Transcript

Dan Le Batard 9/1/22 🔥 Hour 2: Dan's Fantasy Football Nightmare

From The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 46 min · 8,711 words · 51 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Dan Le Batard 9/1/22 🔥 Hour 2: Dan's Fantasy Football Nightmare", an episode of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz published September 2, 2022 (46 min, about 8,711 words). It mentions 8 people, works and ideas, including Untold, Matthew Berry, ESPN, Bill Lawrence, Wild Wild Country.

What this episode is about

The discussion focuses on the cultural impact and growing popularity of fantasy football, highlighting the influence of figures like Matthew Berry in the industry. Topics include the intersection of sports narrative and entertainment, as well as the appeal of fantasy leagues in enhancing the viewing experience for fans.

Key takeaways

  • Fantasy football: where expertise meets entertainment; Matt Berry is its charismatic figurehead.
  • With 17 Sundays, fantasy football feeds our addiction for stimulation and money in one fell swoop.
  • In the world of stats and match-ups, predicting the unpredictable still holds a magical allure.
  • Matthew Berry’s blend of humor and insight makes him the unlikely superstar of sports analytics.
  • Fantasy isn’t just luck—it’s a calculated gamble, and Berry's standing proves he knows the odds.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Matthew Berry, DraftKings, Untold, ESPN
  2. – 10:00: Matthew Berry, DraftKings, Bill Lawrence
  3. – 15:00: Bill Lawrence
  4. – 20:00: Simply Safe, Untold, America's Cup
  5. – 25:00: Untold
  6. – 40:00: Wild Wild Country, Untold
  7. – 45:00: Untold

Notable quotes from "Dan Le Batard 9/1/22 🔥 Hour 2: Dan's Fantasy Football Nightmare"

  • For a special offer when you sign up that's code dan only at draftkingsportsbook we have been talking about the manti teow documentary untold on netflix the directors are going…
    about Untold · at
  • Money-making vehicle for a whole lot of people including our partner draftkings and matthew berry is the one name associated with it more than any other correct one if fantasy…
    about Matthew Berry · at
  • As i've aged out of some of this stuff and never had much interest in it when bill lawrence says to you that he doesn't like how one of his kids consume sports bill lawrence is my age and he is mortified that all of the.
    about Bill Lawrence · at
  • Hear about any of these goddamn stories go [ __ ] yourselves oh my god stugatsu the numbers don't lie in the last decade over 4 million people have chosen simply safe home…
    about Simply Safe · at
  • Sprawling empire of untold stories no this one we can talk about the 1983 america's cup one and though and they're getting those people on board now i'm kidding go ahead stop tell them about it yeah we did a volume one for netflix last.
    about America's Cup · at
  • Story what you the best work you've made i think we're probably maybe most proud of our doctors we did before untold wild country which won the emmy for best documentary series and i was like almost.
    about Wild Wild Country · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Matthew Berry — Person · Referenced expert (fantasy football media) · 6 mentions · first at
    Used as the jumping-off point for a long discussion about fantasy football’s information economy, entertainment packaging, and influence on fandom.
  • Bill Lawrence — Person · Referenced creator (example in argument) · 2 mentions · first at
    Cited as someone who dislikes how his kids consume sports—used to frame a broader critique of athletes becoming “transactions and numbers.”

Books & papers

  • Untold — Book · Primary recommendation · 7 mentions · first at
    The series is discussed as a well-told documentary series on Netflix, focusing on sports stories.
  • Wild Wild Country — Book · Referenced work · 2 mentions · first at
    Mentioned as a previous work by the directors of 'Untold'.

Companies & orgs

  • ESPN — Company · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned in the context of fantasy football and Matthew Berry's association with it.
    Correct one if fantasy had a face if fantasy had a name the guy who pioneered it was this guy through espn and now there are a whole lot of imitators and probably people who do it maybe even better but he's the original.

Places & events

  • America's Cup — Event · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    Briefly mentioned as part of the 'Untold' series on Netflix.

Sponsors

  • DraftKings — Company · Sponsor · 3 mentions · first at
    Presented as the official sports betting partner of the NFL and sponsor of the podcast.
    Two guts podcast we are presented by draftking sportsbook an official sports betting partner of the nfl download the draftking sportsbook app today and use code dan for a special offer when you sign up.
  • Simply Safe — Product · Sponsor · 3 mentions · first at
    Advertised as a home security system during the podcast.

Full transcript with timestamps

this is the dan levator show with this two guts podcast we are presented by draftking sportsbook an official sports betting partner of the nfl download the draftking sportsbook app today and use code dan for a special offer when you sign up that's code dan only at draftkingsportsbook we have been talking about the manti teow documentary untold on netflix the directors are going to join us here in a few minutes to talk about the story the layered story that they told well untold is a very good series if you like sports if you like documentaries almost all of them have been very well told stories artfully crafted we'll do that in about 20 minutes but you guys were talking in the kitchen during the break about matthew berry matthew berry's career i believe matthew berry one wrote or helped write one of the crocodile dundee movies what the talented mr roto well you have yeah you're having him on your uh on

stupidity correct he's on today's episode of stupidity i am so i think billy feels the same way billy's not here today but we found ourselves being insanely jealous of matthew berry wanting to be matthew berry he's got relationships dan he was talking to us hours before he was leaving to go to jay-z's draft he's friends with jay-z they text each other all the time he's friends with you jackman everyone wants matthew berry's information and i want to be matthew berry i want to be the guy that has the information that you want this has been a fascinating oil well to see spring up next to football and create uh more and more interest in the popularity of football fantasy has been a runaway train of uh making people have appetites for i need more information i crave these podcasts that will tell me how to build a good team there is a communal extra bonus steroid sports thing happening when you can root

for both your team and then have your add fed by your other team their team on sunday that is playing on the field and then you've got because you need more stimuli more stimuli more stimuli at 16 sundays they're now 17. you're you're feeding on this stuff it can't just be the action fantasy football has mushroom clouded into an enormous money-making vehicle for a whole lot of people including our partner draftkings and matthew berry is the one name associated with it more than any other correct one if fantasy had a face if if fantasy had a name the guy who pioneered it was this guy through espn and now there are a whole lot of imitators and probably people who do it maybe even better but he's the original gangster correct correct and it's also not even just about the information although he comes out with a lot of gems and does a generally good job it's it's the packaging right it's the love hate

column it's the entertainment and you read his writing it's fantasy within a context there are plenty of people who do this very well on the internet as you said perhaps better but he's entertaining and sometimes the people that do fantasy football are not exactly brilliant personalities he's got a personality he's funny and it's like a winning spot for him because who's checking on these weekly receiver rankings and running back rankings like there's there's not a lot of accountability of oh actually i don't i couldn't tell you how great he actually is at predicting how well people are going i don't imagine that you play fantasy quite perhaps as meticulously as others i would imagine that if matthew berry was all always getting it wrong that there would be plenty of people who know that like you you might not be playing that aggressively but i would think that in the community that values information

and money is made here and valuing information if matthew berry is consistently getting it wrong there's a whole subset of people who know that and are mocking him for it i don't think that would be any kind of secret but maybe he's not getting it that kind of wrong maybe his expertise is such because there are people who are good at this it's not all random chris it's not all matt will tell you dan he will say like hey i'm guessing a lot like i have no idea if a guy's going to get injured if the match-up's actually good but he is well wait a minute those are two different things hold on i do believe many of the analysts do know whether a match up is good injuries you can't predict right but man with a good matchup doesn't necessarily mean a great game for that wide range but it means you're playing probabilities and everyone's trying to win money because somebody else has better probabilities

like that's where the game's being when you're talking about fantasy is not just this hobby hey maybe i get lucky i'm playing the lotto i know the odds are bad when you're playing against these winners who are populating this feeding system who win the majority of the draftkings things because there are people who have some expertise around this who are not getting which one's matthew berry which can someone tell me with some expertise not he's famous guy is matthew berry so good at this that his information is better than other information and he's being held accountable and when he gets it wrong there are people telling you now that guy's a construct of just being entertaining he's not actually one of the guys who's measuring match-ups and giving you good probabilities i imagine his twitter replies every weekend will show someone that said you ranked this guy number 47 so i didn't start him and

so i had him on my bench and therefore i lost that weak you jackass but generally it's it's a combination of entertainment and also like really fantasy football expertise is about showing your work and so when you say i'm ranking this person this place or i think i'm going to have this person as a sleeper as a bust or as a whatever you just say it's because of this statistical trend it's because uh you know jalen hurts was quarterback number seven for the last 10 weeks of the year and so i'm ranking him this year as quarterback number seven and that might surprise you because you wouldn't have jalen hurts his seventh best quarterback but because he rushes so much he's more valuable in fantasy and as long as you show your work and you're entertaining like there's not gonna be a ton of people are going to stop listening because they ultimately will have way more information than you because they study it more than you do

here's here's the thing with matthew berry matthew berry is bringing to the normal person the fantasy industry right like there are so many layers that you can get into on dfs on redraft on a bunch of different things where there are nerds everywhere typing leagues and keepers there are there are excel spreadsheets with numbers that you can't even imagine right formulas that you can't even imagine for a dot for yards per carry for yards after catch all these different things yeah what he's doing is he's giving it and making it palatable for the everyday consumer for the person that's at the water cooler like oh i drafted two in the third round like people that don't know what he's doing is providing them information as i've aged out of some of this stuff and never had much interest in it um when bill lawrence says to you that he doesn't like how one of his kids consume sports bill lawrence

is my age and he is mortified that all of the human beings have become transactions and numbers and things to be moved on a wall street grid because you can win money over here or when you're fantasy league these people aren't human beings kevin durant isn't even a [ __ ] he's just something that i slot in over here for 30 points a game does this affect in any way the social elements of sports that i've always loved analyzing if i keep making these people less and less human in the places where you find the greatest of fandoms the most zealous of fandoms and they're just numbers slotted into the guys we love sports more than ever because of the transaction where's kevin durant gonna go we love transactions and there's this fantasy world that is more and more real where the athletes get chewed up in the maw of it their humanity but i think that fantasy makes me care about other like i care about the dolphins and now

i'm rooting for patrick mahomes i'm rooting for these guys on other teams i've become fans of these you'll find yourself rooting for guys you never thought you would root right for a jet it expands my fan football it makes me more interested to watch all the football games as opposed to just the dolphins game the only danger in it is when it becomes proprietary where you only like if you saw sean alexander they said oh i had you in 2013 what a great season and you feel like some sort of the the word that i don't like in fantasy football is ownership right oh you are a 97 owner of you know whatever right and that like that word sounds bad and espn actually once got in trouble for this because there is a form of fantasy football that is auction style drafting where you start with a player at one dollar and you bid them up and then whoever has the highest bid gets the player and they did a live auction

in bristol when that happened really i remember that yeah we were like that doesn't seem great it was after some other civil rights statue controversy and it was terrible it was just it was like you were thinking this chris yeah yes it was like we were there in bristol the day they did and then it didn't make i made news for it and we were just like wow we were here for this it was terrible judgment i love stu god it's going well even chris had good judgment on that one it's amazing it is amazing but is that not perfect as the symbolism for what we all kind of wish in our fantasies that we were the owner of whatever that was that's what makes fantasy appealing right we become more than owner gm yeah you want to be the gm making the decision starting people sitting people cutting people trading people drafting people it's like it makes me feel like i'm running a team and as a champion of

my fantasy football league for four out of the last six years that's a different character guy say the person that's in the league you know you want to say it yeah this is a league that a fantasy football expert is in jamie eisenberg of cbs sports chelsea he's in one of my leagues also he's in baseball inferno's beating him six out of the last seven years i mean but i be i've won my league for the last six years and i feel a measure of expertise and like wow i'm good at this i could do this you do walk into that draft with like a little well yeah that's right i'm here yeah yeah like people people in the chat are going oh who cares about this witty's just gonna win guys i feel like i swear i swelled with pride there's a certain something when you make your first round pick it's like everyone's paying attention have people dropped out because they're tired of you winning they think you're so good

at it as a matter of fact two people did drop out of the league this past year i don't know if me winning it at a canter has anything to do with it but i'm not gonna say it doesn't have anything to do with it we've had some dropouts because inferno keeps winning he's so much better than anyone else at baseball that he keeps winning and people keep falling by the wayside we're down to nine teams i mean we started with 12. young people get to decide on what's popular young people who have been playing fantasy and really consuming sports and loving sports more because these tentacles grab you and addict you and make sundays and saturdays even more fun than they already were because you've got action all over the place i do believe that when bill lawrence ends up lamenting that his child is treating numbers or athletes as numbers on a page that it is sort of how old people in music lament that

today's music isn't the way that they prefer their music that their fandom was a different thing that didn't come with hell the idea that you could go to the internet and find numbers that quantify how good your player actually is we didn't never mind the internet we didn't have the numbers we didn't know how we were doing the measurements and fantasy has helped us like put a math on this put put emotional relationships beyond the 36 to 7 game that might not otherwise be interesting because you have a proprietary interest in that tight end getting a fourth catch for you you need you you need kyle you need kyle rudolph to go over 33 and a half yards because you need the action i mean it's 60 of the appeal of monday night football isn't it i might even be underselling it in terms of gambling and fantasy is like the whole reason why monday night football draws a huge rating do you like having fantasy players monday night

thursday night i really like it the perfect scenario is to have an above average tight end who needs like 50 receiving yards it's a nice little sweet spot not too crazy to get to but not too easy it still scares me or one td that's all you need it is scary but it's fun and how does that one get the most fun when your guy gets it in the first quarter or right exactly it's a drive that has no significance and yet the only significance is that kyle rudolph just got 19 yards and that's a victory for me dan you're watching it like you're watching the super bowl i mean i've actually had a game end like that where i want to say it was two years ago we were in covid and i think the bills the bills and the colts played in like canada or something we were like wow this game is weird and they were playing like a high school field and gabe davis on the last drive with like i don't even know who it was i'm trying

to think it was matt barkley davis as the game was ending he catches and falls for like a 15-yard game and i won by like point seven oh my god oh my god i one time last season i was down by like nine points going into the last game and i had tyra killed this we're finally here we

this is a trick with you guys i can always know that chris was in the middle of the story i can throw this bait in the water at any time and you guys are just all too eager to all become greg cody i thought you'd never ask let me tell you about this how it ended no i do i don't want to hear about any of these goddamn stories go [ __ ] yourselves oh my god stugatsu the numbers don't lie in the last decade over 4 million people have chosen simply safe home security to protect their home i'm one of them they must be doing something right at simply safe your safety is the only thing that matters i know because i use simply safe in my own home they protect you with cutting edge security technology powered by 24 7 professional monitoring agents who always have your back we here at the levitard show with stu godz love our families we love our yards we travel a good amount and simply safe makes it

easier to check in on our homes and loved ones when we are not there we also love a good perimeter check oh do i love that there's nothing better than a relaxing afternoon stroll around the yard just to make sure everything is where it's supposed to be and simply safe makes this easier to do with their state state-of-the-art technology crystal clear hd cameras when we are traveling customize the perfect system for your home in just a few minutes at simplisafe.comdlb save 20 percent on your simply safe security system when you sign up for an interactive monitoring plan and get your first month free visit simply safe dot com slash dlb to learn more there's no safe like simply safe don levitard uh chris cody does an impression just be careful dangerous game here this is a dangerous game i don't want to play this game he was saying man i could do such a great country oh i don't want to play this

game he's like man this is this is who we're gonna trust i think you could do it chris cause you did a great charles barkley you're one for one there did no one just hear the segment we just did with the mean we cannot be taking judgment is not the best from the local drunk on whether or not you should do the impersonation of a black man stumbling over his words like you don't see the bad child in there there was moses moody moody moses that it sounds worse be careful man we gotta like we cannot do this it's too close to the line this is where the line is something legitimately funny can't be funny because we're scared our ginger's gonna do something racist by accident carry the hell on dan rachel then the line is where we feel alive though this is the levator show with the stu cats we're presented by draftking sportsbook an official sports benton partner of the nfl download the draftking sportsbook

app today and use code dan for a special offer when you sign up that's called dan only at draftking sportsbook we've been telling you about the untold series on netflix very few poorly s uh poorly told stories over there they're going to sports and they're telling stories where the terrain has been covered pretty good and there's new stuff all around them and one of them we've been discussing recently was made by the way brothers chapman and mclean and they're joining us now it's untold series volume two it is on netflix now and thank you for making the time for us uh i guess i'll start with you chapman can you take us through these people hadn't talked before you kind of need the stories to be most human by getting uh two people to talk who are pretty gun shy talking about this so how did the how did the research before this story come to be told right this is about the manti teo uh girlfriend who didn't exist because we

have a few untold so i just wanted to double yes no i'm talking forgive me yeah okay wow look at me louie we have a few on sorry a librarian sprawling empire of untold stories no this one we can talk about the 1983 america's cup one and though and they're getting those people on board now i'm kidding go ahead stop tell them about it yeah we um we did a volume one for netflix uh last year had some great stories like mouse of the palace and caitlyn jenner and marty fish the tennis player and you know for volume two we had kind of like a word doc of of stories that are like dream stories for us and kind of like white whales in the sports space and obviously the manti teo catfishing hoax has has been a story that like when it broke was obviously massive but since then manti never has really done a full in-depth interview on what happened and naya the person behind the catfishing scandal had never really spoken out on

the record before either um and so for us it was like let's go reach out to them let's see if there's maybe more to the story than what was reported at the time because that's what we're trying to do a little bit with untold is we have you know the the the benefit of having 10 years hindsight with a story like this and we can go back and and see what maybe is different about the story through today's lens and so we reached out to both of them and right off the bat we're like we realized just how profound and impacted they both were by this scandal and more than we ever imagined and at that point i think we realized these are going to be like really raw and vulnerable interviews for for unfold but how did you cross the bridge to their humanity what who was doing what in order for those people to not just immediately shut you out it's one thing for them to want to tell their story it's another thing to trust you with it

yeah i think that like it really just starts with like long conversations and meetings and you just start the process of building trust i do think that just with this story we did have the benefit of like neither nya nor anti i think were exceptionally happy with how the story was covered and i just thought i think that they weren't happy with like the period that was at the end of the sentence you know and i think that they wanted to kind of keep writing the sentence or a paragraph or a book so to speak um and keep telling the story but i mean nia was like fascinating like we you know first time we hopped on a call with her it was supposed to maybe be like 10 15 20 minutes and like she kind of just like ran us through like this kind of like just very very very like interesting journey of like self-discovery and identity that she had gone through and the impact that this story had on his life and manti i think

like i i just think like we we by no means we're the first person to approach manti teo to do a documentary on this it's like i think when we were like first talking to his representatives in a way there was almost a notion of like yeah dude like your pitch can join like the pile of pitches that has come in over the last like two years on this but i do think we got like manti at a really interesting point we partnered up with like a couple filmmakers ryan duffy and tony vanuku who just did a brilliant job on the episode but manti his nfl career was winding down he just got married he had a kid i think for like the first time he was like really willing to open up and talk about this and i know like reading kind of some of the interviews that he's done on this and i didn't even know this but it just was very interesting for me to hear him talk about it was i think when he like walked into the interview he probably

underestimated how much he was still like grappling and wrestling with uh the impact that this entire thing had had on his life and listen when we do interviews like we do like three four day interviews with our subjects they're super long and i think towards the end of the interview is when manti really started to kind of like grapple with some of the larger stuff that this has had on his life and was just a super super fascinating process so grateful both of them for really telling their story to be honest yeah they trusted you with an intimate thing and uh there was a degree of difficulty on the story that you were trying to tell he they it did force compassion and understanding on the people watching and the story was was very well told when i asked both of you though what one thing would you say was the most interesting thing about the film do you have the same answer or do you have

a different answer i don't know i think the most interesting thing for me was kind of like the last kind of seven minutes of the documentary when manti kind of starts going into his first games as an nfl player and these anxiety attacks that would hit him and his feet would go numb and his hands would go numb and i think hearing a professional athlete talk in those terms i remember just watching the footage and being like wow this is pretty powerful stuff um and then kind of seeing like the cathartic release he had i think it's we're so used to professional athletes being a little bit keep things closer to the best and bottled up and uh to see him be that open and and raw in front of our cameras i think for me was just like a really powerful moment as a filmmaker i remember like our early conversations with like our producers and our directors and like i think it was like hard for me to get my mind around the

fact that there was media that had like heavily implied that manti was like in on the hoax you know and then like just like working with manti and like getting to know him like i it was almost more of a confusion than it was like i don't believe that like i kept asking like explain it to me explain it to me like how he could be in on this like and and what he gains and like i i understand the concept of the kind of conspiracy so so to speak but i think just like making this documentary and working with it like you can they're like all of our characters kind of made some mistakes or they kind of you know done things that maybe they shouldn't have done um but in terms of like manti being like in on this so it was just like a and now like having released the documentary and talk to people and their reaction to it it's just like almost really surprising like when we first started out on this there

was like an element of like how was mantin on it like we didn't i didn't even know and and now i'm just like very convinced that like he really wasn't at all i have a question about that specifically in uh talking about this documentary which i which i love by the way and talking about it with friends i was reminded about how culpable dead spin was in framing that narrative actually within the reporting there was a line about alluding to impossibly being in it in on it and uh some of the rumors surrounding mantis sexuality also you could trace it back to deadspin and that wasn't really covered all that much in this documentary and if i had one criticism i would have liked to have seen deadspin held a little bit more accountable and let them frame a narrative a little bit they were even holding other networks like oh you missed this you missed this i'm like you guys got tipped off you missed it too

you were playing the same game yeah i think like the document does go on into like sports journalism a little bit and the difficulty in if you work at a press organization needing to get stories out first and i think i don't know what the right or wrong answer to that is obviously they got a tip they did a pretty incredible research into diving into the story and trying to put the pieces together i do think it's interesting that they gave manti an hour to respond you know i think that's i don't know what the standard practices are we're filmmakers more on the filmmaking side less on the journalist side um i do think i don't think tim and jack necessarily knew how massive the story was going to get so i think it's definitely easy in hindsight to be like wow man they they might have alluded that manti was in on it and created an avalanche of problems for manti it's always difficult to tell but

yeah i think you also kind of got to consider like at what point they came into the story and like i do empathize with the fact that like the facts that they're able to draw is like mantis had a girlfriend for the last like three three and a half four years i think everyone especially at that time probably would have had an understanding like you must have been meeting this person you must have been spending time with this person and then obviously like the context that the documentary gives does explain why manti even after he found out that this girlfriend was alive again um but in media wasn't willing to publicly talk about this yet in the course of a heisman campaign and then like notre dame as like an institution is kind of like circling the wagons to a degree which i actually understand you know i think that they're kind of like have their own you know their own institution they have their own football

championship football game to worry about um and so in a way i think that like maybe for the dead spin guys it just felt like a lot of smoke and where there's smoke there's fire um but i don't know how they feel about it today i mean i'd be interested to hear if they think like i and and yeah i i i don't think that they think mantis in on it um and on the hoax anymore i don't know that for sure but in a way like they were rushing fast and i get that you know um and and really like in a way i am grateful because if they don't pursue that tip a lot of those tips end up at the bottom of inboxes like this story goes nowhere we're not here talking about it today you know so um very interesting characters though in the dark so you're grateful ultimately that manti teow got catfish so you could make a film at his expense uh so good it worked out for you the whole thing worked out for you and i suppose that's

the only thing that really matters but you guys are talking to us today on your podcast too that's right that's right we're all in on it look we're all in on this dirty game on it all this dirty dirty content game you can't fish anyone to have this movie uh because it's hard to uh really reach people move people with a story that has this much terrain on it let me ask you both this in feedback from friends and people you've shared this with after you've made the movie what uh what's the criticism that you're like oh that's good criticism i wish we'd done that i wish that we'd gone deeper there i well like one thing that like it just saws like when when when you make these things you're kind of like looking for new characters new interesting characters because like every time you introduce a new character with a new purpose or point in the story it just kind of like adds energy like we open up

episode two on the dead spin guys it's like a fresh face you've been in the in the manti and naya relationship for episode one the one person that we like super wanted to get was diane o'meara who is the actual woman's whose like images were being used by naya if that makes sense like the actual person whose photos were being used to catfish manti and she didn't want to be a part of it i totally get it she's like i i think said something along the lines of like i'm not interested in revisiting this in some way um but there is a part of me where it's like i do i don't know if that's like criticism we've gotten but when i do watch the documentary um i feel a little pain and like god damn i think it would have been a super interesting conversation to have with a person because she was like an unwilling participant in this like her name and face was just like being used and she wakes up one day and her facebook photos

are on the front page of like good morning america and all these talk shows and anderson cooper and cnn and i think it just would have been like a super fascinating um perspective to hear from and i am disappointed that we came up short trying to secure her participation but what do you think it's no criticism just applause non-stop about all your movies yes of course right yeah it's just a perfect piece to object to the question were you guys were you expecting him to be angrier he didn't seem to be angry at anyone and that surprised me i i thought that as a symbol uh you could go ahead and replace touchdown jesus and put just his general forgiveness at the center of campus and it is what every religion should aspire to to get somebody have be those this clearly like just wrong so many different ways and not be angry about it still have peace in his heart somehow yeah it was yeah no we're we're we're definitely

more petty than manchester united i think we probably would have handled things with not as much grace um so it was pretty amazing to kind of see uh how he's coming i'm curious what you guys think which is like what what do you think bantai got drafted in a second round like how much money do you think if you had to put a dollar amount on it how much money do you think he lost in his draft picks mike what do you think manti teow went down in the draft and you could never project it as a first round you can never quantify these things and i just sort of thought okay look notre dame got exposed at the end he wasn't actually that good um it was it was a lot of hype around a guy who would have been going in with this great story that didn't have confusion around it he was a heisman how much higher would he have been drafted well well that's why i wish that that deadspin were held a little bit

more responsible about the narrative that not just their reporting did by looting he was in on it but that shaped everybody's first impression of it so what is he hiding by being in on it and obviously people's minds at the time went to a front and at the time michael sam hadn't happened there wasn't an openly gay player in the nfl and there was a circus around him at the combine and people thought that this was a front for some big secret and it truly damaged there was there was sexuality stuff going on where the the football was not equipped for what is this catfishing thing we're all learning at the name manti teo where a lot of people the curiosities the mysteries around this so what did you guys think when when you examine what it is that happened to his career after that i don't believe anybody watching this movie before watching this movie knows what a crushing seismic life-changing

thing this was that he couldn't help but be a lesser football player carrying this around as a public fool a guy brought up this way with all the cultural stuff you guys were saying to be a pillar of pride to be ashamed at being an innocent to being a an innocent fool yeah yeah i think it had like a devastating impact both on his career obviously how the nfl looked at him the media circus that just trailed him everywhere he went um and then personally like psychologically confidence you know i think like he talks about that at length in the documentary this is a guy that could just make pure tackles all throughout high school obviously dominated hawaiian football dominated ncaa football and then kind of yeah what wasn't able to really tap into that at the higher level at the nfl um but no i mean i think that like i don't even know if we plan on asking the question i didn't do the interview

but i thought one of the more interesting points and it's just a small detail but they asked him how many nfl teams asked you about this when you were going through the combine and the draft and the interview process and he slowly realizes that every single team asked him about this um i don't know if it was their first question but i definitely think it was probably their most important question they were asking him um and i think it like yeah severely like impacted um probably the the his draft pick which turns into money and who knows maybe and i think even his performance on the field it was all very uh i i don't know if we knew that i i don't know if i would have guessed that you know before starting the documentary but in working with manti and hearing the words out of his mouth i believe him you know if you have to itemize the things what should we feel as a fandom as a viewing audience most ashamed of you guys got

into the thicket in the weeds of this uh for our contributions as zealots and as nosy busybodies to wreck lives like where are the lessons in here for us on shame really good question it's a really good question i think like i'll take a stab first i think that there's like an element to and and maybe we're getting it right and better now but i just found it fascinating that like and i don't even know if manti feels this way i i actually i don't i don't think he does this is my own opinion but like seeing this like 19 20 year old kid on the cover of sports illustrated a full mantai like the the fantasy of ncaa college football and realizing how young these kids are you know like i'm getting older now i'm like they're in my early 30s like i'm starting to get 10 years older than these guys and like notre dame a bit as an institution there's just so much money and it's such a weird cottage industry at times it's i'm a fan

of it too and like i participate in it and there's so it brings me joy and happiness as a fan but i do when i make a documentary on this i kind of struggle with the notion of not just manti but all these kids kind of being like exploited in a way that is just shocking and i think manti was like maybe at the height of that you know like his his his persona name image just raking in massive like season ticket sales and huge me and i don't know i just don't know if he ended up like walking away with anything that was helpful for him in his life i think he just stood to only lose in in that system in a way and i just don't know if that's a very fair system but anything you have to do i think your brother's tired of hearing you talk i think your brother's like i don't know not just on this tour but in general like you guys have been working together for a long time and what i think is the other brother just

oh this is bragg i mean a couple of ways cutting it up are we gonna be on here guys forgive us though please i interrupted you uh but i i feel you had the look on your face of like god i gotta hear this again i gotta hear my brother sermonize about all the philosophical stuff you know and he's always doing this stuff while i'm cutting tape in the back he's thinking he's ruminating uh

uh yeah i think i think the kind of hero warship being of college athletes is is a little strange you know i think like i don't know what's what the heart of sports is supposed to be about and it was this strange stew of like building this kid up as an absolute hero and then when the media scandal broke it was like there's part of me that's wondering would this have been so traumatic if it was just that he got catfished but no media scandal i think a lot of the trauma and a lot of the pain and a lot of the anxiety kind of came from the media melee that followed so i think those were two things that kind of interested me the most when making this how do you guys settle creative disputes arm wrestle um we have a ping pong table downstairs here that uh we settle most of our duels nah it's a good i mean honestly like i i i feel like this is the honest answer like these things are so they're hard to make i mean everything's

hard to make i'm not trying to say like our jobs are more difficult than anyone else's job but it's just like all these documentaries are like miracles to a degree you just kind of like bank on like is manti gonna say yes it's going to say yes is notre dame going to participate will we get footage from the ncaa will we get behind the scenes footage like it's it's really a bit of a stew of things that like you have to come together all to say like that it's not just chap nights our directors ryan and tony it's our producers it's our editors it's even our netflix executives get down in the trans trenches with us so in a way like there's too much work to find time to like argue over stuff i feel like 90 of our arguments over like you need to do this and i need like it we're almost like kind of pushing work on to each other as opposed to like finding like disagreements over decisions we've made

um but no i love my brother it's a beautiful working relationship we've been doing this for like 10 years now really excited to kind of make some more dogs it's going to be fun do you guys agree on what is your best story what you the the best work you've made i think we're probably maybe most proud of our our doctors we did before untold wild wild country which uh won the emmy for best documentary series and i was like almost a four or five year process that we did um so that was a really cool project working with that and then maybe on the untold's like we've done eight of them now yeah probably we'd have to choose one that we directed i think that would only be right but i think the mardi fish episode uh we did in volume one on uh him being kind of first professional athlete to come forward about his mental health while he was still playing uh interviewed andy roddick and i think it was a kind of a really unique kind of

tennis documentary and look into that world and i think that's the one i'm probably most proud of i'd like to have a longer form conversation with you guys about wild wild country because just on that one i can't imagine the story the breadth of that story was so batshit crazy where it is you guys ended up uh five years working on that uh project had to be uh both invigorating and nuts right i mean it just had to be everything about that project as you're trying to make your way into the business right like you're the and this business will gut you and you guys make that because you bet five years of your life on something yeah it was it was like a crazy roller coaster ride it was a super small team was mac and i and then my wife who produces our older brother does the music and we have an editor neil and basically the five of us spent like a greater part of four years researching filming editing and um

you know you you release these things and sometimes they can come out on netflix and they kind of come and go and no one really sees it or talks about it and so we really didn't expect much we thought we were kind of making this weird obscure cult story that maybe a few people would like and i think the third week was out saturday night live did a skit on it a documentary now and owen wilson did an episode on it to kind of uh to have it kind of enter the pop culture lexicon at that time 2018 was kind of a bizarre experience did you guys did you guys invent the cult genre right because it became very fashionable right around there and you guys told the story better than most because a handful of them popped up right around there i don't i don't want to be a modest but yes we did that there was like um there was i you know what it was i mean it was interesting like it was a really like doc series in general like i

mean it's not i mean it was only four years ago but like the jinx had come out and that was like mega big and then making a murder just like [ __ ] broke everything um and like just really it was it felt like now that i look back on it it did feel just like early long-form doc series days um which even the ones that we see today aren't kind of like they're they're a little shorter in run time which is great um but no it was like it felt like he's saying he birthed the entire genre is what this guy's saying this guy's just saying yeah i asked about cults and he just did the whole thing now he said yes not just culture but also just the doc series in general don't underestimate me it's not just cults ken burns who yeah what other stories are you guys pursuing what's the story that you haven't gotten that you want most let me ask you that one yeah it's a good question i think for untold one of the ones we've really

wanted to do is the monica selles story and the rivalry with steffi graf and she's just never opened up about it or really talked about it and i think there hasn't been a great female rivalry sports story and i think it would just be amazing to dive into that world um the grand slam chase her coming on the scene and all that um i think that's the big one for untold that i think we could do a great job with and and hopefully hopefully we can do it one day i think uh i mean we're we are big tennis fans so to steal another 10 i think like agassi is due i mean like his book is just so good and perfect in a way and i think he's always mentioned something along the lines of like well i did the book and i like the book and i don't want to mess with the book and there's no need to redo the book and i totally understand that but you know there's so many audiences for documentaries you know it's it's just a

booming like non-non-fiction in general um so if agassi ever decided to sit down i think it would just be an unbelievably fascinating career to dive into and he's so smart and articulate he's just a very interesting person to hear from all the time his book is the best biography i've ever read not sports biography the best biography i have ever read hands down i mean i think my copy is like tattered and ripped and stained because i've read it like i mean since college i've been reading that book i i pick up you know every couple years um but and and like you you only really know this [ __ ] when you like have been spending the last like three four years your life making sports talks but tennis archive is like really good like usta wimbleton like all these tournaments like they do they just have like unbelievable footage and like even making our marty fish documentary we would just stumble across the most

awesome like andre agassi 1980s 1990s archive with sampras like just such unbelievable stuff that it's like you could go full like time travel back into that era and i think it'd just be an amazing project to be a part of a lot of people put a t in wimbledon okay it's wimbledon not wimbledon you're not just saying yeah listen people make that mistake all the time it bothers me i'm just helping you guys out okay jesus dude can i get anything right vernacular corrected on here the way brothers uh gentlemen it really is i can't recommend it strongly enough to the audience because i mean there's just no other way of saying it we were awful to that dude like we were just we were awful to that poor dude and and we should all be very sorry about what we did to that dude and these guys uh just to every uh just awful so thank you for telling an awful story well gentlemen thank you for gives man he's he's the

man so don't feel too bad about it but uh but yeah thank you guys so much for watching the kind words means it means the world seriously super awesome appreciative you

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Dan Le Batard 9/1/22 🔥 Hour 2: Dan's Fantasy Football Nightmare"?

Dan Le Batard (Host), Stugotz (Host), Matthew Berry (Guest), Chapman (Guest), McLean (Guest).

What is "Dan Le Batard 9/1/22 🔥 Hour 2: Dan's Fantasy Football Nightmare" about?

The discussion focuses on the cultural impact and growing popularity of fantasy football, highlighting the influence of figures like Matthew Berry in the industry. Topics include the intersection of sports narrative and entertainment, as well as the appeal of fantasy leagues in enhancing the viewing experience for fans.

What is mentioned in this The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz episode?

8 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Untold, Matthew Berry, ESPN, Bill Lawrence, Wild Wild Country, America's Cup. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Dan Le Batard 9/1/22 🔥 Hour 2: Dan's Fantasy Football Nightmare"?

The episode runs 46 min; the transcript is about 8,711 words in 51 timestamped sections.

More from The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.