Katie Nolan, Dan Le Batard Pull Back Curtain About Why She Didn’t Join Meadowlark Media
1. When Katie Nolan’s tenure at ESPN ended during the time Dan Le Batard was starting Meadowlark Media, most people who follow sports media expected Nolan to land at the company due to, in part, the fact that Nolan often appeared on Le Batard’s Highly Questionable.
However, Nolan never ended up at Meadowlark. What happened?
The two discussed that in great depth on a recent edition of Le Batard’s South Beach Sessions.
The conversation stood out for several reasons. Rarely do two sports media stars pull back the curtain the way Le Batard and Nolan did here. Both said they had never really spoken about why things didn’t work out, even to each other, so the conversation felt cathartic, raw and honest.
After Nolan explained why she struggled during her time there, citing, among other things, the lack of structure and ESPN’s not knowing how to use her, the conversation turned to Le Batard’s pursuit of Nolan for Meadowlark. What followed was a powerful and riveting exchange.
Le Batard: I wish I had known this history when I called you after.
Nolan: I do feel like we need to have a conversation about that at some point. I regret the way that that happened. I was in a bad place when we talked.
Le Batard: You wanna have it here?
Nolan: We can. I’m fine with it.
Le Batard: All right, let me give the backstory here because we haven’t had it. I’ve apologized to you about this profusely by text, but you and I have not talked about everything that happened here, so we might as well do it now. Are you ready?
Nolan: O.K., yeah I'm ready
Le Batard: So, I don't know any of this and I wish I had known that you had been usurped a number of different times by “we don’t know what the job is, just come on over and we’ll figure it out together. Trust us, we’ll figure it out.”
Nolan: “Look at all this money we’re paying you. How could we ever not figure it out?”
Le Batard: And so, after I left ESPN I wanted you to come over to Meadowlark with us, but I did not yet know what it would be, and, you say you were in a bad space, I was manic. I was crazed. I’ve had nothing but success in my career. I’ve made all of my own choices. I don’t fail. I’ve gotta go figure it out and I don’t know how I’m going to figure it out. So I call you and I want to bring you over to Meadowlark and do stuff, but I don’t know exactly what Meadowlark is going to be because we’re building Meadowlark, and if I known that you'd been burned every time by, “No, you got to tell me exactly what it is,” and I’m sitting here with the passion of, “What do you mean?”
Nolan: “It’s me. We’ll figure it out. We’re building a plane in the air.”
Le Batard: “Yes, we’ll build it, and there will be money falling from the sky.” I remember just coming on strong, not knowing that you were in a frail place and scaring you with my intensity.
Nolan: Terrifying. Not only did you call, what happened is …
Le Batard: So I’m sorry.
Nolan: Thank you. That’s O.K. I’m sorry for ever making you feel like I wouldn’t want to work with you. Of course I did. I was hoping that that would be the thing that would happen. But when you called me, and then as soon as we got off the phone, [producer] Mike Ryan called me, and then as soon as we got off the phone somebody else would call me. What it felt like to me was you were like, “Of course you’re coming. What do you mean you’re not coming? If you don’t come we’re not going to be friends anymore.”
Le Batard: Nooooo.
Nolan: The reason that I was hesitant is because I didn’t want to not be your friend because I didn’t want to resent you as a boss. I didn’t want to get to a point where I felt the way about you that I felt about the company that I was currently at, which was ESPN.
Le Batard: What did I do that made you feel we’re not going to be friends anymore?
Nolan: You were manic and you were very intense about, “Well, what else are you going to do?” And I remember you said, “Well you can’t just be the cool girl your whole life,” and I was like, I don’t even know what that means. I just remember you were very, and I understood it, I want to be clear, I understood that you were going through a very stressful period, but I also felt like you were, not strong-arming me, but sort of just like, “Let’s go. Let’s go.”
And I was like, how does this company work? And you keep saying you don’t work with agents. My agent does all my business, and I don’t know anything about business, so if you’re not working with agents I’m screwed because I don’t know how to do the business side. I just know how to be silly. So that part I didn’t understand. And then when it was like, “Well, we’re going to have an arm that does producing, like television stuff, but we don’t have that yet.” Then there was exclusivity that was like, “You can’t do TV, but we don't have TV yet but we will have TV,” and it just was too much.
I think I was already in a place where I was too up in the air that I wanted something that was, obviously I was expecting too much and obviously it doesn’t exist because I don’t have a job right now, but I just wanted somebody that was like, “Look, we’ll pay you this, we want you to do this, you’ll get to work with these two, three, four people, this will be the city you’re based out of.” I needed it to be more structured because I am so unstructured I actually benefit from being given structure.
There was the not trusting part of me from ESPN and then there was the part of me that was like, I don’t succeed well in “you can just do whatever you feel like that day.” I need somebody to be like, “Here’s what we need to do this week, and we can do it however we want to, but these are the goals that we have and this is what we’re trying to make.” So all of it together was just too much, and then I think it was you calling, Mike calling, you calling, Mike calling, that I was just like, I still don’t have a different answer than I just had for Dan. I don’t know what to tell you. You’re freaking me out. And that was basically that.
Le Batard: I’m sorry we created yet more stress.
Nolan: That’s O.K., I’m sorry that I was stressed and that I wasn’t in a place where I could just be like, “Yeah, let’s go.” I would love to be that person. Everything in me wants to be that person who’s just like, “We’ll figure it out when we get there,” but I’m not.
2. It’s bad enough Rams home games are a complete embarrassment with most of the crowd rooting for the visiting team on a weekly basis, but even the team’s security at SoFi Stadium stinks.
3. Lions linebacker Aidan Hutchinson had the Play of the Day on Sunday.
4. This was such a bad look for the ref who told Chiefs defensive back L’Jarius Sneed to put his helmet back instead of throwing the flag, like he’s supposed to do. And this came after the refs had thrown a flag for pass interference on the Chiefs, but then picked up the flag for no apparent reason.
5. Miami had as bad a loss as any team can have on Saturday when, instead of kneeling to run out the clock, it inexplicably ran a handoff, which resulted in Georgia Tech causing and recovering a fumble. That led to the Yellow Jackets’ pulling off an improbable win on a wild play. Here’s that play and the Georgia Tech radio call.
6. The latest SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast dropped Thursday. The episode features a conversation with The Ringer’s sports media columnist and podcast host, Bryan Curtis.
Topics included NBC’s Taylor Swift–heavy broadcast of Chiefs-Jets, Cris Collinsworth’s odd commentary on Zach Wilson and NBC’s Rodney Harrison taking a ton of heat for calling Wilson “garbage” during a postgame interview with the Chiefs’ Chris Jones.
Other items covered on the podcast: whether interest in Deion Sanders and Colorado football has peaked, why the NFL’s prime-time schedule is in big trouble, ABC getting Wednesday-night NBA games, ESPN’s usage of Alex Rodriguez, the proliferation of podcasts and much more.
Following Curtis, Sal Licata from WFAN radio and SNY TV in New York joins me for our weekly “Traina Thoughts” segment. This week we discuss Sal missing an NFL Sunday to look at houses, Patrick Mahomes’s controversial slide at the end of the Chiefs-Jets game, the demise of Threads, the lack of interest in the MLB playoffs and much more.
You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify and Google.
You can also watch SI Media With Jimmy Traina on YouTube.
7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: It's Columbus Day, so we need to remember that weird Sopranos episode.
Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out SI Media With Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
