Whenever you watch a sports debate show, you are going to find someone with a “hot take”. So, where did the hot take actually come from and are they actually genuine?
To answer some of those questions, Sports Illustrated’s Robin Lundberg launched a new show called And Now You Know with the help of SI producer Douglas Vasquez, video producer Eddy Gomez, and coordinating producer David Seperson. The first episode that is a little over 10 minutes long was about the origin of the hot take from the 19th century until today.
For this episode, Lundberg was able to talk to notable sports media personalities Bomani Jones, Michael Wilbon, Max Kellerman, Bob Ryan, and Charlotte Wilder.
As part of the episode, Kellerman discussed that while he and Stephen A. Smith tend to agree on most things when watching a sporting event, they do put in a lot of effort into First Take on finding where they might differ on a particular subject:
“I hear a lot of the time well you guys disagree on everything, are you putting us on?” he said. “No, actually the work of the show before the show ever begins is finding out where we disagree.”
Towards the end of the episode, Lundberg dives into the impact Twitter has had in the vast amount of opinions that are out there. Wilder thought that bad opinions have been around for a long time, but there is also a line where the person giving the opinion needs to be engaging without being a troll.
“I think it’s harder to have a good opinion than it is to have a bad opinion. I think a good opinion takes more time and research than a bad opinion and so, I just hope that we keep building in time for people to keep thinking about things as opposed to things getting faster and faster.”
If this is what all the And Now You Know episodes are going to be, then it should be a good listen to check out whenever you can and no, that is not a hot take. You’ll understand when you watch it.
