Today's guest needs no introduction for the sports fans in our group. Matthew Berry, Class of 1992, is now a central part of NBC Sports NFL coverage, following a 15 year run at ESPN where he found a niche as the fantasy sports expert.
But we start with Matthew's time in Syracuse. He was multi-platform before it was cool - writing a humor column for the Daily Orange, and working on a sitcom at UUTV before joining the Cray-Z Morning Crew at WJPZ. At Z89 he worked with Kendall B, Adam Shapiro, and Chris Lindsay. We go back to some of his favorite bits.
When he graduated, Berry went to Hollywood to pursue a screenwriting career, with his writing partner and classmate Eric Abrams. We go through their journey of writing for George Carlin, Kirk Cameron, and eventually, the final season of Married With Children.
As fantasy sports grew in the late 1990's, Matthew leveraged his Hollywood experience to land a writing gig for a website. Soon, he was thinking much more about fantasy sports than television and movie scripts. He found a niche for himself and hustled, soon building his own website and being his own publicity machine. He worked his way onto the air on ESPN Radio Los Angeles, and over to several other ESPN properties before finally getting an offer to become the Fantasy Expert at The Worldwide leader.
Berry spent 15 years at ESPN, becoming a household name. But a year ago, he left ESPN and moved over to NBC Sports. He candidly discusses the two main reasons he switched networks.
Throughout this episode, you'll hear some great advice from one of our most successful alumni. Matthew offers networking tips, talks about hustle, and the need to sometimes "fake it til you make it."
We also chat about his experience returning to Syracuse to keynote the Banquet several years ago. At Faegan's, he went from flip night participant to the center of attention. But he'll be quick to tell you, his beer pong skills remain as strong as ever.
More:
Matthew Berry's Fantasy Life Website: https://www.fantasylife.com/
Matthew's Book, Fantasy Life can be found on Amazon here.
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The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
Want to be a guest on the pod or know someone else who would? Email Jag: jag@jagindetroit.com.
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JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. Before today's guest was the Talented Mr. Roto, before he was at ESPN. Before he was at NBC, he was part of the Cray-Z Morning Crew. So excited to have Mr. Matthew Berry. Welcome to the podcast.
Matthew: Hey Jon. Thanks. My pleasure. Happy to be here.
JAG: So I always start by asking folks how they ended up at Syracuse, cuz you were all over the place as a kid. How'd you land at SU?
Matthew: I wanted to be in television, radio, film. I knew that was my major and so very simply, I went to my high school guidance counselor. So I grew up in College Station, Texas, which is where Texas A&M University is. Most people are familiar with Texas A&M, and I actually worked my way through high school as a DJ.
Literally. That was my high school job, was working as a local DJ. I was a rock and roll DJ for the local classic rock station, Matthew Rock and Roll Berry. Monday through Friday, seven to midnight on KTAM Brazos Valley's Classic Rock. I knew I wanted to be in tv, film, something like that. And I went to my guidance counselor and asked him, what the best broadcast school was.
And so that guidance counselor, that book that year had the Newhouse school. Had Syracuse as the number one school in the country. And so I applied and went. So nothing, it was just like I was told that was the best school. I went and obviously, you go there and you get the tour and this is where Bob Costas went.
And this is where Len Berman went. Marv Albert, Ted Koppel, and they, they give you all the highlights. It was pretty impressive, easy for me to get there.
JAG: So you get there in the late eighties, and you were multi-platform before multi-platform was cool. You started at the DO before you were at Z89, right? Do I have that right?
Matthew: Correct. So I wrote a humor column for the Daily Orange for a couple years, called, and God, I hate this title. I hated it then, by the way. The editors at The Daily Orange named it, but it was called Berry Funny.
JAG: I love it. Why do you hate it?
Matthew: No, it's awful. It's a bad pun. It's just, it's hacky.
But anyway, it's stuck and so I wrote a humor column for the Daily Orange for a couple years. I also was doing mostly producing and writing, although I did a little bit of acting at what was then known as UUTV. It is now known as I think Citrus TV or Citrus Hill TV. But the student TV station.
So I was heavily involved in that. So to your point about multi-platform, I was doing written work on the student newspaper at the Daily Orange. I was doing TV at the student TV station, UUTV, and of course then Z89 and the Cray-Z Morning Crew.
JAG: How did you get to Z89?
Matthew: Honestly, so I had a circuitous route.
As I said, I had been a DJ throughout my high school career, 14 years old. I started, I became obsessed with radio for some reason, and I started going to all the local remotes that the radio stations in my town would do. And I'm sure at first the DJs were like, who's this weird kid that keeps coming and just hanging out?
But they soon realized I was just a harmless, enthusiastic kid who loved radio when I was, trying to be helpful. Hey, can I get you lunch? Do you want me to hand out bumper stickers? Whatever. And so eventually they started having me, hey, do you wanna come down to the station, answer phones?
And I was like, you bet. And eventually, like a job opened up to run some taped programming. And I did that. And then I got to do some overnights as a dj. And then Saturday and Sunday afternoons I was doing some stuff. And then eventually let me, my senior year high school, the Monday through Friday, seven to midnight show opened up.
I had been doing good stuff on the weekends since they gave it to me. So that was my senior of high school is doing Monday through Friday, seven to midnight. And Bryan-College Station is a town of about 150,000, I wanna say. It's like Market 170 or something like that. But it was a rated market, like it was an Arbitron rated market back then.
So there was a book. I finished #1 Men 25 to 54, which was our demo. Obviously, the classic rock station was our demo. So I have an air check. And I get to Syracuse. And I go to Z89 and I'm like, hey, I would love to, be on air here. And they're like, all right, you can start out doing 3:00 AM to 6:00 AM once a week.
And I'm like, yeah, I did that when I was 15 years old. I've literally been a DJ in a rated market. I actually was number one in a rated market. Shouldn't I just do afternoon drive or something? And they're like no. Everyone starts at Tuesday. You can do Tuesdays at 3:00 AM And I was just like, Yeah. Okay. No thanks.
But then what ended up happening is some of my dear friends, people that I'm dear friends with to this day many years after, but Kendall Lamar.
JAG: Yep.
Matthew: And so Kendall Lamar and Adam Shapiro. And Chris Lindsay. Chris Lindsay was my college roommate. And I was dear friends with Kendall and Adam and so they were doing the Cray-Z morning Crew.
And so they asked if I wanted to join them. So I really, I snuck in through Kendall Lamar, who was a Z89 legend, through his good graces. And I think at the time Dave Gorab was the program director, and Dave and I were friends and at that point, like my column was pretty popular and everything like that.
And he was just like, this is stupid. I don't know why you're not on our air and why we're not doing stuff with you. So yes, into my junior year and then all my senior year, me, Kendall, Adam, and Chris Lindsay did the Crazy Morning Crew together, and we would, not all four of us would be there every single morning, but we did a bunch of stuff and so we had a lot of fun.
JAG: Any specific bits or memories you have from the morning show that come to mind?
Matthew: We had a bunch of ones, and I'm trying to remember some of them. At the time there was the Nike campaign. Around Bo Jackson. "Bo Knows." And it was like Bo Knows sports, Bo Knows baseball, Bo Knows football. It was all like about how, you know, what this great multi-athlete Bo Jackson was.
So we had a guy at the station that sort of sounded like Bo Jackson. And so we would use him to do this. We just had people call up and ask advice, questions, love, advice, relationship, work, advice, the dumber the better. And sometimes we would do it as well. We would write them and pretend they were emails or letters that we'd gotten.
And so we asked Bo, alright, time for another episode of Bo Knows. Bo, my wife was having an affair with my brother. What should I do? It was stuff like that. I can't do the impression, but there's a lot of every answer was like, my wife is sleeping with my brother.
What should I do? And it, it sounds you and your wife are not on the same page and really need to work on some communication and maybe it would help if, you just bought everyone a pair of my Nike shoes. And so that was the bit, every single answer somehow related back to the person's issue would be solved if they just bought a pair of his Nike shoes, because that was the whole campaign.
So we had fun with that. Chris Lindsay was also called the Panther of Love. And so we did relationship advice also with him. What else did we do? We, we had a bunch of different I'm gonna text them right now and I'm gonna see what they say.
JAG: All right, text them now. Text them now. When it comes back,
Matthew: I'll see if I get an answer.
JAG: Yeah, we're recording this. 1130 Eastern. So Kendall's probably doing his morning show on the AMP platform right now. And shout out to Kendall, by the way, who connected the two of us, former guest on the podcast. While you're texting him, once you're done sending that text, I do wanna ask you, everybody knows you for your sports and your fantasy experience, but when you get outta Syracuse, that wasn't where you started.
Matthew: No. What you're talking about there, Jon, is you're talking about my showbiz career. When I, as we talked about my Syracuse career, I spent most of my time at UUTV, yeah. At the student TV station. And so I really enjoyed, running and producing. I did a show called Uncle Bobo's World of Fun.
It was a sitcom about a terrible TV show. So, the premise of the show was, and speaking of the Crazy Morning Crew, by the way, Chris Lindsay played Uncle Bobo as well, but the premise of that particular sitcom, was that it was a children's show. This is before Krusty the Clown. By the way, it was very similar to what Krusty the Clown is on The Simpsons, but this is pre that character.
But the idea was basically a children's show host who off camera was a beer guzzling, alcoholic, woman chasing just, the worst person ever, possibly, that should be hosting a child show. And he did it on a low rated UHF station, and so the idea was that like, cuz we knew we didn't have great equipment and that there'd be boom shots and stuff like that. And so it was explained away by the fact that it was on this crappy station.
JAG: Love it.
Matthew: The show within a show. And so we did that, but I really enjoyed that and we ended up doing, I think, 20 episodes of the show over two years. And I really enjoyed that. And so after Syracuse, I moved out to Hollywood. And I moved out with a guy named Eric Abrams.
Chris Lindsay also came out and a bunch of those guys ended up coming out with me. But Eric Abrams was my writing partner on Uncle Bobo. And we moved out to Hollywood to pursue a career as screenwriters. TV and movie writers.
JAG: And so how did that go? And you ended up doing a few different things out there, including one of my favorite TV shows of all time, Married with Children. I know you were on the last season of that, right?
Matthew: I was, yeah. And the Syracuse network is strong. And I went out there and basically anyone that had graduated from Syracuse that had done anything in the entertainment I wrote them on email or a letter and I said, listen, I just graduated from Syracuse and I want to pursue this career. Could you meet with me? Would you give me, 15 minutes of your time, 20 minutes of your time to talk through, give me some advice.
JAG: That's great advice for a current student, too, is asking someone 15 minutes of their time.
Matthew: And this is what I did, and the advice they give to students know is don't write up and say, hey, I want a job.
Because that's all they get. The 24x7, can you get me a job? Can you give me a job? I literally would say hey, I'm not asking for a job. I literally just want some advice. Are you willing to give me 15 minutes, 20 minutes? I'll come to wherever you are, right? I will get on the phone, make it super easy for you.
Just will you happily gimme 15 minutes of your time and I'm not asking for a job. And so what you do there is by doing that, you disarm them and you're like, okay, sure. I'll give you advice. When I was starting out, I needed advice. You know what I tell students? I said, if you go there and you're prepared. And you've done research on the person you're talking to, you're not just like, how do I get my start and how do I become famous? And it's not that, but you're just like, hey, you did X, Y, and Z. Tell me about how you got to X. What can I personally learn from your experience with Y or whatever.
If you come prepared and you're nice, and you're polite and you know you're interested, at the end of the 15 minutes, some of the people will say good luck to you, but some of them will say, you know what? You seem like a nice kid. Do you know who you should talk to? Actually, my buddy down the hall's actually looking for somebody, and now there's a personal connection and now they're probably more prone to be willing to try to help you and go a little bit further than just getting a cold email or call, from somebody asking for a job.
JAG: The old analogy is that anybody's favorite topic generally is themselves. So if, like you said, I love that point of if you've done your homework about the person you're talking to and you wanna ask them about their story, that's such an easy way to start a conversation. Sure. I'll tell you about what myself and what I've done, and I love that advice for our current students and young alumni.
Matthew: Yeah. Listen, everyone likes talking about themselves, right? And I'm no exception, right? Obviously so I'm sitting here doing the exact same thing and so I think if you just give them an opportunity do that. My very first job out of Syracuse, was again, thanks to Syracuse. So when I was at Syracuse, I was also the president of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
We had a chapter there and so we invited to come speak at the conference, Sam Simon, the late great Sam Simon, who was the creator of The Simpsons. And he was a producer on Cheers and Taxi, and just, this legendary career that he had as a writer and a producer. In booking him, I ended up becoming friendly with his assistant.
Because I had to book his travel in his hotel and make all these arrangements and blah, blah, blah. And so when I moved out to Hollywood, I hit her up and I said, can you help me? Sam had a good experience when he was on campus and with me, and so I ended up getting hired as a production assistant on the George Carlin Show.
Which was a sitcom that Sam was creating and it ran for two years on Fox. I was the stage PA on stage 17 of the Warner Brothers lot at the George Carlin Show. In essence, I was George Carlin's assistant. I worked as a PA, a production assistant, and another sitcom as well. And all the time I was doing that, I was trying to become a professional writer, a sitcom writer.
And Warner Brothers back in the day, I don't know if they still have this, but back then they had this thing called the Warner Brothers Writers Workshop. And probably 800 or a thousand people applied. Out of the thousand scripts, they would narrow it down to 50 and outta the 50 people they interviewed, probably like 25 would make the class.
And outta the 25 people that made the class, four or five people out of that 25 would become staff writers on a Warner Brothers sitcom show.
JAG: Oh, wow. Okay.
Matthew: And so George Carlin wrote me a recommendation letter to get me into the Warner Brothers Writers Workshop.
JAG: Wow. That's impressive. Brilliant comedian.
Matthew: He's a legend. And so obviously that helped out a lot. And Eric and I got into the Warner Brothers Writers Workshop and through the Warner Brothers Writers Workshop, our script got there, we interviewed, we got into the class, and out of the four or five people that got jobs that year out of the Warner Brothers workshop, we were one of them.
And we got placed on a Warner Brothers sitcom called Kirk, starring former teen heartthrob Kirk Cameron. It was a family show and wasn't particularly good, but we were writers. We were writers, and so we were thrilled. And so that's how I got my start. And to your point, Jon, just to bring it full circle, we were able to get an agent, we were writing.
That particular year, the Kirk show, there's this, Parents for Television Council. And the Parents Television Council and they, just deemed what was good and what was bad and everything like that. And so they, that year declared Kirk the safest, best, most family friendly show on television.
JAG: That's wild. Cuz you always hear about some complaining about stuff. This is the other end of the spectrum.
Matthew: Kirk. you may have seen, because he is made some news over the years. Kirk is a devout, devout Christian. And very religious. And so his ethics and point of view obviously influenced the show quite a bit.
And so yes, it was very safe and family friendly. And so I was very proud that we did a show on that. That year we were on the safest, most family friendly show on television. And then the very next year we went to the show that the Parents Television Council had declared the most un family friendly, the least desirable show, Married With Children.
So yes, we wrote on Married with Children. We did 28 episodes of the show, and I had an absolute blast doing that.
JAG: In the mid-nineties. I was a teenager and my brother was probably 10, and my parents and my brother and I would watch this show together. And then I remember my mom's parents came to visit from Florida and saw that we were watching this show together as a family, and they were just completely mortified. "You let your kids watch this? This is awful!" But it was, to this day, one of my favorite shows ever.
Matthew: Oh. And it's not a show you could ever get away with now on tv. But it was really fun and everyone in that cast was great. It just, it was, just sort of on rails. And what's hilarious is that for all its bawdiness, and for all of its warts, for lack of a better way to phrase it, like at the end of the day, Al Bundy was married.
He constantly complained about his wife. He didn't like his kids, he hated his job, everything like that. But like he never cheated on Peg. He was tempted all the time. He constantly talked about how he wanted to, and he didn't like her, and that he didn't want to sleep with her.
And Peg was lazy, and on the couch eating Bon Bons and the whole thing. But the fact is that at the end of the day, he always came home to Peg. He always came home to Peg. He always would do whatever he had to for his kids, for Kelly and Bud. And, in their own weird way, they were really truly a family. And I had a blast on that show and remember that fondly.
JAG: That's fantastic. And then one of the things, when you keynoted our Banquet a few years ago, you talked about finding your niche and finding your sweet spot. So how did the transition go from writing for television, from everything from Kirk Cameron to married with children to into the sports world?
Matthew: I've always been a sports fan. In fact, my friend Adam Shapiro, who I'm literally on a text chain right now, I think he was a sports director at Z89 back in the day, and so he had a sports call-in show as well and on the weekends. And so I would call in sometimes and I really always loved sports, always loved it.
It was my passion. And, but just, I never thought a career in sports was for me. I never thought a career broadcasting sports was for me. But what ended up happening is that, I'm obviously a massive fantasy football player. When I was at Syracuse, I got invited to join my very first fantasy football league by a guy named AJ Mass who worked on Uncle Bobo with me and is still to this day, a writer and editor for ESPN in their fantasy department. He asked me to join a League of other Syracuse guys. Fantasy Football League and Kendall Lamar is in that league. Chris Lindsay and I co-own a team. Adam Shapiro is in that league.
Matt Prochaska is in that league. You know a lot of names that might be familiar to people listening to this podcast. Gary Janetti is in that league. And so anyway, I joined that league and just absolutely loved fantasy sports. Flash forward now to 1999. I graduated college in 1992, I'm class of 92.
In 1999, there's a website called Rotoworld. And they are advertising for fantasy sports writers. This is 1999. This is the age of dial up. So people that are younger, probably don't remember this at all, but like to get onto the internet, like you had to dial up to get to the internet and they're all like, (modem sound effects) Exactly.
JAG: And before that it was, calling in if I remember this, when I was in the early nineties, like, with my dad calling in our fantasy selections on a telephone line. And now it's starting to go digital and go online.
Matthew: Correct. But yeah, back in the day, fantasy started before computers, before the internet, so yeah.
You had to either call in your lineups or you had to fax them in. And standings would come out like once a week. Because you had to wait for all the stats to get calculated. It was very hardcore. So this was, Compuserve, AOL, You've Got Mail was a novel thing, like you've got mail and you're like, Ooh, I've got an email.
That was actually a novel thing back then. But I wrote them a note and I said, Hey listen, I'm a professional writer living out here in Hollywood, but fantasy sports is my passion and I just think it would be so much fun to write a column on the side. Can I try out to I send you a sample? I just think it'd be fun as a hobby.
And they wrote me back the next day and they said, we looked you up on IMDB. Married with Children is our favorite show of all time. You're hired. So again, it all goes back to Married With Children. Because I was writing mean wife jokes for Al Bundy, I got a chance to write a free column on a low rated, website about fantasy sports.
And I started writing a fantasy basketball column, eventually getting into football and baseball as well and really fell in love with it. I've had a really wonderful career that's had a lot of sort of curves and journeys.
And sometimes kids will ask how do I become the next Matthew Berry? How do I get your career? And I have some advice, but my biggest answer is not to follow my path. Sure. Because my path is you couldn't plan it out. It was so ridiculous. And like I started writing for Roto World. I think I'm a pretty good writer and I developed a pretty big following there.
And after four and a half years, and I wrote my column for free. Eventually then I ended up getting paid like 25 bucks a column. And I think eventually it wound up being, I don't know, maybe 50 bucks a column was the highest I ever got paid. After four and a half years, and it's now 2004, and people were starting to make money on the internet, right?
Not a lot of money, but the dot com bubble had burst and people were starting to actually think, oh hey, advertising on the internet is actually a viable way to get your product out there. And I thought maybe, hey, there's a chance I could make a few bucks on my own. So I decided to leave Roto World and start my own blog again.
Literally just thinking, hey, maybe I'll just make a few more bucks on the side. And then I felt like I had a big enough audience that I could justify that. And so I did that, and what I realized quickly was that I didn't have any money to buy any advertising. This is pre-social media. Forget Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. There was no Facebook, there wasn't even MySpace at this point. There was just, how do I get the message out that, hey, I've got this new website over here and I couldn't buy any marketing. I couldn't, I didn't have any money to go out and pay for advertising. So I realized that the only way I could market the site was me.
So I called every radio station I could find, every TV station I could find, every website I could find, including Roto World. I went back to them and I said, hey, I will write for you for free. I will come on your air for free. All you have to do is mention my website. Just link back to my website. Just send traffic to my website.
JAG: Wow. Okay.
Matthew: And they all said, okay. I wrote for roto world.com. I wrote for the sporting news. I wrote for mlb.com, nba.com. We did some stuff for CBS Sports. Kept, just doing whatever I could. One of the places that I went to was ESPN Radio. So a guy named Steve Mason, from Mason and Ireland.
First he was at Fox Sports, and randomly he was at Fox Sports at the same time as a guy named Jason Smith, who's also a proud Syracuse alumnus. And Jason's done really well for himself. Anyway. I go in, Steve Mason is a fan of my column and has me on for a segment, and then that leads to two segments, leads to why don't you stick around for an hour?
Why don't you fill in? And yeah, eventually I just started doing a bunch of stuff with ESPN radio and eventually, like Steve left Fox Sports to go over to ESPN Radio in LA. And so he was doing that and he brought me over there and I did some stuff there and I got into the ESPN ecosystem.
And I was starting to do some stuff for ESPN radio in LA and then I met a producer from Cold Pizza, if you remember that TV show. And I said to the Cold Pizza producer, " Why don't I do a weekly fantasy sports segment for you guys? I'm already doing stuff for ESPN Radio in LA.
I'm in the family. And they were like, okay, we'll give it a try. And so we did that and they liked it, then I ended up meeting somebody from ESPN and I said, I'm doing this segment for cold pizza and I'm doing, radio in LA. I'm in the family. Why don't you let me do a segment on ESPN News?
And they said, okay. And then from there I met somebody from ESPN The Magazine. And I said, listen, I do these things. I do these segments for ESPN News and I'm on Cold Pizza once a week and I'm doing hits for a ESPN radio in LA. I'm in the family. Why don't I do some writing for you guys in the magazine?
And they were like, And I just kept like doing that, piece by piece and meeting people in the company. And eventually in 2007, ESPN came to me and they said, we think fantasy football is big enough that we've been talking internally and we've been talking about how we need a guy.
We need somebody. We need to find our Mel Kiper. Who's our Mel Kiper of fantasy football? We need to find a Mel Kiper for fantasy football. And they're like, we like all the work you do for us. And at that point, the website, my Talented Mr. Roto website, the blog that I'd started, was profitable. No one was buying yachts or anything like that, but we were in the black.
We had a nice little subscriber base. I'd spent the last three years building it up and we had a good reputation. Some other good writers that worked with me and they said, we'd like to buy your website, move you out to Connecticut and make you the guy.
JAG: Wow.
Matthew: And all along that whole time I've been earning my living as a screenwriter.
I was writing for tv, I was writing for movies. I wrote a number of movies. Almost none of them got made. Only one of them actually got made. But I was a working writer in Hollywood, working on good projects, but I was disillusioned with the Hollywood process. And I found myself when I woke up in the morning or went to bed at night, what I was thinking about wasn't the script that I was working on, whatever script I was working on. I was thinking about the website.
What could I build? How could I do the website, what can I do there? What kind of angles can I do? And so I, I realized that this was just an amazing opportunity. So I sold them my website and then quit show business, and they moved out to Connecticut and it was a two year deal. They were gonna buy my website and the price that they were buying my website for was, a certain amount of money.
And then there was extra amount of money for me to go work for ESPN called an Earn Out, quote unquote running the site, but also basically a fantasy sports talent for them. So it was a two year deal. And I was just like if it all crashes and burns, I'll have been on ESPN for two years and I'll figure it out from there.
That's probably not a bad thing to have on your resume. And I ended up doing 15 years there. The two years went well, and they signed me to a contract and then another contract and then another one. And ultimately, I ended up doing 15 years at ESPN.
JAG: The two real takeaways I have from that story are one, the hustle of just reaching out to every radio station and TV station and website and hey, I'll talk fantasy for free if you just promote my website. I think you deserve a lot of credit for almost being ahead of your time there. And then also following your passion and saying, I'm here, I've got my gig writing in Hollywood, but if this is really what gets my juices going is the sports and the fantasy, why not follow your heart? And you did that.
Matthew: Thanks. There's one other lesson there, but both those things are correct, right? I was making a really nice living in Hollywood. But my passion was, to your point, my passion was the fantasy sports site. And I thought, I really wanna try to make a go of it.
And really what happened is that, I skipped over a couple of important steps. In 2005. I went to my writing partner. I went to Eric Abrams who's also Syracuse 92. And I said, hey, the only thing that really makes me happy is this dumb fantasy sports website. And I just said, listen, I'm gonna, I'm just giving you a heads up. I'm gonna give you a year's warning. Let's you and I write one more script. We'll split the money and then at the end of this year, I'm gonna go try to make a career of fantasy football. Again, this is 2005. And so it's really nerd and niche and the internet isn't what it is now. And I'm like, look, I'll probably make $10,000 a year.
I'm probably gonna fall flat on my face and I'll have to do some minimum wage job just to make ends meet. But this is what makes me happy and I just wanna pursue happiness. I just want to chase happiness. What's crazy about that is that by doing that, Jon, just by chasing happiness, I've become so much more successful than I ever was in Hollywood.
I always joke about this, but I had to leave. I've made so much more money doing what I do now than I ever did as a Hollywood writer. And it's so funny. Like I was talking about the fact I had to leave Hollywood to win an Emmy. I won my Emmy, not in Hollywood, but in Bristol, Connecticut.
I was never on camera in Hollywood. But as soon as I left Hollywood and pursued my passion, I got out from behind the computer screen and in front of a TV screen, and not just a TV screen, but like I'm in a movie, right? I did a cameo in Avengers Endgame. It's insane to think about, right?
But I, by leaving Hollywood, I was able to get into Hollywood movies. So it's just crazy. But the thing is that if I'd planned any of that, it wouldn't have happened. All I did was I pursue my passion and what made me happy and I figured if I could just pursue this and get good at it, good things will happen.
I didn't have a grand plan. And so that's always my advice to kids. It's always they're like, how do I get an agent and how do I become famous and how do I get on tv? How do I get to ESPN? How do I get to NBC? And my answer is like I would forget all that and just worry about getting good.
Just get good. Because I promise you that if you're good at whatever it is, you do. Podcasting, writing, vlogging, being a social star, whatever it is you do, photography, whatever. If you're good at it, I promise you someone will find you because we are always looking for good people. You're always looking for somebody that can help you, and push everything out of there and then just try to get good at what you do.
But to your point about the hustle. That's right. Once I felt like I was good, I definitely was proactive in hey, you're a Syracuse grad. Can I talk to you? Hey, we have this mutual friend. Hey, do you know anyone over at Cold Pizza? Oh yeah, my friend is a producer over there. Can you introduce me? That kind of stuff. So constantly like trying to do that. And then the last piece of advice that you didn't take away from my story, that I would just say, there's a little bit of fake it till you make it. In essence, I was doing basically two or three hits a week on ESPN radio in LA.
None of them more than five minutes. Although it was on their air for less than 15 minutes. When I was talking to Cold Pizza, I'm like, yeah, I'm part of ESPN Radio LA, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, all right. And they're like, it's just, again, it's a little bit of fake it til you make it. If you can act like you've got confidence in yourself, then it's easier for other people to have confidence in you.
JAG: You gotta push through that imposter syndrome and act like you belong.
Matthew: A hundred percent. A hundred percent.
JAG: How did they move from ESPN to NBC recently go?
Matthew: Yeah, listen, my contract was coming up. And ESPN was very gracious to me. They're like, we really like you. We want you to stick around for a long time. They offered me a three-year extension, but there were a couple of things that were really important. Number one is, and as you heard my story here, Jon, I think you can realize where anyone that's listening to this realize that I'm secretly an entrepreneur, right?
JAG: Yeah.
Matthew: I'm secretly an entrepreneur at heart. I love building stuff. I love being creative. I love being entrepreneurial and hustling, as you say. And so one of the things that I did while I was at ESPN is I had a company called Fantasy Life. I wrote a book called Fantasy Life. It was a New York Times bestseller, debuted at number five on the list.
Spent many months on the list. Did really well for me. I'm really proud of that. It took me two years to write and I think it's the best thing I've ever written. So if you're a fan of my writing, I would highly recommend buying that.
JAG: We'll link it in the show notes.
Matthew: Yeah. You can get a used version of it on Amazon cheap.
But after the success of Fantasy Life, I decided that I thought there was a chance to build on that brand and create a company around that brand of Fantasy Life. And I've done a whole ecosystem around the brand Fantasy Life. There's a website, fantasylife.com. We do a free daily newsletter to over 300,000 people.
The Fantasy Life Newsletter, there's an app, the Fantasy Life app, which is great. Also free. The alerts are ridiculous, and it's a big ecosystem, and it's a big company. And we're now with I think 11 full-time employees, and so it's done really well. And I had a carve out for this in my previous contract with ESPN, and ESPN came to me and they said we wanna sign you to an extension and we want you to, stick around and we really like you. But you're gonna have to get rid of Fantasy Life. We want you focusing on ESPN and purely ESPN. And so there was that issue, and I didn't want to give up Fantasy Life. And then the other issue was, is that, I wanted to be part of NFL coverage.
The way it's set up in ESPN is that the people who do fantasy and sports betting are completely in a separate category than the people who do our NFL coverage.
JAG: You had the pre-game show for fantasy on ESPN2 on Sunday mornings, while the main pregame show is running on ESPN for a while there. Yeah. It is separate.
Matthew: Correct. It's very separate. Like the Ultimate Boss of the Sunday NFL countdown Show that you referenced, that has Matt Hasselbeck and Teddy Bruschi and Rex Ryan and all those guys. The person that runs that show is a different person and reports to a different person than the person who runs Fantasy Football Now, it's not even in the same division.
JAG: Okay.
Matthew: This is inside baseball, but like just basically the way E S P N covers the NFL does not include sports betting or fantasy, period. And it was important to me as I've tried to always push the ball forward for fantasy sports, more sports betting now, more recently now that it's legal.
That'd be part of N F L coverage because I believe in a big way, Jon, that is one of the ways, one of the major ways, candidly, that fans engage with the NFL. They root for their team. They like to tailgate, but they also have fantasy players in games that they're watching. And in a state where it's legal, they've got money on the game or money on a player.
JAG: I'm glad you went there because I was gonna ask you if you felt like the advent of legal gambling is almost doing for the NFL and sports now, what fantasy did back in the day. And as an example, I grew up in Boston. I'm a Patriots fan, so for 20 years I got to sit back and watch my team destroy everybody and love football.
And now that my team is back toward the middle of the pack, I've actually started gambling on the NFL more because I like that extra juice and that extra thing to root for because I'm not just sitting back watching Tom Brady destroy the entire league anymore.
Matthew: Exactly. It gives you both. Fantasy and sports betting are very different pursuits, but they both have at its core a similar appeal, which is it gives you a rooting interest in a game that you might not otherwise care about.
Or gives you more of a rooting interest in a game that you do care about. At any rate, it was important to me to be part of NFL coverage. And we had some conversations, my agents and I and I felt pretty confident that if I left ESPN, that I would be able to be a part of NFL coverage somewhere.
We had a number of really good conversations and so I made the decision to leave ESPN, and once again, bet on myself. NBC was great, and when I met with them, NBC basically said hey, we really love you, and they made me a very generous offer in terms of what they're paying me.
But beyond that, they just basically said two things. Number one is we will make you a part of our NFL coverage. We're gonna put you on Football Night in America. You will be part of the biggest pre-game show in the world. The highest rated TV show. Forget sports. Just the highest rated show on TV right now is Football Night in America.
JAG: Again, after you leave LA you go to the highest rated show on tv.
Matthew: Correct. Yeah, exactly. The only thing that's higher rated than Football Night in America is the actual Sunday Night Football game. So I guess technically it's the second highest rated. They were like, we're gonna put you on Football Night in America.
We'll make you part of our NFL coverage. And by the way, in terms of Fantasy Life, do whatever you want. We're gonna be supportive of that. We're gonna be completely supportive of that. As they pointed out to me, they said, Cris Collinsworth owns Pro Football Focus, and Mike Florio owns Pro Football Talk.
We are comfortable with our talent. Having an entrepreneurial side to them. Jim Cramer over on CNBC, he owns his investment club. And I was just like, wow, that's amazing. And so they basically said they're gonna put me on, the highest rated show on television, make me part of NBC's NFL coverage. And oh, by the way, they're gonna let me do what I want with my entrepreneurial side. Like, it was a 10 minute negotiation. I'm like, where do I sign? It was like perfect. So NBC is, and I say this with no disrespect to ESPN. NBC's been amazing. They've been incredible partners. I love working there.
I feel like this past year was the best year of my professional career. It's been fantastic. And I'll tell you just a quick anecdote about NBC. My very first day they tell me to come to this conference room or whatever, and so I show up there 9:00 AM and I get there. And in the conference room were like really 15 people? Maybe there's 20.
Everyone that basically runs NBC sports at NBC. So a man named Sam Flood, who's the executive producer of NBC Sports. Sam Flood stands up in front of everybody and the chairman of NBC Sports is there, Pete Bevacqua. Fred Gaudelli, who produces Sunday Night Football.
The legend Fred Gaudelli, and he's there. It's a who's who of NBC sports. They're all there. And Sam says, thank you everyone for coming. I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome Matthew Berry to the NBC Sports Family. Fantasy football and sports betting are not a third rail. They're not some siloed thing.
They are part of how we cover the NFL at NBC. They're part of our coverage of the NFL. It's part of what we do here at NBC in terms of how we cover the league. And Matthew is going to lead our efforts there. Please welcome Matthew to NBC Sports.
JAG: Wow. That had to be an incredible feeling.
Matthew: Amazing. It was incredible. It was awesome. How do you not love being there? And he's been true to his word. I'm on Football Night in America. Do three or four segments. We talk fantasy. We talk betting. I was at the NFL Combine. I was at the Super Bowl. I was broadcasting live from the Jaguars Chiefs divisional round playoff game, that NBC broadcast.
Like I'm literally on the sidelines broadcasting before a playoff game, like how insane is that? So it's been great.
JAG: One of the things you said when you keynoted the Banquet a few years ago is that you're okay with being wrong. Is that, you'll make a prediction when it comes to fantasy or gambling or whatever it is, and you're not always gonna be Right, but have a reason for what you're predicting.
Matthew: Correct. Look, it's a game played with an oblong shaped ball made of leather. Weird stuff is gonna happen. Weird stuff is gonna happen. You can't predict the future, and I think most people, most reasonable people understand that. But as long as you have a good reason for why you think, what you think, that it's not just for being outrageous, but it is backed in data and stats and analysis and film study, and you're like, this is what's going to happen and this is why I think it's going to happen.
Most people are forgiving. And the people that aren't, are just being unreasonable and looking for a fight.
JAG: I wanna come back to the Banquet for a second. You're one of the rare guests we've had, who's been a keynote speaker at the Banquet. Yeah. I was talking to Matt Friedman from the class of 94 yesterday, and he told me the story of that banquet weekend, and he's hanging out with Adam Shapiro at Faegan's, and you're texting Shapiro saying, hey, I'm on my way over.
And so they had a spot near the front of the bar waiting for you to get there, and nobody else knew in the bar that Matthew Berry from at the time ESPN was coming in. And that you walked into Fagans and the second you walk into Faegan's, every kid in the place has their cell phone out taking pictures. That had to be a surreal moment for you.
Matthew: I actually don't even remember that. I have to be honest with you.
JAG: All right, fair enough.
Matthew: It's just, it's not, I'm not saying that every time I go into a bar, everyone pulls out their cell phones, but certainly I am used to having heads turn and phones up when I walk into a place.
But yes, to your point, I think for me the surreal part wasn't necessarily the people gawking, but that people were gawking at Faegan's. That I was walking back into Faegan's, not as a college kid, hoping for flip night. That I was that I was walking in as I guess somebody who had made it.
JAG: Yeah. Kind of where I was going is it had to be just full circle. You're coming back from being a student at Syracuse and learning the ropes and being told, hey, start on overnights at JPZ. You can't just start doing whatever. And now you're coming back to keynote the banquet and basically everybody in the room and probably everybody in the sports department is trying to get a
minute of your time.
Matthew: Yeah. But that's okay. But that's what you're there for, right? I feel like that's, when you go to the banquet, when you say, hey, yeah, I'll come back to college, I'll come back to Syracuse. That's the gig. People want your time. And listen, that's what we did with Sam Simon back when I was a student.
And yeah, I was good with it. I enjoyed it. I had a great time at the banquet. It was really good. And I got a standing ovation. It's pretty cool. That was a cool moment,
JAG: I'm sure. And so well received. I speak for many of the alumni when we talk about how thrilled you were to have you.
I'm gonna timestamp this and say we're recording this on March 31st, and I'm gonna turn this around more quickly than normal because things so change so quickly in the NFL. We're gonna release this the Monday before The Draft.
Matthew: Okay.
JAG: Give me one storyline. I'm not gonna ask for draft predictions or record predictions or anything like that, but give me one storyline in the NFL that you're really interested in following this year.
Matthew: One storyline in the NFL. As we sit here today, I think Lamar Jackson is a fascinating one. Where does he wind up playing? What ends up happening with him? Just on a larger scale, I'll just say quarterbacks, right? I think there's so many great quarterback storylines. Lamar Jackson being, one of the most notable. As we sit here today, the expectation is that Aaron Rodgers will be traded to the New York Jets, but as of this recording, he has not. He's still currently a member of the Green Bay. So assuming that happens, is it Rodgers from two years ago?
Is it Rodgers from last year? What happens with Rodgers in New York on a different team for the first time playing with a team that isn't the Green Bay Packers? I think that's fascinating. Tom Brady retired this off season. There's rumors that he might come back. I don't think he will, but you never know.
So that's interesting. Tua Tagolvailoa had a great year last year, but also health was a concern. What happens with Tua and Miami I think is fascinating. You know what I mean? I just think there's a ton of different great quarterback storylines.
Brock Purdy was an incredible story last year. Mr. Irrelevant. Third string quarterback having to take over for the 49ers and leading them on going undefeated, 6-0 over the regular season and winning playoff games and going to the NFC championship game before he got hurt. And so they've got Brock Purdy versus their third overall pick in Trey Lance. Two young guys. And so who ends up being the quarterback of the 49ers?
We expect CJ Stroud and Bryce Young to be, the first two picks of the draft upcoming. Do they both start? Who takes them? Do they go to Carolina and Houston, respectively, Stroud and Young? Or is there a change? Where does Anthony Richardson go? So I just think there's a lot of fascinating storylines among all the quarterbacks, and so that's what I'll be looking forward to.
JAG: Fair enough. Quick follow up on the banquet thing before I forget. True or false? You were playing beer pong with students at the after party till 3:00 AM? I think you mentioned that on your podcast.
Matthew: That would be true. That would be true.
JAG: How was that experience? That also had to be part of that whole full circle moment.
Matthew: I ran the table. I was good. I'm better beer point than you think. Yeah. Pretty good. Pretty damn good.
Hey, I got some texts on some of our bits.
JAG: I was going there next before we wrap up. Now let's go back to the text of some of the Crazy Morning show bits. Crazy Morning Crew bits.
Matthew: Okay we did a thing called Sing Along with Adam. Adam would sing a verse, would do an acapella version of the verse. The caller had to complete the verse. So we did a whole thing with sing along with Adam.
We did a weekly report on Beverly Hills. 90210. The 90210 report. We always thought that was funny, like, a bunch of dudes talking about Beverly Hills 90210. We always did that. I think we, at one point, I don't know if we ever actually did it or if we just pretended that it happened, but at the War Memorial, they were having tryouts for the American Gladiators.
And so we made Adam go down and tryout, or at least we said we were doing that. We talked about how terrible that was. Those were some of the stuff we did and we just, we had a lot of fun.
JAG: Matthew Berry of NBC Sports, WJPZ Class of 92. Really appreciate you taking some time out of your very busy schedule and spending a few minutes with us today. Thanks for coming on the podcast.
Matthew: Thank you my friend. Go Cuse!