Sports are serious business.
On Under the Number, Brent Peus goes deep with the innovators driving the Sports Economy—from elite athletes and investors to visionary founders and executives.
Get inside the deals, trends, and disruptions reshaping the business of sport. Whether you’re an investor, founder, executive, or just trying to break in, Under the Number offers cutting-edge insights and expert conversations you won’t want to miss.
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The Connection:
I’d never met Seth before, but by the time I was halfway through American Kings, I knew I had to invite him on the pod. I sent him a LinkedIn DM explaining why the book resonated with me so deeply. We recorded the episode two weeks later.
Quotes of the Episode
“You don’t play quarterback — it’s not the same as a shortstop. You are one.”
“There are 16,000 starting high school quarterbacks in America any given year. 958 starters in college. There are 32 starters in the NFL, and 10 good ones. There are three future Hall of Famers any given year. So what does it take to go from 16,000 to three?”
“There’s a balance between living in a suspended state of reality where deep down inside you have to believe that you’re physically — and almost from a human point of view — superior to everybody else.
And you know better. There’s a reason why the ball is in your hands and it’s not in the coach’s hands, and it’s not in the backup quarterback’s hands.
It’s because you, somewhere inside, have to believe that you can do it. And then you also have to balance that with being able to look at yourself honestly and see things to improve on.”
Bet You Didn’t Know:
Perks of the job: while working on American Kings, Seth was in the mix with the “Breakfast Club” – a crew that includes John Elway, Wayne Gretzky, and Sean Payton – at the exclusive Gozzer Ranch Golf and Lake Club in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
“A pile of what must be thousands of dollars in cash is at the center of the table. Elway holds the score cards, doing the math. Gretzky orders food . . . talk turns to the old days.”
Seth Wickersham is a senior writer at ESPN whose primary focus is long form enterprise and investigative work on the National Football League. His stories have appeared across ESPN platforms.
In more than two decades at ESPN, he has profiled the likes of Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Bill Belichick, John Elway, Sean McVay, Andrew Luck, Odell Beckham, Jr., Bill Walsh, Jim Harbaugh, Alex Honnold, Gregg Popovich and Y.A. Tittle, among others, and he has written deep dives into strained relationships within the Cleveland Browns, Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots. Along with senior writer Don Van Natta, Wickersham has written critically acclaimed investigations on the NFL’s handling of the Spygate and Deflategate cheating controversies, the Rams and Raiders franchise relocations, the behind-closed-doors meetings on the inequality protests, the efforts by Jerry Jones to block Roger Goodell’s contract extension, the complicated tenure of NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith, the efforts of Donald Trump to interfere with Senator Arlen Specter’s Spygate inquiry, and of Dan Snyder’s attempts to avoid being removed as owner of the Washington Commanders. A 2022 story about Snyder by Wickersham, Van Natta, and Tisha Thompson is widely credited with triggering the push for him to sell the franchise.
In 2018, Wickersham was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Reporting, and has been part of a staff that has three times won the NMA for General Excellence. His stories have been anthologized in the Best American Magazine Writing, the Best American Sports Writing, Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists, and in Words Matter: Writing to Make a Difference. He has won awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and the Pro Football Writers Association. In 2015, he won a Folio Award for Best Single Story – Sports, and received a second-place National Headliner Award in Magazine Feature Writing.
In the fall of 2021, Wickersham’s book It’s Better to Be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness was released. It was a New York Times bestseller and was named Nonfiction Book of the Year by Sports Illustrated and Sports Book of the Year by the National Sports Media Association.
In the fall of 2025, Wickersham’s second book, American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback, was released. It was a New York Times bestseller.
A collection of his ESPN work, Be on That Hill, will be published in the fall of 2026 by Hyperion Avenue.
He is credited as playing himself in the 2014 movie Draft Day, though he regrets to inform that the scene was cut before it was shot.
Wickersham was born in Denver and raised in Boulder and in Anchorage, Alaska. He attended the Missouri School of Journalism, where he and ESPN writer Wright Thompson covered Super Bowl XXXIV for the Columbia Missourian. He was hired at ESPN The Magazine shortly after graduation in 2000. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and two children.
Bio via ESPN
ICYMI: Last episode with Momentous Sports Managing Partner Kyle Israel ⬇️
