PTFO - What NFL Owners Don't Want You to Know, with Don Van Natta Jr.

Le Batard & Friends Network

Dan Le Batard

Sports

4.9 • 8.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's obvious that the NFL is the most powerful institution in American culture. But far less clear is what the league's power looks like from the inside. Which is why our guest before the Super Bowl is three-time Pulitzer-winner Don Van Natta Jr., whose investigative work for ESPN has offered a rare glimpse at a group that refers to itself as The Membership. Not to mention commissioner Roger Goodell, a human shield who's protected owners from a series of once-catastrophic scandals — and a boardroom that resembles an episode of Succession. Plus: the defenestration of Dan Snyder, the desperation of Bob Kraft and the superpower (and flip phone) of shadow commissioner Jerry Jones. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre. Today's episode is brought to you by Draft Kings.
0:05.7	Graff Kings, the crown is yours. And today we're going to find out what this sound is.
0:11.7	This is a pimple on a baby's ass right after this ad.
0:18.4	You're listening to Draft King's Network.
0:34.5	Invariably, Don Vanta is working on some shit.
0:38.5	You're usually up to some stuff, Don.
0:40.3	Usually have a few things going.
0:41.6	General principle.
0:43.3	When I say, though, that, and I say this all the time, to the point where I actually don't know why you won them, but I say three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Don Van Netta.
0:52.6	Could you refresh our memory here?
0:54.6	Like, what were you doing before you were doing what we're here to actually talk about?
0:59.5	The first Pulitzer was a public service Pulitzer actually at the Miami Herald.
1:03.6	It was covering Hurricane Andrew, the eye of the storm.
1:07.2	I was in Florida City and 165-mile- mile an hour winds were whipping around us in a comfort
1:13.9	in motel, which got torn apart. And I wrote a first person story on a trash 80, one of these
1:19.5	little Texas instrument computers about what it was like to survive the storm. That got the New York
1:25.0	Times' attention, got recruited there at the age of 30,
1:27.8	and won two Pulitzer's there, team Pulitzer's, for explanatory journalism about the aftermath
1:34.0	of the terrorist attacks in New York. In other words, just a natural progression to the NFL.
1:40.2	Yes, right. I always say that covering like the CIA, the Pentagon, trying to get secrets out of there,
1:46.5	prepared me for covering the National Football League.
1:53.8	So there are two kinds of news that I think you need to know about. There's the kind of news
	...

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