Takes

The Colin Kaepernick anthem protest is a viral marketing stunt for Beats by Dre

This is obviously a viral marketing stunt for Beats by Dre. We're going to find out there was a camera that was on Kaepernick on the sidelines. The National Anthem starts playing, puts the beats on, and 'I'm the man, I'm the man'. It's the sleekest beats design of all time. Nobody will even know that you're wearing them.

Dropping a 'trash' signature sneaker is the new version of a celebrity sex tape for staying relevant

Dropping a trash signature sneaker is like the new sex tape. That's how you get people talking about you.

Skip Bayless is better at insulting athletes than Stephen A. Smith

I'm just saying, like, if you needed somebody, if it came down to it, you needed one guy to hurl out one insult at an athlete, who are you going with? I'm going to Skip. ... I think he's better at it in general.

Twitter is primarily composed of memes and ISIS recruitment

It's just memes and ISIS recruitment. That's what Twitter is. It's a real problem out there. Real problem out there.

The internet needs to consolidate the excessive number of golf news websites

Just consolidate all these golf sites. We don't need 17 golf sites writing the same golf stories. ... consolidate all these golf sites.

Peter King will inevitably 'eat the trash' again and tweet something offensive

Peter King... he's like a dog that keeps eating the trash and getting sick... Within a few months, Peter King will eat that trash again. He knows he shouldn't eat the trash, but the trash is there and it's delicious.

SportsCenter highlights of twins games are obsolete in the mobile era

If you just rolled tape from one of [Dan and Keith's] shows and watched it now, you'd say, man, that Twins highlight was pretty long. You just can't do a minute 30 of a Twins highlight that people have already seen on their phones.

It is incredibly difficult for media personalities to leave ESPN and find the same level of success

There's a pretty strong track record that leaving, you know, it's hard to go out there and take on, as Dan Patrick labeled it long ago, the mothership and win. ... People are lazy, man. ... If you make me memorize a new number [on the cable box], I hate you a little bit more.

Bill Simmons struggled on TV because he is a writer competing against trained performers like John Oliver and Marc Maron

Mars [Marc Maron], the other guy they compare to him... you're a stand-up comic for that many years, you have balls the size of pumpkins because you talk for a living. ... He's a performer. ... Bill is a brilliant guy on a lot of fronts and TV is still a relatively new thing for him.

The PMT hosts will eventually break up due to drug addictions and the Twitter checkmark

I can't wait for the behind the scenes, behind the music when we like both develop drug addictions and get into fights and break up with each other. I think that's going to happen sooner rather than later. And the root cause is going to be this [Twitter] checkmark.

Bob Costas is the alpha dog of NBC sports because he lifts in jeans

It was revealed that Costas walked into the weight room with jeans on and just did upper body. I saw it down here. I went to the gym and Bob Costas strolled in in jeans, t-shirt, sneakers, jeans, but he was just doing upper body. That's a savage move. That's a short man move. All chest, no legs.

Mike Tirico is the best sports announcer to listen to right now

Mike Tirico might be my favorite guy to listen to. It's probably Al Michaels still maybe has it because of who he is and what he's done. But Mike Tirico might be my favorite guy to listen to.

Bob Costas was a better Olympic broadcaster when he had pink eye.

My big thing is I miss pink eye Bob Costas. It's not the same with him with two functional eyeballs out there. I miss it. I miss it. He was so good when he was playing hurt. I actually think he was better when he only had one eye.

It is unavoidable for every high-volume media company to eventually have a scandal like the Hulk Hogan Gawker story.

It seems like it's unavoidable at certain points to have some story, because you're just churning out lots of content, to have some story go awry and go off the rails... I think that it's difficult, almost impossible to avoid.

Asking someone to come on your sports podcast is a huge dick move

Can you come on my podcast? So that's a huge – I hate it. I hate when people try to get you to go on, like, your sports podcast and, like, try to joke around with them. Big time dick move if anybody out there does that.

If you claim you were hacked after a scandal, you must lean into it with more fake hacks

If you are going to go the hacked route, you have to go farther down the rabbit hole of hacked. So you accidentally snap a picture of your penis, then you accidentally snap a picture of a swastika, then you accidentally snap a picture of like you throwing a rock at a pigeon and then you're like shit I got hacked.

Draymond Green should sue Snapchat for entrapment

If I'm Draymond, I would consider suing Snapchat. They made an app that makes it really easy to send dick pics that disappear afterwards. So it's like entrapment.

Women in sports media should know 'No' is a complete sentence

I always say like, here's my advice. No is a complete sentence. Like you don't have to justify to anybody why you're saying no to anything because I think young women sometimes feel like they have to.

Sports writers would cure cancer if they didn't spend all their time debating Hall of Fame rules

If we took all the brainpower that the sportswriters of America used up thinking about Hall of Fames and rules and who should be in and who shouldn't, we could have cured cancer. We'd be living on Mars... deciding who's valuable enough to be in some stupid museum that we created.

Blogging is more harmful to the brain than contact sports because it makes the brain soft

I think blogging is more harmful to your brain than playing football or hockey or any more women's soccer... [Logan Couture]: It might be. I've tried to sit at a computer screen for an hour and I got a headache... [PFT Commenter]: Yeah, because if you play a sport and you're hitting your head, you're building a callus on your brain. When you're a blogger, you have like no contact with anything. So your brain becomes soft. That's my theory, at least.

Professional athletes should stay in their rooms and say nothing during the month of July to avoid headlines

Basically just don't say anything during the month of July. Like anything that any professional athlete of note has to say is going to become a headline story. So just just shut up. Just maybe here's what you should do. Just stay in your room. Lock yourself in your room. And just hang out there for a while.

Pardon My Take has more female listeners than any other sports podcast

I honestly think that we have more female followers and listeners than any other sports podcast out there.

I want to be replaced by a parrot if I die in Cleveland

If I do die in Cleveland... I want a parrot... play old episodes of Pardon My Take for the parrot... put it in front of a microphone and you talk to it and it'll just basically do the same shitty takes that we've done for the past three months. Nobody will even know that it's not me anymore.

I guarantee the Takie Awards will be a live show next year

Next year, it's going to be a live show. I'm actually guaranteeing that right now. I want to do it at Guy Fieri's restaurant, like in the back room.

Media members and sports figures should physically fight to settle disputes

I think the media and sports figures should actually physically fight. That feels like something that would happen in maybe Argentina where a ref screws up and they're like, 'oh, we're going to kill you.' I'd like to see more accountability.

Lacrosse will be the fourth major sport in America in 30 years

Should lacrosse take over soccer as the fourth major sport? I think it's got to be us. I think we've got to take it upon ourselves... 30 years.

The Marlins Man Beef Is About Jealousy, Not The Troops

It's not about the troops, it's jealousy.

Stephen A. Smith would have successfully prosecuted O.J. Simpson

I actually don't disagree with Stephen A. Smith here... Because I actually do think he would have been able to put O.J. Simpson in jail. He is so exhausting as an arguer, as a person, that I think that the jury would have just said, 'you know what, just have Stephen A. Smith stop talking and we'll put [Simpson] in jail.'

NFL Blitz is a Mount Rushmore-tier video game

All right, first up, NFL Blitz. No, I played video games a lot more when I was really young, and that was my favorite one.

Madden is the greatest video game franchise ever

I have Madden, the franchise. Just going to take the whole franchise. Fuck it. Mount Rushmore, you get to make your own rules.

GoldenEye 007 and Oregon Trail are top-tier video games

GoldenEye is number one since you didn't take it... Number two, I have Oregon Trail.

Pokemon Go is a CIA government conspiracy to track data and map building interiors

Seriously, though, Pokemon Go is a government conspiracy, and I don't know why anyone... my last one was basically Pokemon Go has somewhere sitting with the CIA and they're saying, huh, how do we get inside people's buildings?... Let's just throw a squirtle right by someone's refrigerator. Picture.

iTunes doesn't exist in Canada

I don't even know if that counts for the iTunes rankings. I don't think they have iTunes in Canada, so we don't actually appreciate them, but we'll just say we appreciate them.

Zack Hample is a 100% liar regarding how he obtained his Fort Bragg ticket

I decided to tell the truth and call out the liar and his friends and his family. ... [Zack Hample] is [a liar] absolutely, positively, 100%. And I've given him an opportunity to come clean, and like say, I'm sorry, you know, I made a mistake... He needs to say it because in about a couple of hours, he's going to be proven to be a 100% liar.

I am ground zero for sports stars and the first sports celebrity who wasn't an athlete

I was actually told by a reporter from Sports Illustrated when he interviewed me, he said, you're the first sports star. I mean, what the hell is a sports star? Star for sports. You're the first one. You're the first guy to become a sports celebrity that wasn't an athlete. ... You are ground zero for sports stars.

My reception at Cubs games is comparable to when the Beatles showed up at Shea Stadium

I was in Chicago for the Dodgers-Cubs. They swarmed me. They overwhelmed me with kindness and love. They were chanting, 'Marlins Man, Marlins Man' between the innings... I go, are you kidding? Watch what's going to happen. It's going to be like when the Beatles showed up at Shea Stadium. And it happened.

Marlins Man was only complaining about not getting into the Fort Bragg game, not skipping it out of respect

I asked him, the first thing I asked him before the game was, hey, are you going to Fort Bragg? He said nothing about respecting the military. All he did was complain about how he couldn't get in and how he does so much to promote Sunday night baseball and Major League Baseball. But MLB and the Marlins are being mean and they won't let him in. ... So for him to now suddenly be bashing me for going is just quite frankly bizarre.

The Rio Olympics tragedies are a marketing strategy by Brazil

The only way to remind people that the Olympics are coming is to continually have tragedies and threats... There are some guys in Brazil right now sitting in a marketing office patting themselves on the back. We really did this. We're making the news. Yeah, we threw out Zika. We threw out terrorists, a guy with a gun. There's sewage. There's poop water. Hey, let's throw some old body parts... Front page news. Oh, yeah. And the Olympics are on NBC. Tune in.

If you don't include Mount Rushmore on a 'Mount Rushmore' list, you are trying way too hard

If you guys don't put Mount Rushmore on the list, you're trying way too hard.

I officially made it in life because Darren Rovell included my tweet in a headline round-up

Guys, I made it. I officially made it in life. I made it on Darren Rovell's headline tweets... Miracle on Iceland. Come on. Just tell me. That's pretty good. I mean, I'm there. You guys are now in the presence of greatness.

The NBA Draft is a huge letdown compared to the NFL Draft

The pageantry, the electricity and all the bells and whistles that go along with the NFL draft, there's absolutely none of it for the NBA. It's basically, here's the NBA draft... You sit on your couch, you drink one beer, and then you refresh Adrian Wojnowski's Twitter feed for three hours. And that's your entire NBA draft experience.

Skip Bayless is the greatest sports entertainer of the last hundred years

I'm questioning anybody's intelligence that's listening to us right now and not tuning in to First Take to see Skip Bayless' curtain call on that show. Possibly the greatest sports entertainer of the last hundred years.

Skip Bayless will get 'West Coast soft' and lose his edge at Fox Sports

I don't think that what they're going to do with him on Fox Sports is going to be nearly as good because he's going to get West Coast soft. He's not going to have somebody as fiery to debate. It's like separating two dogs from each other that have grown up together their whole life.

I drank a beer during the first inning of every playoff game I called to remind myself it's just a game

I got into the habit of having one of the runners go down and get me one of the mega beers from a concession stand. And I'd sip the beer during the first inning. And it wasn't to get drunk, obviously... it was to remind myself that I was at a frigging sporting event and nobody's hanging on every word... I just drank a beer in the first inning of every game of the playoffs.

Troy Aikman and I were comfortable enough to fart around each other in the booth right out of the gate

At what point in your relationship did you guys get comfortable enough to fart around each other in the booth? [Buck]: Pretty much right out of the gate... Troy's that guy. And he's a guy's guy. And I remember one, the first time it happened, he said something like, 'I'm bringing some heat.' And I was like, 'What?' And he goes, 'Just don't worry about it.' And then we came back from commercial and I knew what he was talking about.

I would take a six-month case of Zika if it meant winning a Sports Emmy for the Dan Patrick Show

I'll take some Zika... a little smack. Is it like a six month Zika? ... [Trophies] look good. We're a TV show so trophies always look good in the background.

The 2016 Rio Olympics are being saved by the terrible news stories surrounding them

This is though, as we've said many times, the only way the Olympics – people can be reminded that the Olympics are coming is for these stories to come out because no one actually cares about the actual Olympics.

People should be fired for being bad at Twitter

I hope that this happens more in the future. Just people get fired because they suck at Twitter, not because they say anything offensive or because they break a law or anything, just because they suck at the platform.

I want to see more professional athletes call into sports talk radio as anonymous fans to trash their own coaches

I would love to see more players call into Sports Talk Radio like as a fan and just be like, this coach sucks. He's a bum. Get him out of town.

If you do a bit better than the person who invented it, it becomes yours legally

I feel like if you do something a lot better than somebody else, then it becomes yours... On the internet, we call that a hat tip. So as long as you give somebody a hat tip, then you can steal all their shit and it's totally above board.