Mina Kimes On Going Live to the Whole World After Beyoncé, Talking Football on TV in a Wild Historical Moment, and Why Steve Harvey Is the Perfect Ce...

On Christmas Day 2024, I sat with my family and watched Mina Kimes on Netflix. It was a landmark day. The streamer was showing live football for the first time—the Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers, followed by the Houston Texans vs. the Baltimore Ravens. So, in addition to her duties as an analyst on ESPN’s NFL Live, host of The Mina Kimes Show With Lenny, color commentator for Los Angeles Rams games, and as a trusted voice on the reality show Love Is Blind, she was also now talking ball in front of 27 million people on the same platform where I watch The Night Agent.

In her Los Angeles home this January, I sat with Kimes during a rare 90-minute window in her ever-more-complicated schedule. Her son was still asleep, she was done filming for the day, and her dog and podcast cohost Lenny was snoring on my lap, which apparently was not normal. There was calm, which meant it was time to ask her about Beyoncé.

Mina Kimes: The craziest part [about doing the Christmas Day broadcast] was, in the moment, it didn’t occur to me that I was going right after Beyoncé. I certainly didn’t think about that in my prep, because all my prep was just breakdowns. I’m sitting there and we’re watching Beyoncé and I’m like, “Wow, this is truly Christmas.” The spirit is overpowering me. And then they’re like, “All right, 90 out. What do you think about CJ Stroud?"

I’ve got 90 seconds to give my opinion about how his offensive line can’t pick out the stunt to save their lives. But what didn’t occur to me until after the fact was the 27 million people who watched Beyoncé and then saw me after. Oh no. Really surreal, the amount of eyes.

I definitely don’t feel very universally recognizable. I think when I get approached or when people have an interest in me, it’s very specific to certain niches and places. I’m just so much more likely to be recognized in a sports bar than anywhere else in America.

Which, I say that and it’s like, “Well—that’s America.” But a little bit more specifically, the type of public location where a lot of people are likely to actually watch football. It’s much more likely that people will come up to me too. But the amount of real-life interaction I get is perfect.

Which is not a ton. It’s always positive. It’s always so lovely. Almost to a fault, every interaction I’ve ever had has always been great in person. It’s such a contrast to the internet, right?

Such a good question. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, man, because it just fucking sucks.

Everything about it sucks. There’s so many facets of the platform that I don’t like, including the ownership, the way [Elon Musk] moves in the world, the things he has done to it. But even separate from that, it’s a horrible user experience. It’s horrible for information-seeking. It’s horrible for engagement. It’s horrible in the way that the levers are now pushed to amplify the worst things on there, whether it’s in your comments, or what’s trending, or whatever. So part of it’s like, Screw this, I shouldn’t use this at all. And I’ve been actively trying to find better places to do stuff. But then there is a little part of me that’s like, Well, you should still use your platform, you still have this megaphone, you should still use it.

I’m trying to figure it out. It’s just become a very unpleasant place. And people always say, “Wow, I really miss how you used to dunk on shitty dudes.” And I’m like, “Yeah, there’s just too many of them now.” It used to be something dumb, like “Make me a sandwich.” I’m like... Boom—stand under the rim. But now it’s just explicit bigotry. And it’s a real bummer, because I think live sports flourish when there’s a social platform where people can have real-time conversation. And for what I do, there’s actually a lot of value in it. But I don’t really want to wade through this shit to make a joke anymore.

Yeah. So I’m watching a game first on TV. And then on tape, I’m watching and looking for tendencies, looking for things that teams are having success with or struggling with, taking notes of the plays. And then I start looking at it through a statistical lens, how trends are evolving over the course of the season. So it starts with watching the games and then I work backwards. There’s a lot of prioritizing that goes on. Having a kid means my day is completely oriented around him now, in terms of, I have to finish, it’s pencils down at 5 p.m. And then, during the season, it’s pencils back up, often at 7:30 or 8—but yeah, it’s like I really have to be more efficient with my time.

Yeah. So I think that’s the secret sauce. I’m self-agonizing, but the thing that makes my main show NFL Live work is we’re in constant communication, and that’s been the way since it was rebooted during the pandemic when we had to be. But literally, we’re just on a group chat all day like, “Hey, did you guys see this? Did you see this? Did you see this?” Our producers are on. We have two group chats for the show. We have one called Serious NFL Live Chat that the producers [are in], and then we have the other one—the pettiest stuff, the unfiltered opinions, the inside jokes.

The Commanders. I thought they would be bad. Not because I thought Jayden Daniels would be bad. I liked Jayden Daniels. I just thought the team was bad around him. I thought the offensive line wasn’t good enough to support a rookie quarterback who I thought would take a lot of sacks, and they just dramatically outperformed my expectations. And it happened right after they got their horrible owners out the paint. That never happens in life. Like when the bad guy leaves and then a good thing happens. It literally is like a fairy tale. It’s incredible.

Coming out of college, I wanted a job where I could write. My first journalism job was as an investigative reporter. I got placed there from a previous internship. And I wasn’t like, “I want to solve wrongs and hold people accountable,” which would be the honorable thing. It was just “Ehh: This is a thing I can do where I can write.” My main priority was not having to go back to Gilbert, Arizona.

The first time I ever met Ryan Fitzpatrick was at a game, and he just pointed at me and said, “Gilbert.” Because we’re like the two people from Gilbert. And Brock Purdy is from Gilbert. We’re literally the three football people from Gilbert, Arizona. It’s the smallest circle.

Oh yeah. That was a big deal.

That story was one I was really proud of, because I felt like it was not an obvious story, per se, but one that I really wanted to write, one that I really want to do honor to as well, because I love subcultures and it felt like something that hadn’t been given the proper mainstream treatment. As a writer, I felt like I was good at noticing things. So the biggest change from being an investigative reporter to being someone who writes profiles of athletes was like, it’s no longer about trying to uncover things, and more about What I can say about someone that people think they already know? I felt confident in that, even if I didn’t feel like I had the adeptness of words like others.

That was—of all the things you said, that is by far the most surreal experience.

Forget the other stuff.

You asked me about fame earlier. I’ve never met a more famous person than Steve Harvey. And I have met people who are on paper more famous, who were making more money, whatever. To me, he is the perfect famous person.

I was just on Family Feud with [David] Chang. And he just pops out. You don’t see where he’s coming from. He’s not just milling around.

You’re like, “Whoa, there’s Steve Harvey.” He’s wearing an insane outfit, and it literally feels like he came out of nowhere. And he just presents like he’s been famous his entire life. He’s walking over. Again, about being recognized, it’s very time and place. I’m like whatever’s below D-level celebrity. But, if you will allow me this, Steve Harvey walks up and goes, “Big fan.”

I’m like, this is the best moment in my entire life. And he’s like, “I love your NFL commentary.” I was literally like, I will never reach this height again. It was me and Michelle Wie, the golfer. And he was literally ignored everyone else. He was like, “Ladies, love your work. You’ve taught me a lot about your swing.” And then turns to me and says “You, I love your football commentary."

And then he does the show and then he just disappears, and you’re like, “Where did he go? I don’t know.”

I think that’s how he does it, he’s very careful about the amount of himself he gives to the world.

Got to disappear.

It makes me so happy when Korean people come up to me and say, “Man, it’s pretty cool seeing someone doing what you’re doing who’s one of us.” A lot of young Korean men talk to me, and it’s awesome. It really is supervalidating. And the thing they always say to me too is not just like, “Hey, it’s cool that one of us is there.” They’re like, “It’s really cool that you’re proud of it. And you put up a flag on your backdrop, and you’ve got a flag tattoo, and you bring it up."

And it’s supervalidating, because something I often wrestle with is whether I am doing enough to stand up for the things that I believe in and using my platform in the right ways when I get my opportunities. And something that I think I forget until moments like that is sometimes just being me and doing my job and going about my business is actually itself an act in that way.

And I think I forget that. Especially in a moment like this in American history, sometimes just being you and being good at your job, or trying to, is itself a thing to a lot of people. So that means a lot to me when that happens.

Okay, so for the Eagles, defensively, I’m going to go really fucking deep-cut for you. Oren Burks, who is their backup linebacker, who had to come in for Nikobe Dean. I don’t know if you remember this last year, but this Niners’ linebacker hurt his ankle. It was a really horrible injury just running onto the field. Which was awful. And so this dude, Oren Burks, had to come in, and then he got picked on in the Super Bowl. Now he’s the Eagles backup linebacker, in relief as this weirdly pivotal player. And they went after him, I remember very aggressively, in the Super Bowl last year, and now he’s on the other team. So that’s a super-deep-cut player.

On the Chiefs, I’ll go with another really super-deep-cut player for you: Mike Caliendo. The backup guard who’s now the starter for the Kansas City Chiefs because they moved their guard to tackle, which is insane that he’d be able to do that. Yeah, Mike Caliendo.