Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
No one wants to see someone die on the football field, but the fact that it is possible does raise the stakes. Right after this ad. There were, I'm sure, certainly at Harvard, there were people, I'm sure, who had a very pejorative view of people who had my book in their room. That's how it is.
Chapter 2: What predictions does Chuck Klosterman make about the future of football?
That is also true. Yeah. You know, that's how it is. I'm not, you got to be self-aware.
You can't, you know. But I was trying to figure out, like, when did I first become aware of you and how was I most consuming you? And the answer, despite you being a writer I've long enjoyed, much to the protestations of the coolest kids in college, like Chuck Costner, Bill Simmons, the pod, you've been doing that for like 20 plus years now.
I would say the response I get from going on his podcast is about the same as releasing a book. And I'm not exaggerating. Like the likelihood that anytime if it's someone coming up in an airport or I talk to a guy at the dog park or whatever, the likelihood that what they want to talk about is that. You know, I mean, it's kind of I strangely I've written 13 books.
I'm happy how they've worked out. I've had more success than I would ever dreamed.
Chapter 3: How does the concept of 'Peak Football' factor into the discussion?
But I do sometimes wonder if I'm remembered, if I'm going to be the way, you know, certain Carson guests are remembered. Right. You know, or certain like, you know, certain people who are on talk shows who are, you know, because it's just the magnitude of that thing. is crazy.
I've been on that show once in person, and it still comes up all of the time with strangers on the street. It is intense. It is intense. And so the idea that you're here to talk about this book, which I enjoy, by the way. Thank you. Football. This is you also talking about what's in the psychology of this audience that I think you felt most acutely by sports podcasting.
Oh, well, I wouldn't know if I agree with that because the audience for sports podcasting is not the sports audience. Podcasting is, in many ways, sports podcasting is built for the world of sports outside of the games. You can be the person who doesn't really watch games and yet is able to have a conversation that seemingly could be on a podcast.
All of which is to say that this conversation we're having has been a long time coming. And we have known each other from afar for a very, very long time through the world of sports and sports media. But we never—we had plans, Chuck. We had grand plans that— We did. I blame you, honestly, if I may just immediately throw you under the bus. Like, we had plans.
Chapter 4: What role does nostalgia play in Klosterman's views on sports?
Yeah. Yeah, we did. We were going to go to the Brooklyn Aquarium. Yeah. And, you know, it probably was me. It probably was me. Because I think... I feel like that happened when my life had kind of shifted. I think I had... What year was it? I had kids, I think, already.
Yeah. We were talking, like, in the...
20 teens yes um you it's when you were you know you were on a you know around the horn and like you you dress like a manatee or whatever you know yeah yeah yes and it was like that or something along those lines and we were like let's get high and go to the go to the the brooklyn aquarium and it seemed like a good idea but then i just you know i never got around it there's this kind of this there's a lot of people like that who i've made plans with who i never ended up seeing
I lived in New York from 2002 to 2017. And that's really bifurcated, that there was that first eight-year period, and that was a really incredible, crazy period. And then there was the second period where I was a married person who was raising kids and trying to sort of become maybe a little more serious about what I was doing as a writer.
Hold on. The bifurcation of your time in New York It sounds like you have great nostalgia for, at the very least, the first chunk of it.
If nostalgia is injecting your own feelings into the past and misremembering the past, I hope that's not what's happening. I hope that what I remember is real. But it was just the way my life worked out is so unlike. It's not like... my dreams were fulfilled or it surpassed my dreams. I never had dreams like this, right?
I never, I, I've mentioned this before, but like I used to, you know, like read spin magazine in college. So when I ended up working there, all my college friends were like, Oh, you, what you always wanted to have happen has happened. And I was like, I never read that magazine with the idea that there was a way to work there. Like, I never thought that.
I never met a writer in my life, like an author, until I moved to Akron. Like, nobody. I mean, I came from a town of 500 people, but even in Fargo, I didn't know anybody who were writers. I didn't exactly know how it even worked. You know, like when I published my first book, I just I just wrote it. And then you said, like, I wonder how to publish it. I didn't have an agent initially.
I didn't know anyone in New York. It just worked out. I mean, as with everything, it's like the biggest factor probably is chance. But, you know.
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Chapter 5: How does the structure of football impact its popularity?
But hold on, but New York and my nostalgia, my own potentially misremembered memories of New York media pre all of this shit, like working at a magazine was the best.
Yeah, well, I mean, it seemed that that was the destination job, yes.
Just the idea that, again, I worked at Sports Illustrated as a fact checker, then at ESPN the magazine, and those places either don't exist or are zombies, as I often say on this show. But the era in which there were expense accounts, the era in which the human editorial discretion was the way that decisions were made about what people talked about and knew about and covered.
Like, the idea that there were these institutions with human beings, editors, who had money to spend and said, hey, Chuck, go away for several months and come back with this profile of someone or this review or this piece. That is a world that I constantly am thinking about.
Well, but it's interesting to me you say that because It seems to me, just looking around, that the world you're working in involves much more money. And there's much more money to be made.
It is funny to me how when people talk about the magazine world of the 90s or whatever, they're always talking about expense accounts and how this guy did, you know, he was able, he had the expense of suit or whatever. It's what they always focus on. But that wasn't what it was for me. It was like I wanted to write anything.
And I wanted what I wrote to be seen by people and I wanted to work at the highest level of this. And that's what it seemed like magazines and a handful of newspapers were like. It is like I mean, I've asked this to other people and this seems like an adversarial question. But do you in any way have regrets that you stopped writing? Because it's so that's that's something that's like.
You know, I may be too rigid. Like I can't really change. I still am doing, I'm writing this. Many people would say like, well, this book, you should make it into a 10-part podcast or it should be like, it should have been a sub stack or should, but I want to do this. So it's like, what, why did this, why did you do that?
So certainly, you know, coming from the Tony Kornheiser coaching tree, money, as he often says, is the answer to all of, or questions. But also, what I am nostalgic for, and I'll answer the question about, like, do I miss writing in a second? What I'm nostalgic for is the separation that I had from the pressures of metrics and audience.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of private equity on sports culture?
all our questions would be answered. All we can do now is use our best judgment. If we actually had statistics, it would be so great. And who would have guessed the level of catastrophe that has been for media, you know? But there's also, like, this is a real, your operation here, very impressive, but it's like a cooperative thing.
And it's like, wow, it's great that we're all working together on something. And I am not like that. I like to do things differently. by myself, have complete control over it, and then when I finally hand it over, feel like, well, this is... There shouldn't be any changes. This should be what it is. Were you a nightmare to edit? When I was young, absolutely. I would say as I got older, less so.
When I was a young person... Because I was also like... I... I felt like I thought about every sentence. So, if they had an issue, I had three reasons why, you know. But, I mean, I did. When I was at Fargo, I used to do this. I guess I'm not ashamed of this. When I was writing a big feature, I would always include something in there that was crazy.
So, the editor would be like, we got to take that out. And then, like, I'd be like, okay, fine. But these articles. Other four things. Like, I would do that.
I would add something in there that I knew would... You would have a fake darling that you would consent to the killing of.
Oh, totally. That was its only job, you know, because it would be like, you know, and every once in a while it got through and it'd be really interesting. But, I mean, that was... But that, you know, that... But that was when... You know, I have. I don't... You look back on your life and it's hard to feel good sometimes, you know?
Like, it's hard to feel good because you're looking back on it with the projection of who you are now. Like, I can't get back into the mind of who I was at, say, 25. No matter how hard I try, in some weird way, I'm just imagining myself now, but I'm less fat and I don't have a beard. But really, I was a completely different person.
The weirdest thing about writing books over a period of time like this is... When you write that book, you are frozen in time. And for the person who only reads that book, they're reading about who I was when I was 28. And they understand me better than I do at that age. Because to me, I would never go back and read that book. I would be terrified sort of to have to confront who I was.
It's probably not a person I would like now.
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Chapter 7: How does gambling influence the perception of football?
When I was 50 and now I'm 50 and it only seems to make sense the way things were when I was 20. And that just proves I'm a person who has the inability to really live out, like live in time, like to live in the present. I can't do it. People say like live in the present. I've never done that. I'm only living in the past and the future at all times. I'm not even here right now.
So in that way, the book that you wrote here, Football, what would the version of this book be if it was Chuck of 10, 15 years ago trying to do this? How different would it have been? Quite a bit different.
The fact that I'm like, I'm smarter now, I'm a better writer now, and yet there will be a certain kind of person who will always be like, those early books are better because... They can really feel there's a person there. Like you see this with bands all the time. It's like they mature. Paul McCartney matures and he makes, you know, Flaming Pie.
And he's like, this music is better than the early Beatles. Like no one else thinks that. But he does. Because what he looks back on is something that was like, that's when I was 22 or whatever. It was just natural. Now I'm actually thinking about it. But what's in the early Beatles recordings is this kind of aliveness that you could never be. replicated or whatever.
So if I wrote this book, maybe, I mean, 20 years ago, for sure, it would have been more confrontational, more bombastic. It would have been more an attempt to persuade people to believe what I believed, as opposed to being like, this is an interesting way to think about this idea. It may contradict the way you think about it now, but it's
Just consider this because it may sort of shift the way you sort of view this reality, this reality of football. So, like, I think it would be terrible, to be honest.
How often are you surprised, though, that people really like something? Are you perpetually realizing, oh, like my radar is quite different?
That's a really hard thing to answer because I've been doing this long enough with having the good fortune of having a certain level of notoriety or readership that I think it's now very difficult for anyone to read my books in a straight way.
I am always most interested in reviews in other countries because they're not, they don't have an idea of what I am or what I'm supposed to represent or, I mean, particularly the people in the media industry or in the publishing industry. Like, those are people who sort of have a fixed idea of, like, what I do and how I am.
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Chapter 8: What does Klosterman say about the intersection of football and American identity?
Well, okay. So if you like a book, like when Fuck Rock City came out and no one had ever heard me speak, if they like that book, the voice they're hearing from that book is the best version of their own voice. That if you don't know anything about the writer, but you like the work, what you're hearing is exactly the way it would be presented by yourself.
So it is like this weird sort of bargain kind of. It's like in order to be a successful writer now, I have to do this. If I wanna sell books, I have to go on these podcasts. Like there's a thin sliver of writers who can make a living doing this and even thinner slice who can just like, I put the books out and that's how it is.
It has to be like, they have to have somebody who had some commercial success and the perception within the publishing industry that this work is so great, we gotta do it. For me to do this, I'm not sure how people would even know this book existed if I didn't do this. Because people don't go around bookstores anymore just browsing covers.
And yet I know that it probably has a somewhat negative impact. Or for example, let's say I say something on a podcast that the person is really bothered by. It's not really pertinent to what I'm writing about or anything else. But they're like, this guy is a blowhard and he doesn't understand this. He's uninformed. He's uninformed about, you know, Luka Doncic or whatever it is.
Well, then they're going to transfer that into everything. I mean, like in some ways, it's like the writers who have been dead for 100 years. They have the advantage because all that is there is the text.
You're saying Herman Melville could not have survived in the sports podcasting era.
Yeah.
he'd always be like, he overrated the whale.
You know, sperm whales aren't even the biggest whale. But even Herman Melville is like, that's a real interesting example because with him, like, we do a little bit about his life. He was on a whaling ship or whatever. So sometimes, I almost mean more like if, I don't even know if this happens anymore. Does anyone just randomly read a book from, you know,
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