Pablo Torre has seen the feedback.
And while he largely stands by his anti-jargon take regarding the NFL media, he doesn’t necessarily feel great about it.
Guest-hosting Thursday’s episode of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz, the Pablo Torre Finds Out host reacted to the reaction regarding his viral take. For the uninitiated, a clip from Hard Knocks of Drake Maye reciting play call terminology spurred Torre to express his disdain for content possessing such jargon, which he said fans and media have “fetishized.”
Unsurprisingly, many in the NFL media ecosystem were quick to respond to Torre’s stance. And although he didn’t back down from his take, he did admit that the response left him with a sense of regret.
“I feel bad about what I did,” Torre said.
Asked by co-hosts Domonique Foxworth and David Samson whether he was apologizing for his take, the former ESPN senior writer declined to do so, elaborating that he felt like his film-focused peers thought he was sub-tweeting them. He proceeded to state that he didn’t co-sign Awful Announcing’s (hey, we know those guys) “Pablo Torre is sick of NFL film analysis content: ‘We fetishize jargon,'” headline, stating “they made me into goddamn Mad Dog Russo.”
(If we were really feeling spicy, we’d write up Torre taking out a sports radio legend. But we’ll let it slide. For now.)
“The entire point of what I was trying to say when I was in this chair was that I like it when complicated things are explained to me… as someone who doesn’t have the depth of knowledge in a way that anyone can understand,” Torre said. “My entire show is about, ‘Here’ is a complex thing.
“I’m gonna explain it to you so that you care about it and that you can even talk about it to other people.’ And I just feel like so much of NFL film analysis content at its worst is just peacocking the theatre of authority, as if I want to listen to a lot of doctors only refer to body parts using the Latin name.”
Asked by Samson why he felt the need to clarify his stance on social media if he stood by it, Torre replied, “Because all of these people that I do respect thought that I was sub-tweeting them. And I felt bad that it came across that way.”
After producer Jessica Smetana suggested that he should lean into the take and noted that he’s doing his job as a host by drawing attention to the show with a strong opinion, Torre reiterated that he couldn’t help but be made feel bad by Brett Kollmann responding with a gif of Spider-Man disappearing in Avengers: End Game.
— Brett Kollmann (@BrettKollmann) July 10, 2024
Still, he stands by the take.
“It is annoying when people are saying things without explaining them,” Torre said. “As if we’re supposed to catch up, and no one teaches it.
“I want all of these film nerds to have all of the audience that wants exactly that. And I, in fact, I follow them because I want to learn. I just feel like, across the board, there’s performance of authority through complexity that has been something that I have just wanted to call out for a long time.”
Torre’s co-hosts were quick to call out the hypocrisy of someone who had just used the phrase “performance of authority through complexity” to complain about others using unnecessarily complicated terminology. But alas.
In all seriousness, there are several factors here that can help explain why Torre’s take — which was reasonable — received the reaction that it did.
One of those is that many merely reacted to the headline (which we stand by) without actually reading the story or watching the clip. Another is that Torre seemingly leaned into a Mad Dog-like approach against Foxworth’s pro-jargon stance during Wednesday’s segment. At the same time, Thursday’s conversation was more nuanced (albeit also humorous at times).
To that end, it’s likely that Torre’s original comments were only made with his co-hosts and the show’s audience in mind, as opposed to the audience they later reached after we posted our story. And it’s worth noting that many of his peers’ responses agreed with him that football jargon often gets used as a crutch at the expense of the audience.
We wrote the story because it was an interesting take on the state of football content from a notable media member. The ensuing response from both Torre and his peers seems to validate that it is, in fact, a worthy conversation.
