0:00

The Max is the spot

0:02

for that track drop. The

0:30

Max is the spot for that track

0:32

drop. The

1:00

Max is the spot for that track drop.

1:30

What will be the next track to see what the next track

1:32

drop is? I

1:34

think it's a little bit of a question here. I'm

1:37

not sure what to say. But

1:39

I am. I don't

1:41

know. I'm not sure. I feel like I'm really

1:43

applying your ball, knowing skills properly, but

1:45

you have said skills. You have said, you

1:47

know, philosophy. Neil, I will say

1:49

it's trapezoids. It's not trapezoids.

1:52

Okay. You're going to need to apologize

1:54

to push for that one. Well, that's,

1:56

I think, I think that's a good question. I think that's a

1:58

good question. I think that's a good question. in

2:00

cleanup and restoration and is known

2:02

for making any mess like it

2:05

never even happened with over 200

2:07

look 2000 excuse me locations nationwide

2:09

they're faster to any size

2:12

disaster so speaking of making things

2:14

like they never even happened today's

2:17

may occult us you know what guys I'll

2:19

kick it off I'll apologize for the for

2:21

the trapezoids mix up there that's

2:23

an easy one but also a couple

2:27

Jerry Jones episode things I want to go back

2:29

to first the pronunciation of text

2:31

SRAM so SRAM it does not

2:33

rhyme with ROM it's not text

2:35

SRAM it's text SRAM rhymes with

2:37

jam so even as we were

2:40

preparing for this episode we

2:42

go all right so we got a minute

2:44

call on text SRAM right SRAM not it's

2:47

like no SRAM I'm he nailed

2:49

it when we went live though I was

2:51

on the edge of my seat participation was

2:53

he going to get it right and he

2:55

did I written up with the notes all

2:58

the one that rhymes with jam does not

3:00

rhyme with ROM spelled it wrong in the

3:02

agenda though he's not an S T R

3:04

A M in the agenda well regardless you

3:06

know a shout out to Texas family

3:08

and and we'll do our best to

3:11

get that one right the other thing I wanted to call out a few

3:14

listeners D M and one you know just

3:16

some some some Texas folks out there one

3:18

of the correct a few things not

3:21

really a may occult of getting

3:23

something wrong but more of an omission and I thought

3:26

this was a good one Jerry Jones apparently

3:28

is very good about letting local radio

3:30

and TV analysts criticize the team I

3:33

think he's been good at that throughout his whole

3:35

ownership tenure and I think

3:37

that's worth calling out in today's environment when

3:39

you look at the Orioles spending their

3:41

play-by-play announcer last season for being critical

3:44

I know there's been a lot of chatter in

3:46

NBA circles about the local broadcast teams

3:48

just being cheerleaders you know for their

3:50

local team the team that they work

3:52

for so I thought

3:54

that was something that you know Jerry should be

3:56

shouted out for yeah Jerry understands how to how

3:59

to create juice And, you

4:01

know, it's, you know, he, like he

4:03

even calls into some of those local radio, like his,

4:05

you know, talking to some of the ticket guys and

4:07

all that. One other

4:09

thing a lot of people got on us

4:11

about, we just weren't hard enough

4:14

on the Patriots and Kraft for the whole

4:16

Aaron Thal, you know, Aaron

4:18

Hernandez situation. TCI, I

4:21

gotta say, I wish you would have spent like an hour on

4:23

the doghouse that Aaron Rodgers built. The

4:25

life's like the full size doghouse they had in

4:27

his backyard. Remember that when the cops were like

4:29

searching, they were like, it was like a children's

4:31

castle. They were basically going in there to see

4:34

if perhaps there were. Aaron Rodgers or Aaron. We

4:36

might need to call for a pro in

4:38

for that one. You said

4:40

Aaron Rodgers. Excuse me. My

4:43

Aaron Rodgers may have been on my mind a

4:45

bit recently, but Aaron Hernandez. You

4:48

know, I'm not, I'm not, let's

4:52

see, I'm not unconvinced that

4:55

Aaron Rodgers didn't kill it. Aaron

4:57

Hernandez. Wow. Live

5:00

mea culpa is being lobbed right here for the

5:02

first time ever on the trap. This

5:05

is, and this is, this is no longer

5:07

part of the ad. All right. We have

5:09

to make those like they never even happened.

5:11

Uh, Katie V you got a mea culpa.

5:14

Yeah. I got kind of a reverse mea

5:16

culpa, Neil. Uh, I got a couple of people who, who emailed me be

5:18

like, Hey, love the show. Appreciate what you guys

5:21

do. But I got to tell you, you

5:23

got the stuff about the little rock six wrong. It

5:25

was a little rock nine. And

5:27

I got to say no, actually, uh, I

5:29

was educating some Arkansians or

5:31

Arkansasians on their own civil rights

5:34

history. The little

5:36

rock nine of course was a famous,

5:38

uh, civil rights integration moment, but

5:41

so was the little rock six at North

5:43

central little rock high school. And

5:45

Jerry Jones was present for that one. Uh,

5:47

I don't know that maybe they are in textbooks there in

5:49

Arkansas. They don't, they only have time for one, uh, sort

5:52

of a national guard being present for an integration moment,

5:55

but there were two different incidents and one of them

5:57

was called little rock six. And that's

5:59

where Jerry Jones. was present on the steps to

6:01

their credit. Both guys who emailed me, I was

6:03

like, wow, you have educated me. Thank you. KVV

6:06

ball, no, or KVV for this moment. I'll

6:09

be really honest. I thought we were going to

6:11

get so much more flack from the Jerry Jones

6:13

episode of like, it's such a hefty lift

6:16

and there's no way you could do the guy justice

6:18

and, and you know, an hour, an hour and a

6:20

half. And I think, you know,

6:22

I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of. Hostility

6:25

towards us from, I think people understood TC when

6:28

you called it the beginner's guide to Jerry Jones.

6:30

Cause obviously there's a graduate level course that you

6:32

could take. You get real deep on some of

6:34

that stuff, but I think we hit up the

6:36

most important things. Yeah. DC,

6:39

anything to apologize for? No,

6:41

I think we're beyond beyond reproach. Um,

6:44

you know, we had a tornado

6:46

here in town yesterday. I'm sure you

6:49

some surf, you know, if anybody's listening in Jack's

6:51

there's. So pro could be going

6:53

to call. Well, that's perfect. Yeah. Yeah. If

6:55

you have any tornado issues, serve pro.com or

6:58

call one hundred serve pro today. We appreciate

7:00

that. It's sponsoring the maya culpa segment, uh,

7:02

this year. All right. We do have first

7:05

owner we're doing two today. First guy definitely

7:07

wish he could call serve pro for a

7:09

recent event. He's been in the news. It

7:12

involves throwing drinks at Jags fans. A true

7:14

cleanup, a true cleanup. Uh,

7:16

TC is going to spearhead our

7:19

dive into David Tepper's life and

7:22

career. TC take it away. Yeah.

7:26

Uh, yeah, definitely been in the news lately. Uh,

7:28

you know, obviously fired his

7:31

coach Frank Reich after firing

7:34

Matt rule after firing Steve

7:36

Wilkes after, uh, firing

7:39

Ron Rivera in season. So, you know,

7:41

a lot of lot going on there

7:43

on the, on the, you know, terminations.

7:45

Uh, but this is, uh, this is definitely the

7:47

fastest that an owner has ever taken ownership and

7:49

then made it onto the trap draw to be

7:51

discussed as an owner. So you, you know, you

7:53

have to really do some dirt to be able

7:55

to, to get that right. What

7:58

do you lot of chatter out there about him? having

8:00

the title belt for worst owner right now. Yeah. Well,

8:02

it's funny though. I didn't really like know that much

8:05

about him or, you know, like I just knew he

8:07

was like a kind of a hedge

8:09

fund, just finance guru,

8:11

but you know, didn't really know what

8:14

his story was. And I don't know.

8:16

I kind of find myself like I'm

8:18

a little bit drawn to the guy

8:21

after researching him. Uh, he was born

8:23

on September 11th, 1957, which

8:26

is tough. Uh, so he's 66 years old at

8:29

the moment. He's

8:33

from Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh through and

8:35

through guys. His, uh, his

8:38

dad was an accountant. Uh, his

8:40

mom was a grade school teacher. I

8:42

don't know if it's said on Wikipedia, his dad

8:44

was accountant, but I didn't get that sense in

8:46

his commencement speech they did in 2018 at Carnegie

8:49

Mellon. Uh, it didn't sound like his

8:52

dad was, you know, the most white

8:54

collar dude. It sounded like he was more like

8:56

rough and tumble Pittsburgh, uh, within

8:59

that speech. This is why you can't copy

9:01

Wikipedia. As we've learned exactly, I went to

9:03

the primary source docs, you know, so, uh,

9:06

you know, the, the commencement speech,

9:09

he talked in it about buying the Panthers

9:11

and he started crying. He's like, Hey, like

9:13

a kid kid, a kid who couldn't afford

9:15

to go to a Steelers game is now

9:17

approved to buy the, you know, NFL

9:20

team. He started crying, but within that,

9:22

he talked about his dad and working hard ends meet.

9:24

And then he said, my dad had a bad side

9:27

too. He was physically abusive to me. I'm

9:29

sure it was a cycle that he got from his father

9:31

and that his father got from his father. There was nothing

9:33

more terrifying in my life. And I prayed that I would

9:35

never be the same to my children and the

9:38

greatest accomplishment of my life. I broke that cycle.

9:41

And, uh, you know, he got a standing ovation

9:43

at the commencement speech and talks

9:45

about, you know, after that kind of going to an inner

9:47

city high school and how they couldn't even have fans

9:50

in the stands when the two rival high schools

9:52

would play. You know,

9:54

a lot of both socioeconomic

9:56

and racial animus there.

10:00

And, you know, kind of, he said

10:02

he started his first

10:04

job. He applied to work at McDonald's

10:07

and he got denied working for McDonald's. And I think

10:09

this is, this whole thing is

10:11

like, David Tepper is one big fucking

10:13

chip on the shoulder, like that's, that's,

10:16

that's how he comes off

10:18

to me of like, he just wants

10:20

to prove the world wrong. But he

10:22

attended Pitt. He paid his way through

10:24

school, attended Pitt, and then went

10:27

to work for a bank for a couple

10:29

of years and then went back to Carnegie

10:31

Mellon or back to Pittsburgh, back to Carnegie

10:33

Mellon got his, I

10:35

think the equivalent of an MBA now, but it was like a management

10:38

and industrial sciences or something like that. So,

10:40

but he was unsatisfied with his role at

10:42

the bank. You know, he sold

10:45

knives door to door at one point. He

10:47

mentioned that in his commencement speech. I know

10:49

you probably, probably find,

10:51

find some community with him on that front. Not

10:53

sure if they're cut Co or not. Wait,

10:56

did you sell knives? Yeah. I sold knives for

10:58

a summer, uh, from New York college.

11:01

How did that go? It went really well. Uh,

11:04

yeah. I mean, I made a door to door

11:06

thing or making a pyramid scheme. You call your

11:08

parents friends and then they give you numbers to

11:10

call. And then you tap into like a rich

11:13

elementary school pipeline who have never seen the penny

11:15

get cut or, you know, the whole, the whole

11:17

spiel. And so then I, I kind of raked

11:19

at the beginning of the summer with,

11:22

with friendlies, and then at the end of the

11:24

summer with like people that didn't really know that

11:26

the whole spiel. So we, we

11:29

could take that to another trap draw episode. Well,

11:31

one thing I just love about these is we get to find

11:33

out each things about each other. Yeah. Of course. Good

11:36

investigated into, into our own lives. Yeah.

11:39

So Tepper, he gets this job

11:41

with Republic steel. All

11:43

of his business school buddies are shitting on him

11:45

because he gets this job at Republic steel and

11:47

there's an across the board pay cut at Republic

11:49

steel. And they're like, Oh, you, you

11:52

really shows wisely going to work for

11:54

Republic steel, then, then he goes to

11:56

work for Keystone mutual funds. Then

11:58

in 1985. He

12:00

goes to Goldman Sachs, which I think he had been

12:02

denied from a position there

12:04

previously. And so he

12:06

goes to work for Goldman Sachs and their high yield

12:09

group as a credit analyst. This was back in the

12:11

80s. And TC, I probably

12:13

mentioned on the chapter before, I'm in

12:15

the middle of this book, Denna Thieves,

12:17

which is all about this. And Goldman

12:20

has all the egg on their face.

12:22

Their head junk bond, high yield guy

12:24

gets, they're at the center of

12:26

this whole savings and loan junk bond shit show

12:28

in the late 80s. And it sounds like Kepper

12:30

was sitting at the center of

12:32

the hurricane, which is sick. Well,

12:35

yeah, so he's this bankruptcy, just the

12:37

worst assets, right? Just like junkiest

12:40

junk bonds ever. And

12:43

he's credited with doing big things at

12:45

Goldman during the 1987

12:48

market crash. And basically,

12:50

a lot of people kind of credited him with helping

12:52

to save the firm. And he's not even, he's

12:54

an analyst at this point. He's just

12:57

on the desk. So he's figuring,

12:59

all right, I'm going to get partner.

13:01

It's a shoe in. He gets passed

13:03

over for partner because he was just

13:05

loud and profane as fuck.

13:09

Even in his commencement speech,

13:11

he's like, hey, I'm trying

13:13

to keep this as above

13:15

board. And that seems to

13:17

be kind of a theme with him

13:19

as well. People have described the, his

13:22

current offices is like, it's like

13:24

walking into a really upscale frat

13:26

house or a really upscale

13:29

sports bar, where you just feel like

13:31

you're in a dude's room. So

13:34

he gets passed over for

13:36

partner twice in two years, kind

13:39

of on the backside of that. Then

13:41

he branches off on his own and he

13:44

operates from a buddy's desk

13:47

for a while, trading out of his own personal

13:49

account to basically

13:52

raise enough money to start his own fund. Starts

13:54

his own fund, Apple Lusa in

13:57

93, which even the name stands

13:59

out. as like

14:02

Pittsburgh, you know, like

14:04

when you start to compare it to like every

14:06

other hedge fund

14:08

or financial shop, like Appaloosa doesn't scream like

14:11

high brow to me. Yeah,

14:14

yeah, kind of, you know, it kind of

14:16

sounds very, very rust belt or very Appalachia.

14:19

And then, yeah, basically,

14:21

it just starts absolutely cleaning up.

14:23

I mean, all

14:25

of the, you know, everybody says

14:27

he's like one of the ball's easiest, just

14:30

makes ridiculous plays on

14:32

stuff. I think our

14:34

fucking long people are here. They

14:36

like, like it never fails. Like

14:38

they show up at like, well,

14:41

I'll have like one podcast in a

14:43

week and they show up like 10

14:45

minutes into that podcast every time. Unbelievable.

14:50

Like should leave this in. Fantastic.

14:53

David Deborah would have those people

14:55

murdered. Yeah. Well, that

14:57

was, there was, there's all sorts of quotes

15:00

out there of like, uh,

15:02

let me, God, let me find this quote of,

15:04

yeah, he's just like always characterizes himself as an

15:06

upper middle class guy who happens to be a

15:08

billionaire. He said, he said when

15:10

he goes to a restaurant, yeah,

15:12

like if someone's an asshole, like a waiter,

15:15

I think I could just buy this place and fire that

15:17

guy. Like that's like the way

15:19

this guy's mind works. I had it, I

15:21

had it written down like Tepper is the

15:24

embodiment of like money doesn't change people. It

15:26

just accentuates what's like, you know, kind of

15:29

already either is good or sucks about that person. And

15:32

it seems like Tepper seems like the guy,

15:34

a guy at this point, he should not sit down for

15:36

an interview because like a lot of, uh, I got a

15:38

lot of quotes in here from this New York mag profile

15:40

in 2010. And it's just like, man,

15:43

you probably shouldn't say that stuff. Like, and,

15:45

but he also doesn't give a fuck. So

15:47

you know, you kind of, I'm kind of with you. The more

15:49

I researched in the morning, like, man, what an asshole, but like

15:52

he doesn't care what I think. So good for him. Yeah.

15:56

As, as you can hear the blowers, my

15:58

garage. It's

16:01

funny too. I have artificial terror from my

16:03

backyard and the lawn people still manage to

16:05

come at the wrong time in the backyard.

16:09

But we're just going to power through it. Tepper

16:11

also has a tendency of saying, you

16:13

know, you know, I was successful. I was never

16:15

afraid to go back to Pittsburgh and work in

16:18

the steel mills. That's, you know, it's kind of

16:20

like, hey, you know what, like I started from

16:22

the bottom and I, you know, I was born

16:24

in this shit kind of thing. So,

16:26

but yeah, I mean basically like his business career

16:28

is just like the guy's a force

16:30

of nature. Like he keeps a set of

16:33

brass testicles on his desk. I

16:40

try to see the quote on brass

16:42

testicles is quote Tepper has

16:44

a pair of brass testicles cartoonishly

16:46

huge and grotesquely veiny. They

16:48

are fixed to a plaque inscribed with the words,

16:50

the most valuable set of all time and

16:53

are not out of place at all in Appaloosa's offices,

16:55

which resemble a high end sports bar. The

16:59

balls were a gift to Tepper from a former

17:01

employee, Alan

17:03

Fornier, who

17:06

now runs his own fund, pennant

17:08

capital management in the wake of Tepper's big score in 2003.

17:12

Tepper had purchased the distressed debt of three

17:14

of the three then largest bankruptcies

17:16

in corporate history, Enron, WorldCom and

17:18

insurance giant Conseco. When they

17:21

emerged from bankruptcy and the debt

17:23

appreciated Appaloosa went up a

17:25

whopping 148%. So,

17:28

basically, yeah, sorry, from reading this stuff. It's

17:31

like he just going back

17:33

to the Goldman days. When

17:36

you're investing in this distressed stuff, he just kind

17:38

of had the stomach to like ride it out

17:40

longer than anybody else, like go deeper into the

17:42

bet and ride it out for longer. And

17:44

there was another quote in this article. It

17:47

said those trades were classic Tepper, according to

17:49

his former analyst, in

17:51

that they were complicated in execution, but

17:53

simple in theory. Quote, he takes a

17:55

macro perspective on something. For instance, for

17:57

instance, this European sovereign crisis. which

18:00

is that it's not going to be that bad. And

18:02

then instead of using it like an investing

18:05

currency or something macro, he then applies it

18:07

to like a micro stock or goes really,

18:09

really hard on like, well, of course,

18:11

like WorldCom and Enron, like

18:14

the people that have debt are going to get paid out first. So

18:16

I'm just going to go buy up as much of that as I

18:18

can get. And I'm just going to sit on it and like,

18:20

I'm not going to lose my nerve. And it's like,

18:23

it's kind of crazy. But like, that's, you know, I

18:25

do admire that because that's really fucking hard to do.

18:29

It was the same thing in like, after

18:31

you know, 0708, like in 2009, he's like,

18:33

everybody's freaking out about like, hyperinflation

18:35

and all that. And he's like, not like the markets

18:37

are going to adjust, like, we'll figure this out, we'll

18:40

get through it. And like, sure

18:42

enough, they do. And then he's long on certain

18:44

stuff like Amazon and Alibaba and stuff like that.

18:46

It's, you know, kind of foundational as well. Can

18:49

we just pause for a second, think about the

18:51

fact that his friend Alan had to find like

18:53

a brass sculptor and be like, Hey, I want

18:56

this pair of balls and I want you to

18:58

make them like extra big and extra veiny. Like

19:00

don't don't short me on the veins in these

19:02

balls. All right, because I want them to really

19:04

represent the fortitude that

19:06

my friend David Tepper has. And then

19:08

some brass sculptor had to sit there

19:10

and like, you know, picture some balls

19:12

or you know, look at pictures of balls and then,

19:15

you know, craft them and deliver

19:17

them. And we should put this New York

19:19

mag profile and we'll put it in the

19:21

show notes because it's definitely worth a read.

19:23

The other thing he keeps up like one

19:25

of his companies he invested in is

19:27

like a silicon like

19:30

breast implant company. And he

19:32

would keep like the like breast

19:35

implants on his desk and he'd like throw

19:37

it at people. And he thought it was

19:39

like really, like, I guess really funny. Like

19:42

throw some silicon breast implants. That's

19:44

the long guys. Just the long guys. Just,

19:47

you know, for my fucking life

19:50

over here. Oh, man. That's

19:53

good. I mean, it's just crazy

19:55

too, like the amount of money

19:57

that this guy's making, like, you know,

20:01

61% return in 01 he had this huge fourth quarter

20:03

in 05 like just like urban

20:05

legend shit on Wall Street Cleaned

20:08

up in 09 he made four billion dollars

20:10

personally like the firm made eight billion clear

20:12

eight billion He made four billion personally. I

20:14

think he's he's up to 16

20:16

18 20 billion dollars, you know, just

20:18

an all from just like this,

20:22

you know betting his own money basically at

20:24

the start here and then But

20:27

TC it seems yes juxtaposed that

20:29

with like His office

20:32

is like I know where they are They're out by the

20:34

Shorthills Mall in New Jersey, right and like

20:36

a nondescript red building and another

20:38

thing from this article was like Quote he's been

20:40

known to badger the secretaries about spending too much

20:42

money on paper cups for the office and for

20:44

years He drove to work in a rusted minivan

20:47

Even while one employee notes half the people in

20:49

the office were driving Porsches. So,

20:51

you know, it's that like Just

20:54

desire and drive to make as like the

20:56

goal is just to make the money But

20:58

at the same time it's like no, no, no, we

21:00

are not gonna let the cost creep up over here

21:03

You know and just kind of we're making money our

21:05

way. Yeah, we're a we're a lean shop We're

21:08

not gonna forget what got us here in the first place

21:10

like he lived in a pretty modest

21:13

house in New Jersey I think he moved down to

21:15

South Beach for a while like he moved the firm

21:18

down there in 2016 and then moved

21:20

back to Jersey The he

21:22

got divorced in 2016. He

21:25

was married for 30 years got three kids

21:28

There was first wife and then was remarried a few

21:31

years ago, and I think she's from New Jersey

21:33

She went to Rutgers new

21:35

wife and he moved moved back to New

21:37

Jersey in I think 2000 and Like

21:41

he's paying like a hundred to a hundred and

21:43

twenty million dollars in state income tax a year

21:45

in New Jersey Because

21:47

of that move Neil my I

21:49

mean I think that by far the best The

21:52

best story out. There's the one

21:55

about the house in the Hamptons for sure Do

21:57

you want to do you want to handle that? I'll be happy to you. So

22:00

TC alluded to his days at Goldman. So

22:02

Tepper didn't do a good job climbing

22:04

the political ladder at Goldman. He had a really good

22:07

relationship like the head of his division, but

22:09

his direct boss or so it was the other

22:11

way around. The guy that like, when he became

22:13

this all-star and he kind of got Goldman out

22:15

of all this trouble by buying up

22:18

the bonds of like all these distressed banks.

22:21

And then they wrote it out and then Goldman came out

22:23

like looking really good in the, I think the early 90s.

22:27

He got passed over by this guy, John

22:29

Corzine twice to become a Goldman partner. And

22:32

I think what's really funny about this is,

22:34

you know, he was basically described as like

22:37

too brash, too crass, too confrontational, a know

22:39

it all, just not really Goldman

22:41

material. What's funny is you fast forward

22:43

like 30 years and that sounds a

22:45

lot like their current boss, David

22:47

Solomon, DJ DeSaul. If

22:50

you've read another recent like New Yorker article about

22:52

him, he's taken, he's kind of not

22:54

the traditional Goldman mold, but he gets passed

22:56

over two years in a row. So he

22:58

bounces, but you know, like TC said,

23:01

just a massive chip on his shoulder. So

23:04

you fast forward to after Appaloosa takes

23:06

off in the early 2000s,

23:09

he bought John Corzine's house in

23:12

the Hamptons, but it was his ex, he

23:14

got divorced. So his ex wife had the

23:16

Hamptons house. He bought it. And

23:18

by the way, Corzine is like a US Senator at this

23:20

point from New Jersey. He's

23:24

friends with Neil, the guy Bob Menendez. You

23:27

may have to. So Corzine lost the house in

23:29

the divorce. Lost the house in divorce. And Tepper

23:31

buys it. It goes on the market

23:33

from the ex wife. He buys it for like 46 or 47 million.

23:37

He razzes it, just basically burns it,

23:39

just like knocks, demolishes the whole

23:41

thing. Burns it down and it pisses on

23:43

the ash. And then he builds a house

23:45

that is, let me find my notes

23:47

here because it's good stuff. Tepper's

23:49

mansion located in the Hamptons took over five

23:52

years to build and sits on the grounds

23:54

of his old boss's former home that he

23:56

purchased for $43.5 million. So

23:59

he bought the house. house and

24:01

just knocks it down and builds one that's like twice his

24:03

bid. The new 11,268

24:06

square foot home is almost exactly

24:08

twice the size of his boss's

24:10

home and boasts a giant swimming

24:13

pool, pool house, three-car garage and tennis court with

24:16

the home facing out towards the ocean. The

24:18

home is surrounded by lush green rolling lawns,

24:20

has a separate guest house, a massive driveway

24:23

with manicured gardens and a jacuzzi relaxation

24:25

area overlooking the ocean.

24:28

And then he said, that was all from a separate article, but

24:31

in the New York mag article, he said, quote, you

24:33

can say there's a little justice in this world. Tepper

24:36

said, referring to getting the last laugh

24:38

over Korsai. This

24:40

is like 25 years later. Wow, so

24:43

he wasn't at Goldman when this happened. No, no, this was

24:45

like 20 years later. Okay.

24:48

So, but it was kind of like, I'm

24:50

going to buy the ex's house. I'm

24:53

going to buy the old boss's house and get the last laugh here.

24:56

He still got that chip on his shoulder. That's

24:59

incredible. I love that. I kind of love

25:01

stories like that about rich people's extreme pettiness.

25:03

Like if you're, I think when we do

25:06

these series, what we sort of common that

25:08

emerges just like how relentlessly driven

25:10

so many of these like, you know,

25:12

scrappers who came from nothing were and

25:14

then how like little petty slights like

25:16

basically motive that motivated them forever to

25:19

just work their ass off. Yeah.

25:21

And it seems like too, there's

25:23

a deep sense of, you know,

25:26

it may not be like treating people great,

25:28

but it seems like there's a sense of

25:30

maybe fairness or justice with him where I

25:32

was one of the positive things he said he learned from his

25:34

dad was like, who do you

25:36

treat better? The president or, or your garbage

25:38

man. And he's like, both like you treat

25:41

them both the same, right? It's

25:43

not like you treat the garbage man better, but

25:45

he, but he may not have like a great track

25:47

record of treating his own employees that

25:50

way or whatever. But it kind of feels like if you're in,

25:52

you're in kind of thing until you're not. Well,

25:55

it was like, he's a, he's got a Jekyll and

25:57

Hyde personality a little bit. It sounds like in the

25:59

office during business. hours. Like there's a

26:01

quote in there about he'd say, like, do you

26:03

know what a schmuck is to like an employee? They'd be like,

26:05

go look in the mirror. But then like, you

26:07

know, he walked to the car

26:09

with them and they didn't, you know, he

26:11

keeps everybody like, like way off balance. Another

26:13

good one was when Tepper coached elementary school

26:16

kids in softball, he could be

26:18

heard screaming all the way down the block. Which

26:21

is sick, which is kind of sick. I'm

26:23

kind of into that. And he

26:26

gives like, he's given like $160 million

26:28

to his alma mater, like to Carnegie

26:30

Mellon, like the business schools named after

26:32

that. There's a quad named the Tepper

26:34

quad. There's given a bunch of money

26:37

to pit. He's, you know,

26:39

like granted, you know, yeah, I'm sure like he's

26:41

getting tax breaks and all there's all sorts of

26:43

stuff here and there. But like, it seems like

26:45

there's a, there is a charitable element

26:47

and wanting to pay it forward to be

26:49

very much like a bootstrap. You know, hey, I lifted

26:51

myself up on my big straps kind of guy. TC,

26:55

I got one more Tepper thing before we

26:57

talk a little bit about the Panthers and

26:59

I want to touch on

27:01

Jerry Richardson too. So I found this,

27:03

I did a little search on New York

27:05

Times archives. 2011, there's an ATM story in

27:08

the Hamptons. Apparently somebody left a

27:10

receipt in a Capital One ATM out

27:12

in East Hampton. And the

27:14

balance said $99,864,731.94. The

27:20

person took out $400. So somebody had 99, 100,

27:22

not what yeah, $99 million in a savings account

27:28

with it was getting like 1.1% interest. So there

27:30

was this like whole thing where people were

27:34

like, who could it be? And everybody was saying it was

27:36

had to be Tepper. Like he's the only guy that would

27:38

do this. It was like a flex, but he denied that

27:40

it was him. So I don't

27:42

know if they ever found out who did it,

27:44

but that was like, they're like two separate New

27:46

York Times articles, like featuring Tepper

27:49

and everyone's like convinced it was him. There's

27:53

a famous story at ESPN that Floyd Mayweather

27:55

took one of my colleagues and friends, Tim

27:57

Keown to the AT&T. ATM, just to basically

27:59

like show him the ATM receipt that said

28:02

he had like $130 million in

28:05

his like checking account. So

28:07

kind of, Neil, do you want to do Panthers now?

28:09

Or do you want to do kind of Tepper's like

28:11

so Tepper buys a 5% stake in the Steelers in

28:16

2009, which is kind of continuing along

28:18

with their owner and training program that they

28:20

seem to be running over there where I'm

28:22

sure the Rooney's are getting shipped off of

28:25

like, hey, you're paying the Piper, you're

28:27

going to pay, you know, 30% over what the

28:30

market value is here while they vet you as a

28:32

future owner kind of thing, right? Because they've done this

28:34

with several of the other owners. They did it with

28:36

Haslam. We looked at that. Exactly. Yeah,

28:38

that's kind of a, hey, like full

28:40

circle moment for him of like, you know,

28:43

grew up being a big Steelers fan. And

28:45

then so we'll fast forward to 2018 Panthers.

28:47

You want to talk about Jerry Richardson, Neil?

28:49

Yeah. Richard's in born July 18th, 1936. Of

28:54

course he is the original

28:56

founding owner of the Panthers. I think he kind

28:58

of approached the NFL in the late eighties, like

29:00

89 or maybe 1990 and said like,

29:03

I want to bring a franchise to the state

29:06

of North Carolina. And he was

29:08

very player. Yeah. Former one of

29:10

the, since George Halas was the only other former

29:12

NFL player to be an owner. And

29:16

I have a few friends in North Carolina. This

29:18

guy's like very, very well regarded. He's

29:20

kind of like the North Carolina's favorite son, good

29:23

football player, flanker halfback. I kind of want

29:25

to bring the term flanker back. I was,

29:27

I've always liked that as a football term,

29:30

played at Wofford. And then he

29:32

went on to play for the Baltimore Colts, caught

29:34

a touchdown pass in the

29:36

NFL championship from Johnny United to

29:39

meet the New York Giants 31 to 15. And

29:43

then he got traded the giants, but he ended up quitting. So

29:46

he still holds some Wofford single game

29:48

records. I think

29:50

Wofford's biggest alum by far could be a

29:53

may have also come in for that, but

29:56

it seems like he gave Jerry

29:58

Richardson and William McGirt. There

30:00

you go. So after – oh, also

30:02

TC, Jerry Richardson was a KA, just

30:05

like you and Randy. So

30:07

we've been in the family here on the trap draw. Neil,

30:09

also Jerry Richardson died. No,

30:12

I was going to say that I died in March of

30:14

last year. So we're

30:16

not there yet, man. We're not there yet. So after –

30:19

Well, what you were saying is one of the

30:21

most famous moments that was. I mean, I think

30:24

he still is one of the most famous. Actually, he's still an alum, even if he's

30:26

not a lot. Yeah. Anyway,

30:29

so after he quits the

30:31

NFL after I think two or three

30:33

seasons, he takes his NFL championship bonus

30:35

and he pours it into the franchise

30:38

of Hardee's in Spartanburg, South Carolina, which

30:40

is where Wofford's located. From there,

30:42

he starts basically a company called Spartan Foods,

30:45

and he franchises like all the Hardee's, just

30:47

all of them. So that's

30:49

where he starts, and then he turns that

30:51

into Flagstar, which becomes the sixth largest food

30:53

service company in the United States. He's

30:56

controlling 2,500 restaurants and providing

30:58

jobs for over 100,000 employees and retires in 95. I

31:03

feel like Mark Brunel tried to do the same

31:05

thing in Jack's after he retired. He bought up

31:08

all these water burgers. He went bankrupt within like

31:10

five years. Tough. So

31:14

yeah, so Richardson, I guess,

31:16

stored business career and then kind of stays

31:18

in the Carolina's region

31:21

his whole life. And I

31:23

think he was very adamant with the NFL that he wanted the

31:25

Carolina Panthers to be a regional team based

31:27

in Charlotte. So it's

31:29

always kind of noticeable when it's like the Carolina

31:32

Panthers. I don't get

31:34

that sense as much. Arizona Cardinals is another

31:36

– I guess another one. What am

31:38

I – are there any other NFL teams I'm missing

31:40

that are like – I mean New England Patriots. New

31:42

England, I guess, too. Okay, so it's not – yeah,

31:44

there's a few of them. Like Carolina Hurricanes

31:46

are – they're in Raleigh,

31:48

but they're similar concept, right?

31:51

Green Bay is certainly a regional team. But I

31:53

think what's worth mentioning, and the reason I wanted

31:55

to bring up Richardson was like he had a

31:57

lot of sway. It sounds like he was a good

31:59

guy. he came in and was immediately impactful as

32:01

an owner and he had a lot of respect

32:04

from the other owners. And I think if you

32:06

look, you know, Carolina's been in the Super Bowl twice

32:08

and I'd say getting a franchise off the

32:10

ground in the 90s and seeing that kind

32:12

of success is, you know, worth

32:15

lauding. He was also instrumental

32:17

in the player lockout in 2011. So

32:20

he kind of led negotiations

32:23

on a new players agreement. So it sounds like

32:25

a very hard-ass too. A

32:27

very public racist, if we're getting there.

32:30

Well, we're getting there. We're definitely getting

32:32

there. So he

32:34

played a huge role in that. And

32:36

then after firing George Seifert in 2001,

32:38

he didn't hold another press conference. George

32:41

Seifert. George Seifert. Seifert. Didn't

32:43

hold another press conference until

32:45

he took questions or he didn't hold another press

32:48

conference where he took questions from

32:50

the media for nine years until

32:52

he basically announced he wasn't going

32:55

to extend John Fox's contract in

32:57

2010. I guess the

32:59

one memorable moment, he kind of was pretty hands off with

33:01

the organization, it seemed like, or he

33:04

liked to remain behind the scenes like he didn't

33:06

want to do press conferences or anything. But he

33:08

was pretty active in the Greg Hardy domestic violence

33:10

events. Like he like personally said, like, we're not

33:12

resigning this guy. Like

33:14

he and his quote was like, because

33:17

we do the right things here or something,

33:19

you know, very, very basic like that. So

33:23

in 2017, Sports Illustrated

33:25

reported that four former

33:27

Panthers employees were given significant monetary

33:29

settlements due to the inappropriate workplace

33:31

comments and conduct by Jerry Richardson.

33:34

The accusations accused... It's like another Jerry,

33:37

not necessarily Jerry himself, but some of

33:39

Jerry's lieutenants that we were talking about

33:41

last time around, right? Yeah, it sounds

33:44

like it included both sexual language and

33:46

conduct and then apparently a racial slur

33:48

directed at a Panthers scout. It

33:51

was tough timing because the year before it was

33:53

almost like a little bit of a, I think

33:55

a media tour on how Richardson

33:57

was a quote champion of diversity. with

34:00

Cam Newton at QB and Ron

34:02

Rivera as the coach. So

34:05

it was kind of like maybe set up to

34:07

on this pedestal and then maybe that's not really

34:09

what what Jerry Richardson was all about. So

34:13

I feel like we're also washing over the

34:15

Ray Carus stuff happened on this watch as

34:17

well. That's true. Which is why the

34:19

Greg Hardy quote is why I called that out of like, hey,

34:21

we do the right things here. It's like, well, maybe you weren't

34:23

really doing the right things. There's some stuff we

34:26

just didn't really know about until 2017. Which

34:28

is like, if you're interested in saying it's reassuring that

34:31

your current guy may be throwing drinks

34:33

on people, but there's not people getting murdered in

34:35

cars or like throwing, you know, I think Greg

34:37

Hardy's thing was he was throwing through a woman

34:39

on top of like his guns and beat the

34:41

crap out of her. I can't remember exactly. Yeah,

34:43

the cracking stuff was tough, really tough. Hardy

34:47

was our previous guy, Jerry Jones went and signed Greg

34:49

Hardy then right after that. Yeah, Greg Hardy's a bad

34:51

guy. So anyway, TC to bring

34:53

it back to the sale. So a lot of Panthers

34:55

fans assumed that Richardson would pass the team down to

34:57

his two sons, Mark and John.

35:00

But in 2009, they both just

35:02

like resigned together. And it

35:05

sounds like it was like, kind of

35:08

like his dad with his dad, their dad's

35:10

blessing. And then unfortunately, Richardson son, John died

35:12

of cancer in 2013. So

35:15

I don't have a whole, I don't have a

35:17

lot more there. But then shortly thereafter,

35:19

Richardson told Charlotte media that he wanted the

35:21

team sold after his death to

35:23

someone that would keep the team in

35:25

Charlotte. And so he ends up selling it

35:28

before he dies. He sells the team in I think 2018

35:30

to Tepper, and then he died in 2023 in Charlotte age

35:32

86. So

35:35

that brings us up to the Tepper stuff. Yeah,

35:38

and yeah, I'm sure there'll be some North

35:41

and South Carolinians that will chime

35:43

in with all sorts of Jerry Richardson

35:45

stuff. Listen, this isn't a Jerry Richardson

35:47

podcast. And Carolina is in the most parochial

35:49

place in the country, maybe other than like St.

35:52

Louis. Well, that's because that's why they ride for

35:54

their guy. I mean, he's a homegrown, homegrown guy.

35:56

So I feel like we would be remiss if

35:58

we're talking about the Panthers without. bringing

36:01

up Richardson sold the team

36:03

to Tepper for I believe two or two

36:05

point two billion It was two point two

36:07

billion and one of the reasons Tepper got

36:09

it There was another

36:11

bid From I'd never

36:13

heard of him but from Ben Navarro

36:15

who put together a group but

36:18

Tepper's was basically like all his money whereas there

36:20

was a bunch of outside parties involved and Tepper

36:23

got kind of fast-tracked plus he'd already been

36:25

vetted through the Steelers You

36:28

know kind of incubator program there

36:31

And then yeah, so he takes over in

36:33

2018. They're like seven and

36:35

nine. They've got Kiechle. They've got The

36:39

calf read. Yeah, they got a pretty good like

36:41

kind of core right? aging

36:44

core but but but you know Thomas

36:46

very very Like

36:48

they're like I remember their offense

36:50

their linebackers so freaking good, especially

36:52

like that That Super Bowl run

36:54

with Cam Newton. I mean they would they only lost one

36:56

game until the Super Bowl I mean that team was staff

37:00

Yeah, so then you know Marty Hurney

37:02

all that stuff They go seven and

37:04

nine and then Tepper fires Rivera the

37:06

next year And they had

37:08

some pretty good drafts like this, you know 2018

37:11

2019 they had Brian Burns that DJ Moore

37:13

all these guys and then the fires

37:16

Rivera in season Perry

37:18

fuel finishes up the season goes 0 and

37:21

4 and then Tepper

37:23

just glowing brain stuff brings in

37:25

Matt rule You

37:28

know fires fires Hurney early into

37:31

Rule staying brings brings rule in from where

37:34

was he Baylor at the time? He

37:36

was formerly of temple and then he went

37:39

to Baylor defensive guy

37:41

he draft Derek Brown The

37:44

Dn from Penn State gross mottos

37:46

Jeremy chin like pretty pretty good

37:48

draft and You know,

37:50

but rules just by all accounts. He just like

37:52

wasn't NFL coach just like wasn't happy in NFL.

37:54

They go Five and twelve

37:56

in his second year They

37:58

totally whiff on the draft second year and then,

38:00

you know, rule gets fired,

38:03

uh, after the third year, 2022 season

38:07

and, uh, Steve Wilkes takes

38:09

over or bro gets fired

38:11

in season. Uh, it goes one,

38:13

it starts off one and four in 2022. Steve

38:15

Wilkes comes in, uh, it goes

38:18

six and six and Wilkes was, you know,

38:20

kind of a homegrown coach for the Panthers.

38:23

He'd gone out, kind of gotten a rod deal

38:25

out and was that Arizona got

38:27

hired at the end and then kind of flamed out

38:29

there quickly, but everybody was riding

38:31

for him to like keep the job and,

38:34

you know, and then they bring in, uh, they

38:36

bring in Frank Reich and, uh, we

38:38

know how that went. And, uh,

38:41

you know, and then Fitter gets fired. He's

38:43

the GM, you know, the hand pick GM and, and you

38:46

know, right goes one and 10,

38:48

uh, and gets fired, you know, 11 games in or 12

38:50

games in. So

38:53

all that noting calling out the

38:55

Bryce young trade. Yeah. I

38:57

mean, you know, gives up a little else

39:00

first round, but now that bears are going to have another

39:02

first round pick, like, I mean, maybe one of the,

39:04

the best trades

39:06

of all time by the bears. Uh,

39:09

yeah, which I kind of liked that temper

39:11

sort of through his like a scouts and

39:14

staff under the bus when he did a

39:16

little press conferences, like, well, you know, some,

39:19

I know I was, I thought CJ shroud was a

39:21

great pick, but you know, we as a building, I

39:23

guess, agree, agreed that, uh, Bryce young will be the

39:25

pick, it was like, clearly he

39:27

was pissed off that some, you know, people

39:30

had led him astray in the analysis department

39:32

here. Yeah. And, um, but yeah, it seemed

39:34

like, Hey, like when now we, you know,

39:36

we've got this good defense, we want to

39:39

capitalize on it. They didn't trade Brian burns.

39:41

Like the Rams were offering two first rounders

39:43

allegedly end of 2022 season. They

39:46

didn't make the deal and then,

39:48

you know, doubled down, do the whole thing

39:50

with, with, uh, Bryce and all

39:52

that. And in the midst of all of this, there's

39:55

the, uh, the practice facility that they're

39:57

trying to build in rock Hill.

40:00

South Carolina, this massive, massive project, I think close

40:02

to this whole kind of practice

40:11

facility, indoor facility, all

40:13

this development around it, it was just

40:16

mired in all this crap.

40:19

And they recently demolished it,

40:21

just tore it down. And

40:24

the holding company that was holding the real

40:26

estate for it, he just declared bankruptcy on

40:29

it. They operated

40:31

the local municipality in Rockhill, South Carolina,

40:34

had operated in bad faith and

40:36

wasn't doing what they said they were going to do on

40:38

the tax breaks that were given. So instead of figuring

40:41

out and just finishing the facility, he

40:43

said, fuck you guys, I'm tearing this

40:46

thing down completely.

40:48

So that's fascinating.

40:51

I feel like Charlotte's always one of those things where

40:53

it probably makes sense to have

40:56

a retractable roof

40:58

stadium with kind

41:00

of, it seems like the kind of city that would

41:02

want to host Final Four's and New

41:06

Year's Day bowl games and stuff like that.

41:08

And it seems like the American American Stadium.

41:10

This might be a recency bias, but it

41:12

also seems like there's a monsoon game there

41:14

at least in the

41:16

season, where it's just like the Falcons Panthers

41:18

game this year, it's like just

41:21

brutal weather and the team sucks.

41:23

And it's just like, man, you're kind of, you're

41:25

making it hard on everybody to, you

41:28

know, like it's one thing if it's cold and

41:30

snowy, but when it's just like that cold rain,

41:32

it's almost even worse, which is why you probably

41:34

want that retractable roof. I

41:36

kind of feel like in the future society

41:38

where everything is blessed and perfect, like all

41:41

NFL stadiums should have a retractable roof. Like

41:43

that would be like, so far where like

41:45

it's open air, but you have a, you

41:48

know, you have like a translucent top or

41:50

something, right? Or some of the stuff

41:52

like that's what you know, the elements

41:54

are, I think a great factor of

41:56

football. I don't, I don't agree.

41:58

That's why. I

42:01

think it's an interesting debate, right? Like should it, should

42:03

they have an effect? Like should Buffalo have a retracule

42:06

roof? Should you have to go up there and that's

42:08

an advantage, you know, maybe should it be the team's

42:10

decision, whether or not to open or

42:12

close the roof based on their advantage? I don't know.

42:14

Those are all like, is it kind of a

42:16

disgrace that the Vikings have, have an indoor stadium? Yeah,

42:18

I think it is the Viking and they have

42:20

a great stadium, but you know what? I think the

42:23

Vikings should play outside. That should be part of

42:25

their shtick, you know, it bears after,

42:27

you know, it's part of their shtick. But

42:29

you don't feel like being indoors.

42:32

Oh, I think Detroit should be outside as well. You

42:35

know, like, like Cleveland, Cleveland should be outside. Like

42:37

everybody in the AFC North should be outside. Everybody

42:39

in the NFC North should be outside, you

42:42

know? So, um,

42:45

and so, you know, all these,

42:47

the Panthers fans fucking hate him. I mean, everybody hates,

42:49

and you're like, you guys willing to spend, spend money

42:51

and like he wants best in class stuff and he

42:54

just like can't get out of his own way. Right.

42:57

He's like 0 for 4 on like big

42:59

hires. He has a short fuse.

43:02

Sounds like he just grinds people to

43:04

death. He's... Doesn't Ruhl have like no

43:06

offset in his contract?

43:09

So that he's going to be paying Ruhl like 10 million

43:12

a year for the next like four years. Yeah.

43:14

And I think he tried to take, take Ruhl

43:16

to court on that and all sorts of stuff

43:18

there. And he also

43:20

owns the SC Charlotte or Charlotte SC

43:22

MLS team. He paid

43:24

like 300 million plus for it. Um,

43:28

they like, he fired the coach, like,

43:30

I don't know. He like whiffed on

43:33

hiring and then he, he fired

43:35

that coach after they almost, and then the like

43:37

interim comes in and they almost make the playoffs

43:39

and then he fires that guy. And then they've

43:41

got a new sporting director

43:43

from Premier League. And yeah, I don't

43:45

know. It's just like, it

43:47

just seems like it's like dog, just like,

43:50

like be confident in hiring the right people

43:52

and then like, let them carry out

43:55

a long-term plan. It's almost like his

43:57

management of this franchise is so.

44:00

divergent from his management

44:03

of his assets and investments of

44:05

like, hey, buy something

44:07

and then, you know, kind

44:09

of like don't like belong with it

44:11

and stick with the plan, right? I

44:14

actually see some of his why he's

44:16

been, this is my opinion, but it

44:18

seems like why he's been successful with,

44:21

you know, he's a trader, right? So there's

44:23

a lot of like, not so much impulse,

44:25

but like, you got to get

44:27

out like that you got to

44:29

cut bait and make decisions on the fly

44:31

when you're trading. He

44:34

doesn't seem to have a ton of like, long

44:36

term operational consistency, like

44:38

a trading floor is like a, it's

44:41

a boiler room, man. It's like a

44:43

high stress, like, lots going on.

44:45

Like, we got to do this now, now, now. It's like

44:47

very impatient. He

44:49

seems to have conviction in his positions though. Like,

44:51

it's not like he's just doing a bunch of

44:54

day trading and like making, you

44:56

know, small slivers on margins.

44:58

He's like, you know, he's in it

45:00

to win it for, you know, some of these three or

45:02

four year plays, right? Which is, I don't

45:05

know. It's funny. The question I have is like, it's

45:07

hard to, when we, when I go back and look through

45:09

this guy's background, it's like, man, it's hard to bet against

45:11

a guy like this, you know, with all. He'll

45:14

figure it out against all bankruptcy companies

45:16

he's invested in all like the down

45:19

years that turned into like 300% up

45:21

years the next year. Like, you

45:23

know, he'll stay the course on you. But

45:26

I got it. I just do get a little

45:30

bit of joy when you see these masters of the universe

45:32

try to take their, you know, oh

45:34

my God, I'm the smartest guy in the room thing

45:36

into the NFL and just get bodied. I

45:39

mean, he's just getting flamed from everybody about

45:41

being the worst owner in the NFL. Like

45:44

that has to just be needed him, which is what that's

45:46

also going to like, you know, that's just going to add

45:48

to the chip on his shoulder. And he's like, cool. Like,

45:50

I'm going to like, I could kind of see it. I'm

45:52

trying to think of like, who, who

45:54

another owner that, you know, who would be

45:57

kind of a comp for

45:59

him. that we've either already done

46:01

or that's kind of like they almost have to learn

46:03

how to get out of their own way. Right.

46:06

I think you would the easy answer be

46:08

Snyder, but I think he's a lot smarter

46:11

and he's a lot more successful than Dan.

46:13

I would say blank Arthur blank based on

46:15

the episode we did on him kind of

46:17

came in like I'm a I'm a business

46:20

genius. Like I know how to

46:22

run a company. And you know, he

46:24

had a few moments where he fell flat on his

46:26

face, but definitely I think blank if you look back

46:28

on his first four or five years had more success

46:31

and some of the issues like the Mike vixstuff

46:33

wasn't blank school like that, you

46:35

know, he may but but in a similar

46:37

vein definitely had they have similar hiring tendencies

46:39

where they just can't seem to hire the

46:41

right people and they don't

46:43

know when to cut bait. I

46:46

think blank also probably enabled like, you

46:48

know, yeah, turned a blind eye

46:51

to some of the things as well. Did we talk

46:53

in the blank episode? Did we talk about when blank

46:55

like push Vicks wheelchair around when he had he

46:57

got injured? That's like literally one of my favorite

46:59

moments in the NFL in like the last 20

47:02

years. So then the owner just basically being the

47:04

wheelchair pusher. Yeah, blank Jackson is

47:06

the guy that puts like head janitor on his

47:08

business card, you know, when he's like the chairman

47:11

and CEO, it's like, get the fuck out

47:13

of here, man. Which like shout out to

47:15

blank like, but you know, blank fired Arthur

47:18

Smith. Like, although I feel like even in

47:20

blanks, you know, kind of post

47:22

post termination comments there he he

47:25

it sounded like he was

47:27

more enamored with Arthur Smith family

47:29

than he was with Arthur Smith himself. He's

47:31

like, Yeah, Arthur comes from a great family.

47:33

It's like, yeah, but he like didn't do

47:35

a good job as coach, you know, so

47:39

all that's to say, yeah, I think Tepper weirdly,

47:42

like, I'm not betting against the guy

47:44

because it seems like he's like,

47:47

this will be his life's work now

47:49

to be successful as the Carolina Panthers

47:52

owner and he will figure out all

47:54

right, cool, like, somewhere like, you know,

47:56

the Redskins or the commanders or whatever

47:58

the hell they're called just just

48:00

did with you know bringing in

48:02

Bob Myers to you know assist

48:05

with the With the plan

48:07

of like alright like he'll figure out Alright, who's

48:09

the right person to bring in here, you know

48:11

and like maybe maybe he's so poisonous that nobody

48:13

wants to wear with him But like

48:15

when your checkbooks that big and like he's got like

48:17

Steve Cohen money, you know what I mean? Like he's

48:19

one of the most Wealthy

48:22

do you know and like where he or

48:24

the thing is like it's like like why

48:27

wouldn't yeah We're not most wealthy Americans United

48:29

States. I would assume probably top 15 somewhere

48:31

in there I think he's up to 13

48:34

billion. I think I Mean

48:36

here's another here's another quote from the New York mag

48:38

profile and this from 2010 So

48:41

in the 17 years since he founded

48:43

Appaloosa Its assets have

48:45

grown from 57 million to 13 billion

48:48

and his annualized compound return

48:51

in that time period is 30%

48:53

net to investors putting him in line with

48:55

legendary money managers like Soros Stan Drucken Miller

48:58

and Julian Robertson So like

49:00

all the you know, it's pretty made off to

49:02

yeah the finance crowd like he's like he's like

49:04

genius boy Like

49:06

he's he's referred to as a golden god

49:08

in the industry Like you

49:10

know, it's so I don't know I'm

49:13

kind of the guy's kind of a

49:15

force of nature and at some point Yeah, like

49:17

if you're an asshole or whatever like whatever

49:19

but like at some point it seems like the

49:21

one inefficiency in the NFL

49:23

market these days is coaching contracts

49:26

and coaching salaries of like You

49:28

know, I like it feels like all right the caps what?

49:32

220 million dollars or whatever like You

49:35

know what? It seems like a vet like a

49:37

coach could be worth 30 million dollars a year

49:39

right coach, you know, and it

49:41

seems like he's if if anybody's gonna do that, it's

49:43

him especially because he's Like he's

49:45

gonna have to pay above market value just to get

49:47

the guys that he wants. Yeah, you know So

49:51

anyway, that's David Tepper and yeah,

49:53

I mean, you know, I never everybody says like the

49:55

the MLS team is First

49:58

class as far as like like they play

50:00

at Bank of America Stadium. They draw well.

50:02

He puts money

50:04

behind it. Their socials are great. They're like,

50:06

it's a well-run team. So I don't

50:09

know. We'll see what happens with the Panthers.

50:12

All right. All right. Thank you. He's got that dog in

50:14

him, Neil. He

50:17

does have some dog in him. And before we

50:19

get to our next owner, I want to thank

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you're up. Boom. We

51:53

are going to visit a local

51:55

guy for me. You're not going

51:57

to call him. Steve,

52:00

Steve to Scotty, the Scotty,

52:02

Steve, the shotty, uh,

52:04

the first owner in this series who

52:07

we can honestly say that I know this

52:09

person. If you're some people, when I occasionally,

52:12

when I talk ball on the Twitter, some

52:14

people are like, what do you know? Golf writer. You don't

52:16

need anything about the NFL. Like dog,

52:18

I've covered the NFL for like 20 years. This

52:20

is the first fall in almost

52:23

20 years that I did not write about

52:25

football. Uh, so I've been around the game.

52:27

Just a little bit. Yeah. I dunno. Hopefully

52:29

ball, no, or hopefully have risen to

52:31

the level of elder ball. No, or, uh, TC, uh,

52:34

Steve Ashadi was born in Philadelphia in

52:36

1960, Italian American

52:39

family as should be obvious. Uh,

52:41

but we're almost immediately his family moved to Severna

52:44

park, Maryland in 1961. Uh,

52:47

his father was a construction sales

52:49

executive, uh, you know, bacon sales,

52:51

making making sales, but

52:53

you know what? His father passed away when he

52:56

was eight years old. He died of leukemia, which

52:58

was a pretty devastating transformative moment in

53:00

Steve's life. He's never really talked much

53:03

about his father. Uh, I listened

53:05

to a lot of interviews over the years and

53:07

it's something Steve is pretty private guy. And that's

53:09

a part of his, uh, I

53:12

guess background that he doesn't really crack

53:14

open, but he's praised his grandfather

53:16

a lot for being the, the, basically the

53:18

stepdad who stepped up his

53:20

grandfather, Gordon Johnson, essentially supported his

53:23

family after his father died. He

53:25

paid the mortgage. He paid for

53:27

Catholic school. Uh, even though

53:29

his father was retired, he'd been a car salesman

53:31

for almost 40 years. So the

53:33

Bishadis, uh, really had to kind of scrape money together.

53:35

It did not have very much

53:37

of it, uh, growing up in Anorunbo County,

53:39

Maryland. He said, uh, I told the

53:41

Baltimore son in 2004, my

53:44

mom didn't let many dinner conversations go by

53:46

without telling us how lucky we were to

53:48

have my grandfather. I was constantly

53:50

exposed to the teaching. You'd better work hard.

53:53

Uh, quick question. Yes. Or,

53:56

um, it seems

53:58

like counties are a bigger deal. in

54:00

Maryland than they are elsewhere

54:02

in the country. That's a great question, TC,

54:05

and I think you are speaking truth. Counties

54:07

are pretty important in Maryland. There's

54:09

a lot of regional pride in

54:11

Maryland about which county you're from. There's

54:14

very much like a Rumble Boys or a thing

54:16

like Baltimore County, you

54:19

know, Baltimore City. When I first moved

54:21

to Baltimore and worked for the Baltimore

54:23

Sun in 2000, my assignment

54:25

was to cover the Howard County sports.

54:27

Howard County is like the middle county

54:29

between DC and Baltimore and

54:31

like super pretty wealthy county and lots

54:34

of like pride. A lot

54:36

of big girls lacrosse was huge there. They were

54:38

known as being one of the coolest or the

54:40

best girls lacrosse in

54:42

the country. There's what Prince? There's

54:45

Georgia County. Georgia's County. Yeah,

54:48

yeah, yeah. I don't know. That's just stuck with me

54:50

overly, like over the years. I haven't spent

54:53

a ton of time in Maryland, but you

54:55

know everybody just kind of refers to the counties, especially

54:57

like you know the Eastern Shore and all that stuff.

54:59

Yeah, the Eastern Shore, they don't get quite as much

55:01

into the county thing there. It's just like if you're

55:03

from the Eastern Shore from the other side of the

55:06

Bay Bridge, then that's kind of there. Even though there

55:08

are a bunch of different counties there, people are like,

55:10

oh yeah, I'm an Eastern Shore kid. But

55:13

Montgomery County, Prince George's County, those are all

55:15

south around DC. Those are like

55:17

big deals. So, Arundel County is kind

55:19

of, I would say very blue collar,

55:21

very kind of hard work. That's

55:23

where Eisenhower, the preserve, the Andrew Green redesign

55:25

is that we've talked about coming to visit.

55:28

So, there's also a super elite course that

55:30

almost no one knows about there. It's called

55:32

Arundel National. The guy who used to run

55:35

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac built

55:37

like a sort of an Augusta like replicate

55:39

there and that it gets, I'm not

55:42

kidding, like maybe 50 rounds

55:44

a year. It's one of like the truly

55:46

white oak. Yeah, it's truly, like

55:49

super duper exclusive. I never even like set my

55:51

eyes on like the fences outside. It's like an

55:53

unmarked road. You have to go down, just find

55:55

it. Anyway, back to the Bishattis.

55:58

Steve is a C student. in high school and

56:01

was constantly kind of told by his teachers that he

56:03

lacked focus. He later learned

56:05

that this was because he had attention deficit

56:07

disorder. He said, if you have

56:09

learning disabilities and you're bad at school, and if

56:12

you're bad at school, you hate school. It

56:14

was terribly challenging for me. It was very

56:16

depressing to sort of be just like a

56:19

shitty student. He spent one

56:21

year playing football. It was his senior year.

56:24

He came out for the team and the

56:26

coach was like, yeah, like you are slow.

56:28

You are small. You're going

56:30

to basically play special teams and defensive end.

56:33

He went to Sivirna Park High School and they went 2-8. It

56:35

was like their worst record in 30 years. He

56:38

knew kind of right away that even though he tried to

56:40

play basketball, tried to play football, he was not much of

56:42

an athlete. He'd spent

56:44

his summers in Rundle building essentially

56:46

like the piers and the waterways,

56:49

which was like super intense work where you'd just

56:51

be hammering nails for hours and hours. He

56:54

ended up at Salisbury State University, which is

56:56

now Salisbury University. He graduated

56:59

in four years there with a degree in liberal arts, which

57:01

I thought was interesting that nothing that Steve

57:03

has done in his life would sort of lead you to

57:06

believe that he was a liberal arts major. He

57:08

got a job at a Baltimore staffing agency right

57:10

out of college. It

57:12

was the Kelly Girls Staffing that was a

57:15

marketing firm that sent girls to

57:17

Kelly Services. Within 15 months,

57:19

it was a place like went bankrupt. He

57:23

was basically, it was a quote from one of

57:25

his friends, Michael Bush, who's a big Maryland politician

57:27

who grew up right around where Shadi did. He

57:29

said they laid him off one Christmas and he

57:31

said he was determined to go out and establish

57:34

his own business and compete against them. Before

57:36

that kind of happened, he had like a meeting with his girlfriend's

57:39

father. He was

57:41

his girlfriend's father who suggested he start his own business.

57:44

Steve told the Baltimore Sun in 2004, I was 23 years old and I had $3,500 in the bank. His

57:49

eventual stepfather said, well, you ain't got

57:52

far to fall. I thought it

57:54

was a sick quote. He basically was like,

57:56

all right, I'm going to go, we're not

57:58

well-financed, but I've done two dumb to fail. I

58:00

think I can do this. I know I can do it better from

58:02

the company that I work for." And he talked

58:04

his two roommates into tearing out the basement

58:06

bar that they had in their basement. And

58:09

they basically like he went to Goodwill and

58:11

he bought a bunch of desks and a

58:13

couple of old phones. It sounded like a

58:15

kill-off. Yeah, exactly. Very much so. And

58:18

so he and his cousin, Jim Davis, not the

58:20

Garfield guy, just to be clear, started

58:23

a business that placed engineers in

58:25

the aerospace and technology sectors. They

58:27

called it Aerotech. In the crappy

58:30

duplex they had in Annapolis, it had

58:32

an orange shag carpet that was

58:35

held together with duct tape. So

58:37

his cousin and so they paid themselves $100 a week as

58:39

a salary. But he was totally unafraid to borrow money and

58:47

to just basically say, hey, we're

58:49

going to be a recruiting firm. We're going to

58:51

go and get people fresh out of college with

58:53

their engineering degrees. And we're

58:56

going to have a service that basically places

58:58

them in the aerospace industry or

59:00

in engineering firms or whatever. And

59:03

what he realized at the time was

59:05

that the technology boom at the country was

59:07

kind of exploding at this point. And

59:10

companies were starting to realize they didn't know how

59:12

to recruit people. They didn't know how to find

59:14

good engineers. So he was like, I'm going

59:16

to eliminate that. And also, workers

59:19

were starting to decide they didn't necessarily want to be

59:21

tied to specific companies forever,

59:23

especially the technology people

59:25

who wanted to bounce around and do a bunch of

59:27

shit. And so he sort of fit this need of

59:29

like, all right, we need someone, an engineer for six

59:31

months. We need someone, a space design

59:33

person for a project for a year.

59:36

And basically, everyone paid a fee

59:39

to Aerotech. And Aerotech handled all

59:41

of the placement stuff.

59:45

So they started with just two clients. But

59:47

after a year, they already had $1.5 million

59:51

in sales. So

59:53

they were definitely like kind of exploding. They experienced

59:56

70 consecutive quarters of growth,

59:59

which is... Good. Pretty decent. Pretty

1:00:03

high margin business, too, right? Yes. So

1:00:06

basically, he said, after I

1:00:08

knew I could do it better, once I got successful,

1:00:10

I was handling the Baltimore market. But I had a

1:00:12

person who was assigned to the Northern Virginia market, and

1:00:14

he kept getting caught in traffic, like two or three

1:00:16

hours of traffic every time he wanted to drive home.

1:00:19

And eventually, we had like six or seven contract engineers

1:00:21

working down there. And I said, you know what? Screw

1:00:23

it. Let's open an office down there so we don't

1:00:25

have to drive back and forth. And then the same

1:00:27

thing happened when we did a code in Philly, and

1:00:30

then we did it in Orlando. And eventually, I

1:00:32

thought, you know what? We can do this all

1:00:34

around the country. And so business

1:00:36

with Aerotech just kind of exploded. He

1:00:39

and his buddy, Jim Davis, they started opening all

1:00:41

kinds of different divisions of it. And

1:00:44

basically, what that became later was

1:00:46

Aligis, which is like sort of

1:00:48

a string of these different kinds

1:00:50

of temp agencies.

1:00:53

Under the Aligis umbrella, in

1:00:56

addition to Aerotech, was like ACT

1:00:59

Talent, Tech Systems, Tech Systems

1:01:01

Global Services, Ashton

1:01:03

Carter, Aligis Global Solutions, Major

1:01:05

Lindsay in Africa, Aligis Partners,

1:01:07

Market Source, and then a

1:01:09

thing called Getting Hired. All

1:01:12

of this just like they

1:01:14

essentially became like the second

1:01:17

largest placement recruitment firm and temporary

1:01:19

worker firm in the entire United States,

1:01:21

or entire world, of like 45,000 workers.

1:01:25

It's wild. A couple of notes there. I

1:01:27

just remember how many contract and temp workers

1:01:30

Google used. I think it was like double

1:01:32

the full-time employee, like

1:01:35

double the contractors. And also,

1:01:39

Shadi needs to be in the running for the prestige world wide

1:01:41

award. Those names are

1:01:43

absolutely outrageous. Tech Systems, it's like they

1:01:46

sat around on a whiteboard and were

1:01:48

like, what is the most generic

1:01:50

thing we can come up with? No,

1:01:53

we need 10 of those. Let's

1:01:55

get to work. He

1:01:58

had this great quote. He did this like

1:02:00

hour long interview with Marlon Humphrey for

1:02:03

the Ravens channel, kind of about his

1:02:05

business executives. And he used to tell like

1:02:07

his workers, like, when

1:02:10

you're on the phone and you're trying to make a

1:02:12

sale, you'd better smile when you get a no, because

1:02:14

that means you're one step closer to a yes. Our

1:02:17

stats say that if we get a yes

1:02:19

for every 22 nos, then I guarantee you

1:02:21

we better get 22 nos by

1:02:23

lunchtime. It's basically like, I'm going to push

1:02:25

you and I'm going to push you until you get people to

1:02:28

basically be like, all right, all right. So truly

1:02:30

like a fearless salesman.

1:02:33

This is a fucking

1:02:35

great. He might have sold some knives along the way. Very

1:02:38

much right. It is a great quote about

1:02:40

business. I was thinking about you and he said, I

1:02:42

read this, he said, every day there's a

1:02:44

wolf at the door and some people are scared of

1:02:46

that wolf. Other people are motivated by

1:02:48

that wolf. I am the fucking

1:02:50

wolf. I loved the fear

1:02:53

of the wolf. I woke up every morning thinking

1:02:55

that that wolf was going to blow my house

1:02:57

down. So I worked every day like it was

1:02:59

my last chance to prove myself. When

1:03:01

you continue with that attitude, that underdog attitude, that

1:03:04

fear of failure, you're willing to put the drive

1:03:06

in, then you're going to win. Hell yeah. That's

1:03:09

a fucking wolf. You had another quote

1:03:11

in here about he hated putting

1:03:13

a suit on every morning. Did you share that one?

1:03:16

Yeah. So he basically was like every day he

1:03:18

had to put a suit on every morning. He

1:03:20

told himself because then it would feel like a

1:03:22

real job. He's very much. He's like animal shirt

1:03:24

London. Exactly. Even now, I've

1:03:26

made a point the last year or so, I

1:03:28

try not to wear sweatpants even though I'm working

1:03:30

at home. It's like, no, I'm going to put

1:03:32

some real freaking pants on. I'm going to

1:03:34

put a wolf shirt on. That's a

1:03:36

little factor in success. You got to at

1:03:39

least put some jeans on. I'm not going

1:03:41

to wear a suit, but I'm

1:03:43

vibing with Steve right now. Honestly,

1:03:47

as someone who does know, Stephen has

1:03:49

had probably two or three personal conversations

1:03:51

with him over the years. I

1:03:54

can't help but really like him. You'll

1:03:56

hear at the end of this, had some particularly.

1:04:00

Kind of tension, contentious run-in over

1:04:02

Ray Ray's stuff, but I

1:04:05

can't help but really enjoy him. This

1:04:07

idea that it's not impossible for

1:04:09

you to be a good person if

1:04:11

you're a billionaire, I feel like Spasciotti

1:04:13

kind of upends that rule. Because

1:04:16

I do think he's actually a good person

1:04:19

who has taken some arrows

1:04:21

for... I mean there's

1:04:23

not a lot of really any controversy in

1:04:25

his life. He's kind of just worked really

1:04:27

freaking hard and done things the right way.

1:04:30

So in 1997, he was

1:04:33

basically working his ass off. He would

1:04:35

travel 40 weeks

1:04:37

a year on the road, just constantly

1:04:39

hustling. He said he was waking up

1:04:41

in hotel rooms and he couldn't be married. He was

1:04:43

married or did he have a family at this point?

1:04:45

He was married. He borrowed money

1:04:47

from a business partner to be able to

1:04:50

buy an engagement ring to marry his wife,

1:04:52

Renee. They've been married for I believe

1:04:54

40, 42, 43 years. They've been together

1:04:57

all this time. So

1:05:00

he was basically like, hey, I need

1:05:02

you to raise the family because I'm going to

1:05:04

be hustling constantly. And she was like, all right,

1:05:06

that sounds like a deal. I'm going to be

1:05:09

as low maintenance as possible. And

1:05:11

so he was on the road like

1:05:13

40 weeks a year. He said he was waking up in

1:05:15

hotel rooms, couldn't even remember what city he was in. And

1:05:18

he said he kind of got to an age where he

1:05:20

realized that his kids, they

1:05:22

were of the age when his

1:05:24

father had died. And he

1:05:27

was basically like, you know what? I didn't

1:05:30

have a father because my father

1:05:32

was dead. And now they don't have

1:05:34

a father because I'm addicted to working like 60, 70

1:05:36

hour weeks. And I

1:05:38

don't want to do that anymore. So I'm going to go ahead

1:05:40

and kind of take a step back. So

1:05:42

like the second guy that he

1:05:44

ever hired at Aerotech, he

1:05:47

basically put that guy in charge and was like, I'm just

1:05:49

going to help out with long-term planning. I'm going

1:05:51

to work one day a week and you guys can

1:05:53

keep sort of, you know, keep the business churning. And

1:05:56

Aerotech still has like revenues like $15 billion

1:05:58

a year. So even

1:06:01

continuing, he's still a little

1:06:03

bit involved in the long-term strategy of it, but most

1:06:05

of what he does now is

1:06:07

oversee the Raven stuff, which you'll

1:06:10

see, he is truly

1:06:12

the opposite of Jerry Jones or

1:06:14

Tepper. So

1:06:17

here's a cookbook that he says, I always put

1:06:19

business first. I was lucky enough to have a

1:06:21

wife who understood that. I just got to the

1:06:23

point that I was wealthier than I ever thought

1:06:25

that I would be, and I knew

1:06:28

I didn't need to make more money. My boys were

1:06:30

the age when I didn't have a father. It was

1:06:32

just the right time. So because

1:06:35

he was sort of, it wasn't like mega, mega rich,

1:06:37

but he was still rich enough to where people would

1:06:39

sort of start to kind of ask

1:06:43

him about other opportunities. And

1:06:45

so someone reached out to him in 1998

1:06:47

and basically said, hey, the Florida Marlins are

1:06:50

for sale. Are you interested at all

1:06:52

in buying them? And he was like, no,

1:06:54

like that baseball doesn't really interest

1:06:56

me. It's not my thing. He

1:06:58

was a big like college basketball fan, loves the

1:07:01

Terps, has court side seats with the Terps, was

1:07:03

like good friends with Gary Williams. Basically

1:07:05

got a quote one day that said, I would have

1:07:07

loved to buy the Maryland Terrapins, but I guess there's

1:07:09

like a state law against that type of ownership. You

1:07:12

can probably buy the Florida State Seminole. That's

1:07:15

true. The Florida State Seminoles have really opened

1:07:17

up a whole other area avenue to that.

1:07:20

And so in 1999,

1:07:22

Art Modell, who had moved the

1:07:24

Cleveland Browns to Baltimore, he

1:07:27

had had all kinds of health problems, two

1:07:29

heart attacks, two heart bypass surgeries and a

1:07:31

stroke. And the team was in

1:07:33

like a shit ton of debt. You

1:07:35

know, the Modell's not super like great

1:07:37

at running a team. And

1:07:39

he was basically like, yo, I need to, I

1:07:42

want to cash out. I want to like my kids to sort

1:07:44

of value in this.

1:07:46

And but I, Modell was kind of addicted a

1:07:48

little bit to wanting to have like a, you

1:07:51

know, a farewell tour. I think Modell sort of

1:07:53

felt like he never quite got his

1:07:55

flowers for helping, you know,

1:07:58

bring about like the TV deal to the NFL. And

1:08:00

like, Madel is one of the people who kind of

1:08:02

helped think up Monday Night Football as a thing. And

1:08:04

so Madel wanted a deal

1:08:06

where he could sort of stay

1:08:08

on as the majority owner for a few years and kind

1:08:10

of apprentice, like, you know, Tepper

1:08:13

did. And Bishadi was like, all right, cool. I

1:08:15

don't quite have like all 600 million

1:08:18

to – someone basically reached out to Bishadi. And

1:08:22

he was like, well, I don't quite have all 600 million

1:08:25

that it would acquire. And they were like,

1:08:27

okay, well, that doesn't matter because Madel basically

1:08:29

wants this to be like a deal where

1:08:31

you paid like 275 million upfront. And

1:08:34

then over the course of four years, you sort

1:08:36

of learn from him. You sit behind the scenes,

1:08:39

and then you have the option to buy the

1:08:41

other 51% in four years. Bishadi

1:08:43

was like, all right, you know what? I'm going to

1:08:45

go to Mexico. I'm going to think about this with

1:08:47

his wife. Basically came back and was

1:08:49

like, yeah, let's do this. Like, let's go ahead and go on in

1:08:51

on this. Bishadi described it

1:08:53

as like one of the best deals that he

1:08:55

could possibly have gotten because he said, because I

1:08:58

had no power for four years, it was like

1:09:00

going to college for four years, but you'd never

1:09:02

get a test. I got a four-year apprenticeship where

1:09:04

I did not have to make a single decision,

1:09:07

which was pretty sweet. Why was the team during

1:09:09

that time? So

1:09:11

interestingly enough, like when Bishadi was

1:09:13

approached and the Ravens

1:09:15

kind of were like, didn't have a lot of money,

1:09:18

didn't have a lot of revenues, they needed an influx

1:09:20

of money, of Bishadi's money to be able to sign

1:09:22

a bunch of free agents. And those free agents in

1:09:24

99 that they signed ended up being the team that

1:09:27

won the Super Bowl in 2000. So

1:09:29

like they did have like a huge impact in

1:09:31

that first Super Bowl, even though he was not

1:09:33

the majority. That was Brian Billock. Yeah, that was

1:09:35

Dilfer and the boys, TC. Come

1:09:39

on. Come on, Lewis, Shannon Sharp,

1:09:41

Sarah Gusa. Ed Reed was not on that

1:09:43

team. That was Rod Woodson. In fact, those guys,

1:09:45

Chris McAllister, things of that nature. Was

1:09:48

Jamal Lewis on that team? Jamal

1:09:52

Lewis was on that team. So that kind

1:09:54

of set the table for like, this

1:09:56

is going to be an organization of success. Like Bish,

1:09:58

one of the best deals that I've ever had. of

1:10:00

the shot his biggest things. One of the

1:10:02

things that he later told John Harbaugh was

1:10:04

like, I think, I don't care. I don't

1:10:06

want you to strive for greatness. I want

1:10:08

you to strive for consistency, because consistency is

1:10:11

its own greatness. And a lot of the

1:10:13

auto franchises make a mistake of they're not

1:10:15

consistent. These big ups and downs, these big

1:10:17

swings. I don't really, I don't like that. So

1:10:20

when he bought with Ozzy Newsome in

1:10:23

his role at this point, I was already been

1:10:25

okay. Ozzy was the GM, Steve

1:10:27

very much considers like one of

1:10:29

his closest friends and mentors felt like Ozzy

1:10:31

taught him so much about the league. Basically

1:10:34

is like Ozzy has a lifetime contract for whatever the

1:10:36

Ravens, you know, as long as he wants to be

1:10:39

at the Ravens, he's with us forever. And

1:10:41

so Ozzy still works the Ravens, even though he's not the

1:10:44

GM anymore. Eric Dacosta is GM. He's just basically

1:10:46

like a consultant who's sort of,

1:10:48

you know, number two in charge. I

1:10:51

thought this was funny, the Washington Post did a big

1:10:53

piece about Bishati when he took over and

1:10:55

said, you know, that it was a good

1:10:57

deal when he bought the Ravens, but not

1:10:59

a great deal. Even

1:11:01

though it had already increased like about $100 million since he

1:11:04

purchased it within a year. This guy,

1:11:06

what's this guy's name? Mark

1:11:09

Giannis, who was like a financial sort

1:11:11

of analyst for things that he

1:11:13

did all right, but you have to recognize something.

1:11:15

If you intend to keep the team, as I

1:11:17

think he will, it doesn't matter what someone else

1:11:19

will pay for it. You still got to pay

1:11:21

that 600 million. The Ravens are currently

1:11:23

valued at $4.63 billion. So it turned out to

1:11:27

be a pretty good deal for Bishati. And

1:11:31

then he still got equity in

1:11:33

his company this

1:11:35

whole time. And that's still, and like

1:11:37

as this is going along, that's continuing

1:11:40

to just churn out cash

1:11:42

and be a complete monster. Right. His

1:11:44

total net worth is like around $8

1:11:46

billion. So he's not like one

1:11:49

of the most like mega wealthy owners in the

1:11:51

NFL, but he's, you know, something like, you

1:11:53

know, the 140 wealthiest, 140th wealthiest

1:11:55

American. Yeah.

1:11:58

His net worth is. gradually increased

1:12:00

since he bought the team. Correct. One

1:12:04

of the things that Beshadi was

1:12:07

very adamant about is that

1:12:09

he said, I have no interest in notoriety, which I

1:12:11

don't think is the correct use of that term. I

1:12:14

said, I plan to be the least known owner

1:12:16

in the country, in the NFL owner. He just

1:12:18

basically was like, I don't want to do interviews.

1:12:20

I don't really want to sort of put myself

1:12:22

out there and be like the face of things.

1:12:24

I want to be involved, but I don't want

1:12:26

to be in charge, which I think is really

1:12:28

interesting sort of way of putting it. I

1:12:31

just got to say, he's also, it

1:12:34

finally hit me like who he looks like

1:12:36

because he's a very striking individual. He looks

1:12:38

like the Soprano's version of

1:12:40

Bill Walton. He's

1:12:44

Italian. Italian. That

1:12:46

is great. That is really good. Just hit me

1:12:48

like a lightning bolt. It's like, cause it's like,

1:12:50

who does this guy look like? It just looks

1:12:52

just like Bill Walton. Yeah. The

1:12:54

very slick back here. The

1:12:57

very Italian, it's just like his Italian cousin. So

1:13:02

that's a, that is an excellent poll. I

1:13:04

have to say the one of the quotes

1:13:06

that says there might, there is a difference

1:13:09

between being involved and being in charge. He

1:13:11

just said that he kind of has some

1:13:13

Steven Stallone in him too. It's a investor

1:13:15

Stallone or no, no, sorry. No, no. All

1:13:17

the guy, the golf, he's got the horse. It's

1:13:22

like if Steven's the gall and Phil Walton, I think

1:13:24

if Steven's the gall ever smiled, Beshadi

1:13:26

has like, he's very much a smiler and

1:13:29

he has these like the big white veneers and

1:13:31

he very much like can't resist like grinning

1:13:33

and laughing where it's like, oh, you know,

1:13:35

I always had the stone face look to

1:13:37

him. Yeah. Never. Anyway,

1:13:39

so this is the quote. I, there's a difference between

1:13:42

being involved and being in charge. I want to be

1:13:44

very involved. I just don't want to be in charge.

1:13:46

You can't hire talented people and then overrule

1:13:49

them with less talented people like

1:13:51

myself. I said, I've never

1:13:53

overruled anyone. I might be a little

1:13:55

forward and say to John Harbaugh like, Hey, let's take

1:13:57

a look at this Isaiah likely guy. looks

1:14:00

like he's a little different. I love productive people

1:14:02

when they're from smaller schools but it's not my

1:14:04

job to pick them. When I was

1:14:06

running Aerotech, I knew that business better than anyone.

1:14:08

So I felt like I should be front and

1:14:10

center. When I got into this business, I knew

1:14:12

I would never catch up. There's always someone

1:14:14

who knew better. It isn't really

1:14:17

humility in my opinion, it's intelligence. I don't

1:14:19

want to be front and center because there's

1:14:21

always someone in this organization who will be

1:14:23

smarter than me in every category. Which

1:14:26

is like totally really rare for the

1:14:28

NFL owner to basically be like, yo,

1:14:30

I'm not the smartest guy in the

1:14:33

room. I don't think he thinks he's

1:14:35

all like, he's not a guy who's

1:14:37

like, I got rich because I was smart.

1:14:39

He's like, I hustled my ass off and

1:14:41

that's why I got rich. A quote in

1:14:43

Aeros basically was like, hey, I really

1:14:47

believe in

1:14:51

hard work but I don't think that I know

1:14:53

what I'm doing and everything. It's just like

1:14:56

a fascinating kind of cat.

1:14:58

He loves the NFL draft. He's the one

1:15:00

thing where he's like, I love to sit

1:15:03

and watch YouTube videos of guys. He's like,

1:15:05

I'll go in there. He told

1:15:07

Marlon Humphrey this. He's like, oh, in there and I'll

1:15:09

watch their highlight tape and then I'll be like, all right,

1:15:11

I want to see their worst plays because you can't

1:15:13

hide your worst plays. I don't need to see anybody's

1:15:15

highlight tape. He'll sit and literally

1:15:17

break down film of and he's

1:15:19

like, I don't do it with the first round guys because

1:15:21

I feel like my guys, my scouting department is really good

1:15:23

and they're going to be able to make a good decision

1:15:25

with that. It's like, I want to like see the third

1:15:27

and fourth rounders, guys who might be like a diamond in

1:15:29

the rough and then I might make some recommendations by go,

1:15:31

let's take a chance on this guy, which

1:15:34

is pretty awesome. You're a ball

1:15:36

knower. Yeah. Not a ton of

1:15:38

like, you know, really controversy in

1:15:40

Bishadi's like ownership stuff. He

1:15:42

did fire Brian Billick after Billick

1:15:45

went five and 11 the one year. So

1:15:47

he hadn't hired Brian Billie. He did not

1:15:49

hire Brian Billick. He took over with his

1:15:51

guy. The only hire that he's made is

1:15:53

Harbaugh. And, but I will say he tried

1:15:56

to hire your boy, the clapper, Jason

1:15:59

Garrett. They offered Jason Garrett the

1:16:01

job. They were very quite enamored with it and

1:16:03

Garrett backed out of it after getting the offer

1:16:05

kind of held the retold the Ravens and needed

1:16:07

to sit on it for like 24 hours and

1:16:10

then in kind of a humiliating way, like

1:16:12

turn down the job to stay the offensive

1:16:14

coordinator with the Cowboys. Jerry gave him

1:16:16

a bump and basically said, you know, you're out. Yeah. Really want

1:16:18

you to be the coach of the Cowboys someday. You're

1:16:20

my coach and waiting. Like you're a future

1:16:22

like offensive guru genius. And so

1:16:25

they, as their second choice ended up going

1:16:27

with John Harbaugh and you

1:16:29

know, like he's been there, you know, since

1:16:31

2008 and has had, I don't know, one

1:16:34

seed twice now as one of Superbowl.

1:16:37

So turned out a little bit better for, for

1:16:39

John than it did for the Clapper. Do you

1:16:41

think the Clapper would have been successful with the

1:16:43

Ravens? I think probably, I

1:16:45

don't know that he would have been as

1:16:48

successful as Harbaugh. I think Harbaugh is

1:16:50

really good at culture and

1:16:53

has, you know, made a few mistakes here and

1:16:55

there about maybe cycling some guys out. I

1:16:58

always think that like he, like he got rid of

1:17:00

Anquan Bolden like right after they won the Superbowl. And

1:17:02

that was like a huge culture mistake

1:17:04

because it really pissed off a lot of guys and

1:17:06

almost caused a mutiny, like Ed Reed had to put

1:17:08

down a mutiny at one point. And

1:17:11

then, but you know,

1:17:13

overall, like John's really good at basically

1:17:15

Dominic Foxworth told me once, like he's

1:17:17

better at being a human being

1:17:19

than any other coach that I've ever

1:17:21

played for. Like he's not, it doesn't mean that

1:17:23

he doesn't make like ruthless decisions because

1:17:26

he has to, that's part of the job. And you

1:17:28

can't like trust anybody in this job, like a thousand

1:17:30

percent, but he's more human than anybody that I've ever

1:17:32

dealt with and he will actually, he won't lie to

1:17:35

you, he won't mislead you. A lot

1:17:37

of coaches will lie and basically say like, oh, things are

1:17:39

great. You're, we feel good about you. And then stab you

1:17:41

in the back. He's basically be like, yeah, you're not cutting

1:17:43

it for us. Like, you know, I care about you as

1:17:45

a human being, but we need better plays from you. And

1:17:47

so if you don't step up, like you're going to be

1:17:49

gone. And I think that's what players value above

1:17:51

all things. It's like, they just want an honest

1:17:54

assessment of who they are and stuff. But

1:17:56

the other story quote about, uh, how he

1:17:58

loves to evaluate like. DBs and wide receivers

1:18:00

and stuff. Although wide receivers would be kind of

1:18:03

a mark on his tenure. He said, I'm looking

1:18:05

for girlfriends. Well, my scouting department is looking for

1:18:07

wives. I want a flashy pass rusher and those

1:18:09

guys want linemen. I can't see what's going on

1:18:11

on the line. So I can't evaluate them. I

1:18:14

like to be able to see what's going on

1:18:16

and out and be in space. So

1:18:18

it was a great quote. Uh, just some

1:18:20

other like philosophical quotes that he had that I thought were great. Uh,

1:18:23

you know, people all the time ask him about like,

1:18:25

how can I get rich and famous? And he's like,

1:18:27

you know what? The only thing better than being rich

1:18:29

and famous is it's being rich. You don't need the

1:18:31

fame. You don't get anything out of it. Being rich

1:18:33

and anonymous is the key to life. Uh,

1:18:36

we might be doing the wrong

1:18:39

opposite quadrant. We're

1:18:41

becoming less anonymous. We might be, we're definitely not

1:18:43

famous. The three of us are not doing it

1:18:45

right. One

1:18:49

thing I do, I've really kind of admired about Steve over the

1:18:51

years is he's like, um, he's a

1:18:53

big, he's not a political person. Really.

1:18:55

He's given some money to like Republicans

1:18:57

has given some money to Democrats, but

1:18:59

what he cares really about is like

1:19:01

people. And he's put up towards

1:19:03

a ton of funding towards the historically

1:19:05

black colleges and universities, uh, is particularly

1:19:08

in Maryland. He, when he said

1:19:10

someone told him at some point that like the

1:19:12

underfunding that the state was giving them was like

1:19:14

close to like half a billion dollars. And he

1:19:16

said, that really pissed me off. So I said,

1:19:18

we got to make a big difference here. He

1:19:20

started making huge donations and like putting all, you

1:19:22

know, all funding, all kinds of scholarships for HBCU

1:19:25

kids. So that was, you know, pretty

1:19:27

cool. Uh, and one of my, one of

1:19:29

the great moments that this is like power, you know, Steve's a

1:19:31

big Catholic guy, like giving tons of money to the Catholic

1:19:33

church. So one of the most, uh, invigorating things

1:19:35

he ever did in his life was he went,

1:19:37

he gave a bunch of money to, uh, you

1:19:39

know, the Catholic church of Rome. And as a

1:19:41

result, they let him and his wife like go

1:19:43

in and see the Sistine Chapel all alone and

1:19:45

they cleared the floor and they let him and

1:19:47

his wife like lay down on their backs for

1:19:49

45 minutes while a guide like took them point

1:19:51

by point through the Sistine Chapel. And he was

1:19:53

like, it was like one of the most moving

1:19:56

experiences of my life. That's, that's power right there.

1:19:58

I think when you can clear the Sistine. Apple

1:20:01

for an hour. So obviously

1:20:03

like the Ray Rice stuff is sort of

1:20:05

the one kind of, you know, black mark

1:20:08

on his tenure, just in terms of like

1:20:10

what the Ravens knew and when they knew

1:20:12

it, yours truly was

1:20:14

sort of embroiled in some of this

1:20:16

directly. Uh, in that when I, in

1:20:19

2014, I'd been at ESPN for a couple of years. And when

1:20:22

the Ray Rice initial incident came

1:20:24

out, uh, I got, you know, a

1:20:26

call from Don Van Nada, who was like one of the most

1:20:29

respected investigative before, it was like,

1:20:31

I know you used to cover the Ravens. Uh, I

1:20:33

need your help. Like we need to find out like

1:20:35

unpack, like what happened here and when

1:20:38

the, what the Ravens knew. But

1:20:40

Shadi was very, he loved Ray Rice. Like he

1:20:42

felt like, you know, Ray was in some ways

1:20:45

like a family member to him. He

1:20:47

always was like, anytime the shot, he

1:20:49

would ask Ray to make like any charitable appearance, like

1:20:51

Ray would be like, yes, sir. I absolutely would do

1:20:53

it. He's really thought that he

1:20:55

was like sort of a pillar of the community guy.

1:20:57

And so when initially what happened

1:20:59

was you thought that the

1:21:02

full video, full TMZ video didn't come out

1:21:05

right away. It seemed like and Ray and

1:21:07

excuse me, Ray Rice, I

1:21:09

think mess misled various people

1:21:11

within the Ravens and thinking that he

1:21:13

had like backhanded his fiancee Janay, which

1:21:15

is horrible to even like parse this

1:21:17

kind of stuff. And so the Ravens were

1:21:20

like, okay, it was a drunken mistake. It was

1:21:22

stupid. We're going to stand by you. The

1:21:24

Shadi said at the time of the incident, he'll be back

1:21:26

with the team. He'll definitely be back. I

1:21:29

know how terribly disappointing it is to Ray and

1:21:31

his fiancee, how embarrassing it is for them, but

1:21:33

I have compassion towards them. And

1:21:35

so, you know, I will say like the

1:21:38

Shadi basically and Ozzy both wanted

1:21:40

to, Ray Rice was such

1:21:42

an important person. They felt like to the history

1:21:45

of the franchise, to their sort of iteration of,

1:21:47

of the second kind of wave

1:21:49

of Baltimore Ravens and the Super Bowl and

1:21:51

stuff that they wanted to believe like, Hey,

1:21:53

you shouldn't be crucified, which is such a

1:21:56

silly word, but for one mistake. So

1:21:58

they stood by him. And of course. What

1:22:00

we found out when we did a reporting is that they

1:22:02

knew over time, maybe not right away,

1:22:05

a lot more than they let on and

1:22:07

that they kind of got walked out the

1:22:09

plank to where they couldn't take it

1:22:11

back. They, as they found out more shit about what

1:22:13

happened with rice, his lawyer

1:22:15

told allegedly like president Dick

1:22:17

Cass, Hey, it's fucking horrible. He knocked

1:22:19

her the fuck out. You

1:22:22

guys, this is bad. They didn't

1:22:24

really feel comfortable being all of a sudden be like, Oh,

1:22:26

guess what? After standing by Ray Ray, I saw this time.

1:22:28

We're now cutting him. So then when

1:22:30

the video did come out, they were put

1:22:32

in a position of like, Oh shit, like we

1:22:35

look really stupid. Our story

1:22:37

detailed a bunch of this stuff. And

1:22:39

one of the things was that Beshadi had sent

1:22:41

texts to Ray Rice basically saying, you

1:22:43

know, on September 9th, I spent, I just spent

1:22:45

two hours talking to Ozzy was all about you.

1:22:47

We love you. And we will always figure out

1:22:49

a way to keep you in our lives. This

1:22:51

is after the punch video. When you

1:22:53

are done with football, I will hire you

1:22:56

to help me raise great young men. I

1:22:58

still love you. Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation

1:23:00

point. And rice said, I know it's a

1:23:02

rough time for all of us, all of you. I love you.

1:23:04

And that will never change. And Beshadi said, I will

1:23:06

help you make a great life. Indeed. I

1:23:09

give you my word. And right. Said,

1:23:11

you know, that means the world to me and my family. We greatly appreciate it.

1:23:13

Thank you. Rice at the time

1:23:15

told a bunch of friends

1:23:17

that he felt like he was sort of being blackmailed and staying

1:23:19

quiet. Like, there'll be a job for you. If you don't talk

1:23:21

about this stuff, Goodell was kind

1:23:24

of hung out to dry on some of this

1:23:26

stuff where he claimed that no one within the

1:23:28

NFL had seen this video as we

1:23:31

had had sources saying that they

1:23:33

did remember. You guys remember that

1:23:35

someone within the NFL offices called

1:23:37

the Associated Press and left them a

1:23:39

voicemail saying Ray Rice punched his wife.

1:23:41

The tape is horrible. You know, you

1:23:43

got to look into this further. Robert

1:23:46

Mueller did an investigation to try to find

1:23:48

out like where this leak came from. Surprise

1:23:51

surprise. No one could ever figure out like what

1:23:53

had happened, where the alleged leak came from. We

1:23:56

knew at ESPN that, you know, Chris Mortensen

1:23:58

was told by someone he. He never was

1:24:00

willing to reveal that source that Ray Rice had

1:24:02

punched his wife. So all this talk

1:24:04

about the Ravens didn't know was BS. They

1:24:07

knew at some point and they didn't, we weren't

1:24:09

able to sort of walk back what had happened.

1:24:12

So eventually they come out and they cut Ray Rice. They

1:24:15

criticize our lot of report, although I will say, I always

1:24:17

been appreciative for Steve for saying this in the press conference.

1:24:19

He was like, you know, I always

1:24:21

thought Kevin M. Augenberg was one of the best

1:24:23

young reporters that the Baltimore Sun ever had. So

1:24:25

it hurts my feelings, you know, and some of

1:24:27

this effect that this would come from him.

1:24:30

Steve and I eventually like, you know, hashed it out.

1:24:33

He was basically like, there's no hard feelings between us. Like you have

1:24:35

a job to do. I had a job to do. That's

1:24:38

really kind of the only, I

1:24:40

would say, you know, I don't know if

1:24:42

it's a black mark is kind of a tough thing to say, but like, you

1:24:44

know, smudge on

1:24:46

this resume of things. Like they did. I bet if

1:24:49

you asked them now, he'd say they messed up. Like

1:24:51

we did. Like you said, they walked out on this

1:24:53

plank. They're like, oh God, now we're trapped here. Like

1:24:55

and then they didn't do the right thing. You

1:24:58

know what I think? Yeah, the quote said we all

1:25:01

failed. I was kept abreast of every little thing we're

1:25:03

doing here and we failed. So it

1:25:05

kind of goes back to his whole thing of, hey,

1:25:08

I don't want to be the one making the decisions. And

1:25:10

this is an instance where he kind of had to come

1:25:12

in and be the one making the decisions. And if you

1:25:14

have that mindset of, you know, I'm not

1:25:16

like, I'm kind of

1:25:19

in charge, but I'm more like, you

1:25:21

know, just hiring the people and they're in charge. Like that's,

1:25:23

you know, that kind of puts those two things at odds

1:25:25

with each other. When

1:25:27

did the Ray Lewis stuff, the

1:25:30

Cobalt lounge was that under Bishadi's

1:25:32

watch? That would have been in

1:25:34

the under 20 years. So

1:25:36

that was 99. That was Modell's. The

1:25:39

White Link. So

1:25:41

Bishadi loves Ray Lewis and they

1:25:44

have had like a very close

1:25:46

relationship for many years. One

1:25:48

thing that I had sort of forgotten about, but

1:25:50

remember the Ravens came really very close to signing

1:25:52

Colin Kaepernick. I don't know if you guys remember

1:25:54

this. Yeah, they've, they've vetted

1:25:56

the kuke and they were very,

1:25:58

very much like. You know what,

1:26:00

I think we're going to go forward

1:26:02

with this. Bichali didn't even in

1:26:05

an interview. He said, we've had long conversations in the

1:26:07

building about it. I've had conversations with a bunch of

1:26:09

current and former players about it. I think you'd be

1:26:11

shocked as to who is against it and who is

1:26:13

for it. It's not racial lines and it's not existing

1:26:15

players or pro players or former players. I

1:26:17

care about the fan base and I have to observe the opinions

1:26:19

of players who have been here. Collins

1:26:22

made some assurances that there would be no protest, that

1:26:24

he would be standing and I understand

1:26:27

that that might hurt the brand. I

1:26:29

know we're going to upset some people and

1:26:31

we're going to make some people happy that he stood up for

1:26:33

something and we stand for that too. Nonviolent

1:26:35

process is something we've all embraced. He said, personally,

1:26:37

I liked it a lot better when he went

1:26:39

from sitting to kneeling. I'm a Catholic, so we

1:26:41

spend a lot of time kneeling, which

1:26:44

is great. Actually

1:26:47

kneeling is more respectful than standing.

1:26:50

So Bichali never said this, but Ray Lewis

1:26:52

claimed that they were going to sign Kaepernick,

1:26:55

but then, I don't know if you remember

1:26:57

this, but Colin Kaepernick's girlfriend, now his partner,

1:27:00

they have a child together, tweeted a

1:27:02

picture of Ray Lewis and

1:27:04

Bichali at the Super Bowl when

1:27:07

they won and Bichali was

1:27:09

massaging Ray's shoulders on the dais of

1:27:11

the Super Bowl during the trophy ceremony.

1:27:14

So his girlfriend tweeted this picture from

1:27:16

the movie, Django Unchained, of

1:27:18

Samuel L. Jackson doing the same

1:27:20

thing, massaging Leonardo DiCaprio's thing and

1:27:22

basically referred to Bichali

1:27:24

as a slave master. And

1:27:27

Captain Ray Lewis was like, that was it. That

1:27:30

was a bridge too far. Bichali

1:27:32

was like, I'm not doing this now. Why

1:27:34

do we want this? So in some ways, I

1:27:37

kind of, reading that and making me think back, it's like,

1:27:39

man, Colin Kaepernick kind of fucked himself in that sense.

1:27:41

He could have been back in the NFL and

1:27:44

yet his camp was

1:27:46

tweeting this kind of stupid shit

1:27:48

because I really do think Bichali is a

1:27:51

very, as we said, super forgiving person in

1:27:53

no way, shape or form as the racist.

1:27:55

Like he's giving tons of money to HBCUs,

1:27:57

like he's stuck up for Ray Rice. stood

1:28:00

behind like trail sugs and all these people who'd

1:28:02

gotten various, you know, in trouble for

1:28:04

things. And so that was kind

1:28:06

of a quite the sort of, you

1:28:08

know, I guess, unfortunate zinger for

1:28:11

the Kaepernick crew. Just

1:28:13

a few coming into final notes here. Bishadi, I

1:28:15

did say that there was only been one bad

1:28:17

kind of mark on his resume TC. Bishadi

1:28:20

says that Tom Fazio is the best

1:28:22

designer working today. He's a

1:28:24

member, he is at home down in Baker's Bay,

1:28:26

this is where he shot his career. I saw

1:28:28

it. I saw his place. So

1:28:32

he's a 10 handicap. He says he doesn't ever think

1:28:34

he'll get under a 10. But he wants

1:28:37

to fight to sort of, you know, stay at a 10 as

1:28:39

he gets older. And he has a he

1:28:42

has the succession plan for the Ravens is sort of

1:28:44

interesting. Bishadi's kids are not involved

1:28:46

in the team side of the business. They are involved

1:28:48

in some of like the investment side of the business.

1:28:50

But he's like, they won't take over when

1:28:52

he's gone. He says there's a lot of pressure

1:28:54

in the high profile business like this. I

1:28:57

just didn't think it was in the cards, or fair

1:28:59

to my kids to say, you're gonna have this Baltimore

1:29:01

treasure and you're going to be the steward of it.

1:29:04

I don't think it's fair. I think it wrecks a

1:29:06

lot of families. And so is basically I

1:29:08

don't I didn't promise to turn it over to my

1:29:10

kids when I die. So as I

1:29:12

said, I'm gonna leave most of my money to charity. I

1:29:14

don't know. I don't want to wait until

1:29:16

I'm dead to give it all away. When I'm 72, I

1:29:19

think I'll probably say that's enough. I'll sell the

1:29:21

team. I'll take that money and hopefully spend the

1:29:23

next 10 years giving all that money away. So

1:29:25

he's 63 right now. And I'm playing Tom

1:29:28

Fazio courses. Just

1:29:30

a great quote, I thought kind of, you

1:29:32

know, in some ways, like applied to what

1:29:34

we do a little bit and said, you

1:29:37

know, if you're gonna start a business, I

1:29:39

recommend reading and researching and find something that

1:29:41

you do well or better than others. Some

1:29:43

people say do something you love. Well, I

1:29:46

had to spend the better part of my life explaining to people what

1:29:48

I do. Oh, what do you do? You put

1:29:50

engineers to work in 14500 companies. Why do they need

1:29:53

you? Well, because they can't find them. I'm a

1:29:55

recruiting specialist. It doesn't sound too sexy, but it

1:29:57

made me a lot of money. If someone opens

1:29:59

up a flower shop and says it's a goal

1:30:01

for them their whole life. That's great. Maybe it

1:30:03

makes you happy, but I didn't have a lot

1:30:05

of money growing up. So I had to do

1:30:07

whatever I could to be successful. And

1:30:10

there's a great quote. He told Humphrey, he said, if Humphrey was

1:30:12

like, I want to start a business. What, what advice would you

1:30:14

have to me to start a business? He said, I always

1:30:16

tell players, if you want to start a business,

1:30:19

don't do a damn thing until you retire, because

1:30:21

if you try to do it part time, guys

1:30:23

like me will eat you alive. I

1:30:25

would love the wolf bitch. Yeah. I would

1:30:28

love to have part time competitors. Don't compete

1:30:30

against people who need this for survival. Don't

1:30:32

invest money in your friend's business because they

1:30:34

won't fight to survive. They say they will,

1:30:37

but they won't when the wolf, because the

1:30:39

wolf is not at their door. So

1:30:42

I think that that's Steve Vigotti. Hell

1:30:44

yeah. Steve, I'm the off chance that

1:30:46

you're listening. Uh, thanks for

1:30:49

the compliment all those years ago. When I put

1:30:51

you on blast, uh, in a, in

1:30:53

a big investigative piece, uh, and thanks for it, he,

1:30:55

he was really always kind to me. In the very

1:30:57

few times he talked, he was like, I remember he

1:30:59

said, go on to John Harbaugh. I told John a

1:31:02

few years ago, there's no way that he's going to

1:31:04

be here very long. Uh, he's like,

1:31:06

I'm really sad to see you go to ESPN, but you deserve

1:31:08

it. There's no way like you should be still here at the

1:31:10

Baltimore sun. And I was like, Oh man, like that gave me

1:31:12

such a boost of like confidence, uh, because

1:31:14

I had been critical of the Ravens. I wasn't like some Homer.

1:31:16

And so for him to say like, you know, your shit. Thank

1:31:19

you. I always got me as sort of a, you know,

1:31:21

a boost. What a ledge. I didn't mean

1:31:23

that was the first time. I

1:31:26

was the first time you came across my radar screen.

1:31:28

What was the Ray Rice thing? The Ray Rice thing.

1:31:30

I'm like, I remember, you know, I'd read some, some

1:31:33

Don Van Nada stuff, but I'm like, Oh, like, who's,

1:31:35

who's this guy? He's a capital J investigative reporter here.

1:31:41

You know, you might've sent me a DM

1:31:43

about that TC. Like, man, that was a

1:31:46

riveting read. So I'd have to go look

1:31:48

back to our DM history. It's still allows

1:31:50

such things. All

1:31:52

right. I'm all, you know, I'm all like,

1:31:55

God, two guys are completely opposite. I know

1:31:57

you put the temper at the bottom right

1:31:59

now. you put Shadi probably in

1:32:01

the top two or three. I

1:32:04

mean, KVV, what's the, has there been any

1:32:06

kind of change in organizational

1:32:08

philosophy from Newsom to Dacosta

1:32:10

or is it kind of,

1:32:13

you know, I think that, I would say a

1:32:15

little bit TBD, I mean, Ozzy's last, um,

1:32:17

basically act as GM was to say, let's

1:32:20

go get Lamar Jackson, like let's trade up

1:32:22

into the first round. Uh,

1:32:24

so, you know, there was a little bit more,

1:32:26

I would say Dacosta has

1:32:29

helped them shift to

1:32:31

a little bit more of like taking bigger

1:32:33

swings on things. So I don't know that

1:32:35

like Ozzy would have signed Odell

1:32:37

Beckham. I don't know that Ozzy

1:32:39

would have traded for Roquan Smith. Like Ozzy was

1:32:41

very much like we have to sort of, we

1:32:44

draft well, we can homegrown guys, and

1:32:46

I think Dacosta realized like we just, we're going

1:32:48

to have a problem with evaluating writer receivers. So

1:32:51

let's go get one. Let's fix

1:32:53

it once and for all sort of the

1:32:55

credibility. And then we'll sort of

1:32:57

fit it in with, you know, with Parrotman

1:32:59

or with say flowers and stuff and you

1:33:02

know, they're, they're much more explosive offensively that

1:33:04

the Ravens football was

1:33:06

so bad aesthetically for

1:33:09

like 10 years. It was like after the

1:33:11

Super Bowl in 2012 until

1:33:13

like Lamar took over, it was like eight

1:33:15

years of like, Hey, they're still running. He

1:33:17

drafted the most trashed group of wider receivers.

1:33:19

Really? After you. And they were still winning

1:33:22

because they still had good defenses and Flacco

1:33:24

was like competent enough, but they were so

1:33:26

uninteresting to watch. I remember one

1:33:28

year they had a like a do or die home game

1:33:30

in the last game of the year against the Bengals. If

1:33:33

they won, they would go to the playoffs and if they

1:33:35

lost, they would not. And the Bengals

1:33:37

scored on like a fourth and 12 and like won

1:33:39

the game. That was remember that when the bills made

1:33:41

the playoffs too, and they got all those donations, Danny

1:33:43

Dalton's charity. So it was

1:33:46

the upper parts of the stadium were almost empty.

1:33:49

That was how miserable people were. Cause they were like, you

1:33:51

know what? I do not give a shit. This team is

1:33:53

so not fun to watch. And Beshati

1:33:55

at that moment was like, we have to

1:33:57

make a change. Like We, we cannot. the

1:34:00

be like. We. Go! Good entertainment, broad appeal

1:34:02

exactly and I to go smart of him Mikey

1:34:04

You know a lot of owners would have been

1:34:06

like wow we're still in all safe and were

1:34:08

so fine We're still be consistent boys like I

1:34:10

think it has to be to think I support

1:34:13

like to to perfect examples like their mentality is

1:34:15

like Keaton Mitchell like bring him in his like.

1:34:17

East. Carolina kid like I can't believe nobody took

1:34:20

a flyer on him and he was on

1:34:22

draft. The guy but also like this file

1:34:24

or the Ravens exactly but then like Thailand

1:34:26

Wilson Liger. You. Know run the

1:34:28

really really city forty time and like other

1:34:30

people's draft boards and there's for now that

1:34:32

cattle and organ. It's a great spot. Know.

1:34:35

Is is a football players on like

1:34:38

that or scouting and their their talent

1:34:40

development. So. So

1:34:42

we'll see the be there. You know I think

1:34:44

they have a decent chance to win it all

1:34:47

this year but you know who the lots home

1:34:49

games to do it in the night besides I

1:34:51

just they keep you know he's very much like

1:34:53

Loki the gloves to drink bud light and loves

1:34:55

to square foot slops and is just not a

1:34:57

pretentious person at all like very much like of

1:35:00

he still and really what when they went to

1:35:02

Servo he flew like a hundred and fifty of

1:35:04

his friends including his old high school coach who

1:35:06

thought that you know who didn't play him whatever

1:35:08

and his his eyes off color joke for years

1:35:11

you'd. Like of know you're the first player

1:35:13

ever had get to the Nfl you know

1:35:15

as an owner so that's great assessments client

1:35:17

whereas Tapper would have never would have liked

1:35:19

alone is high school coach to the game

1:35:21

and then like now on at him out

1:35:23

on a mission of the thought of eleven

1:35:25

years later that ago. or

1:35:28

I have set of guys of the unwanted

1:35:30

stuff. See. You back next

1:35:33

sense I guess for episode seven

1:35:35

and indices six were real nice.

1:35:37

They are owners are to be

1:35:39

with honours like a good chairs.

1:35:42

Think. Thirty boehner given the given their

1:35:44

to see. I

1:36:01

remember nights, I didn't remember nights

1:36:04

I damn knew we'd wait

1:36:06

and get a ride I

1:36:08

knew your favorite rappers, favorite

1:36:10

rappers I knew your favorite

1:36:12

rappers, baby, ride Absolute

1:36:14

fool, hell no joke Who me? I'm heard

1:36:16

from the track