Clay Travis Show: Clay Fires Back at Critics, $9M College QB Deal Sparks NIL Alarm

Clay Travis (0:01)

Welcome in. I am Clay Travis. This is The Clay Travis Show. I hope all of you are having fantastic Thursdays, wherever you may be across the country. We've got a Thursday night football. We've got blood bank guarantees. We got a lot of fun to dive into with college football. We have a college football quarterback breaking the bank and what the significance overall could be. Kamario Taylor at Mississippi State. We've got a bunch of different topics out there. Kirk Cousins with one of the funniest AI videos that I have seen as he walks into the Minnesota Viking locker room. We're going to dive into all that and more, but your boy is under attack. All over Twitter today, I've been trending. People have been coming after me like crazy all about, oh, Clay Travis doesn't believe anything that he says. And I met with him back in 2014 or 2016 and I had a dinner with him and he said, this is all very interesting to me, primarily in the sense of what I think it represents. There is a desire to bring back Woke 2 and to try to bring back the Woke era of 2020, 2021, 2022 And I am one of the biggest threats to that happening. Sport and state is one of the biggest threats to that happening. Outkick is one of the biggest threats to that happening. In fact, the only reason there is a market place of ideas in all of sports is me. Because if outkick didn't exist, and if sport and state didn't exist, there'd be no outlet out there saying, hey, you know what? I think that we shouldn't allow men to compete in women's sports. I think that Leah Thomas tucking his dick behind his butt cheeks and putting on a women's swimsuit and trying to win a women's championship is not something that we should celebrate in sports. And so there's a concerted effort to come after me. And people say, oh, Clay Travis doesn't believe what he actually says. And I know this because a decade ago, I talked with him. Or a decade ago, I worked on a show with him. Or, oh, my goodness, you should see. Like, what do I actually not believe?

Does anybody ever answer that question?

I have been as transparent about exactly what I believe about everything under the sun for my whole career. And a part of me thinks that people aren't aware of how transparent I am about sharing every vote, about sharing every thought. But for those of you out there who care, and maybe you're new, hello, go please click like and subscribe.

Maybe you're new. Here's my entire voting history as an adult. I used to be a Democrat. I voted for Al Gore in the year 2000 I worked on Al Gore's presidential campaign here in Tennessee. I wrote about all this for a long time. And then in 2004, I voted for John Kerry. In 2008, I was an Obama voter, and I donated to Obama's presidential campaign. In 2012, I voted for Obama again. And then I started to see things start to go crazy. And so in my sports media career, I saw myself around 2012 to 2016, some of you will remember, I saw myself as a radical moderate. I was really upset by what I saw from the far right and the far left. And then the Democrat Party just kept going further left. I didn't leave the Democrat Party, they left me. You know who said that? Ronald Reagan, who used to be a Democrat. You know who else used to be a Democrat? Donald Trump. You know who else used to be a Democrat? Elon Musk.

I was a couple of years ahead of where Elon ended up going, and I don't think it's a coincidence that I'm a target. Because the fear is if I can change my mind, then others of you might change your minds too. And this is why we have seen so many men, particularly in 2024, white, black, Asian and Hispanic rising up and saying, I'm tired of old school Democrat craziness that has now translated into culture war lunacy. So 2016, I voted for Gary Johnson. I wasn't ready to vote for a Republican yet. In 2020, I wrote, I voted for Donald Trump. I posted it on Outkick. It's one of our most read articles of the year and Trump lost. Joe Biden ended up president of the United States. 2024, I came back and voted for Trump again. So if that upsets you, that's your right. I think everybody who is in my audience is well aware of what I have said and what I have done and what I believe. And I think sometimes the people who are attacking me think that I haven't shared all this. I mean, there is certainly a fear, I think, of the influence that I have with The Clay and Buck Show, with this show, which gets clipped and millions of people watch every day, with Fox News and Fox Sports, which I'm on almost every day. You can make an argument that I talk to more people every single day than anyone almost in media, certainly live every day for about four hours. And so people are going to come after me. I welcome it. I actually enjoy rolling around in the mud. Do you know why? I love it because that's how people become aware you exist. We live in an attention economy. And this is worth thinking about. But I do think a lot of people are afraid of somebody saying something bad or, oh, my goodness, my name is going to be trending or whatever else. The number of people that I meet who say, I first heard about you because somebody was attacking you and saying that you were awful.