are some of the off-field storylines that you're really going to be focused on this week coming out of San Francisco slash Santa Clara? Well, the overarching one is just how the NFL can continue to increase revenues. And they have so many different levers they can pull to do that.

22:46The most obvious one is the 18-game regular season, which I know that Roger Goodell and many owners are laser-focused on making that happen as soon as possible. Because with more inventory, you can then sell more games to the networks and the streamers. And the NFL is in this unique position in American life where they have a stranglehold on American culture and entertainment in a way that no other organization has. And so 18 games is a big part of it that I think we'll have discussions about. You know, John, you have a badly crippled National Football League Players Association. We broke those stories last summer, as you know, about Lloyd Howell and his love of going to strip clubs on a union nickel.

23:40and you have an NFLPA that's in disarray. There's a criminal investigation right now in Brooklyn that's very active looking into not only the NFLPA, but the Major League Baseball Players Association as well, which is an overhang over everything. So you have a crippled union. And so I think that 18 games and opting out of the television contracts, and you know this, and the streaming contracts, that's also a big priority for the National Football League to maybe open those discussions as early as this year. Now, ideally, they'll have the 18-game season first, because then they'll have a lot more inventory to offer.

24:21But I wouldn't be surprised even if they don't have the 18 games, that we'll have discussions beginning later this year with the networks and the streamers. When the NBA signed that colossal$77 billion deal, it reset the market, John. You know this, where the NFL now looks like a bargain to the networks and to the streamers. And if you can get Apple in play as well, you already have Amazon and Netflix. That's a lot of networks and streamers vying for very limited product. I mean, the NBA, you could argue there's too much product, right? I mean, the season is probably too long and the playoffs are too long, but the NFL has limited product.

25:05And so that's going to be a lot of the discussions out in San Francisco this week is 18 games, new television deals for everybody. And how can they end these deals several years earlier? And the cascading money supply will continue for the owners. And the other is the equity of teams. I believe the Dallas Cowboys, you know, Forbes says Jerry Jones's team is worth$13 billion. I think that's low by at least$7 billion. I think that if Jerry wanted to sell 10 % of the Cowboys right now, today, I think he could get$2 billion for it. So that puts the Cowboys at a$20 billion valuation. And the reason these valuations are skyrocketing is because you have long labor deals.

25:55So that's really, really good. And you have, obviously, this bonanza of television money that's going to continue going forward. Yeah, long labor deals, long TV deals. It's a TV deal that goes into the 2030s, and you already know that the TV networks, they're the ones that want to open up this deal early because they want to get it even further because that helps out there.

26:23You mentioned a lot there. I want to go to the weekend players' union because I think that that is sort of a domino here. The players' union needs to approve of the 18-game schedule. Another way to increase the number of games is to increase the, and I believe Robert Kraft, of all people, has talked about this. Every team is going to play an international game, and so they're going to increase the number of international games. By increasing the number of international games, do they need player association approval on that one? I don't believe they do. I think that that's something that they can do themselves.

27:04I think it's only the 18 games. I think it's only an increase in the regular season. I think they'd like to have the buy-in, and that might be something that will be discussed. But I don't believe it's mandatory. Only the length of the regular season. That only was entered into the CBA, John, in 2011 by DeMora Smith, that if you increase the number of games in a regular season, you need to sign off by the players unit. Now, if you talk to league executives, if you talk to team executives or team owners, you will walk away thinking 18 games is a fait accompli. It's certainly going to happen. It's a surprise that it hasn't happened yet.

27:46last time that you were on the pod, you talked about how the Players Association, you know, was at some, at one point it was on the table and then they sort of pulled it back a little bit. Where does that stand now? Is that, is that a legitimate bargaining chip for the Players Association? Or is it something that's going to, we all believe it's going to happen, but is it something that's going to be sort of bulldozed over by the, by the league and by the owners? Well, the level of confidence that owners have in 18 games and Roger Goodell is kind of astonishing. Again, I think it's a reflection of the weekend National Football League Players Association.