Ben Gilbert

And this is all being led by, you mentioned Lamar Hunt, who was the Dallas Texans owner.

Independent Baseball League.

And in some ways, it's easy for the upstart to do this in counterposition because they have no existing TV contracts.

But they do kind of get laughed out of the room.

They go to the TV networks with this.

And each of the TV networks are like, oh, cool idea.

But like, who cares about your league?

No one's going to watch this.

So we hear your pitch.

We understand that this is very innovative and breakthrough and very different than what the different NFL teams are doing.

And we don't really care that much.

This is probably the fourth episode we've talked about Rune Arledge on.

This is actually shocking.

Like I know to everyone right now, we're like, well, of course.

But it used to be the case that Sunday afternoons kind of had a hole in their schedule.

Like CBS had no good programming.

And so that's why they would originally agree to like, sure, we'll broadcast some NFL games.

But no one expected the American public in their living rooms to take to football as an event, as an entertainment form delivered over the air to the living room the way that it did.

And so the NFL sort of rebranded Sundays in America and turned it into a completely different way that people spend their time.

And that was shocking.