Howard Bryant

The commercials are everywhere.

I mean, media is funded by DraftKings and FanDuel and the rest of it.

And then the players take the fall.

And so the more you watch these games with your high-definition televisions and the controversial calls, especially in the NFL and the NBA, the more you begin to wonder, are you watching a legitimate contest?

And that is the death knell for sports.

So the question is really going to be,

Are you going to trust what you're watching or are we simply going to watch these athletes be the ones who individually get bounced out of the game and the game maintains its legitimacy?

I think it's a very, very difficult balance and I think 2025 really showed that.

See, I'm choked up.

You are.

You're reclaimed.

It's incredible, Scott.

I mean, that is the thing that we love about the games.

Every time there's a scandal, whether it's steroids, whether it's gambling.

When the game is played at its best, people come to it, and they love it, and it reminds them of all the reasons why they got hooked in the first place when their team wins.

Greg Maddox once told me, the great Hall of Fame pitcher told me, it's baseball, you can't ruin it.

And that Dodgers-Blue Jays World Series was one of the greatest things I've ever seen.

I've been covering this stuff for 30 years.

It is that reminder of the power of what sports brings for us.

Once again, we talk about all the scandal, but you also talk about the things that these athletes can do.