How Al Michaels Got Traded for Oswald the Rabbit
EPISODE 180: Off-field sports swaps.
You may have heard that Inside the NBA, the greatest postgame show in the history of sports, has become an endangered species — this on account of its corporate parent, Warner Bros. Discovery, losing the TV rights to the NBA.
But thanks to a new trade, between Turner and Disney, Inside has found new life:
Which got me thinking — about not only the long-awaited conclusion to this protracted NBA rights saga, but also how corporate swaps like this even work.
And then I remembered that The Sporting Class is the only show on the Internet that features two top executives that have personally orchestrated off-field trades like this before.
Back in 2006, former ESPN president John Skipper famously traded Hall of Fame broadcaster Al Michaels to NBC for an obscure cartoon character named Oswald the Rabbit (among other things).
And former Marlins president David Samson, now the host of Nothing Personal, executed transactions like this a couple times. (Once trading a top pitching prospect to the Pittsburgh Pirates for a “special assistant.”)
We go inside all of that — as well as another recurring topic: the new 12-team College Football Playoff’s alleged Southeastern Conference cabal.
DKN/YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:
Hallucinatingly,
Pablo