Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. We are slipping into your Freakonomics radio feed today with a bonus episode. It is a conversation with Jason Kelsey, the longtime Center for the Philadelphia Eagles. In case you don't follow American football, Kelsey is one of the Eagles' best and most popular players, and the Eagles are one of the best and most popular teams in the NFL.
They won the Super Bowl in 2018, and last season they made it back to the Super Bowl, but they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs. One of the Chief's best players happens to be Jason Kelsey's little brother, Travis. This was the first time that brothers had ever played against each other in the Super Bowl. The Eagles and Chiefs are two of the best teams in the NFL this year too, and they happen to be playing each other again this week on November 20th.
At the start of this season, we put out an episode called When is a Superstar Just Another Employee. It was about a survey conducted by the NFL Players Association, the union, which they turned into a report card that graded all 32 teams on their workplace conditions. Jason Kelsey was one of the voices we heard from in that episode, but only for a few minutes. The full interview with him was well over an hour, so I thought you might like to hear the whole thing now.
The Kelsey brothers have become a phenomenon over the past year or so. They make one of the most popular podcasts around called New Heights. They are in TV commercials together, along with their mom. Jason was the subject of a documentary on Amazon Prime.
Travis, if you haven't heard, but I'm guessing you have, Travis has been dating Taylor Swift, but it was Jason who was just named one of People Magazine's Sexiest Men of the Year. The interview you're about to hear was done in late spring before the current NFL season began, so there will not be any Taylor Swift gossip. Sorry about that. But I think you will agree that Jason Kelsey is an unusually interesting and open-minded person, curious and positive person.
And if you enjoy this conversation even half as much as I did, that will be a lot. If you'd like to hear more of these full interviews from the episodes we produce, you should become a member of our new Freakonomics Radio Plus program. You'll get a bonus episode like this one every week, and you can also listen ad-free. To sign up, visit the Freakonomics Radio show page on Apple Podcasts, or go to freakonomics.com slash plus.
OK, here now is Jason Kelsey. This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me on.
I'm excited. Do you like being a podcast god in addition to being a football god? I do enjoy my 9 to 5 and this side job I have going on right now. I guess it was on your show where you talked about your relationship with your brother and how the podcast has changed it.
That's true. You weren't just saying that. Yeah, I don't know that, if I did say change, maybe that's not the right word. Amplify, maybe, or something.
Yeah, I think it's definitely amplified. And we've just talked more than we've talked, you know, we've both been playing football in the NFL for over a decade now and, you know, our first 10 years, we didn't communicate as much. You also realize, especially being an older brother, how much your younger brother has changed. It's not the same big brother, little brother relationship that it used to be when we were in college and in high school together.
I think now it's much more of a brotherly friendship and love for each other, and you kind of see the differences in one another and the way you think about things. I do think Travis always viewed our relationship a little bit more competitive, being the younger brother, right? He was always trying to win and, you know, he compared himself a lot to me growing up, according to my dad. So, to me, the relationship was never that, but I think it would be interesting how my brother would answer that, and I think, you know, he's far exceeded me in career achievements in the NFL.
He just plays an easier position. Come on. I wish that was the case. I would go play that.
But, you know, I think he's far exceeded me in a lot of those regards and just beat me in a Super Bowl, which, not the greatest highlight for me. So, maybe he does feel as competitive, I guess, as he used to. I think he's finally cemented himself as surpassing the big brother. It looked like he was sad for you after the Super Bowl, yeah?
Yeah, so I thought about it a lot the night before, like, what am I going to do if we win and how am I going to greet Travis, right? He was sad. And that's one of the reasons for me, I didn't really want that interaction to be that long. You know, I gave him a hug, and I'm like, go celebrate with your teammates.
Because I didn't want him to be in that state of mind. I wanted him to be happy and celebrating with his teammates and enjoying the fact that he's a world champion. What were you going to say to him? Did you figure it out if you won?
Man, I did have something, and I'm trying to remember what it was. It has since gone out of my mind. I'm trying to block as much of that day and everything out as much as possible. Coming in second when the stakes are high is no fun, is it?
It's not. You put so much work in, and the team is so tight at that point because of the success and longevity of the season. You really get to a point where you think you're the best in the world, and I still think on another day we might have been. But knowing what it's like to share that moment with a group of guys and coaches and staff and organization and knowing that that team, with how good it was and how tight it was, isn't going to have that final achievement.
It's rough. All right, so just so I have it, if you would just introduce yourself, say your name and what you do. Sure. I am Jason Kelsey.
I play center for the Philadelphia Eagles and I also host a podcast with my brother Travis. Why the name of the podcast, New Heights? Where did that come from? So we're from Cleveland Heights, so we were looking for a way to draw on that when we were going through the different names.
That one sounded like the one that is what we're trying to do constantly, right? You're always trying to take your game to new heights. And now we're in a different game. We're in the podcast game, but still try to be great at whatever you do.
And I think that that's one of the things that we want to continue to run with, and we look forward to doing more things of celebrating individuals that are the best at what they do, you know, expertise and watching people who are really great at things is one of the most enjoyable things to witness and celebrate. Just tell me a little bit about your family, growing up, what your folks did, and what the house, what the family was like, what you were into and so on. Yeah, so I grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. We were for a short stint where I have a few memories.
We were in North Ridgeville, Ohio. My brother probably doesn't remember that portion at all. My mom worked in banking her whole life, started off as a teller and worked her way up to a VP and primarily in low income housing loans. She worked at Key Bank, the largest building in the city.
My brother and I could see it from our high school, Cleveland Heights High School. So we always knew where mom was. My dad was a steelworker in Cleveland. He ended up becoming a sales rep where he's in and out of steel mills quite a bit.
And did you have siblings beyond your brother? No, just Travis and I. And tell me about you as an athlete as a kid. How good were you and at what sports when you were younger, let's say from zero to 12 or 13?
My father believed in us trying as many things as possible, so I did everything from my first sports were soccer and baseball, then to hockey, karate, golf, wrestling, lacrosse. I eventually settled into my high school sports of being football, hockey and lacrosse. You know, I don't, I guess, I don't want to be cocky, but I was good at pretty much all of those sports. I was one of the better players on the field no matter what sport it was.
Would you say the same is true for most NFL athletes? I don't know. You know, football is tricky because if you're big, fast and strong, there's a good chance you're going to be good at football. There are other sports that I think require more skill or repetition that I've seen high, high caliber NFL players struggle with.
You know, obviously, golf is one that anybody who plays knows that that's a difficult game. What's your handicap now, if you don't mind me asking? Oh man, I don't know that I play enough to have a handicap. I'm happy if I break 90.
Let me say that. I hit some shots that are spectacular pretty much every round I'm out there. And then also three putt and chunk wedges around the green. I know that game.
I'm familiar with that game. So I guess another thing from growing up, you know, we grew up in a very, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? A liberal town. So we played music.
We did a lot of artistic things as well. But you played sax in a is from things that I like of coaches and players and teammates. And I think that, you know, coaches that are more unifying are more celebratory, are more embracing. If the culture of the team is, you know, you need to buy into what we're doing, that is a frustrating culture and team to be a part of.
If the culture is, it's our job to get the players to buy in, or it's our job to make the culture embracing of the players, that's a culture I can get behind. And, you know, I think in the world right now, it is very animosity driven, and people want to pick sides. And I think that I certainly, I try to see the good in people. I try to see, you know, the good in humanity and shed light on that.
And I think embrace my teammates and in my city and the values and things that were instilled in me from my father and mother and everywhere that I grew up in. So let me ask you this, you've been with one team for your whole career, how many seasons now? This is year 13 coming up. Okay, so even though football is an unusual job or a pretty uncommon job, at least, it's a job.
And the Eagles are essentially your employer. I mean, they are your employer. It's a little bit different than most employers, perhaps. I assume you like the culture overall, because you've had certainly opportunities to leave.
Can you talk about your relationship with the organization in a way that, you know, a non-professional athlete could relate? Because the world has changed a lot in that regard too, as you well know, your folks were with a company for a long, long, long time. And that just doesn't happen that much anymore. So in a way, in the modern world for a relatively young person, you're sort of an outlier.
So talk about your relationship with the organization, you know, pros and cons. And we can get into the NFLPA report card that I want to talk about too. You know, it's extremely hard to stay with the same organization for an entire career. There's so many factors that go into that between, you know, what you're worth, whether the team agrees with that assessment, you know, what the dynamics are from a health standpoint and from an age standpoint.
And I've been very, very lucky to meet a lot of parameters. And it was close a few times to probably not being that way. Meaning you almost left a couple of times. Well, I think I almost was forced out at least one time.
I think I had a rough year in 2016, the year before we played in the Super Bowl, ironically enough. What was rough about it? I just didn't play well at the start of the year. Were you hurt?
No, I just had a few bad games early on. I was out of rhythm. We were able to turn it around. I had a good second half of that season, but a lot of the narrative was that the Eagles wanted to move on from me.
And I think they did, but, you know, I was in this realm from a contract standpoint that it was probably too much that anybody else wanted to pay. You were in a three or four or five year deal at that point? I signed a five-year extension and this would have been year four of that extension, I think. And the reason I say the contract saved me was that I wasn't such a high salary that the Eagles weren't willing to pay it, but it was too high that another team probably wasn't interested in trading for me.
What was your number that year? Do you remember? I think it was right around six. It might've been a little bit less.
Six million a year. So what was that like coming back to the team for your last year of that contract and knowing that the team hadn't been your biggest supporter necessarily? I did not view it personally. I'll be honest with you.
I knew that I struggled the beginning half of the season. I had an offensive line coach that believed in me and Jeff Stoutland very strongly felt that if I just used the right technique, I'm going to mitigate the vast majority of these issues and ended up proving to be right. We ended up going to the Super Bowl the next year. I had the best season of my career.
I made my first all-pro team, won a world championship. So it was a pretty damn good feeling. So they're not going to not bring you back now. Correct.
And now they're going to be on a bargain really because now everybody's, hey, you still interested in that trade you guys were talking about last year? But these are the things that happen throughout a career. You're going to have ups and downs and bad years. And I think sometimes, I think, you know, not to pat myself on the back, I think I handled it in a really healthy way.
I had a great leader and Jeff Stoutland as an offensive line coach who believed in me still. So my self-confidence was still high. And what's your relationship like with the upper tier of the organization, with ownership, with GM, EVP, and so on? As I've gotten older and garnered more trust within the organization and more of a voice, I get asked my opinion more.
Not that I was ever shy of voicing my opinion before, but now it's more proactive, I guess, asking of the opinion rather than me just blurting it out. Can you give an example of where ownership or management may come to you and say, hey, we don't know about this. We don't feel good about this. I mean, this is a bad example.
It seems like something really small, but we do a bowling trip or some type of team activity every offseason. And literally today, we just got back from the bowling alley because they consulted with me and other leaders on the team about, you know, do you think this is important? And I do think it's important. I think it's fun to kind of step away from practice and do something outside the confines of a game.
How'd you bowl today, by the way? Terrible. It was one of my worst outings. The lanes were slick.
They put too much oil on. Oh, come on, come on, come on. Wasn't ideal. A poor carpenter blames his tools.
That's fair. Okay, so anyway, but you did it. And that's something that you talk about with management, for instance. Another example, probably more of an impact.
I'm getting older and they're looking at having the next center for the next decade. So they've drafted a guy with the idea of him maybe replacing me multiple times at this point in my career. And I've ended up having great careers with those guys. But, you know, Cam Juergens is a guy we drafted last year and they had me actually watch tape and give my assessment on which players I liked out of that draft class.
There are a number of really good centers in that draft class. It's a little bit weird, though, in that you are being asked to help your employer recruit your eventual replacement, correct? Well, either they're going to do this on their own and I'm going to have no involvement, or I can be a part of this and try and, you know, have a say. And, you know, I have seen players fight the process of them drafting guys or bringing free agents in.
When you say fight it, meaning the new guy comes in and you give him a cold shoulder. You don't help him out. Cold shoulder. You don't really help him.
You don't develop a relationship. You don't try and help the player improve. And listen, I don't know that that's a job of any player. I just think for your own psyche, it's not good for you.
Like if this guy's better than you, it's going to happen. And would you rather it be, hey, this guy fought it with every tooth and nail? Or would you rather be like, hey, man, like I had some small part in making that guy get as good as he could be as fast as he did. And I've seen guys fight that.
And I think it actually does make those players play worse. I think it starts to mess with their head. And I don't think it's a healthy room. Like you want a room in the NFL that everybody feels like they're in it and valued.
You don't want to be in a room where, like, you're not you're holding back from a guy because that guy's going to feel that. He's going to be like, man, that guy doesn't really care about me or he doesn't like me or whatever. You want all of these individuals in your room to be adding to the conversation. That's a big part, in my opinion, about getting better as a unit and a player is all of these conversations that happen throughout the week to happen in the preparation in the offseason at the bar.
Like all of this makes a difference. I firmly believe in the outcome. So if you've got someone on your team that you feel hasn't quite got to that level yet of being that kind of teammate, are you now the sort of guy veteran who will go? Maybe it's your QB and you say to him, listen, you're doing an amazing job.
But if you could also reach out a little bit more as a human, as a teammate, it'll be better. Do you do that? I do that now for sure. If I see it.
I have not always been that position, you know, being older now, I view more strongly on that now. You know, I wish I would have had this viewpoint in other parts of my career and voice them to other guys that I played with. You would have done some things differently. Well, I think I would have just voiced things and maybe in a more direct way.
Sometimes I voice things in an indirect way, right? Because you don't want to step out of your lane, right? Especially if it's Because there's a few scans out there that I'm optimistic about, that I think I will get, either this year or next year. But as of right now, none of them have that many studies around them, so they're pretty...
Unfortunately, there's no clear way to tell whether somebody has CTE while they're alive. Right now, the major way that they know how to do it is to cut the head open, and I don't plan on doing that for hopefully a long time. Do you know anybody who died of CTE? Did you know any of those older players?
Not personally. I know a fullback that played with the Eagles and the Patriots that ended up getting Lou Gehrig's disease, and it came out after that he had CTE. Out of all the brains that cut open of former NFL players, almost every player, maybe every player, has had CTE. So, one, that's frightening, obviously, on some degree.
But two, there's also a number of NFL players that live long, healthy lives without symptoms later in life. And I would love for the NFL and NFLPA to get behind an initiative that pushed for those players to donate their brains, because unfortunately, I think most of the players that donate their brains end up being players with symptoms. And I have a sneaky suspicion that there's a lot of people walking around with CTE that have minimal symptoms and that there are lifestyle mitigations. What do you mean by lifestyle mitigations?
Proper sleep, exercising, proper nutrition. I think that all of those things are going to end up playing a role into the severity at which this affects your life. If you look at a lot of the symptoms associated with CTE, there's similar symptoms as other age-related cognitive diseases, whether it's tau protein buildup, web entanglements. I think, as we're finding out, you know, exercise, sleep, proper nutrition, a lot of these things mitigate all of these other cognitive declines.
And you're pretty good at that stuff, or not so good? I think I'm really good. I think I'm really good with sleep. I don't drink as much as I used to, even though I still enjoy one every once in a while.
My conversation with Jason Kelce, center for the Philadelphia Eagles, continues after the break. I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back.
Let me take you back to the beginning of your career. On your show, you talked to Howie Roseman, your EVP GM of the Eagles. And he admitted that there was some reluctance to draft you because of behavioral concerns. He said, I do remember in the draft room, scouts were going, I'm just telling you, he might fight half the team and he really likes to party.
How right were those scouts? Well, I think the anger portion has always been misunderstood. The party was spot on. That's something both my brother and I had an affinity of, especially in my younger years.
You know, I enjoyed having a good time and celebrating life. My anger, I've always been a kid that's been prone to outbursts or temper tantrums. But almost all of them happen in the confines of being on the field, one. And then, two, they're always with people that I love and respect.
I don't know that I've ever gotten that upset to want to fight a random person. It almost always comes at a level of, I feel like I'm being disrespected by somebody that I have respect for. And why is this not being reciprocated, type of feeling. And what happens is I don't address that.
I've gotten better at it because now I just address it on the front end as opposed to... How do you do that? You go talk to the person. You tell them how you felt.
Or you say it in maybe a less direct way, but you get it out of your system, right? In a much more appropriate manner. It still happens from time to time. I'm a very emotional person, always have been, but I've definitely gotten much, much better at controlling them.
All the elements of being a professional football player that you're talking about, I think listeners will really get a good window into what the job is like. Even though most of us are not physically capable of doing it, and we only watch the output, right? We watch on Sunday. We don't see what happens those many, many, many other hours.
But you're now talking about all those other hours and all the stuff that goes into it. The meetings, the lifting, the practice. When it comes to all that stuff, the actual job, everything outside of the performance on the field, how much does the workplace environment matter? We're talking about the NFLPA report card here.
And, you know, as an outsider, I can look at it and say, Oh wow, I could imagine how being on a team with really low grades could be terrible. And it could result in bad play. On the other hand, there seems to be no correlation between good marks here and good teams. In fact, quite the opposite.
A lot of the teams that are really good are ranked pretty well. So can you just get into that a little bit? How much do you care? How much does it matter?
Maybe not just you, but other people as well. Well, you know, in terms of a lot of the things that were voted on for this survey, I think that players do care. I think that they want to be in a workplace and an environment that is, one, the best available, but also, two, something that is enjoyable and is good for the family and facilitates a healthy environment to get better in. To me, the most important things are the staff questions.
You know, is the staff good? Do they want to help the players improve? But, I mean, some of the people that were rated poorly in that are some of the best and highly regarded people in their fields. So how do you account for that, then?
Just personal differences? Yeah. And sometimes it's personal differences. Some of it is, you know, if a guy has been around for a very long time, there's a chance that he is more old school and less inclined towards maybe new modalities and things that college kids are coming in with.
What the NFL deals with a little bit is, you know, every major college has better facilities than the NFL does. The universities use these as recruiting tools, and they have very large pockets to build these enormous facilities. And the NFL just is behind that for the most part, outside of maybe a couple. You know, I was at the Miami Dolphins training facilities last year, and it's pretty state of the art.
Why were you there? We were doing training camp there. So for me, another reason this is a little bit more difficult for me is I haven't played anywhere else. But you do hear through the grapevine and guys that have been other places, the vast majority of NFL players have played for multiple teams.
So you get a frame of reference as to where the Eagles are and where the different staff members are in the eyes of the players. So the Eagles came out kind of middle of the pack. I'm curious what you thought of that result. And I'm also curious to know, I assume you filled out the survey yourself.
Maybe you didn't. No, I did. Would you say that the overall team results for the Eagles reflect your views closely or not so much? I thought it was spot on.
I'd be curious to see what the standard deviation on each one of these was because when I saw the results, it was almost to the T. You felt like you were looking at your answers. Yeah, yeah. But I know that a lot of guys filled it out.
All right, so I'm glad to hear you say that because I do want to ask you about something that you mentioned earlier, which is the discrepancy between staff and facilities. So for the Eagles, I'm looking at your report card. Strength coaches A+, training staff A+, but training room C-, locker room C+. So explain how that, why there's such a split there.
Is it just that you want to be kind to people? I mean, it wasn't anonymous survey. So what is it that makes you grade the people well but the facilities poorly? Well, I think that one, we were one of the least injured teams in the NFL last year.
And the two staffs and rooms that control that the most are the strength department and the training department. I've been around a lot of different staff members at this point. I think that both of those rooms are led really well. They do forward, innovative things.
They're open to discussing things with the players. Give me an example, if you don't mind, of the forward, innovative things. So there's a whole discrepancy right now in the NFL of, do you practice on Wednesdays or how many hard days in a row? The strength staff is very involved with the training staff at, one, trying to help players improve and get better, but also to mitigate injuries.
And, you know, training camp used to be two-a-days, hard every single day, three-hour practices. Pads and helmets. That's right. And now it is much more of a tiered system where one day is a yellow day, and that goes into, one, the intensity practice, but also the length at which you're out there.
Green is a, hey, we're getting geared up. This is going to be a barn burner. But it's done in a calculated way that the coaches understand and that the players understand and that is done in, scientifically, what is the optimal way for a player to, one, stay healthy, but also improve. And just so I'm clear, those changes were the result, I assume, of NFLPA, the players' union requests and negotiations over the years, not from the teams.
But tell me if I'm wrong there. I would say you're wrong. The two days, for sure, was a big negotiating factor by private planes that have more space for the guys that are in the back. Like, you know, we have a player, Jordan Malata, who's north of 6'6 and 400 pounds almost.
He's going to struggle to fit any situation in the back of the plane. What's your plane? It's a charter from? It's a charter, man.
I'm trying to remember because I... Is it American? Philly is a hub for American. So Philly is definitely an American Airlines hub.
And I'm trying to remember, there's always the little video at the start with the lady who's walking and her heels are clicking. And I know the exact thing I'm trying to remember. It's not, is it Delta? No, it's not Delta.
I think it's American Airlines. I think it is. It's good to know you watch the safety video, though. Well, you got to be prepared.
I've seen it a few times. OK, so treatment of families. The Eagles did OK, B-. Tell me about that one.
We have a family room for games that oftentimes is just a little small. And then I think another part of that is there's not really a big congregating area for families and players after the game. That's like away from fans. Do you think this report card will lead to any change?
I do. It's already led to change. So we talked about the training room facilities. They installed a much larger cold pool in the actual training room.
We used to have two above ground pools out back, which I always, you know, we're a billion dollar organization with above ground pools. I think we can maybe do better than this. Above ground outdoors. Like in the winter.
Well, so they would have to shut them down in the winter. And that was a big issue with it. And there was a big cold pool and hot and I guess it wasn't really that hot, but it was hot enough. So they've already made corrections on that.
I believe they're addressing some of the family issues at games. The weight room is adding another tier that's going to add more footprint for more, you know, bikes and other workout equipment. What about travel? Do you know if that's going to change at all this year?
So I did talk to somebody about that. You know, why don't the Eagles just invest in a plane already? It's, you know, it's more than a valuable enough organization. And their claim was that there's no place to store it.
Close to Philadelphia. They can put it where they have the outdoor pools. How about that? So I don't know that that's going to change.
And I don't know that the coaches and front office are going to be willing to give up their first class seats. So we might be stuck still with only an empty row, which is, I mean, all things considered, not the worst thing in the world. I guess what I'm really asking is how much do you think this report card is going to matter? Short term, let's say this season and then long term, which would include teams responding to it in a meaningful way.
I do think teams are going to respond to it. I think the Eagles are already responding to it. Just like players are competitive. I think owners are competitive.
And I think that owners are certainly a good portion of owners are not going to like seeing their organization viewed in a negative light. And I think that they're going to try and correct these things. Were you surprised, though, that there is what looks like a negative correlation between the report card and, you know, wins, Super Bowl wins, especially? Were you surprised at that?
I'll give you the top five are the Vikings, the Dolphins, the Raiders, the Texans and the Cowboys. Bottom five are the Commanders are kind of an outlier. Cardinals, Chargers, Chiefs, Jags, Bengals, Pats are 24. So, you know, it's not perfect by any stretch, but I guess seeing the Chiefs so low is maybe the big surprise.
The Chiefs is the biggest surprise. And the Bengals, but I mean, the Bengals have only really been good for the last few years. So the Bengals are notorious for being and I love Cincinnati. I went to school there.
They are notorious for being one of the cheapest organizations. They are still good at evaluating talent and they have an incredible quarterback in Joe Burrow that helps you win games now as well as an outstanding defense. I think if you look at the correlation of that, what you see is the teams that are at the high end are teams that have all recently revamped their infrastructure. The teams that are at the low end of that are teams that have not invested in new infrastructure.
And I think that the new infrastructure probably is not going to make as big of a difference in wins and losses as having good players. But it can make somewhat of a difference for players. It can also make a difference for sponsors and bottom line of businesses making money. I'm sure somebody's been crunching numbers on that portion of it.
And it also makes a difference for other workers that are in those buildings. And like we just said, owners are competitive, man. They want to have the best. And, you know, again, from the outside, just as a fan, you you think of these multibillion dollar firms paying their employees in some cases, many, many millions of dollars, but even the lowest paid are making a lot more than the average employee.
But then cheaping out on those infrastructure or facility things. Can you explain that? It's just surprising to me. I think that one, a lot of the owners that have, I guess, new age of owners or the real estate moguls or people that have made money outside of, I guess, inheriting a team might not be the right choice of word there.
But I think that all of them understand the value of investment and they've built businesses around doing all of that. I think the family run businesses are used to more of the old school way of the way the NFL was, you know, the Browns are a legacy of Paul Brown, one of the most heralded coaches of all time in the NFL. And, you know, they adhere to a particular style of football, a way of doing things from the football end, not necessarily, I think, on the business side of things. I will say there was one point where we talked about my anger earlier and we were coming back on a short flight and they didn't like turn the TVs on on the back of the seats.
And I remember just looking at the word billion dollar organization and we can't even get free movies on these flights. Like what's going on here, guys? Would you say that to them? I said that to one of the stewardesses and then one of the guys that kind of runs everything for the logistics with the team came back and he's like, we're gonna turn the TVs on Jason.
So we got them going. Now, what about being charged for food in Arizona, let's say, did that surprise you? It did. And that's why it wasn't Philly my first few years in the off season, at least we went to Arizona.
We used the Arizona Cardinals facilities and I can say firsthand, they are not investing in this place. The weight room had, I'm not kidding you, the mats of the weight room were like, I don't know if they had water moisture that was getting in there, but the rubber mat that was on top of the concrete floor was peeling up on the corners of it. So like, you're like walking on an uneven surface the whole time. I was like, how are people not just getting hurt in here outside of their cold tub and hot tub in their training room, which was pretty spacious.
It was eye openingly bad in my opinion. For, I would say probably 99.8% of people listening to this. They never have and never will play in the NFL. They probably have a little bit better sense now of what the job is like on a day to day basis, thanks to you.
But assuming they're going to continue to not play in the NFL, but they are thinking about, you know, I have a job, I have a boss, I have a place where I go. I have perks and intangibles, or maybe there are things that I want. What do you think is the biggest takeaway that the rest of us can learn from this report card and survey? I think unequivocally that more unions should be doing this.
One. I think that Jeffrey Lurie is a very open owner and a guy who really wants player feedback. It's different when one person or somebody comes to you with an anecdote or a one off as opposed to a literal survey of your entire workforce saying this is what we think of the place that you have us operating. For CEOs and owners, I think that seeing it this way, an unbiased view of it, gives you a much more realistic idea of what your workplace environment is.
So I would want this information. And as a worker, I would want my boss to know this, but to also not be punished if I tell him it to his face. So I'm a big fan of this survey. I think that it will lead to a lot of change in some of these NFL organizations, especially if it's done on an annual basis.
I see no reason why other fields or places of business would not follow suit and try to make changes as well. Nobody wants to be known as the cheapskate. Before, when it was rumored, you were the cheapskate. It was harder to prove.
Now there's data. So I love it. I love it. Listen, I'm glad for my sake you didn't retire because it'll be really fun to watch you play this season.
Now that we've had this conversation, I just want to wish you all the best with your health and your family and, of course, your job performance and all that. So it was really a pleasure. Awesome, Stephen. It's been a blast.
That, again, was Jason