What Micah & CJ Mean to the NFL
Getting in on the growing trend of current athletes as media stars
Basketball has staked out an early lead in the burgeoning model that is athlete media. That’s natural. They have the most stars to begin with.
I would say the biggest media stars are still ex-players: the Inside the NBA guys of course, along with newer entrants like JJ Redick, Kevin Garnett, Matt Barnes, Gilbert Arenas, Austin Rivers, and Jeff Teague, all of whom have made their own unique splash.
Active players are firmly in the mix too. CJ McCollum was early on this. Draymond’s got a big podcast, as does Paul George. Michael Porter Jr.’s got one. The list goes on and on.
It’s almost more surprising when a player isn’t doing this. Even LeBron is podcasting here and there these days with the aforementioned JJ. (There’s something just the tiniest bit off-putting about that show, by the way, but this isn’t about them. Comment if you’d like to discuss.)
Football, on the other hand, is playing catch-up. It’s not like they don’t have famous guys on the airwaves. They’ve got Tom Brady now. They’ve got Troy Aikman and Greg Olsen and Tony Romo, who probably get in front of more people total than any of the NBA guys we’ve listed.
They’ve got the older quarterback contingent, Simms, Bradshaw, Esiason, etc. They’ve got the Manning brothers. They’ve got morning-show guys like Michael Strahan and Nate Burleson. They’ve got Shannon Sharpe. And they’ve got Pat McAfee, though I don’t know that it’s his playing background that’s driven his success.
What they don’t have as much of, to my eye, is what they have in the Kelce brothers. Those two have built a formidable empire out of their podcast, New Heights, which has in turn been greatly amplified by the Taylor Swift effect.1 Much like the Mannings, those two are brothers, so they have that instant chemistry that really works in a format like theirs.
The NFL doesn’t need much of anything, but it’s allowed to want what that affords them. They’re likable, they’re popular, and they’re elite players sharing stories from inside the game, even if one of them just retired and the other can’t be far behind.
Those two haven’t been at it all that long, so it’s been doubly interesting watching the NFL push another pair of players who aren’t actual brothers but often act like them: CJ Stroud and Micah Parsons.
It’s the horseplay factor, right? That’s something Inside the NBA has always had in its favor. These two are competitive, they like to mess with each other, and they love to jump into the sort of irascible debates that have always been great fodder for TV and radio and are now great fodder for social media. Who’s better than who? Begin argument.
They make it work because they’re stars. They’re both active players, they’re both very good active players, and just as important, they’re both very young. As you might expect, then, the NFL is pushing them hard. As they should! Stars are marketable.
And boy are they marketing them. They’re in Japan horsin’ around with sumo wrestlers, pulling down 20M+ views as part of the NFL’s growing international push. They’re debating what they could each score in an NBA game, because that was a thing for a few weeks there. (Thanks to the aforementioned Austin Rivers for that collective tangent, by the way, so yeah, current/very-recent athletes are driving news cycles too.)
They’re comparing notes on their own personal All-Pro teams, and then they’re going to the mat on a hypothetical 4th-and-5 play.
Sure, it’s not for everybody, but this kind of stuff tells me they have something. Again, it’s the chemistry. They remind you of your loudmouth friends arguing over all the same stuff. It’s approachable while bringing in some genuine insight for good measure.
Like I said, the NFL doesn’t need these two to be successful podcasters. The NFL doesn’t need much of anything. Their preeminence appears unchallenged by all the many things that I have, at times, thought might pose problems for the future status of the league. And while I do still wonder if their well-publicized issues with head injuries will chip away at the sport’s popularity and base of talent over the course of the coming decades, that bill isn’t coming due anytime soon.
The NFL probably won’t fix their studio shows, which will presumably remain terrible as long as the same types of people are making the same types of decisions on how to run them. (My main note there? More is not better.) That aside, any league, even the NFL, can use a little more juice out there in the culture. Never hurts.
After their little jaunt in Asia, the NFL would be foolish not to send them on another field trip next year. Give them a travel show! These two are in the mix, and I bet they stay there. How the NFL looks to capitalize on that will say a lot about how they present themselves to younger viewers.
Also, This
🏀 I’ve been recapping the Finals with the illustrious 5x5 roundtable crew, c/o the wonderful
. Here’s the latest, after what was essentially a deciding Game 3:
⛹️ RIP to the logo. Jerry West loomed large in the game, and
made a compelling case as to why he might have had the most impactful basketball career — in all phases, from player to coach to executive — we’ve ever seen. Tough couple weeks for losing legends.🐾 I found the Dan Hurley-Lakers story maddening. It all felt so perceptibly orchestrated, in the same way that a lot of Woj bombs do, but somehow especially this one. Access journalism is a lot of journalism, and look, that’s fine. I get it. Do your thing. But the fact that that whole circus almost definitely originated with Hurley himself made me one shade more jaded with respect to the fuzzy line between reporting and doing PR for your book subject’s son. I am very aligned with this write-up from
.📺 Hold up! Might TNT get a piece of the action after all? We’d been told for a while now that the NBA wouldn’t seat a party of four. It looked like they’d be squeezed out of a new triumvirate, and they very possibly still might. But here we do see a little opening, even if it’s — reportedly, as ever — only the table scraps. The intrigue continues.
🎾 We were treated to another Alcaraz-Sinner gem at the French Open last week, which Alcaraz followed with yet another five-setter to bring it home against Zverev (who seemed to wear out after coming out firing, which seems to be a pattern for him). Alcaraz, who now owns a sterling 11-1 record in five-set matches, is really something else. Tennis fans have it pretty damn good.
🌭 The true biggest story in sports right now is Joey Chestnut getting banned from the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, which the New York Post referred to — not inaccurately — as “this year’s beef barf.” The retribution is top-notch, and there appears to be some backstory to these two parties’ falling out. I stole this from a friend, but we’re calling this #GlizzyGate, and it’s an outrage.
I always mistakenly call their show In The Heights. The Kelce brothers do not appear, and to my knowledge have never appeared, in In The Heights, but if I could change that, I would. For Jason, not Travis, to be clear.