Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Acquired Podcast on the NFL (with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal)
Wed, 05 Feb 2025
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (Acquired) are hosts of the critically acclaimed podcast covering business history and strategy. Ben and David join the Armchair Expert on this special Super Bowl episode to discuss the metric of being right more often but having less fun, how the Super Bowl is the best weekend for a wedding, Disneyland, and Costco, and how LA refused to participate in early games due to segregation. David, Ben, and Dax talk about Teddy Roosevelt starting the NCAA in 1905 to prevent football fatalities, JFK passing antitrust legislation for televising football, and how the NFL uniquely collectivizes resources so all teams get equally distributed resources from league-wide television deals. Ben and David explain the breakdown of the gentleman’s agreement between the AFL and NFL to not poach players, how the formation of the NFL compares to the founding of the United States, and why Monday Night Football revolutionized modern television.Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the Acquired Podcast and who are its hosts?
Yes.
This is kind of a freebie for us because normally I would have had to do a ton of research and that has now fallen on both of your shoulders. So Ben and David, you guys are the hosts of Acquired. Does it get back to you how much we talk about Acquired? Yes. Oh, good. Good, good, good. We never know if we're in a vacuum or not.
I know. Even my Hermes hiccup seemed to have made its way back.
Because you liked it so much and you wanted to buy one of the old bags.
And I stand by it.
I don't think there's anything wrong with liking one of those.
Right? Thank you.
It is a truly unique thing in the world, and they make it by hand, and it's special.
Wait, why'd you get in trouble? I was unrelatable.
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Chapter 2: How did Ben and David start the Acquired Podcast?
It was $900 grand a year for however many teams.
And what actually ends up happening is all of it, or at least half of it, goes to the New York Giants because they're the most harmed from the Jets joining in the same city.
Oh, interesting. So they didn't do that evenly.
No. Basically, Al Davis is a gangster. Wow. So this is where anyone with less than a 50,000 seat stadium needs to upgrade. They're like, this is the big times now. We're signing these huge TV deals. Once this is in place after the merger, two things happen.
One is the Super Bowl, which we can get to in a sec. Arguably the more important one is Monday Night Football. That starts in 68? Right around there. One of the other just incredible inventions of the NFL was they invent more football.
And prior to that, are they only playing on Friday and Sunday? They're only playing on Sundays. Which is a bad spot. When they originally conceived of this, it was no one watches TV on Sundays. So where can we get airtime? Cheap real estate.
Monday Night Football is the first time there's only one game happening at a time. So there's one nationally televised game. Before it was, oh, there would be like a game of the week that maybe more markets would see than others. But they're all happening at the same time. They do the deal with Rune Arledge and ABC to create Monday Night Football.
That basically invents the modern football telecast.
Eight and a half million dollars per year that ABC pays the league for one game per week. So it's $500,000 per game, which today seems like tiny. It's very large relative to the other TV contract. They're basically saying because it's one game, because it's primetime, this is a really expensive slot.
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