Happy Wednesday,
This week we did something a little different. Instead of bringing in a guest, Jake and I went head-to-head in a structured debate on one of the most divisive topics in sports marketing right now:
Should AI be used in sports creative?
Jake argued in favor, I argued against, and our producer, Gabby, moderated (for the record, these positions were assigned randomly).
It’s worth listening to the full debate to capture the nuance of the conversation, but here are our biggest takeaways from a conversation that’s not going away anytime soon.
At best, AI gets you to 80%. But in the creative world, everyone is trying to be better than average. And the only way to do that is to start with your own creative process.
How We Got Here
The setup: Teams are already using AI to generate graphics, cut highlights, and build social content, and the tools are getting better, faster, and cheaper every month.
The problem: This has blurred the line between what's human-made and what's AI-generated, putting the people using these tools in a genuinely difficult position.
Pro-AI Argument: Jake argued for the ethical, intentional use of AI as a tool to expand creative capacity — not replace it.
Anti-AI Argument: Tyler argued that generative AI is fundamentally different from every other creative tool that came before it, and that the long-term costs — to creators, to the industry, and to the craft itself — are being sorely underestimated.
The Big Idea: This is Less About Jobs and More About What Gets Lost
I want to be honest about something: going into this debate, I thought the strongest argument against AI in sports creative was surrounding jobs, and that using AI to replace human creative work is gutting an industry and pulling up the ladder behind people who are just trying to get in.
And while I still think that’s a very real problem, it’s not the one I kept coming back to in our conversation.
Instead, the point that seemed to resonate most with Jake was about the “creative muscle” (and what happens when you stop using it).
MIT published a study in 2025 called "Cognitive Debt." They divided 54 participants into three groups:
AI-only
Search engine
No tools
They then measured brain activity over four months of writing tasks. Unsurprisingly, the AI group showed the least brainwave activity and the weakest brain connectivity to their own material. In fact, 83% of AI users couldn't accurately quote their own work (again, not shocking because they didn't write it).
But then came the most alarming finding: this cognitive decline persisted even after they stopped using AI; their brains didn't just “snap back.”
This is the spiral I'm actually worried about. Not that AI takes over sports creative overnight, but that the more we reach for the prompt instead of the pen, the worse we get at the thing we’re supposed to be good at. And in sports specifically, where tradition, context, and the visceral feeling of being a fan matter more than anywhere else, that loss is irreplaceable.
Now, Jake did have a counterpoint to this argument. He claimed that this loss isn’t inevitable. The same way not everyone who feels stressed smokes a cigarette, not everyone who has access to AI will let it replace their creative process. The tool doesn't have to become the crutch. I pushed back: the reason we don't all smoke cigarettes is because there's regulation, social norms, and decades of public health infrastructure telling us not to.
We have none of that for AI yet.
5 Things We Actually Agreed On
This was a debate, but it wasn't as adversarial as it sounds. Here's where we landed together:
1. Generative AI is different in kind, not just degree.
Photoshop's advancement is not the same as text-to-image or text-to-video AI. One amplifies human skill. The other replaces the act of creativity itself. Jake drew this line himself, and it matters.
2. AI lacks taste. And in sports, taste is everything.
Jake made this point on the pro-AI side, and I agreed: AI is a consolidator of existing information. It can get you to 80% really fast, but the best creative work (the stuff that actually moves people) requires context, instinct, and a point of view that AI just doesn't have (at least not yet).
3. The process matters, even if the output looks the same.
Jake's Ferrari-vs.-Ford analogy was the most interesting moment of the debate. A Ferrari is worth more than a Ford because it's handmade. That value is real, and people pay for it. The same logic applies to creative work, and increasingly, there will be a market for verifiably human-made content, even if AI-generated content is indistinguishable on the surface.
4. The entry-level pipeline is at real risk.
If AI absorbs the lower-skill work that used to be how new creatives got reps and built experience, how does the next generation learn? This wasn't the center of the debate, but it's the downstream consequence nobody is talking about enough.
5. Your creative process cannot start with AI.
This is where we both landed. Use it to stress-test. Use it to brainstorm. Use it for the objective stuff, transcription, masking, and captioning. But if you start with AI, you're starting at a deficit, and that deficit compounds.
Why It Matters
Now, I won’t tell you who “won” the debate (although we did make Gabby give her winner), but she also said something at the end that stuck with me.
She talked about brainstorming and how one of the first things you learn as a kid is how to generate ideas, use your imagination, and sit with a blank page and make something from nothing. That process is the foundation of everything creative. And the minute we hand it off entirely, we’re not just at risk of creating something mediocre; we risk losing an inatley human instinct.
Still, I’m not naive. The cat is out of the bag. I use AI. Jake uses AI. The question isn't whether to use it; it's whether you're still the one driving. The second AI stops being the tool and starts being the author; something real gets lost. And in sports, where the whole point is that it's unpredictable, tribal, and deeply human, that loss matters more than almost anywhere else.
We didn't resolve the debate, but I think we asked the right questions.
📩 And don’t forget: Bottom of the Ninth is back this Friday with the top three stories in sports and business from the week.
See you then,
Tyler & Jake