Meet the NFL’s Most-Hated Man 🧤

I’m not sure if anyone else has experienced this, but I find it interesting that, in sports, we’re often not allowed to complain about our jobs because so many people want to work in the industry.

And he’d never be one to complain, but I just spent 24 hours working with an ESPN College Football Broadcaster, and let’s just say that not enough people know how much work goes into an ostensibly part-time job. I’ll explain more at the end.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: Meet the NFL’s Most-Hated Man

📉 Biggest Loser: The Rise and Fall of TopGolf

🏆 Winner’s Circle: Why are the Knicks Wearing Tape On Their Ears?

Join Mark Guiducci for a series of wide-ranging conversations with cultural leaders from the worlds of Hollywood, Politics, Style, Silicon Valley, and beyond. 

On every episode, Vanity Fair pulls back the curtain on how some of the most interesting and powerful minds in our society work – and where they see us going. On Fair Game from Vanity Fair, no subject is off limits.

Watch on YouTube, listen anywhere.

Who the heck is this guy wearing orange gloves on the sideline of every NFL game?

Well, he actually has one of the most important jobs in football that no one seems to know anything about, but it also makes him one of the most hated men in America.

Mandatory Marketing: Per the NFL’s contracts with TV networks, every broadcast must have at least 16 commercial breaks, each lasting 2 minutes and 20 seconds.

This averages out to 4 breaks per quarter, which usually follow natural pauses in the action like after a scoring play or a punt; however, sometimes broadcasts need to roll TV timeouts over to the next quarter if there isn’t an obvious break in the action. But who coordinates all of this?

Well, that’s where Dave Dare comes in.

High Stakes: Networks pay billions of dollars every year for the rights to broadcast NFL games, and the only way they make that money back is by selling commercials during the game.

That’s why they send a dedicated person to every game to make sure the NFL hits its required 16 commercial breaks, and for the last two decades that person for NBC has been a lawyer from Omaha, Nebraska.

Specifically, on the sideline of every Sunday Night Football game, you’ll see Dave wearing bright orange gloves, and his only job is to make one of two hand signals.

This also tells local radio broadcasts and the in-stadium production crew to go to break. Then, once the 2 minutes and 20 seconds is up, Dave will hear a countdown in his headset, at which point he’ll wind his arms to let the refs know that they can resume play.

Part of the Job: Once you find Dave in the crowd, you might also notice that he’s always being followed around by a guy in a green hat; this is essentially Dave’s counterpart on the NFL side and is there to “make sure Dave does his job.”

And while Dave says that he loves traveling to watch some of the best football in the league every week, he also admits that he frequently gets heckled by fans in the stadium who don’t like sitting around for at least 37 minutes and 20 seconds every game while the broadcast goes to commercial.

But in his defense, he’s just doing his job.

What the hell happened to Topgolf?

Just two years ago, the company was on track “to become even bigger than actual golf,” but since then, it’s had one of the worst declines in sports. However, the reason is actually simpler than they want you to think.

Company Founding: Topgolf was founded in the UK in 2000 by twin brothers who were tired of the same-old driving-range experience. And even though they didn’t expand into the U.S. until 2005, the concept quickly caught on here in America after Callaway made their first of three investments in the company:

By the time Callaway announced its $2.6 billion merger with Topgolf in 2020, the company already had 63 venues worldwide, most of them in the U.S.

Grass isn’t Always Greener: The rationale for a legacy golf brand like Callaway investing in a new driving-range concept like Topgolf seemed obvious at the time: it gave them the opportunity to reach more new golfers they could eventually sell their products to.

Topgolf Callaway’s CEO even called the newly acquired company “the best thing to happen to golf since Tiger Woods,” saying “it’s going to be the largest source of new golfers” for the entire industry. A 2022 study backed that up, estimating that of the 41 million Americans who played golf that year, 15.5 million played exclusively at “off-course” places like Topgolf.

So if the company had such great momentum just a few years ago, then what happened?

Hit it and Quit It: To answer that question, we just need to look at this chart, which shows five consecutive quarters of declining same-venue sales.

This basically outlines that once Topgolf expands into a city, it struggles to bring people back for a second or third visit. And the reason is pretty straightforward: according to a study conducted earlier this year, even though customers perceive the brand positively for “fun” and “atmosphere,” it’s seen sharp decreases in perceptions of “value” and “price.”

And honestly, they’re right.

Because even though Callaway will blame inflation and rising interest rates as the reason they had to sell Topgolf at a valuation of less than half of what they bought it for 5 years ago, the truth is, spending an average of $36 per person to go to a glorified driving range just isn’t sustainable.

Why are Knicks players wearing tape on their ears during practice?

The short answer: to help them feel less tired, but the real answer is more complicated than you might think.

First Adoption: Even though this taped-ear look is pretty uncommon for athletes here in the U.S., professional soccer players across Europe have been sporting it for over a decade.

That’s because, in the 1970s, a group of German scientists realized that by collecting just 20 microliters of an athlete’s blood, they could measure everything from how hard practice was to how fit a player is, and even whether they’re ready to come back from an injury.

But how?

Trackable Training: When humans exert themselves, our muscles produce a byproduct called “lactate.” At a certain level of activity, our muscles can keep up with lactate production and recycle it.

But as we push harder, lactate can leak into our bloodstream faster than our bodies can clear it, and this buildup is often associated with the burning feeling in your muscles and an eventual drop-off in athletic performance.

So, by tracking lactate in an athlete’s blood throughout practice or across an entire season, teams can more accurately assess fatigue, fitness, or recovery and tailor a training regimen to avoid future dips in performance or even injury.

But what does any of this have to do with putting tape on your ears?

Ouch: As European football clubs, like Liverpool, started using lactate testing during practice to determine a player’s recovery levels, they decided that pricking a player’s ear would not only be more sanitary and more consistent than pricking the tip of their finger, but since there are fewer nerve endings in your earlobe, it would also be less painful.

So in reality, that “tape” you see on athletes’ ears is actually bandages, and based on these images, it seems like the European practice of lactate testing to help manage an athlete’s fatigue and recovery might have made its way over to the NBA.

When you refer new readers to the Bottom of the Ninth, you win exclusive prizes.

➡️ Here is your unique link to share: {{rp_refer_url}}

You’re currently at {{rp_num_referrals}}. That’s only {{rp_num_referrals_until_next_milestone}} away from receiving {{rp_next_milestone_name}}!

*Please do not use fake email addresses — they will not qualify as referrals. Thank you!

👋🏻 Happy Friday!

I don’t think enough people realize that most of the broadcasters you hear on Saturdays don’t work for the network full-time. Now, that’s not to say broadcasting a college football game isn’t a lot of work (~20 hours per week, according to Max Browne), but since most broadcasters have another job, it means a lot of that work has to be done at night, on airplanes, and on weekends.

Spending a full 24 hours with Max really showed me this grind (and much more). Check out the video if you haven’t already: