Conviction Beats Consensus: The Untold Origin Story of ESPN - Mike Soltys and Garrett Sutton, Authors of "Sports Heaven: The Birth of ESPN"

Eric Sim, better known as the "King of JUCO", is one of the biggest baseball influencers on the planet, with 3.45 million subscribers and close to 600 million views across his platforms. But before the brand, he was a San Francisco Giants farmhand who got released in 2015, spent two years bartending to pay the bills, and genuinely hated the game. This episode isn't really about content. It's about obsession. The kind you only find when the goal is yours, the clock is yours, and nobody is comi...

Have you ever looked at a talented team and wondered, “Why aren’t we getting better results?” In this conversation, Aaron Walsh breaks down why underperformance is rarely just a talent issue; the bigger problem is often the part leaders underinvest in: culture, communication, clarity, and the everyday behaviors that either enable or sabotage execution. It’s a sharp reminder that strategy only works when the environment supports it, when leaders are intentional about development, and when peop...

Leadership maturity comes down to three decisions: knowing when to push, knowing when to trust, and knowing how to regulate. In this episode, Derin McMains and former Navy SEAL Josh Cox unpack all three — pulling lessons from recent guests Steve Gilbert, Bruce Arians, and NBA Coach of the Year Joe Mazzulla, and translating them from ballfields and battlefields straight into your boardroom. ReliaQuest exists to Make Security Possible, allowing security teams to detect and contain threats withi...

Fifty-six years in one profession will teach you two things: how to win and how to adapt. Lin Dunn has done both. And she'll tell you the second one is what makes the first one possible. Dunn founded women's athletics at Austin Peay in 1970, led Purdue to a Final Four, became the first head coach and general manager of the WNBA's Seattle Storm, won a championship as head coach of the Indiana Fever in 2012, and was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2014. But this conversatio...

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers National Coaching Academy was established to create new pathways for coaches trying to break into the NFL. Austin College football coach Taj Darby was 1 of 25 to earn a coveted spot in this year's class at the Academy, and then selected as 1 of 5 to return for NFL Training Camp. In this conversation, Taj unpacks the philosophy that got him here: patience, delayed gratification, and belief - built through years of coaching underdogs and turning down Division I opportun...