🧤Meet the Most Hated Man in Football

Can I be vulnerable for a minute?

This career is altogether the most ego-boosting and ego-deflating thing I’ve ever done. I’ll give you a prime example:

On Sunday, I posted a video on TikTok about the NFL’s orange glove guy (the story you’re about to read) and didn’t think much of it, but by the time I woke up, it had millions of views and has gone on to be one of my best-performing videos of the month.

The next day, I posted a video about a unique pair of glasses being used by the Tennessee Titans, and I was certain it was going to go viral, too. It currently has 10,000 views.

The moral of the story? If I actually knew what would go viral, I could finally charge more for brand deals.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: The Milwaukee Brewers are on the Verge of MLB History

📉 Biggest Loser: Meet the Most Hated Man in Football

🏆 Winner’s Circle: The Story Behind the Most High-Tech Headband in Sports

🗞 The Big Story

The Milwaukee Brewers are about to make MLB history, but not for the reason you might think.

No Salary Cap: Baseball is a strange sport. Since it doesn’t have a salary cap, every dollar a franchise earns from ticket sales, hot dogs, and local media rights can be used to build a better team. And while it’s not a novel observation that not having a salary cap benefits the teams in the biggest markets, I’m not sure most fans actually understand just how big an advantage these teams have.

To prove my point, just look at the revenue as compared to the Opening Day payroll of the last four teams in the National League:

Small Market Magic: For context, the Milwaukee Brewers' 2025 Opening Day payroll of $115M isn’t even worth half of what the Los Angeles Dodgers make every year from their local media rights alone ($334M/year).

However, that hasn’t stopped the team in the league’s smallest market from finishing the regular season with the best record in baseball. Still, it’s not what they did in the regular season that’s going to land them in the history books.

History in the Making: Instead, if the Brewers can manage to win their first World Series in franchise history this year, then they’d join the 2003 Miami Marlins as the only other team in the Wild Card era to win it all with an Opening Day Payroll ranked in the bottom 10.

A historic outlier in a league where 27 of the last 30 World Series champions have ranked in the top half of Opening Day payrolls, according to Baseball America.

To read more about how the Brewers have built a perennial contender in the 39th largest media market in the country, check out Mike Mazzeo’s piece in the Sports Business Journal.

📉 Biggest Loser

Who the heck is this guy wearing orange gloves on the sideline of every NFL game?

He actually has one of the most important jobs in football that no one seems to know about, but it also makes him one of the most hated men in America. Let me explain.

NFL Commercial Requirements: Per the NFL’s contracts with TV networks, every broadcast is required to have at least 16 commercial breaks that last 2 minutes and 20 seconds each. This averages out to 4 breaks per quarter, which usually follow natural pauses in the action, like after a scoring play or a punt.

However, sometimes broadcasts need to roll TV timeouts over to the next quarter if there isn’t an obvious break in the action, but who’s responsible for coordinating all of this?

Well, that’s where Dave Dare comes in.

Networks pay billions of dollars every year for the rights to broadcast NFL games, and the only way they recoup that investment is by selling commercials during the game.

That’s why they each send a dedicated person to every game to ensure the NFL meets its required 16 commercial breaks, and for the last two decades, the person for NBC has been a lawyer from Omaha, Nebraska.

Dave’s Job: On the sidelines of every Sunday Night Football game, you’ll see Dave wearing a pair of bright orange gloves, where his only job is to make one of two hand signals to the refs:

• Arms Crossed = Production is going to a TV timeout

• Arms Raised → Wind = Coming out of break

These signals also inform local radio broadcasts and the in-stadium production crew when they should go to break as well.

Once you find Dave in the crowd, you might also notice that he’s always being followed around by a guy in a green hat. This is essentially Dave’s counterpart on the NFL side and is there to “make sure Dave does his job.”

While Dave says that he loves traveling to watch some of the best football in the league every week, he also admits that he frequently gets heckled by fans in the stadium who don’t like sitting around for at least 37 minutes and 20 seconds every game while the broadcast goes to commercial.

But in his defense, he’s just doing his job.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

This is the most high-tech headband ever created, but not for the reason you might think.

The Rise of Flag Football: You might be shocked to learn that flag football is actually the fastest-growing sport here in America, but while many experts will cite “safety” as the reason for record-participation numbers, just because there’s no tackling in flag or 7-on-7 football, it doesn’t mean the athletes are immune from getting injured, specifically when it comes to concussions.

In fact, one study analyzed 17 different professional and collegiate flag football games and identified 92 instances of head impacts – equal to almost 5.5 per game – with roughly half of those resulting from jump-balls.

But what are these flag and 7-on-7 players supposed to do? Wear helmets?

Well, for most of the sport’s history, that has been the answer. And even though these soft-shell, rugby-style caps are effective in limiting concussions, they also absorb a lot of sweat, they’re warm on a player’s head, and, let’s be honest, they don’t look that cool. 

Ditching the Caps: That’s why, in 2021, a team of designers and engineers started interviewing athletes who played flag and 7-on-7 football to ask about what they would actually wear. And overwhelmingly, they kept hearing the same answer: headbands. 

So, over the next two years, this same team invested millions of dollars into:

• Research

• New technology

• Product development

Then, in June 2023, they launched one of the best-designed pieces of football equipment I think I’ve ever seen.

SYZMIK Headband: On the surface, this might just look like a normal headband with a bit of extra padding, but what you don’t see is the custom-made foam that lines the inside of this band. Apparently, the EVA Foam used in this headband is typically used in running shoes due to its ultra-lightweight properties; however, this material has actually been custom-designed to also disperse high-end impacts.

It also absorbs 35% less sweat than other soft shells and headbands on the market, keeping it both lightweight and way more comfortable.

But perhaps the most impressive aspect of this design is that the entire headband is ultrasonically welded together, which not only makes it more durable than headbands sewn together but also gives it a significantly better appearance.

And after talking to the designers of this product, I learned that their biggest competition isn’t other products on the market but rather athletes wearing nothing at all.

That’s why it’s so impressive that SYZMIK, the company responsible for this X7C headband, has not only been able to design something that has a 5-star safety rating from Virginia Tech and has been proven to reduce head impacts by 41%, but their headband is now being worn by more flag football players than any other brand on the market, according to the company.

Not bad for just being in year two.

⏱️ In Other News

• This company is solving Guardian Cap’s biggest problem

• The newest retirement asset? Big 10 football

• “Ball is life” - Taylor Swift, probably

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

If you’re reading this on Friday morning, there’s a chance I’m currently getting my gallbladder removed. Send me your best YouTube or TV recommendations while I recover!