The very first Monday Night Football game in 1970 was watched by 60 million US households, nearly matching Super Bowl I's audience of 65 million — inventing a weekly holiday in American culture.
Where this was said
At 2:46:33 · chapter starts 2:38:28
The year 2016 crystallized two of the most consequential failures in modern NFL history. First, the league finally acknowledged what its own researchers had known for years: repeated subconcussive hits cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease that has devastated former players with memory loss, depression, and suicidal ideation. The NFL settled a billion-dollar lawsuit over CTE and has since changed concussion protocols — but the trust damage runs deep, particularly with parents deciding whether their children should play. LeBron James saying he won't let his son play football was a cultural earthquake. Second, Colin Kaepernick's kneeling protest — a personal statement about police brutality by a player using his public platform — was met by the NFL with the classic response of the incumbent institution: suppress it. No team signed him after the 2016 season. He filed a grievance and reached a confidential settlement. The NFL turned a one-man statement into a national conversation that ran for years. Both failures, Ben and David argue, reflect the NFL's inability to adapt its legendary narrative control strategy to a social media environment where individual voices, Twitter accounts, and viral moments move faster than any commissioner's press office.
The NFL acknowledged the link between football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy — a debilitating brain condition — only in 2016, after years of covering up its own research. In the same year, Colin Kaepernick took a knee, the NFL effectively blackballed him, and turned a manageable moment into a national headline. Two institutional failures in one year that still haunt the league.
Only 23% of Gen Z say the NFL is their favorite professional sports league, compared to 33% of US adults overall — a troubling 10-point gap for the league's long-term fan pipeline.
Thomas's wife is already ranked in the top 2,000 CrossFit athletes in the world — roughly the top 1% — and Thomas wants her to pursue the sport professionally now that he is graduating law school.
Research shows athletes who mentally imagine practicing basketball or soccer have better performance than those who do not include imagination in their training.
Rico Verhoeven dominated approximately 10 of 12 rounds against undisputed heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk before a controversial post-bell stoppage.
Rico's appeal confirmed the fight was stopped after the bell rang, and the ringside doctor found no concussion or disorientation — yet the result was never overturned.
Glory Kickboxing uses 5 judges rather than boxing's 3, which Joe Rogan argues reduces the chance of a corrupt or incompetent minority swinging the result.
Rico Verhoeven had only one professional boxing match before fighting undisputed heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk for the WBC title.
Despite having just one pro boxing match, Rico Verhoeven had been training boxing for 15 years alongside his kickboxing career.
Rico used a full 6 months to transition from kickboxing stance to a proper boxing stance under trainer Peter Fury, calling it essential rewiring.
Rico Verhoeven has had approximately 75 professional kickboxing fights, giving him a massive combat sports experience advantage over pure boxers.
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