Rich Eisen

Impolitic with John Heilemann

Audacy | Puck

News, Politics

4.8 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2020

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rich Eisen has been a fixture in the sports media firmament for a quarter century. Sharp and funny, as well-versed in pop culture as in the prevent defense or the pick-and-roll, Eisen was still in his twenties when he first lit up ESPN during its heyday in the 1990s, before becoming the face of the NFL Network and his eponymous talk show and podcast. But what sets Eisen apart from many of his peers is his comfort in the place where top-flight athletics collide with broader social and political dynamics — which set him up perfectly to cover the traumas and dramas of 2020, as the sports world was shaken by a raging pandemic and the upheaval spawned by the killing of George Floyd. With our annus horribilis finally coming to a close, Heilemann and Eisen reflect on the lessons that players, owners, and leagues have learned from grappling with COVID-19, the unprecedented wave of sports activism unleashed by Black Lives Matter, and the media's response to it all. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, John Hyalman here and welcome to Hell in High Water, my podcast from the
0:14.4	ReCount and I Heart Radio, with big ups to the one and only Rizza for our dope team music.
0:19.9	As we sit here halfway through December, finally, thankfully, blessedly able to glimpse
0:24.2	the finish line of this epicly, royally, horribly fucked up Anno Domini, it feels appropriate
0:29.8	to spend the next couple of episodes of the pod engaging in some retrospective, year-and-review
0:34.5	-ish real talk, about two massive industries and realms of human endeavor that A were
0:39.6	profoundly affected by the seismic traumas and dramas of 2020, B, collided with politics
0:45.8	and culture in ways that were illuminating and at times inspiring, and C, served as a
0:50.9	lifeline for millions of us struggling to maintain our sanity.
0:54.5	The topics that I'm talking about are sports and entertainment, the latter of which we will
0:58.2	get to next week with a special guest I promise you will not want to miss, and the former
1:02.8	of which we will turn to now, with a guest I know you don't want to miss, because you're
1:07.8	like here.
1:09.6	A prolific and endlessly engaging commentator on every aspect of American sports, and a
1:13.8	newfound friend who turns out to be every bit as sharp, affable and authentic in this setting
1:17.5	as he is on your TV.
1:20.2	That would be Rizza.
1:21.2	A state of professional sports in America is we are alive.
1:26.2	It's actually still happening, despite everything going on in the world.
1:31.2	It is still going down.
1:33.2	I'm Rizza.
1:34.2	I approve this message.
	...

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