Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
Full method →
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 5 5.00
Q and you started to think about what you could do, you were already kind of thinking about it. You had this blueprint. You had Grantland. It was a pop culture site. It was YouTube. It was podcasts, and podcasts were really what was generating most of the revenue. Was that in your head? You were like, we, I know what to do. I know how to create something like this.
A Yeah. So there were two separate things going on. One is I knew I wanted to do the ringer as a company and I had the four people from Grantland that eventually we all decided to work together that would help me build the website. And I knew I was going to make real money for my podcast that would be able to help pay for anything. But I was trying to figure out the TV side of it. And the thought was like, could I get heavily involved with HBO sports? And could I create an interview show for them? And You know, went down that path, and I, I think the mistake looking back was, I was so mad at how the ESPN thing ended that I just tried to do everything all at once, and it was, both things suffered. I think, you know, I definitely wouldn't, wouldn't do it that way again.
AI assessment note: “Yeah. So there were two separate things going on. One is I knew I wanted”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q And you were trying to do this initially with a team of like four people, right?
A Yeah, I had four people, and it was four people that I worked great with at Grantland. And that was the big thing I learned at Grantland was like, the team part of it is so important. So with The Ringer, we had four people that I felt really good about. Sean was our number two at Grantland, and he was ready to run Grantland by like year three. And just editorially, he got it. So that was fantasy. Chris Ryan was like a really good ideas guy for sports and culture and worked great with all of us. Mallory was like the best young editor we had and just like indefatigable work ethic. And then Julia Lipman was young, but like a go-getter and just like a problem solver. And really from November on, we rented this house in this kind of crappy part of, uh, Hollywood. And we just tried to figure out what do we want to do? How are we going to be different from Grantland? Everyone's going to pair this to Grantland. How is it going to be different? Yeah. Who do we want to get? What talent do we like? How do we do podcasts? We did the first, like, five months from my house. It was my podcast and it was The Watch with Chris and Andy.
AI assessment note: “Yeah, I had four people, and it was four people that I worked great with”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q That surprised you, that like reporters who covered sports were almost like people who covered politics, who were like, I don't vote, right? And you saw that, and you just, you couldn't understand it.
A I couldn't understand it, but that's the way it was back then. I understand pieces of it. Like, I understand you have to stay detached, and you have to be objective, right? But I never understood why somebody would be covering sports if they didn't love sports, and if you love sports, you have to have a favorite something. You can't just be an atheist, a sports atheist, basically. You have to have a player you love, or a team, or whatever, and I remember, like, 2002 1001, I must have been to 55 Red Sox games, something like that, because I was like, I just want to be there. I feel like just watching us on TV, it's not good enough. Yeah. My whole thing is, like, do the work.
AI assessment note: “I couldn't understand it, but that's the way it was back then.”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q And you're back writing for ESPN, and, and I know you, you put out a book at that time, but I want to, I want to sort of get a sense of, I mean, your, like, lifestyle, right? Like, which involves a lot, like, watching a lot of sports. Like, that never really changed.
A Yeah, the O-Four, I was kind of back to where I was three years before in Boston, but way better at Knowing how I had to do stuff, and it was a really fun year. Like, I really felt like I went up a level as a writer, and I was watching the Red Sox run on all the time, and then the Red Sox turned out to be the famous team, and it was great. It was probably one of the two or three best moments of my career, like being able to write all the time during that journey, and going to the ALCS games in Boston, games four and five, and being able to write about that that night, which I still was like, probably my favorite piece I ever wrote.
AI assessment note: “I was watching the Red Sox run on all the time”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q Did that in any way, like, shake your confidence? Because, you know, you left ESPN, you were a big star there, and probably there's some people who are like, ha, ha, ha, his HBO show didn't work.
A Oh, there was definitely, I mean, there was two things. One, when I left ESPN, everybody's like, you can't leave the nest. ESPN is the reason you succeeded. You can't leave. You're going to fall apart. And then the second thing was stuff built around, you know, with like one person at the forefront, like businesses, there was not a lot of big track record at the time. So when the HBO show failed, I think a lot of people, there were some pieces. I saw a couple of them that were really nasty, like, oh, yeah. Now it's over. And I was like, this is definitely not over. Like, I will, I knew we had some good ringer stuff, and I also knew, like, I'm gonna figure out some different way to make an impact.
AI assessment note: “And I was like, this is definitely not over. Like, I will, I knew”
Answered produced feed
D 3 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 3.70
Q fifty million dollars. It's a lot of money. I mean, that's, Incredible. But why at that point? Did you think Spotify could really supercharge us now that if they're the owners, we could take cash off the table, and then we don't have to worry about, like, the bottom line, and then they can really make us even bigger? Was that, were all those things reasons why you did it?
A Yeah, it started, um, they had approached us, like, maybe the start of 2019, something like that, or late, late 2018, because we were doing a couple of podcasts with them, and I didn't realize they were sizing us up to possibly buy us, because I'm stupid, but they, they came back with us four times, and one of the times they came, this lady named Sheila came, who I thought was just part of the Spotify creative team, or whatever. God forbid I was smart enough to Google her, And it was their acquisitions lady. And all I had to do, if we had just Googled her, we would have been like, oh shit, they might be trying to buy us. We were pretty naive about that, but we didn't want, I didn't want to be bought. I didn't want to be owned by anybody. I didn't want to work for anybody. I loved what we were doing and I loved not having a boss. I didn't want to be in another big company. And then they bought Gimlet and they bought Gimlet for like two hundred million dollars.
AI assessment note: “I didn't want to be bought... And then they bought Gimlet”
